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You're assuming that the goal is getting to zero CO2 emission? There is no reality where that is possible. Edit: I hadn't read the article. That indeed seems t

You're assuming that the goal is getting to zero CO2 emission? There is no reality where that is possible. Edit: I hadn't read the article. That indeed seems to be the goal. On that basis, yes the math appears wrong.

epgui 4y ago
It's difficult to think of any other reasonable goal that is not at least as "ambitious" as that one. That is, if one considers "trying to survive" an "ambitious" goal.
thfuran 4y ago
Frankly, we probably ought to hit net negative for some while to actually unwind the mess rather than settling for merely stopping accelerating the worsening but I agree with your assessment of the odds.
- steve76 4y ago
- beachy 4y ago
  Agree, and yet (assuming we reach that happy place) what happens next? Who decides how high to wind the global thermostat? Would countries who have benefited from increased temperatures (Russia perhaps) all fall in line and happily agree to go back to (say) pre-industrial revolution levels of CO2?
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    I'm not sure we need to worry about that until we are magically able to sustain negative or net zero emissions globally. On the present horizon at least it looks like we will be settling for somewhere around two degrees above from pre-industrial temperatures.
  - ido 4y ago
    Even once (if) we get to negative co2 it will take centuries for the temperatures to drop back to pre-industrial levels. We’re still taking “only” slowing down temperature increase for well beyond the lifetime of anyone alive today.
  - lozenge 4y ago
    Isn't that the same issue as currently? Every country that extracts fossil fuels is deciding to turn up the global thermostat, but rather than calling it out as a decision, we treat it as a default or an irrelevant consequence.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  According to Jean-Marc Jancovici (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaQ-U-dP_7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaQ-U-dP_7M, in french though), this is right on the money: CO2 being extremly stable and given the quantity we already have transfered in the atmosphere, a 1.5°C global rise in temperature is inevitable already. We'd have to in the negative indeed to have a impact, and with the system inertia and the cascading effects, it's not even sure it would reverse the trend completly.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  You're right that this would have benefits. But the (very high) costs also must be considered. In the end, I'm sure Earth's CO₂ levels will be engineered, and reverting to the preindustrial levels is not at all certain to be considered optimal.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Right now we're so far from being able to return there that we might as well be discussing cities on Enceladus, it's about as doable.
barry-cotter 4y ago
> You're assuming that the goal is getting to zero CO2 emission? There is no reality where that is possible. If this works then doing it more is clearly possible. Maybe not politically or economically viable in the current circumstances but certainly possible. If weathering fine gravel/dust is the mechanism there’s an awful lot of coastal land with relatively active currents in the UK and elsewhere to dump it.
Thorrez 4y ago
What do you mean by "zero CO2 emissions"? Do you mean literally emitting nothing, or do you mean offstting emissions with capture, making it net zero?
- stormbrew 4y ago
  Carbon zero would probably mean not putting any new carbon into the cycle. Not all carbon emissions are positive contributions to net carbon, if they’re just reusing carbon that was already being cycled through. Consider as a thought experiment a world where we suddenly have limitless but “clean” power (ie. fusion comes sooner and better than even the most optimistic expectations) and we start doing carbon capture that also produces burnable hydrocarbons as a byproduct. Running an ICE off that fuel doesn’t put any new carbon into the air, it just recycles what was already there. Obviously this isn’t likely, but it illustrates the premise in an exaggerated way. More practically, in theory wood from farmed, new growth trees fits this mold, but in practice it’s not a terribly efficient or clean fuel once you take all the externalities out. And obviously you’re not gonna power a car on it. But fundamentally, the main thing we need to do to get to zero is stop breaking the planet’s own sequestration of all the carbon that was in the atmosphere before it was hospitable to modern life. At this point doing that is very much a political problem, we probably have the tech to replace the energy we’d lose from that, we just aren’t willing to build it out fast enough.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
- eastbound 4y ago
  All those CO2 calculations are done by taking what nature can absorb (3Gteq), assuming we can emit that much and dividing by the population on Earth. - (1) As if an African person could emit exactly as much as a UK person. - (2) As if countries who chose to overpopulate were allowed strictly proportionately to their population. Since emissions are tightly coupled with consumption, (1) means everyone on Earth should be able to consume the exact same quantity of goods and every country would have exactly the same richness. Which is communism in the purest sense. Which, when you know a few globalwarmists, is exactly in line with their aspirations. I mean they just wanted to impose communism but they came back under a new form. (2) Since emission calculus are proportional to population, it incentives to overpopulate to be allowed more emissions. Which, you may say, is a side-effect incentive of this calculus and is at odds with global warming. They don’t see a problem with that. Everyone should be allowed to live, they say. Again in line with communist ideals. I’ll add (3): Every time they ask me to consume 5% less electricity, they allow 5% more migrants in the territory, then they fight to allow them to consume as much as middle classes here. So this whole story of global warming is just about this: Stuffing more people on a territory and making everyone only able to consume exactly the same. Which, if the managers of the top CEOs of positive energy startups were your classmates (I know a bunch of them) totally aligns with their worldview when they were students (sons of hippies born with a computer and, as you say, metrosexuals with former communist ideals, generally with anti-colonial stances). I’m flummoxed that their worldview is so trendy that they succeeded in life despite major ideological flaws in their reasoning, and one of my friends is even worth 60m€. Global alarmism is just the new form of communism, just as toxic, just as idealistic.
  - serenitylater 4y ago
  - grapescheesee 4y ago
    Its the voice in the room, that wants to ask. Maybe we have a population issue? No one wants to be the voice, its a political nuke.
stormbrew 4y ago
I mean, there’s always at least one reality where this happens: the one where climate disasters escalate to the point where human civilization is no longer able to extract new carbon to put into the atmosphere. The goal is to find a different reality than that one.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  sure, except for the fact that positive feedback & runaway warming exist and are likely.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    I don’t know what you mean by except? That’s.. exactly what I’m saying. I didn’t say it would stop climate change, i just said it would stop us from adding more carbon to the atmosphere. I don’t think it’s a good thing.

