6 ms·

Random question - At what scale do we need to do this to get back to where the planet was 50 years back?

jaggederest 6y ago
3210 gigatonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere (410ppm) 275 ppm (Target PPM, based on pre-industrial levels) 3210 gigatonnes - ((3210 gigatonnes / 410) * 275) = 1057 gigatonnes to remove. Advertised scale: 4000 tons per year (1057 gigatonnes / 4000 tons per year) = 264250000 years reasonable timeline: 30 years 30 years / 264250000 years = 8808333x increase needed. Call it roughly 10^7 times faster. So, a lot.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mc32 6y ago
  You forgot stabilizing pop growth.
  - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
    Population growth hasn't been the problem for decades. The problem is per-capita consumption. The "westernization" of India and China is 2.5-3 billion people that want western consumption patterns.
    - ECA_stax 6y ago
      > Population growth hasn't been the problem for decades. Of course it is. Populations always eventually demand development, aka "westernization". So as the world population grows, so does the consumption.
      - seanwilson 6y ago
        > So as the world population grows, so does the consumption. This includes dairy + meat consumption, where about 70 billion animals are farmed for food each year right now. When someone brings up that humans are overpopulating the planet, I've never heard someone mention that overpopulating the planet with livestock is also an issue.
        TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
        Nonsense. Someone always brings up agricultural emissions. The Australian government talks about it directly here: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/ag-farm-food/climatechange/australias-farming-future/livestock-emissions https://www.agriculture.gov.au/ag-farm-food/climatechange/au...
- eucryphia 6y ago
  CO2 concentration was falling over recent geological timescales, below 150 ppm photosynthesis stops. We could survive at 1000 ppm by 2800 when the next glacial will have started, by then fusion power will be mainstream. Socialism is a far greater short term global problem, it murdered 100 million people just last century, equipped with modern technology (e.g. a virulent novel coronavirus) it could be billions.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Posts like these make me wonder if lizard people actually exist and have a conspiracy to use monkeys to return the world to a state they can thrive in without minions. An /s but barely. The last time CO2 levels were at levels we see today humans had not evolved yet. The last time 1000ppm CO2 was in the atmosphere the apex predators were giant carnivorous birds. We are looking at billions of deaths from climate change if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow and tens of thousands of years until the climate returns to pre-industrial levels.
    - zaroth 6y ago
      > We are looking at billions of deaths from climate change if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow and tens of thousands of years until the climate returns to pre-industrial levels. This seems to me to be the more absurd position. The challenge of “returning the climate to pre-industrial levels” is easily solvable without any magical technology with merely tens of trillions of dollars. Given a few decades additional progress in rocketry, perhaps only a low single digit trillion dollars per decade (indexed to current real value). Assuming a materials science advancement which permits a functional space-elevator, or the ability to do some manufacturing on the moon, it gets significantly cheaper even than that.
      - konjin 6y ago
        The assumption that industrial civilization is possible in 50 years is the absurd proposition.
  - adrianN 6y ago
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > 275 ppm (Target PPM, based on pre-industrial levels) Who says this is the ideal level to be at?
  - jaggederest 6y ago
    Me, I say. That's the atmospheric level as of 1776, before large-scale industrial intervention. Good enough for George Washington, good enough for me. If you have other opinions, by all means, do your own math :)
  - notabee 6y ago
    https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical... There are dozens, hundreds more studies, graphs, and other data to answer that question. At this point, due to the overwhelming amount of research data available, this kind of question should be considered as made in bad faith.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      This graph does not answer the question at all. Why is not the ideal level 100? 200? 300? 500? If you have never been at 500 how would you know if the outcome is actually detrimental overall? You can't make models when you don't have historical data outside of your training set, that's a very simple rule that everyone can understand. Al Gore made ridiculous claims back in 2008 about how bad it would get in just 10 years (making it seem that the trend was linear, which it isn't) and he was completely wrong on most of them - so the question I raise is very much valid.
- notabee 6y ago
  Well, we're adding a bit over 30 gigatonnes per year (33 last year). 4000 (tons) * 1.102 = 4408.000 (metric tonnes). 1 gigatonne = 1,000,000,000 metric tonnes So each year we're emitting enough that this particular scale of capture would require: 33,000,000,000 / 4408 = ~7486388 years to remove. All the vegetation, land, and ocean can absorb about 17 Gt CO2 per year (Currently. Of course massively burning forests or increasingly carbon saturated oceans are going to significantly impact this equation as things get worse.) So this technology would need to get at least 16,000,000,000 / 4408 = 3629764 times more effective just to keep things from getting any worse. And even so, this still seems like one of the more hopeful options because artificial capture could potentially be scaled much higher using less space than vegetation, given enough renewable energy. But even more efficient is simply emitting less carbon.

