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It’s not impossible to speculate the possibility that in 50-100 years, climate change could be reversed through a CRISPR-like technology (e.g. something that ca
by cj 5y ago
It’s not impossible to speculate the possibility that in 50-100 years, climate change could be reversed through a CRISPR-like technology (e.g. something that can be released and replicate in the environment, thereby changing it).
Or at the very least, I can see a future where gene editing could relieve your suffering from heat by raising the threshold your body can tolerate :)
- nr2x 5y agoAt current rates of carbon outlay, there won’t be much of a world left to save in 100 years.
- pkdpic_y9k 5y agoNot unless we all work our asses off! Engineers can do anything :^)
- matmatmatmat 5y ago... except politics, engineers are usually not very good at politics, and climate change is, in large part, a political problem.
- pkdpic_y9k 5y agoagain, I love me some doom trolling but only if it helps motivate work, and if software engineers can build platforms that undermine democracy I gotta believe its at least possible they can undermine bad politics too
- dantheman 5y agoIt's a technology problem unless you want condemn most of the world to an incredibly low standard of living.
- ben_w 5y agoYes, but what we can do is try to invent things which are better then the status quo in terms of both money and the environment — if people use those inventions for purely selfish reasons, they’re still helping the world.
- kortilla 5y agoThat statement isn’t backed by science
- nr2x 5y ago“We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100” https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-predictions-then-versus-now-15340 https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-predictions-then-ve...
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoYou want something that replicates in the environment and removes carbon? We have those. They're called "plants."
- nr2x 5y agoEven if we reforested every possible area, the current rate of carbon outlay exceeds capacity to absorb. Well explained in the Economist video: https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ
- pkdpic_y9k 5y agoDoes this include ocean farming based carbon capture? That sounded like a pretty positive route in terms of land use limitations when I heard about it.
- chr1 5y agoIf we could convert Sahara back into a savannah or farms, the amount of carbon required for the new soil and plants would exceed the amount of extra carbon we have added to the atmosphere so far. And there are many viable routes to do that. E.g. building large number of ocean thermal energy conversion plants [1] to reduce temperature of the north hemisphere, recreating conditions that have caused green Sahara in the past. There are numerous possibilities to use engineering to revert adverse effects of climate change, and to actually improve the climate. The only scenario when we are doomed, is if population declines significantly so that we get runaway effect from carbon we have already produced melting permafrost, and not have large enough economy to use geoengineering on a large enough scale. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion#Climate_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversio...
- nr2x 5y agoSo there’s one minor problem with the Sahara…
- 5y ago
- PixelOfDeath 5y agoLooking at the world right now, I hope for the best with that gene therapy against sociopathic billionaires.
- coliveira 5y agoToo bad for the millions of people who will die because of the changes during these 50 years...