epgui 4y ago

It's difficult to think of any other reasonable goal that is not at least as "ambitious" as that one. That is, if one considers "trying to survive" an "ambitious" goal.

thfuran 4y ago

Frankly, we probably ought to hit net negative for some while to actually unwind the mess rather than settling for merely stopping accelerating the worsening but I agree with your assessment of the odds.

steve76 4y ago
beachy 4y ago
Agree, and yet (assuming we reach that happy place) what happens next? Who decides how high to wind the global thermostat? Would countries who have benefited from increased temperatures (Russia perhaps) all fall in line and happily agree to go back to (say) pre-industrial revolution levels of CO2?
- kuhewa 4y ago
  I'm not sure we need to worry about that until we are magically able to sustain negative or net zero emissions globally. On the present horizon at least it looks like we will be settling for somewhere around two degrees above from pre-industrial temperatures.
- ido 4y ago
  Even once (if) we get to negative co2 it will take centuries for the temperatures to drop back to pre-industrial levels. We’re still taking “only” slowing down temperature increase for well beyond the lifetime of anyone alive today.
- lozenge 4y ago
  Isn't that the same issue as currently? Every country that extracts fossil fuels is deciding to turn up the global thermostat, but rather than calling it out as a decision, we treat it as a default or an irrelevant consequence.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
According to Jean-Marc Jancovici (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaQ-U-dP_7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaQ-U-dP_7M, in french though), this is right on the money: CO2 being extremly stable and given the quantity we already have transfered in the atmosphere, a 1.5°C global rise in temperature is inevitable already. We'd have to in the negative indeed to have a impact, and with the system inertia and the cascading effects, it's not even sure it would reverse the trend completly.
BurningFrog 4y ago
You're right that this would have benefits. But the (very high) costs also must be considered. In the end, I'm sure Earth's CO₂ levels will be engineered, and reverting to the preindustrial levels is not at all certain to be considered optimal.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Right now we're so far from being able to return there that we might as well be discussing cities on Enceladus, it's about as doable.

barry-cotter 4y ago

> You're assuming that the goal is getting to zero CO2 emission? There is no reality where that is possible. If this works then doing it more is clearly possible. Maybe not politically or economically viable in the current circumstances but certainly possible. If weathering fine gravel/dust is the mechanism there’s an awful lot of coastal land with relatively active currents in the UK and elsewhere to dump it.

