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I don't like those kind of projects because they sort of try to bank on the global warming problem with inventions and new things, except this doesn't work, bec

by jokoon 6y ago

I don't like those kind of projects because they sort of try to bank on the global warming problem with inventions and new things, except this doesn't work, because CO2 is just too hard to eliminate. It's the penultimate problem of industrialized capitalism: "we have a problem and we need to MAKE something new to solve this". But the problem was always the excess of industry in the first place. The solution is simple: slow down consumption everywhere and optimize the use of carbon, but it's completely against the spirit of industrial capitalism. That's why global warming can only be solved with political solutions. I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, while the wealthy will be able to shelter themselves away from hot places. Global warming is EXACTLY the problem of libertarian ideology. It completely dismisses the commons. Global warming is the perfect example of what happens when we accept "survival of the fittest" and social darwinism. I'm worried that rich people are okay with global warming because they are able to justify it with Malthusian arguments.

kolinko 6y ago
You get downvoted because you provide no arguments for why it is too hard of a problem for eliminate. You also didn't provide any arguments as to why this specific approach won't work. It's similar to people closing their eyes when there's fire and screaming "we'll all die". It's your choice to believe that, but don't stand in the doors trying to prevent people from searching for a survival route.
- jokoon 6y ago
  Using fear and other emotions is also a way to make people react. A lot of people cannot really absorb the science and numbers.
realusername 6y ago
That's some moral arguments you are using here, it's all nice and well in a debate but it's not moral arguments which will help in any way the humanity to fight global warming. Yes we do need technology and we need it quickly before the problem worsen even further. Even global agreements like the Paris one are built upon having such technology, no amount of shaming and moral argument will help in achieving anything.
- perfunctory 6y ago
  I disagree. We've had all necessary technology all along. It's exactly the lack of moral responsibility that's holding us back. Fighting climate change is more akin to the civil rights movement than to the Manhattan project.
  - realusername 6y ago
    Your argument is a different one already, yes we're definitely not doing much against climate change, and yes some moral responsibility to fight this global issue is badly needed. But that does not validate the pseudo-moral arguments blaming technology & industry like the one above, this is guaranteed to fail.
  - RobertKerans 6y ago
    There's just been a months-long Europe-wide experiment re reducing emissions which should yield some interesting data, and the early reports do seem to support what you're saying.
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    I don’t disagree that we have the technology to emit less pollution simply by doing less (the moral decisions in this hypothetical), but the issue is that most (perhaps nearly all) people in the world don’t agree with your morality. This makes technologies which bypass this problem far more feasible, even if they’re further out from actually solving the problem. They might have the potential to get there, whereas morality probably doesn’t. Agriculture is a major source of pollution for example, but it’s how everyone eats. The fact that most people in the world are poor makes this problem extremely hard to solve... How do you argue morality with someone who is just trying to feed themselves? If you want them to use less fertilizer, irrigate less, ship their product shorter distances, etc for the sake of climate change, well... Good luck. Now try telling them to stop driving, or use less electricity, or...
    - perfunctory 6y ago
      > How do you argue morality with someone who is just trying to feed themselves? Don't change the subject. I am not arguing morality with someone who's trying to feed themselves. I am arguing morality with someone who flies to tech conferences several times a year, drives around in a huge SUV, and screams bloody murder when someone else proposes maybe a carbon tax or something. And then blames it all on poor people. Poor people are not the problem. Rich people are the problem. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-pub...
neilwilson 6y ago
We solved the nitrogen problem in food production with technology. We'll solve the CO2 emission problem with technology as well. I'm with Captain Kirk. I don't believe in no win situations.
- orwin 6y ago
  CO2 is an oxide. I barely remember my chemistry classes, but i think than without solvent, oxides need energy to be broken. And even with 70% of our planet covered with a solvent (the sea that absorb CO2), our emissions are still going through the roof. If fusion happens in less than 20 years, we may be able to absorb CO2. I'm not high on this, but with supraconductors, you never know when the next breakthrough is. However, if we manage to hit +3°C average (we are already at ~+.9°C average), the living conditions will become hotter than the Sahara for 1/2 to 2 billion people. And that's without counting wetbulb temperature that will be reached in Florida more than a dozen day a year. I know that +3° average is hard to understand but consider this. Between the last ice age, where France was basically Siberia, Scandinavia was under 3km of ice and you could make Calais/London by foot, and 1850, there was a 5°C average temperature difference. The change was over 20 000 years. Also CO2 emissions today will have an impact in 20 year (CO2 in low atmosphere does not seems to have more than marginal greenhouse effect, its high-altitude CO2 that cause our troubles). That's the political challenge: - Are the predictions for +3° around 2070 right? And i'm not talking about RPC 8.5, i'm talking about the one with constant CO2 emission btw. If they are at least right on magnitude order, will we be able capture CO2 before 2050? - Will technology be able to grab CO2 out of low atmosphere? It seems we need incredible amount of energy for that (compared to our production). So fusion it is then. Is fusion before 2080 possible? At least China is advancing faster than France so maybe? I'm not high on this, and i'm a supraconductor optimist since 2009. - Will we be able to capture increasing amount of CO2 out of our electric centrals, cars and trucks? This is what i think is the more likely. But this technology still don't exist, and we need it right now. - Are we hoping that either fusion or CO2 captation will come soon enough to limit the CO2 emissions, and... That's all? Or are we vastly investing in research? Or investing in energy/consumption economies? Do people understand what does it mean for a country to reduce its CO2 emission by 4% a year? Do politicians and economist understand, or are we still stuck with "green growth" for another decade? I will order my research once i quit my job, try to order my sources (or find more precise ones), clean my code and write a long, long post on what it really means to stop using fossile fuel, even "only" -4% a year (what we need to do to respect the 2°C Paris agreement). From what i've read in the last GIEC report, if we don't find a new technological ace right now (ten years ago even), the win solution might be hard to swallow for the western world, and even harder for those living in tropical areas. The only thing i'm really sure is that if we don't take care of the problem, the problem will take care of us.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
>I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, By whom? All the most effective military forces in the world belong to the industrialised nations that are doing the emissions. Do you think Tokelau is going to land their marines in South China and Houston to shut down production?
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Ecoterrorism, I’d guess is the idea. Especially since it’s attached to a mini manifesto.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    That would explain the blatant projection of claiming Maltheusianism in industrial expansion when they are the exact opposite.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  With nuclear umbrellas? Even with eco-fascist fundamentalists at the helm it is a hell no, absolutely no nuclear power even pretends to be that crazy. It might have been a viable geopolitical picture before WW2 and a useful pretense for causus beli against other industrialized powers or a sick justification for lebensraum - effectively used like eugenics as an intellectual justification for why these current travesties are moral imperatives. Now it would be even less effective than screwing for virginity. I mean screwing is capable of producing more virgins at least.
chrisweekly 6y ago
"the penultimate problem" you seem to think "penultimate" is a more grandiose way of saying "ultimate", but it's not. it means "second to last".
- war1025 6y ago
  Well, "ultimate" means last. So it's really a way of saying "second most important", which I think could easily have been what they were going for there.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    Not really. OP made no mention of any other factor.
FreeFull 6y ago
Even if we completely stop all manmade CO2 emissions right now, there still is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already. Actually removing the CO2 from the air in some way will be necessary if we want to stop global warming from getting even worse.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Stopping all human CO2 emissions stops global warming (on average, bad valvano you years will make it worse that year), and reverses it. Plants convert more CO2 than gets converted back by a small amount every year. You just want something that doesn't need a million years to get back to normal.
  - lozenge 6y ago
    Even if CO2 was held constant, warming would continue for decades.
philipkglass 6y ago
It's a problem of fossil fuel combustion [1], not capitalism. The per-capita CO2 emissions of the USSR were also above the presently sustainable level for Earth's 7.8 billion people. [1] And land use changes, larger herds of ruminant food animals, high altitude airplane contrails... But mostly fossil fuel combustion.

