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> "The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel emissions,” said Ralph Keeling. “But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each yea

by brink 5y ago

> "The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel emissions,” said Ralph Keeling. “But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020." That's extreme.

fallingfrog 5y ago
Nature does not match her challenges to our abilities. There’s no reason to expect this to be fair. It’s definitely not the kind of thing where I would engage in hand wringing over human stupidity. It sucks and it’s unfair, but it’s the situation we have to deal with.
- brink 5y ago
  I'm more referring to the nature of the proposed solution as being extreme. Calling for shutdowns greater than 2020 is the sledgehammer to society approach. Are we really so against the wall that we cannot come up with something better than the economically suicidal shutdowns?
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    He's not saying we need to shut down, he's saying we need solutions that are equal to or greater in magnitude than a shutdown. CO2 emissions went down during the early pandemic, but quickly started climbing back towards normal again.[0] In 2020 overall, global emissions fell 6.4%[1]. If we maintained that trajectory, it still wouldn't be enough to stop climate change. [0]https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-change/ https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-chan... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/08/carbon-dioxide-levels-pandemic-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/08/carbon-d...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tech-no-logical 5y ago
    in my opinion : yes. we've been coming up with things for 30-40 years now, and emissions are still rising. we've had some kind of climate accord since 1992, and essentially nothing has changed with respect to fossil fuel use. on my side of the pond we've committed to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 as compared to 1990... that's just 9 years, and we are _still_ at 1990 levels or thereabouts, meaning we have done essentially _nothing_ in 30 years. I'd damn well say we're against the wall.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Yes, thats what happens when you ignore the problem for 70 years, chickens come home to rootlst
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020." "Cuts" means cuts in the release of new CO2, it doesn't mean that this has to be accomplished through shutting down the economy - you misunderstood the statement.
- ohazi 5y ago
  > but it’s the situation we have to deal with. We're not going to deal with it. We're going to continue partying for another 200 years. Then we're all going to get woozy and stupid. Then the population will crater. I don't think humanity will go away entirely, but I don't see a reason to be optimistic about the next 500 or 1000 years. This is the peak.
  - jjulius 5y ago
    Slightly off-topic, slightly tangentially related; you may enjoy Kae Tempest's "The Book of Traps and Lessons".
  - Loveaway 5y ago
    How do you know? Humans are probably the most adaptable species on the planet. Not many tropical animals are able to survive in Antartica for example. Maybe we'll get fusion and AI rolling, and we have more energy then we possibly dream of, can de-carbonate the atmosphere and so on. The way I see it it's gonna be all about energy. There are absolutely insane amounts of it everywhere, and all our power generation is like nothing compared to what's going on at planetary, cosmic scales. The question is are gonna be able to tap into it, and make use of it? If so, all our problems will seem silly, but for that to happen we need to keep up the innovation, keep up improving technology, keep the economy running and don't fall into the trap of regressing into a dark age. If we just shut down everything and go back into the woods, we're definitely gonna be at the whim of whatever is going to happen and there will be nothing we can do about it.
    - fallingfrog 5y ago
      I agree. There’s no going back, only forward. We need alternative sources of energy.
jjulius 5y ago
This may not be the most constructive comment on HN, but my initial reaction to this kind of comment is often: It is what it is; mother nature doesn't give a fuck about us and never will. Preventing climate change would be incredibly painful, as is letting it happen.
- orwin 5y ago
  Yes, but one can be piloted, the other won't.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Ignoring the effects on natural biodiversity, I think letting it happen would actually be less of an issue for humans. It's not that expensive to build seawalls around coastal cities. Crops will be grown further north and crops will grow more easily in higher CO2. On the other hand, stopping it would basically involve a war on developing countries to forcibly prevent them from developing further. Most developed countries have already leveled off their CO2 emissions or are headed downward. Increased CO2 will harm the developing world more than anywhere else, but those places are also the least interested in putting in the effort to stop the effects.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > stopping it would basically involve a war on developing countries to forcibly prevent them from developing further. Why not instead just give them the developed tech and the expertise? Instead of sending tanks, send wind turbines and photovoltaics and release all the IP on them. Instead of suppressing development, let them leapfrog the carbon-intensive technologies.
    - l33t2328 5y ago
      This is a naive solution. What IP is being held back?
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
twobitshifter 5y ago
Yet everyone wants to start commuting back to offices. It looks like 2020 didn’t even have a noticeable effect on the trend.
graeme 5y ago
We actually require cuts to zero. And then negative by sucking carbon from the atmosphere. 2020 we simply began getting worse at a slower rate. But ANY emissions of fossil fuels come from outside the carbon cycle and make the carbon worse.
elihu 5y ago
Compared to the seriousness of the problem I don't think it's extreme, but I also don't think it's quite the right approach. Instead of telling people to drive less, or eat less, or not heat their homes in the winter (which isn't going to work), we can transition away from fossil fuel energy as fast as we can and replace it with renewables. My usual (U.S. centric) suggestions when this topic comes up are to greatly expand solar and wind energy production, finance transcontinental high-voltage DC lines so that we can trade power with Africa/Asia/Europe and even out the day/night imbalance (we can keep fossil fuel plants around as an emergency backup and just not use them), electrify the interstate freeway system so that EVs can charge without stopping and make cross-country road trips without having to haul around huge batteries, and we should expand EV tax credits to cover conversions of existing vehicles as well as new vehicles. We also need more battery production, especially of technologies like lithium iron phosphate (or whatever replaces it in the future) which are good enough and aren't bottlenecked on expensive materials like cobalt and nickel. None of these things require people to change their behavior, though it would help if they did. It's probably also not enough to save us from pretty severe climate problems in the future, but at this point I think that's more-or-less unavoidable so we should just do the best we can right now.
- kossTKR 5y ago
  The problem is that an old money power elite halts this progress. Big oil and polluting industries hold ginormous wealth and hire thousands of lawyers, PR people, astroturfing groups etc. to stunt progress. I'm sure this will eventually shift - as far as i know multiple golf states are heavily investing in "green tech", not sure what the US elite is doing, but i hope that a critical mass will be hit at some point. Until then there will be no governmental push to save earth because the richest elites writes the laws, and unless their wealth isn't dependent on dirty energy they will rather kill everyone on earth than give up their generational wealth. Stupid when the tech is literally ready and prices are falling so much. We need extreme global bans on all dirty energy 30 years ago, and stop using trillions of subsidies for family dynasties, military black budgets, and other black boxes that siphon money from everyone to a hidden elite in offshore tax havens - and instead take those money and subsidise saving earth / gren tech / neo manhattan like projects. Unfortunately the oligarchs, and especially the tech elites will rather flee to New Zealand and live alone in bunker than imagine any happy ending. It's dark. Maybe they don't count on the transition being possible and to be fair i don't either. The amount of energy stored in fossil fuels is so massive, so portable, so cheap that even with a revolution in batteries and tech everyone in the world will pretty much have to live as third worlders - unless fusion and batteries undergo a deus ex machina like event.

