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I empathize with people who are trying to help by reducing their footprint. Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifeti

I empathize with people who are trying to help by reducing their footprint. Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second.

throwaway5752 7y ago
I have spent a not inconsiderable amount of resources reducing my footprint and I will be thrilled to death if we can manage our way out of this crisis and people get "free lunches". This is just trivial game theory and the sunk cost fallacy. Regrettably, the numbers involved make me pessimistic. I think your idea of some deus ex machina technology is ungrounded optimism, wishful thinking, or denial. Nothing in the linked article gives any cause for such optimism. Climate change math is like the ballistics equation. It is just a cold hard reality check. There is no free lunch in terms of the energy of a chemical reaction. We are all getting really, really close to failing here. I think it's imperative not to be hopeless about it, but we should be honest with ourselves that we may not have modern human civilization as we understand it within a generation or two [edit: unless we act immediately, not soon]
monkeydreams 7y ago
> Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second. In the same way that a year's worth of health insurance is wasted if you don't get sick. So, not wasted.
tommoor 7y ago
It took me months to save $100 as a kid, now seconds of movement on the stock market earns me more money – but I don't regret saving as a kid :)
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  I don't think the environment pays compound interest then again, what banks do anymore?
abraae 7y ago
Fear instead what will happen if such a machine is ever developed. Which country(s) will own the machine? Who will decide what we dial the CO2 back to? You'd think it would be back to pre-industrial times but who knows? Will regions that have benefited from climate change and can now grow crops be on board? Or will they prefer to keep things as they are?
- millstone 7y ago
  We should be so lucky as to have these problems.
roel_v 7y ago
The article links to a website where you can calculate your footprint, and buy offsets in various programs to negate that footprint (projectwren.com). It would cost me USD 17 / month to offset my (larger than average for my country) footprint. Why do I even bother with my reusable coffee cup and paper straws for that kind of money? I just don't understand. If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it?
- aetherson 7y ago
  Marginal costs would increase if hundreds of millions or billions of such offsets were purchased. By how much, I don't know.
- lacker 7y ago
  You’re probably correct that your reusable cup and paper straws are ineffective mechanisms for preventing climate change.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    But they do make you feel like you're doing your part. I wonder how many people are just satisfied with that and whether it wouldn't have made more sense to push other solutions instead.
  - lorenzhs 7y ago
    Reducing the use of disposable plastics isn't supposed to prevent climate change, it's about reducing the amount of trash. While any trash that you put in the bin in a western country is highly unlikely to end up in the world's oceans, it still sends a signal against ubiquitous single-use products. That the two are so often treated as one is really unfortunate. Because if people actually cared about reducing their individual carbon emissions, they'd have to give up things like flying and eating meat, not disposable plastics. But that involves actual changes in behaviour, so it's not exactly popular and many people find the mere suggestion offensive.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it? Considering how much excise taxes Europeans pay on their gasoline, you would think that climate change would already be a solved issue. Taxes are a larger part of the cost of gasoline than the gasoline itself. Yet somehow there isn't enough money to fight climate change?! The Netherlands pays $3.53 per gallon purely in excise taxes.[0] Bulgaria, a country with an average income of $9000 a year[1], pays $1.61 a gallon in excise taxes. [0] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-europe-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-europe-2019/ [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/bulgaria/wages https://tradingeconomics.com/bulgaria/wages
FooHentai 7y ago
I know a guy that's not buying a new computer because he's holding out for Quantum computing. Last talked to him some time around 1998 but, you know, the logic was sound.
scythe 7y ago
There is a non-negotiable entropy cost associated with removing CO2 from the atmosphere: you need to either pump it, so P0 = 0.0004 atm; if P1 = 5 atm (liquid CO2) then E = M R T ln(5 / 0.0004) / 44 => E/M = about 500 J/kg, or you need to absorb it chemically, which requires a chemical with a vapor pressure of CO2 < 0.0004 atm, (e.g. NaOH) itself generally energy-intensive to produce. I expect that we will eventually develop technology for CO2 extraction, but it's not going to be easy or convenient. 500 joules per kilogram is a lot and I doubt chemical methods will beat it. Currently there are about 3.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 3.5 * 10^15 kg. To decrease the concentration by 1/3, returning us to preindustrial CO2 levels, you'd need about 600 petajoules or 170 terawatt-hours of input energy assuming thermodynamically perfect isothermal compression (which is impossible to actually achieve). Global world electricity consumption per year is about 21000 TWh. No current method of CO2 extraction comes close to this limit and it's very unlikely that any ever will. Nonetheless, we have several orders of magnitude of wiggle room to let real-life methods work out okay. But the energy cost is not small and the negative effects of present-day CO2 emissions should not be considered easily curable. And just for the fun of it, a human being releases about 4 * 10^5 kg of CO2 during their lifetime, requiring about 2 * 10^8 J. So the most efficient CO2 pump possible would require at least 200 million watts of power (about a thousand Tesla Roadsters at maximum output) to confine this CO2 within a second.
- avmich 7y ago
  How did you calculate 500 J/kg? If you spend energy to pressurize gas, you can get it back when restoring the original pressure, right?
  - scythe 7y ago
    I integrated the PV curve at constant temperature, so P = nRT/V and dW = P dV = nRT dV/V. Then we can write W = nRT log(V0 / V1) = nRT log(P1 / P0), and n = M / 44, the molar mass of CO2. Also, you can't restore the initial pressure because at the initial pressure the CO2 takes up a whole atmosphere of space!
    - 7y ago
bagacrap 7y ago
you fear it like you fear winning the lottery