Thorrez 4y ago

What do you mean by "zero CO2 emissions"? Do you mean literally emitting nothing, or do you mean offstting emissions with capture, making it net zero?

stormbrew 4y ago
Carbon zero would probably mean not putting any new carbon into the cycle. Not all carbon emissions are positive contributions to net carbon, if they’re just reusing carbon that was already being cycled through. Consider as a thought experiment a world where we suddenly have limitless but “clean” power (ie. fusion comes sooner and better than even the most optimistic expectations) and we start doing carbon capture that also produces burnable hydrocarbons as a byproduct. Running an ICE off that fuel doesn’t put any new carbon into the air, it just recycles what was already there. Obviously this isn’t likely, but it illustrates the premise in an exaggerated way. More practically, in theory wood from farmed, new growth trees fits this mold, but in practice it’s not a terribly efficient or clean fuel once you take all the externalities out. And obviously you’re not gonna power a car on it. But fundamentally, the main thing we need to do to get to zero is stop breaking the planet’s own sequestration of all the carbon that was in the atmosphere before it was hospitable to modern life. At this point doing that is very much a political problem, we probably have the tech to replace the energy we’d lose from that, we just aren’t willing to build it out fast enough.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

eastbound 4y ago
All those CO2 calculations are done by taking what nature can absorb (3Gteq), assuming we can emit that much and dividing by the population on Earth. - (1) As if an African person could emit exactly as much as a UK person. - (2) As if countries who chose to overpopulate were allowed strictly proportionately to their population. Since emissions are tightly coupled with consumption, (1) means everyone on Earth should be able to consume the exact same quantity of goods and every country would have exactly the same richness. Which is communism in the purest sense. Which, when you know a few globalwarmists, is exactly in line with their aspirations. I mean they just wanted to impose communism but they came back under a new form. (2) Since emission calculus are proportional to population, it incentives to overpopulate to be allowed more emissions. Which, you may say, is a side-effect incentive of this calculus and is at odds with global warming. They don’t see a problem with that. Everyone should be allowed to live, they say. Again in line with communist ideals. I’ll add (3): Every time they ask me to consume 5% less electricity, they allow 5% more migrants in the territory, then they fight to allow them to consume as much as middle classes here. So this whole story of global warming is just about this: Stuffing more people on a territory and making everyone only able to consume exactly the same. Which, if the managers of the top CEOs of positive energy startups were your classmates (I know a bunch of them) totally aligns with their worldview when they were students (sons of hippies born with a computer and, as you say, metrosexuals with former communist ideals, generally with anti-colonial stances). I’m flummoxed that their worldview is so trendy that they succeeded in life despite major ideological flaws in their reasoning, and one of my friends is even worth 60m€. Global alarmism is just the new form of communism, just as toxic, just as idealistic.
- serenitylater 4y ago
- grapescheesee 4y ago
  Its the voice in the room, that wants to ask. Maybe we have a population issue? No one wants to be the voice, its a political nuke.

stormbrew 4y ago

I mean, there’s always at least one reality where this happens: the one where climate disasters escalate to the point where human civilization is no longer able to extract new carbon to put into the atmosphere. The goal is to find a different reality than that one.

whimsicalism 4y ago
sure, except for the fact that positive feedback & runaway warming exist and are likely.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I don’t know what you mean by except? That’s.. exactly what I’m saying. I didn’t say it would stop climate change, i just said it would stop us from adding more carbon to the atmosphere. I don’t think it’s a good thing.