9 ms·

One absurdity of this is that Fox News is carbon neutral. https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent-company-of-fox-news-cares-a-lot-about-gl

• platz 4y ago
  Is it true that in 40 years at the current rate, we'll be at 600 PPM? What happens to humans at that level?
  • LBJsPNS 4y ago
    We're fucked.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Crudely put but no less true for that.
  • ben_w 4y ago
    600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment. I’m not expecting 40 years at the current rate. Given the way PV deployments have been growing and how long they last, I expect electricity to be mostly green in the first few years of the 2030s, and most other sectors soon after.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      It's not the direct effect on us that causes problems, it is the runaway greenhouse effect that would wreck high efficiency agriculture. Think mid double digits drops in yield. If you are focusing on the direct effect on humans you are looking at the wrong thing, that is manageable, the other one probably is not.
      • swader999 4y ago
        Doesn't yield increase with more CO2? It certainly did in my greenhouse when I put my large rabbit inside.
        • zaarn 4y ago
          Yield yes, but not nutritional contents. Most vital nutrients require more than just CO2 to have more production in a plant (notably, Nitrogen is needed).
          • ben_w 4y ago
            Nitrogen is 70% of the atmosphere, I don’t see any way for it to run short until the death of the sun (or the use of von Neumann probes) boils off Earth’s atmosphere. If you’re going to worry about fertilisers, worry about phosphate and potassium… but even then, the problem and solution is unrelated to greenhouse gases.
            • zaarn 4y ago
              Nitrogen is 70% of the atmosphere but unlike CO2 it's concentration isn't going up in an appreciable way. So if a plant is constraint in nutrients by Nitrogen, it can't make more of those if CO2 goes up. If CO2 goes up it can only make things that require more Carbon and Oxygen, both of which only form very basic structures the plants can use to build. Not nutrients.
              • ben_w 4y ago
                That assumes the plants get it directly from the air. Legumes do (hence the invention of crop rotation), but most plants get it from fertilisers, the manufacturers of which get it from the air and can scale up independently of the farms. The manufacturing process currently uses methane… but only because that’s historically been the cheapest source of hydrogen.
                • 4y ago
    • TomSwirly 4y ago
      Here's a graph of energy consumption by source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years Renewable sources are growing exponentially but carbon emitting sources continue to grow exponentially as well, simply somewhat slower. It seems wildly, unreasonably optimistic to look at that graph and imagine most of that majority at the bottom suddenly vanishing within ten years.
      • ben_w 4y ago
        To me, that looks like a sigmoid that has passed its peak. But, assuming it’s an exponential, it doubled between 1975 and 2015 (i.e. 40 years). Here’s some graphs for PV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics PV is doubling every 3 to 3.5 years. 3 doublings of PV at that rate gets us to about 9-10 TW peak. I don’t know the actual average global capacity factor, but I do know the current global electricity usage is only about 3 TW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
    • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
      > 600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment. How long before we start putting adsorption scrubbers on our HVAC systems' intakes?
    • vixen99 4y ago
      > 600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment Reference?
      • alar44 4y ago
        Just Google it, I've seen this number many times.
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        That's in the atmosphere around you, effect on organism, not the effect on the climate due to the greenhouse effect.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    Massive wars, displacement on a scale never seen before, famine. In short: go watch some movie about the apocalypse, then multiply by 10 or so unless they include the earth becoming entire uninhabitable because that likely will not happen. But for the vast majority of our species, and many others besides it will be permanent curtains. And I'm not sure if you could call the survivors lucky. It's not that the CO2 level itself would be fatal to humans, it is the cascade from large scale agricultural collapse that would do us in.
    • arethuza 4y ago
      Also sustained wet bulb temperatures > 35C rendering some areas pretty much uninhabitable for anyone not in an AC building or vehicle. Would anyone want to live somewhere where if your AC or power dies then you die when you can try and migrate somewhere more hospitable? Edit: And I am acutely aware that I live somewhere that is likely to suffer the least directly consequences from climate change.
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        I was in Portugal a while ago in summer and it was hitting 45 Celsius, absolutely unbearable. We sprinted from the car to the nearest AC'd building. No way you can deal with that kind of temperature unassisted for any length of time.
  • thecatwentup 4y ago
    There are a lot of alarmist comments here - but the direct effect on humans is minimal up to 10,000ppm[1]. The effect on the environment on the otherhand isn't easy to predict. [1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2020-08/Carbon-Dioxide.pdf https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...
    • shawabawa3 4y ago
      Those statistics are for acute exposure. There are noticeable effects to cognition even under 1000ppm