by brink 5y ago

fallingfrog 5y ago

Nature does not match her challenges to our abilities. There’s no reason to expect this to be fair. It’s definitely not the kind of thing where I would engage in hand wringing over human stupidity. It sucks and it’s unfair, but it’s the situation we have to deal with.

brink 5y ago
I'm more referring to the nature of the proposed solution as being extreme. Calling for shutdowns greater than 2020 is the sledgehammer to society approach. Are we really so against the wall that we cannot come up with something better than the economically suicidal shutdowns?
- brendoelfrendo 5y ago
  He's not saying we need to shut down, he's saying we need solutions that are equal to or greater in magnitude than a shutdown. CO2 emissions went down during the early pandemic, but quickly started climbing back towards normal again.[0] In 2020 overall, global emissions fell 6.4%[1]. If we maintained that trajectory, it still wouldn't be enough to stop climate change. [0]https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-change/ https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-chan... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/08/carbon-dioxide-levels-pandemic-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/08/carbon-d...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tech-no-logical 5y ago
  in my opinion : yes. we've been coming up with things for 30-40 years now, and emissions are still rising. we've had some kind of climate accord since 1992, and essentially nothing has changed with respect to fossil fuel use. on my side of the pond we've committed to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 as compared to 1990... that's just 9 years, and we are _still_ at 1990 levels or thereabouts, meaning we have done essentially _nothing_ in 30 years. I'd damn well say we're against the wall.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Yes, thats what happens when you ignore the problem for 70 years, chickens come home to rootlst
- bscphil 5y ago
  > But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020." "Cuts" means cuts in the release of new CO2, it doesn't mean that this has to be accomplished through shutting down the economy - you misunderstood the statement.
ohazi 5y ago
> but it’s the situation we have to deal with. We're not going to deal with it. We're going to continue partying for another 200 years. Then we're all going to get woozy and stupid. Then the population will crater. I don't think humanity will go away entirely, but I don't see a reason to be optimistic about the next 500 or 1000 years. This is the peak.
- jjulius 5y ago
  Slightly off-topic, slightly tangentially related; you may enjoy Kae Tempest's "The Book of Traps and Lessons".
- Loveaway 5y ago
  How do you know? Humans are probably the most adaptable species on the planet. Not many tropical animals are able to survive in Antartica for example. Maybe we'll get fusion and AI rolling, and we have more energy then we possibly dream of, can de-carbonate the atmosphere and so on. The way I see it it's gonna be all about energy. There are absolutely insane amounts of it everywhere, and all our power generation is like nothing compared to what's going on at planetary, cosmic scales. The question is are gonna be able to tap into it, and make use of it? If so, all our problems will seem silly, but for that to happen we need to keep up the innovation, keep up improving technology, keep the economy running and don't fall into the trap of regressing into a dark age. If we just shut down everything and go back into the woods, we're definitely gonna be at the whim of whatever is going to happen and there will be nothing we can do about it.
  - fallingfrog 5y ago
    I agree. There’s no going back, only forward. We need alternative sources of energy.

