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Yikes like the clathrate gun that turned out to be nonsense, or yikes as in it's actually a threat? Not saying climate change isn't something to be worried abou

Yikes like the clathrate gun that turned out to be nonsense, or yikes as in it's actually a threat? Not saying climate change isn't something to be worried about, but this article doesn't say if it'll release like 10% of yearly methane, or like 0.00001% and Ketzer's just trying to pump his publication count. What I would really love to see is an indepedant website ranking all the threats. How bad is global shipping vs leaving your lights on? Or the clathrate gun vs burning oil fields? Or recycling your plastic vs throwing your plastic shit in the river in 3rd world countries? Like there's was a dip in CO2 emiisions during covid, but only like a 15%. Who's producing the rest? 'cause it's now obviously not most of the population of the world who get lectured about recycling, it's obviously a small number of companies, which I think most of us would suspect probably has a high intersection with the small number of people hoarding wealth in the world.

renewiltord 6y ago
The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis was falsified? I did not realize. Do you happen to remember where you read that?
- bananabreakfast 6y ago
  It wasn't. They're being hyperbolic with the intention to mislead.
titzer 6y ago
Are you referring to a specific clathrate gun or the concept in general? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis summarizes a lot of research on this subject and doesn't give me the impression that it's nonsense or "debunked". Personally, I find it worrisome.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  It isn't debunked, but not well modelled and thus very large error bars (from a friend that works in atmospheric chemistry)
  - regularfry 6y ago
    The problem with that criticism is that the payoff function is absurdly nonlinear. Think of it in terms of expected values: because the outcome at one end of those error bars is so severe, it's rational to treat the "gun" part as true until it's shown not to be.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      I'm not criticizing the hypothesis, simply pointing out it's not well understood. But it is not true that the precautionary principle applies here regardless of the risk. There is a cost to avoiding the behaviors that raise the possibility of run away methane release; carbon based energy was absolutely necessary to get out science/industry to the point we can look for alternatives. If we muddled around in the pre-industrial age in perpetuity, eventually we'd get wiped out by some large event (astroid, super volcano, ice age etc). So the risk is worth it to a point since the cost of the alternative is equally high.
      - regularfry 6y ago
        We're not in that situation, because we've already made the choice not to muddle about pre-industrially. But even so, that argument is flawed: we're still at risk of getting wiped out by all the same extreme natural phenomena as we were 500 years ago, only we've added some new ones of our own: nuclear holocaust, clathrate guns, runaway warming of some other cause immediately spring to mind. Probabilistically we're worse off now than we were then, just because of the additional ways things can go wrong. We don't have the choice to stay pre-industrial. That's off the table. We do hopefully still have the choice to avoid a scenario that drops us irrecoverably back to pre-agricultural.
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
> Like there's was a dip in CO2 emiisions during covid, but only like a 15%. Who's producing the rest? While I agree very much about the absurd logic of trying to put the solutions to climate change on individuals, I am honestly perplexed that you don't seem to understand how all of your daily consumption contributes to climate change. CO2 emissions doesn't just come from driving your car. If you ordered anything delivered from amazon that created CO2, if you live in a developing city your environment creates CO2, if you consume food that is grown non-locally or that uses fertilizer that also create CO2. It's not just a "small number of companies" it's every company and every part of our modern life. Look around you and I can assure you that most of the things you see where shipped around the globe using ships powered by bunker fuel, they were made with materials gathered using a non-trivial amount of non-renewable energy. Again, I agree that we can't expect that individually we'll all radically alter our lives and live like it's 1800, but it is essential to realize who much of your current way of live contributes to the enormous production of CO2. The fact that things slowed down and we decreased emissions by some notable percentage but we suffered incredible economic consequences for this show just how unsustainable our entire way of life is.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Are you an idiot? Or do you really order from amazon like 10 times a day? It doesn't add up mate, there's a lot of misdirection going on.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  What about just simplifying it and saying that, the majority of the reason for climate change is burning coal and oil ? I don’t think we need to regress back to living in mud clay huts and blocking Amazon orders. We did need to stop burning coal for generating power 100 years ago.
  - vertis 6y ago
    It's nowhere near that simple though. CO2 is one big contributor, but not the only one. Methane is also a big contributor[1], and things like beef production are a big part of increased Methane emissions (by no means the only source). [1]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/methane/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warmin...
aaron695 6y ago
> it's obviously a small number of companies, which I think most of us would suspect probably has a high intersection with the small number of people hoarding wealth in the world. Do you think the rich just buy coal mines and set them on fire? Or do you mean all the citizens of Europeans and North American, in which case yes. We 1% with all the wealth are the ones emitting CO2 while we wait for the worlds poor to catch up, who get to have a small footprint by letting kids die of diarrhoea and stuff. You stared well, of course the Clathrate gun is made up like almost everything else in the global warming lore, but then you started your own fan fiction.
adrianN 6y ago
This website is not exactly what you're asking for, but similar: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/
morsch 6y ago
Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x
perl4ever 6y ago
>it's obviously a small number of companies, which I think most of us would suspect probably has a high intersection with the small number of people hoarding wealth in the world. Assuming that you're right about a small number of companies producing most of the pollution, and a small proportion of people "hoarding wealth" what does the one have to do with another? If all the oil and coal companies had stock that was distributed perfectly evenly, I don't see how it would necessarily change pollution.