by jokoon 6y ago

kolinko 6y ago

You get downvoted because you provide no arguments for why it is too hard of a problem for eliminate. You also didn't provide any arguments as to why this specific approach won't work. It's similar to people closing their eyes when there's fire and screaming "we'll all die". It's your choice to believe that, but don't stand in the doors trying to prevent people from searching for a survival route.

jokoon 6y ago
Using fear and other emotions is also a way to make people react. A lot of people cannot really absorb the science and numbers.

realusername 6y ago

That's some moral arguments you are using here, it's all nice and well in a debate but it's not moral arguments which will help in any way the humanity to fight global warming. Yes we do need technology and we need it quickly before the problem worsen even further. Even global agreements like the Paris one are built upon having such technology, no amount of shaming and moral argument will help in achieving anything.

perfunctory 6y ago
I disagree. We've had all necessary technology all along. It's exactly the lack of moral responsibility that's holding us back. Fighting climate change is more akin to the civil rights movement than to the Manhattan project.
- realusername 6y ago
  Your argument is a different one already, yes we're definitely not doing much against climate change, and yes some moral responsibility to fight this global issue is badly needed. But that does not validate the pseudo-moral arguments blaming technology & industry like the one above, this is guaranteed to fail.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  There's just been a months-long Europe-wide experiment re reducing emissions which should yield some interesting data, and the early reports do seem to support what you're saying.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I don’t disagree that we have the technology to emit less pollution simply by doing less (the moral decisions in this hypothetical), but the issue is that most (perhaps nearly all) people in the world don’t agree with your morality. This makes technologies which bypass this problem far more feasible, even if they’re further out from actually solving the problem. They might have the potential to get there, whereas morality probably doesn’t. Agriculture is a major source of pollution for example, but it’s how everyone eats. The fact that most people in the world are poor makes this problem extremely hard to solve... How do you argue morality with someone who is just trying to feed themselves? If you want them to use less fertilizer, irrigate less, ship their product shorter distances, etc for the sake of climate change, well... Good luck. Now try telling them to stop driving, or use less electricity, or...
  - perfunctory 6y ago
    > How do you argue morality with someone who is just trying to feed themselves? Don't change the subject. I am not arguing morality with someone who's trying to feed themselves. I am arguing morality with someone who flies to tech conferences several times a year, drives around in a huge SUV, and screams bloody murder when someone else proposes maybe a carbon tax or something. And then blames it all on poor people. Poor people are not the problem. Rich people are the problem. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-pub...

