3 ms·

No, I think we agree. > On a natural scale (100 years as a base unit) they are distinct from the carbon dragged up and released from where it was buried millio

No, I think we agree. > On a natural scale (100 years as a base unit) they are distinct from the carbon dragged up and released from where it was buried millions++ of years ago. Of course. Where they are no different from each other is that, once in the atmosphere, it makes no difference which one you have, you are growing a blanket over the planet. This is why I say it is just as damaging. CO2, regardless of source, "sticks" to the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. Same effect. > As far as human activity goes we as a global race do need to put back forest growth we've clear felled Definitely > drop our ongoing and ever increasing emmissions Agreed > and claw back through capture the excess we have emitted in the past century That would be nice. I have yet to see any evidence that we can really do this at a planetary scale. In the lab? Sure. Planet? At this stage, I don't see any evidence of that being possible. Lots of purported solutions; none seem to pass the planetary scale physics test. > This will take both time and significant mindset change The part where I hyperventilate is the time element. We actually have politicians pushing the idea of saving the planet in a few dozen years. That is preposterous. In a rational environment these people would be laughed off the stage. You simply can't change something like this, of planetary scale, in a few years, and likely not in even in a few centuries. This is the paper [0] that, years ago, really got me interested in understanding what was going on; to try to separate facts from fiction. It hit me like a bucket of cold water. I was all in on renewables and everything we were being told would reverse climate change. I built a beautiful 13 kW solar array on my property (soon to expand to 20 kW). Soon after that, as I gained experience with my system and started to analyzed the performance and data, I realized we were being sold a bunch of nonsense about solar. And then I read this paper. It was a shocking revelation that launched me into research and questioning absolutely everything for about a year. This work and experience is where my position on this general topic comes from. I see a lot of hand waving and a lot of claims. I have yet to see anything that passes the physics test at a scale that is even a reasonable fraction of the planetary scale of this problem. Note that none of this is about denying what is happening. When I get into conversations with people one of the first attacks I am subjected to is an accusation of being a denier. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is real. What I am saying isn't real is what we are being told about what we can actually do about it. And yet, I must clarify. This does not mean we should not clean-up our act. I agree with what you said about what we must do. My objection is that the political and money-grabbing forces behind the climate change industry are connecting one to the other as if it were a magical solution. These are lies. Nobody has shown this can be done. For obvious reasons, I would be more than happy to be proven wrong on this. We are all on the same boat. All I want is honest conversation and for the powerful political forces to not force or otherwise compel our scientists into sticking with the chosen narrative. This paper is very unique. A university research team would commit suicide if they published something like this. Grants would evaporate and careers would be ruined. That, sadly, is the reality we live in. One that really bugs me to no end. [0] https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

defrost 4y ago
Of the anticipated side effects of anthro climate change increased forest fires -> more C02 in atmosphere until trees grow back to match isn't a biggie, C02 isn't the most insulative of the gases to worry about, it's the methane and water vapor that will really push this to another level .. that's just physics. >> You simply can't change something like this, of planetary scale, in a few years, and likely not in even in a few centuries. As a counterpoint we, as humans, got here in roughly 100 hundred years with the bulk of the damage done most recently. Although most of that can be cast at "advanced western civilisation" and ideas of capitalism based on unlimited growth etc. Not really something that culturally had much traction with my people, but we are all the shit together. I'm fairly optimistic that we (locally, here in W.Australia) can hit production of 15 million tonnes / per annum of green hydrogen by 2030 (that's generative from renewable eneragy with no "blue hydrogen" from natural gas). Small beer against the petawatts required on a global scale but we act locally and ask that others make some kind of effort to match.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > As a counterpoint we, as humans, got here in roughly 100 hundred years with the bulk of the damage done most recently. Right, of course. In the simplest possible terms, causing a mess is always easier than cleaning it up. That is true in every sense; time, energy and resources. I tried to answer this question in my research. In other words, if we can make a mess in 100, 200 or 500 years (take your pick, we started burning oil a long time ago), why did we make such an impact and why is it that we can't clean it up just as quickly. In the end I think it boils down to energy. It's a long topic. I'll try to summarize it as best as I can. When we burn one liter, gallon or barrel of oil we are burning a concentrated form of energy that took mountains of plant and other matter and an unimaginable amount of time and energy to produce. I have not run the numbers at all. I would not be surprised to find out that the only energy source on earth that is denser (per unit mass) than oil is nuclear. A loose way to think of this is that each barrel of oil burned might represent burning down a forest-load of trees. I can't calculate an accurate number because it is so hard to get reasonable estimates. Just judging from the results then: If, in 100 years, we did what normal took 100K years (a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2), then (very hand-wavy now) we are burning a thousands times more fuel per day than whatever occurred in the natural cycle. This is, in my opinion, also why we just can't fix this without, I don't know, magic of some fundamentally incredible discovery of the scale of the Theory of Relativity. We need a ridiculous amount of energy and resources to fix this. Most people think local/laboratory, when, in reality, this has to be viewed at a planetary scale. And, at that scale, we might just need more energy and resources than exist on this planet if we claim to be able to fix this (drop it by 100 ppm) in 20 to 50 years. I would really like to see honest scientific conversation around this reality. Why? Because, if it is true that we cannot fix it, we should be investing money, resources and brain-power on how to deal with it. I don't think I am wrong. I have yet to see any proposed solution --of any kind-- prove viability at a planetary scale. If I am right, we are wasting valuable time and resources. I just read this article this morning [0]. Quite a revelation. I am still trying to understand it. No conclusions on my part yet. There's so much we don't know. And, again, to be repetitive, we can barely control things at a local level (coal and forest fires) and we are actually claiming to be able to fix an entire planet in two decades. At some point one has to take a moment to think that this might just not be a reasonable claim. I'll repeat that none of what I say is to propose we do not need to cleanup our act. We definitely do, at all levels. I just don't want lies about why we should do it. And, of course, I firmly believe nuclear is the solution to energy generation. From what I've seen so far, nothing else can compare, not even close. [0] https://www.ornl.gov/news/inland-water-carbon-emissions-rise https://www.ornl.gov/news/inland-water-carbon-emissions-rise

