3 ms·

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

• 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.
• dvdkhlng 6y ago
  Comparing the nitrogen problem with the problem of CO2 emissions is apples to oranges IMO: - Nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere and bound nitrogen (i.e. fertilizer) has an inherent short-time value that is higher than the cost of nitrogen fixation (i.e. fertilizer production). So this is something that the market readily solves via technological progress. - On the other hand CO2 emissions result from extracting energy stored in fossil carbon. Currently a significant part of the energy needs of the whole planet are satisfied by extracting energy from fossil carbon (e.g. burning coal). Removing CO2 from the atmosphere does not have any short-time value to whomever does that. No market force working towards that. Also, removing the CO2 probably needs (depending on technoligy much) more energy than was extracted from the carbon in the first place. Humanity does not currently seem to have any energy sources available to "return" the energy havested from fossil carbon. Good luck waiting for a magical technology that can easily satisfy the energy needs of a whole planet-wide civilization with less negative side-effects than combustion of fossil carbon. Also the deadline for undoing CO2 related damage may be quite close [1] so that any such technologies would need to be available for global deployment within a few decades. - Climate engineering [2] may be a way to compensate CO2 related damage without having to remove CO2 at all. But again, no short-time benefit to whomever does that and all available technologies would also incur immense cost and do not evenly undo greenhouse-gas induced temperature changes over the whole planet (plus all the other possible side-effects) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering
• specialist 6y ago
  I've chosen to suspend disbelief and adopt the same conclusion. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to get out of bed every day.