renewiltord 6y ago

The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis was falsified? I did not realize. Do you happen to remember where you read that?

bananabreakfast 6y ago
It wasn't. They're being hyperbolic with the intention to mislead.

titzer 6y ago

Are you referring to a specific clathrate gun or the concept in general? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis summarizes a lot of research on this subject and doesn't give me the impression that it's nonsense or "debunked". Personally, I find it worrisome.

anonuser123456 6y ago
It isn't debunked, but not well modelled and thus very large error bars (from a friend that works in atmospheric chemistry)
- regularfry 6y ago
  The problem with that criticism is that the payoff function is absurdly nonlinear. Think of it in terms of expected values: because the outcome at one end of those error bars is so severe, it's rational to treat the "gun" part as true until it's shown not to be.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    I'm not criticizing the hypothesis, simply pointing out it's not well understood. But it is not true that the precautionary principle applies here regardless of the risk. There is a cost to avoiding the behaviors that raise the possibility of run away methane release; carbon based energy was absolutely necessary to get out science/industry to the point we can look for alternatives. If we muddled around in the pre-industrial age in perpetuity, eventually we'd get wiped out by some large event (astroid, super volcano, ice age etc). So the risk is worth it to a point since the cost of the alternative is equally high.
    - regularfry 6y ago
      We're not in that situation, because we've already made the choice not to muddle about pre-industrially. But even so, that argument is flawed: we're still at risk of getting wiped out by all the same extreme natural phenomena as we were 500 years ago, only we've added some new ones of our own: nuclear holocaust, clathrate guns, runaway warming of some other cause immediately spring to mind. Probabilistically we're worse off now than we were then, just because of the additional ways things can go wrong. We don't have the choice to stay pre-industrial. That's off the table. We do hopefully still have the choice to avoid a scenario that drops us irrecoverably back to pre-agricultural.

baron_harkonnen 6y ago

> Like there's was a dip in CO2 emiisions during covid, but only like a 15%. Who's producing the rest? While I agree very much about the absurd logic of trying to put the solutions to climate change on individuals, I am honestly perplexed that you don't seem to understand how all of your daily consumption contributes to climate change. CO2 emissions doesn't just come from driving your car. If you ordered anything delivered from amazon that created CO2, if you live in a developing city your environment creates CO2, if you consume food that is grown non-locally or that uses fertilizer that also create CO2. It's not just a "small number of companies" it's every company and every part of our modern life. Look around you and I can assure you that most of the things you see where shipped around the globe using ships powered by bunker fuel, they were made with materials gathered using a non-trivial amount of non-renewable energy. Again, I agree that we can't expect that individually we'll all radically alter our lives and live like it's 1800, but it is essential to realize who much of your current way of live contributes to the enormous production of CO2. The fact that things slowed down and we decreased emissions by some notable percentage but we suffered incredible economic consequences for this show just how unsustainable our entire way of life is.

mattmanser 6y ago
Are you an idiot? Or do you really order from amazon like 10 times a day? It doesn't add up mate, there's a lot of misdirection going on.
bamboozled 6y ago
What about just simplifying it and saying that, the majority of the reason for climate change is burning coal and oil ? I don’t think we need to regress back to living in mud clay huts and blocking Amazon orders. We did need to stop burning coal for generating power 100 years ago.
- vertis 6y ago
  It's nowhere near that simple though. CO2 is one big contributor, but not the only one. Methane is also a big contributor[1], and things like beef production are a big part of increased Methane emissions (by no means the only source). [1]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/methane/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warmin...

aaron695 6y ago

> it's obviously a small number of companies, which I think most of us would suspect probably has a high intersection with the small number of people hoarding wealth in the world. Do you think the rich just buy coal mines and set them on fire? Or do you mean all the citizens of Europeans and North American, in which case yes. We 1% with all the wealth are the ones emitting CO2 while we wait for the worlds poor to catch up, who get to have a small footprint by letting kids die of diarrhoea and stuff. You stared well, of course the Clathrate gun is made up like almost everything else in the global warming lore, but then you started your own fan fiction.

adrianN 6y ago

This website is not exactly what you're asking for, but similar: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/

morsch 6y ago

Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x

perl4ever 6y ago

>it's obviously a small number of companies, which I think most of us would suspect probably has a high intersection with the small number of people hoarding wealth in the world. Assuming that you're right about a small number of companies producing most of the pollution, and a small proportion of people "hoarding wealth" what does the one have to do with another? If all the oil and coal companies had stock that was distributed perfectly evenly, I don't see how it would necessarily change pollution.