jjulius 5y ago

This may not be the most constructive comment on HN, but my initial reaction to this kind of comment is often: It is what it is; mother nature doesn't give a fuck about us and never will. Preventing climate change would be incredibly painful, as is letting it happen.

orwin 5y ago
Yes, but one can be piloted, the other won't.
mlindner 5y ago
Ignoring the effects on natural biodiversity, I think letting it happen would actually be less of an issue for humans. It's not that expensive to build seawalls around coastal cities. Crops will be grown further north and crops will grow more easily in higher CO2. On the other hand, stopping it would basically involve a war on developing countries to forcibly prevent them from developing further. Most developed countries have already leveled off their CO2 emissions or are headed downward. Increased CO2 will harm the developing world more than anywhere else, but those places are also the least interested in putting in the effort to stop the effects.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > stopping it would basically involve a war on developing countries to forcibly prevent them from developing further. Why not instead just give them the developed tech and the expertise? Instead of sending tanks, send wind turbines and photovoltaics and release all the IP on them. Instead of suppressing development, let them leapfrog the carbon-intensive technologies.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    This is a naive solution. What IP is being held back?
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago

twobitshifter 5y ago

Yet everyone wants to start commuting back to offices. It looks like 2020 didn’t even have a noticeable effect on the trend.

graeme 5y ago

We actually require cuts to zero. And then negative by sucking carbon from the atmosphere. 2020 we simply began getting worse at a slower rate. But ANY emissions of fossil fuels come from outside the carbon cycle and make the carbon worse.

elihu 5y ago

Compared to the seriousness of the problem I don't think it's extreme, but I also don't think it's quite the right approach. Instead of telling people to drive less, or eat less, or not heat their homes in the winter (which isn't going to work), we can transition away from fossil fuel energy as fast as we can and replace it with renewables. My usual (U.S. centric) suggestions when this topic comes up are to greatly expand solar and wind energy production, finance transcontinental high-voltage DC lines so that we can trade power with Africa/Asia/Europe and even out the day/night imbalance (we can keep fossil fuel plants around as an emergency backup and just not use them), electrify the interstate freeway system so that EVs can charge without stopping and make cross-country road trips without having to haul around huge batteries, and we should expand EV tax credits to cover conversions of existing vehicles as well as new vehicles. We also need more battery production, especially of technologies like lithium iron phosphate (or whatever replaces it in the future) which are good enough and aren't bottlenecked on expensive materials like cobalt and nickel. None of these things require people to change their behavior, though it would help if they did. It's probably also not enough to save us from pretty severe climate problems in the future, but at this point I think that's more-or-less unavoidable so we should just do the best we can right now.

kossTKR 5y ago
The problem is that an old money power elite halts this progress. Big oil and polluting industries hold ginormous wealth and hire thousands of lawyers, PR people, astroturfing groups etc. to stunt progress. I'm sure this will eventually shift - as far as i know multiple golf states are heavily investing in "green tech", not sure what the US elite is doing, but i hope that a critical mass will be hit at some point. Until then there will be no governmental push to save earth because the richest elites writes the laws, and unless their wealth isn't dependent on dirty energy they will rather kill everyone on earth than give up their generational wealth. Stupid when the tech is literally ready and prices are falling so much. We need extreme global bans on all dirty energy 30 years ago, and stop using trillions of subsidies for family dynasties, military black budgets, and other black boxes that siphon money from everyone to a hidden elite in offshore tax havens - and instead take those money and subsidise saving earth / gren tech / neo manhattan like projects. Unfortunately the oligarchs, and especially the tech elites will rather flee to New Zealand and live alone in bunker than imagine any happy ending. It's dark. Maybe they don't count on the transition being possible and to be fair i don't either. The amount of energy stored in fossil fuels is so massive, so portable, so cheap that even with a revolution in batteries and tech everyone in the world will pretty much have to live as third worlders - unless fusion and batteries undergo a deus ex machina like event.