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> Fortunately there's a constant supply of energy into the earth system, so conservation of energy is not violated! I read versions of this argument all the ti

> Fortunately there's a constant supply of energy into the earth system, so conservation of energy is not violated! I read versions of this argument all the time. What I find amazing about it is that proponents dismiss conservation of energy without realizing that without it, there would be nothing to talk about. CoE is at the CORE of global warming and is THE relevant scientific principle that rules it. Why? Earth could be thought of as an isolated system in space. Energy-in, energy-out. If the planet emits less energy than it receives, it gets hot. If the planet emits more energy than it receives, it freezes. Everything we are talking about has to do with the principle of conservation of energy and its application at a planetary level. If, for example, we somehow capture 20% more of the solar energy we receive on the surface and do not return it to space, we will cook ourselves. In other words, any so-called solution that seeks to transform solar energy into magical beans to precipitate CO2 from the atmosphere has provide solid accounting of how it will affect energy balance. After all, a CO2 reduction solution isn't so unless it can operate at a planetary scale. And, because of that, it will require an astronomical amount of energy and matter to work. Something --anything-- of that scale that is claimed to work in decades, rather than tens of thousands of years, will require energy and matter at probably an unimaginable scale (is that larger than astronomical?). This places it between impossible and fucking dangerous. At one end of the scale we just can't pull it off, end-up causing more damage and pollution than we ever imagined and waste decades and resources that could have been put to good use. At the other end of the scale we deploy something that might kill half (or more) the life on earth, permanently damage ecosystems, food supplies, weather and more. Do nothing, then? No. Just don't do stupid.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> If, for example, we somehow capture 20% more of the solar energy we receive on the surface and do not return it to space, we will cook ourselves. In other words, any so-called solution that seeks to transform solar energy into magical beans to precipitate CO2 from the atmosphere has provide solid accounting of how it will affect energy balance. After all, a CO2 reduction solution isn't so unless it can operate at a planetary scale. And, because of that, it will require an astronomical amount of energy and matter to work. Trees and algae did it once. We can do it again with PVs which are 10-20x as efficient as photosynthesis. Also you're conflating renewable energy and geoengineering. Stopping the output is a much more tractable problem than gathering CO2 and doing something with it at 500ppm. For the former, you only need to pull a few economic levers, make some very rich people very angry, and current technology makes new fossil fuel extraction very difficult. For the latter, we have the technology, and the costs are even small compared to the amount of public money spent on suppressing prices of fossil fuels (a couple trillion would cover the energy, and a few trillion for sabatier reactors is small compared to just the most recent gulf wars) but the political problem is probably intractable under capitalism. More realistically geoengineering will likely take a less energy intensive form like high altitude sulfate seeding and have major 'unforseen' consequences that hurt people outside the global north.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> If, for example, we somehow capture 20% more of the solar energy we receive on the surface and do not return it to space, we will cook ourselves. In other words, any so-called solution that seeks to transform solar energy into magical beans to precipitate CO2 from the atmosphere has provide solid accounting of how it will affect energy balance. After all, a CO2 reduction solution isn't so unless it can operate at a planetary scale. And, because of that, it will require an astronomical amount of energy and matter to work. Trees and algae did it once. We can do it again with PVs which are 10-20x as efficient as photosynthesis. Also you're conflating renewable energy and geoengineering. Stopping the output is a much more tractable problem than gathering CO2 and doing something with it at 500ppm. For the former, you only need to pull a few economic levers, make some very rich people very angry, and current technology makes new fossil fuel extraction very difficult. For the latter, we have the technology, and the costs are even small compared to the amount of public money spent on suppressing prices of fossil fuels (a couple trillion would cover the energy, and a few trillion for sabatier reactors is small compared to just the most recent gulf wars) but the political problem is probably intractable under capitalism. More realistically geoengineering will likely take a less energy intensive form like high altitude sulfate seeding and have major 'unforseen' consequences that hurt people outside the global north.