defrost 4y ago

Of the anticipated side effects of anthro climate change increased forest fires -> more C02 in atmosphere until trees grow back to match isn't a biggie, C02 isn't the most insulative of the gases to worry about, it's the methane and water vapor that will really push this to another level .. that's just physics. >> You simply can't change something like this, of planetary scale, in a few years, and likely not in even in a few centuries. As a counterpoint we, as humans, got here in roughly 100 hundred years with the bulk of the damage done most recently. Although most of that can be cast at "advanced western civilisation" and ideas of capitalism based on unlimited growth etc. Not really something that culturally had much traction with my people, but we are all the shit together. I'm fairly optimistic that we (locally, here in W.Australia) can hit production of 15 million tonnes / per annum of green hydrogen by 2030 (that's generative from renewable eneragy with no "blue hydrogen" from natural gas). Small beer against the petawatts required on a global scale but we act locally and ask that others make some kind of effort to match.

robomartin 4y ago
> As a counterpoint we, as humans, got here in roughly 100 hundred years with the bulk of the damage done most recently. Right, of course. In the simplest possible terms, causing a mess is always easier than cleaning it up. That is true in every sense; time, energy and resources. I tried to answer this question in my research. In other words, if we can make a mess in 100, 200 or 500 years (take your pick, we started burning oil a long time ago), why did we make such an impact and why is it that we can't clean it up just as quickly. In the end I think it boils down to energy. It's a long topic. I'll try to summarize it as best as I can. When we burn one liter, gallon or barrel of oil we are burning a concentrated form of energy that took mountains of plant and other matter and an unimaginable amount of time and energy to produce. I have not run the numbers at all. I would not be surprised to find out that the only energy source on earth that is denser (per unit mass) than oil is nuclear. A loose way to think of this is that each barrel of oil burned might represent burning down a forest-load of trees. I can't calculate an accurate number because it is so hard to get reasonable estimates. Just judging from the results then: If, in 100 years, we did what normal took 100K years (a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2), then (very hand-wavy now) we are burning a thousands times more fuel per day than whatever occurred in the natural cycle. This is, in my opinion, also why we just can't fix this without, I don't know, magic of some fundamentally incredible discovery of the scale of the Theory of Relativity. We need a ridiculous amount of energy and resources to fix this. Most people think local/laboratory, when, in reality, this has to be viewed at a planetary scale. And, at that scale, we might just need more energy and resources than exist on this planet if we claim to be able to fix this (drop it by 100 ppm) in 20 to 50 years. I would really like to see honest scientific conversation around this reality. Why? Because, if it is true that we cannot fix it, we should be investing money, resources and brain-power on how to deal with it. I don't think I am wrong. I have yet to see any proposed solution --of any kind-- prove viability at a planetary scale. If I am right, we are wasting valuable time and resources. I just read this article this morning [0]. Quite a revelation. I am still trying to understand it. No conclusions on my part yet. There's so much we don't know. And, again, to be repetitive, we can barely control things at a local level (coal and forest fires) and we are actually claiming to be able to fix an entire planet in two decades. At some point one has to take a moment to think that this might just not be a reasonable claim. I'll repeat that none of what I say is to propose we do not need to cleanup our act. We definitely do, at all levels. I just don't want lies about why we should do it. And, of course, I firmly believe nuclear is the solution to energy generation. From what I've seen so far, nothing else can compare, not even close. [0] https://www.ornl.gov/news/inland-water-carbon-emissions-rise https://www.ornl.gov/news/inland-water-carbon-emissions-rise