neilwilson 6y ago

We solved the nitrogen problem in food production with technology. We'll solve the CO2 emission problem with technology as well. I'm with Captain Kirk. I don't believe in no win situations.

orwin 6y ago
CO2 is an oxide. I barely remember my chemistry classes, but i think than without solvent, oxides need energy to be broken. And even with 70% of our planet covered with a solvent (the sea that absorb CO2), our emissions are still going through the roof. If fusion happens in less than 20 years, we may be able to absorb CO2. I'm not high on this, but with supraconductors, you never know when the next breakthrough is. However, if we manage to hit +3°C average (we are already at ~+.9°C average), the living conditions will become hotter than the Sahara for 1/2 to 2 billion people. And that's without counting wetbulb temperature that will be reached in Florida more than a dozen day a year. I know that +3° average is hard to understand but consider this. Between the last ice age, where France was basically Siberia, Scandinavia was under 3km of ice and you could make Calais/London by foot, and 1850, there was a 5°C average temperature difference. The change was over 20 000 years. Also CO2 emissions today will have an impact in 20 year (CO2 in low atmosphere does not seems to have more than marginal greenhouse effect, its high-altitude CO2 that cause our troubles). That's the political challenge: - Are the predictions for +3° around 2070 right? And i'm not talking about RPC 8.5, i'm talking about the one with constant CO2 emission btw. If they are at least right on magnitude order, will we be able capture CO2 before 2050? - Will technology be able to grab CO2 out of low atmosphere? It seems we need incredible amount of energy for that (compared to our production). So fusion it is then. Is fusion before 2080 possible? At least China is advancing faster than France so maybe? I'm not high on this, and i'm a supraconductor optimist since 2009. - Will we be able to capture increasing amount of CO2 out of our electric centrals, cars and trucks? This is what i think is the more likely. But this technology still don't exist, and we need it right now. - Are we hoping that either fusion or CO2 captation will come soon enough to limit the CO2 emissions, and... That's all? Or are we vastly investing in research? Or investing in energy/consumption economies? Do people understand what does it mean for a country to reduce its CO2 emission by 4% a year? Do politicians and economist understand, or are we still stuck with "green growth" for another decade? I will order my research once i quit my job, try to order my sources (or find more precise ones), clean my code and write a long, long post on what it really means to stop using fossile fuel, even "only" -4% a year (what we need to do to respect the 2°C Paris agreement). From what i've read in the last GIEC report, if we don't find a new technological ace right now (ten years ago even), the win solution might be hard to swallow for the western world, and even harder for those living in tropical areas. The only thing i'm really sure is that if we don't take care of the problem, the problem will take care of us.

Mvandenbergh 6y ago

>I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, By whom? All the most effective military forces in the world belong to the industrialised nations that are doing the emissions. Do you think Tokelau is going to land their marines in South China and Houston to shut down production?

fennecfoxen 6y ago
Ecoterrorism, I’d guess is the idea. Especially since it’s attached to a mini manifesto.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  That would explain the blatant projection of claiming Maltheusianism in industrial expansion when they are the exact opposite.
Nasrudith 6y ago
With nuclear umbrellas? Even with eco-fascist fundamentalists at the helm it is a hell no, absolutely no nuclear power even pretends to be that crazy. It might have been a viable geopolitical picture before WW2 and a useful pretense for causus beli against other industrialized powers or a sick justification for lebensraum - effectively used like eugenics as an intellectual justification for why these current travesties are moral imperatives. Now it would be even less effective than screwing for virginity. I mean screwing is capable of producing more virgins at least.

chrisweekly 6y ago

"the penultimate problem" you seem to think "penultimate" is a more grandiose way of saying "ultimate", but it's not. it means "second to last".

war1025 6y ago
Well, "ultimate" means last. So it's really a way of saying "second most important", which I think could easily have been what they were going for there.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  Not really. OP made no mention of any other factor.

FreeFull 6y ago

Even if we completely stop all manmade CO2 emissions right now, there still is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already. Actually removing the CO2 from the air in some way will be necessary if we want to stop global warming from getting even worse.

bluGill 6y ago
Stopping all human CO2 emissions stops global warming (on average, bad valvano you years will make it worse that year), and reverses it. Plants convert more CO2 than gets converted back by a small amount every year. You just want something that doesn't need a million years to get back to normal.
- lozenge 6y ago
  Even if CO2 was held constant, warming would continue for decades.

philipkglass 6y ago

It's a problem of fossil fuel combustion [1], not capitalism. The per-capita CO2 emissions of the USSR were also above the presently sustainable level for Earth's 7.8 billion people. [1] And land use changes, larger herds of ruminant food animals, high altitude airplane contrails... But mostly fossil fuel combustion.