throwaway5752 7y ago

I have spent a not inconsiderable amount of resources reducing my footprint and I will be thrilled to death if we can manage our way out of this crisis and people get "free lunches". This is just trivial game theory and the sunk cost fallacy. Regrettably, the numbers involved make me pessimistic. I think your idea of some deus ex machina technology is ungrounded optimism, wishful thinking, or denial. Nothing in the linked article gives any cause for such optimism. Climate change math is like the ballistics equation. It is just a cold hard reality check. There is no free lunch in terms of the energy of a chemical reaction. We are all getting really, really close to failing here. I think it's imperative not to be hopeless about it, but we should be honest with ourselves that we may not have modern human civilization as we understand it within a generation or two [edit: unless we act immediately, not soon]

monkeydreams 7y ago

> Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second. In the same way that a year's worth of health insurance is wasted if you don't get sick. So, not wasted.

tommoor 7y ago

It took me months to save $100 as a kid, now seconds of movement on the stock market earns me more money – but I don't regret saving as a kid :)

blackflame7000 7y ago
I don't think the environment pays compound interest then again, what banks do anymore?

abraae 7y ago

Fear instead what will happen if such a machine is ever developed. Which country(s) will own the machine? Who will decide what we dial the CO2 back to? You'd think it would be back to pre-industrial times but who knows? Will regions that have benefited from climate change and can now grow crops be on board? Or will they prefer to keep things as they are?

millstone 7y ago
We should be so lucky as to have these problems.

roel_v 7y ago

The article links to a website where you can calculate your footprint, and buy offsets in various programs to negate that footprint (projectwren.com). It would cost me USD 17 / month to offset my (larger than average for my country) footprint. Why do I even bother with my reusable coffee cup and paper straws for that kind of money? I just don't understand. If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it?

aetherson 7y ago
Marginal costs would increase if hundreds of millions or billions of such offsets were purchased. By how much, I don't know.
lacker 7y ago
You’re probably correct that your reusable cup and paper straws are ineffective mechanisms for preventing climate change.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But they do make you feel like you're doing your part. I wonder how many people are just satisfied with that and whether it wouldn't have made more sense to push other solutions instead.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Reducing the use of disposable plastics isn't supposed to prevent climate change, it's about reducing the amount of trash. While any trash that you put in the bin in a western country is highly unlikely to end up in the world's oceans, it still sends a signal against ubiquitous single-use products. That the two are so often treated as one is really unfortunate. Because if people actually cared about reducing their individual carbon emissions, they'd have to give up things like flying and eating meat, not disposable plastics. But that involves actual changes in behaviour, so it's not exactly popular and many people find the mere suggestion offensive.
Mirioron 7y ago
>If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it? Considering how much excise taxes Europeans pay on their gasoline, you would think that climate change would already be a solved issue. Taxes are a larger part of the cost of gasoline than the gasoline itself. Yet somehow there isn't enough money to fight climate change?! The Netherlands pays $3.53 per gallon purely in excise taxes.[0] Bulgaria, a country with an average income of $9000 a year[1], pays $1.61 a gallon in excise taxes. [0] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-europe-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-europe-2019/ [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/bulgaria/wages https://tradingeconomics.com/bulgaria/wages

FooHentai 7y ago

I know a guy that's not buying a new computer because he's holding out for Quantum computing. Last talked to him some time around 1998 but, you know, the logic was sound.

scythe 7y ago

There is a non-negotiable entropy cost associated with removing CO2 from the atmosphere: you need to either pump it, so P0 = 0.0004 atm; if P1 = 5 atm (liquid CO2) then E = M R T ln(5 / 0.0004) / 44 => E/M = about 500 J/kg, or you need to absorb it chemically, which requires a chemical with a vapor pressure of CO2 < 0.0004 atm, (e.g. NaOH) itself generally energy-intensive to produce. I expect that we will eventually develop technology for CO2 extraction, but it's not going to be easy or convenient. 500 joules per kilogram is a lot and I doubt chemical methods will beat it. Currently there are about 3.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 3.5 * 10^15 kg. To decrease the concentration by 1/3, returning us to preindustrial CO2 levels, you'd need about 600 petajoules or 170 terawatt-hours of input energy assuming thermodynamically perfect isothermal compression (which is impossible to actually achieve). Global world electricity consumption per year is about 21000 TWh. No current method of CO2 extraction comes close to this limit and it's very unlikely that any ever will. Nonetheless, we have several orders of magnitude of wiggle room to let real-life methods work out okay. But the energy cost is not small and the negative effects of present-day CO2 emissions should not be considered easily curable. And just for the fun of it, a human being releases about 4 * 10^5 kg of CO2 during their lifetime, requiring about 2 * 10^8 J. So the most efficient CO2 pump possible would require at least 200 million watts of power (about a thousand Tesla Roadsters at maximum output) to confine this CO2 within a second.

avmich 7y ago
How did you calculate 500 J/kg? If you spend energy to pressurize gas, you can get it back when restoring the original pressure, right?
- scythe 7y ago
  I integrated the PV curve at constant temperature, so P = nRT/V and dW = P dV = nRT dV/V. Then we can write W = nRT log(V0 / V1) = nRT log(P1 / P0), and n = M / 44, the molar mass of CO2. Also, you can't restore the initial pressure because at the initial pressure the CO2 takes up a whole atmosphere of space!
  - 7y ago

bagacrap 7y ago

you fear it like you fear winning the lottery