3210 gigatonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere (410ppm) 275 ppm (Target PPM, based on pre-industrial levels) 3210 gigatonnes - ((3210 gigatonnes / 410) * 275) = 1057 gigatonnes to remove. Advertised scale: 4000 tons per year (1057 gigatonnes / 4000 tons per year) = 264250000 years reasonable timeline: 30 years 30 years / 264250000 years = 8808333x increase needed. Call it roughly 10^7 times faster. So, a lot.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mc32 6y ago
You forgot stabilizing pop growth.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Population growth hasn't been the problem for decades. The problem is per-capita consumption. The "westernization" of India and China is 2.5-3 billion people that want western consumption patterns.
  - ECA_stax 6y ago
    > Population growth hasn't been the problem for decades. Of course it is. Populations always eventually demand development, aka "westernization". So as the world population grows, so does the consumption.
    - seanwilson 6y ago
      > So as the world population grows, so does the consumption. This includes dairy + meat consumption, where about 70 billion animals are farmed for food each year right now. When someone brings up that humans are overpopulating the planet, I've never heard someone mention that overpopulating the planet with livestock is also an issue.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
        Nonsense. Someone always brings up agricultural emissions. The Australian government talks about it directly here: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/ag-farm-food/climatechange/australias-farming-future/livestock-emissions https://www.agriculture.gov.au/ag-farm-food/climatechange/au...
eucryphia 6y ago
CO2 concentration was falling over recent geological timescales, below 150 ppm photosynthesis stops. We could survive at 1000 ppm by 2800 when the next glacial will have started, by then fusion power will be mainstream. Socialism is a far greater short term global problem, it murdered 100 million people just last century, equipped with modern technology (e.g. a virulent novel coronavirus) it could be billions.
- konjin 6y ago
  Posts like these make me wonder if lizard people actually exist and have a conspiracy to use monkeys to return the world to a state they can thrive in without minions. An /s but barely. The last time CO2 levels were at levels we see today humans had not evolved yet. The last time 1000ppm CO2 was in the atmosphere the apex predators were giant carnivorous birds. We are looking at billions of deaths from climate change if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow and tens of thousands of years until the climate returns to pre-industrial levels.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    > We are looking at billions of deaths from climate change if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow and tens of thousands of years until the climate returns to pre-industrial levels. This seems to me to be the more absurd position. The challenge of “returning the climate to pre-industrial levels” is easily solvable without any magical technology with merely tens of trillions of dollars. Given a few decades additional progress in rocketry, perhaps only a low single digit trillion dollars per decade (indexed to current real value). Assuming a materials science advancement which permits a functional space-elevator, or the ability to do some manufacturing on the moon, it gets significantly cheaper even than that.
    - konjin 6y ago
      The assumption that industrial civilization is possible in 50 years is the absurd proposition.
- adrianN 6y ago
ekianjo 6y ago
> 275 ppm (Target PPM, based on pre-industrial levels) Who says this is the ideal level to be at?
- jaggederest 6y ago
  Me, I say. That's the atmospheric level as of 1776, before large-scale industrial intervention. Good enough for George Washington, good enough for me. If you have other opinions, by all means, do your own math :)
- notabee 6y ago
  https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical... There are dozens, hundreds more studies, graphs, and other data to answer that question. At this point, due to the overwhelming amount of research data available, this kind of question should be considered as made in bad faith.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    This graph does not answer the question at all. Why is not the ideal level 100? 200? 300? 500? If you have never been at 500 how would you know if the outcome is actually detrimental overall? You can't make models when you don't have historical data outside of your training set, that's a very simple rule that everyone can understand. Al Gore made ridiculous claims back in 2008 about how bad it would get in just 10 years (making it seem that the trend was linear, which it isn't) and he was completely wrong on most of them - so the question I raise is very much valid.
notabee 6y ago
Well, we're adding a bit over 30 gigatonnes per year (33 last year). 4000 (tons) * 1.102 = 4408.000 (metric tonnes). 1 gigatonne = 1,000,000,000 metric tonnes So each year we're emitting enough that this particular scale of capture would require: 33,000,000,000 / 4408 = ~7486388 years to remove. All the vegetation, land, and ocean can absorb about 17 Gt CO2 per year (Currently. Of course massively burning forests or increasingly carbon saturated oceans are going to significantly impact this equation as things get worse.) So this technology would need to get at least 16,000,000,000 / 4408 = 3629764 times more effective just to keep things from getting any worse. And even so, this still seems like one of the more hopeful options because artificial capture could potentially be scaled much higher using less space than vegetation, given enough renewable energy. But even more efficient is simply emitting less carbon.