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Maybe the commenter does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. I definitely understand your sentiment. It is har

Maybe the commenter does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. I definitely understand your sentiment. It is hard to restrain oneself of a good for some cause to see other people using it. In this case it might be productive to adapt a new view that better suits reality and increases congruence between ideas about the world and imperics.

pjc50 4y ago
> does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. The opinion that it should be addressed or not? Because there's no feasible route to addressing it that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions.
- madsbuch 4y ago
  > that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions. You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. As the original commenter also said: He'd rather focus on earning money than saving a bit. Maybe that opinion translates to the climate debate? Maybe he wants to produce large amounts of energy with limited externalities instead of saving a bit.
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    You're talking about finding a different way to reduce emissions, it is still reducing emissions.
    - madsbuch 4y ago
      Synthetic fuels do not reduce emissions. The emissions are just not from fossil fuels. Or am I missing something?
      - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
        There are fuels that consume CO2 from the air during production and then burn it during usage (net being close to zero depending on the energy used to generate it).
      - pjc50 4y ago
        I put "fossil emissions" in my original comment for a reason; things which are made from atmospheric CO2 and not fossil carbon, but then release CO2 again when used, are "net zero" and should not be counted unless you want to confuse people.
        madsbuch 4y ago
        The normal person add fuel to their car and expects emission from the car. The discourse on qualifying different forms of fuels is way more confusing. It is also dangerous. If we allow marketing of "net-zero" fuels, fossil fuel companies will offset their fuel with CO2 certificates.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    At what cost to others? The climate morality debate is complicated because it's all statistical. "Drown Bangladesh and Florida" is obviously a wrong outcome, but there's no one individual wrong action that leads there. You could come up with an approximation like "each gallon of jet fuel consumed raises the sea level by one femtometre"; each action is individually trivial, but combined they are not trivial.
    - madsbuch 4y ago
      > At what cost to others? ... I think nobody disagrees. Your entire comment is rhetoric handcuffing. Nobody proposed to let "Bangladesh and Florida drown". We are discussing ways to avoid current path of climate change which can involve other means than reducing mobility. Unfortunately a lot of people are set on an extremely narrow path, which is a moral issue. How are you going to explain to third world countries that you do not think they have the right to prosper like the US did? In the end, it is morally wrong to be single minded on the solution to the issues. We need to consider other means. Let the means compete and pick the best way.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      The statistical part is the easy part. You can handle the femtometres by estimating how much it'll cost to mitigate the damage, and taxing jet fuel per gallon in proportion (among with other CO₂ emitters). Put tax money to mitigation, and you'll even get a negative feedback loop that'll settle something reasonable. No, the hard part is that we just can't do the obvious, because there is no one global government that could mandate it. Instead, everyone at every level - individual, corporate, governmental - is better off short-term by not doing any climate mitigation, because those who do will lose business to those who don't.
  - yanellena 4y ago
    >You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. Not at the scale of commercial airlines though and certainly not (yet) as cheaply.
    - madsbuch 4y ago
      Indifferent to how practical you might think it is, one can still hold the view that it is more feasible to combat climate change that way. Also, it is interesting to see, that you think it is more practical to eliminate air travel, than to employ new techniques to allow air travel while being climate neutral.
- yreg 4y ago
  The opinion that personal voluntary reduction of emissions won't cut it. We need more drastic measures like carbon taxes.
- snthd 4y ago
  It's the opposite IMHO. Reducing emissions directly will never work because of the Jevons Paradox[0] (at least for CO2 - crazy-high-CO2-equivalent-pollutants are something else). The only thing that matters is preventing extraction of fossil fuels in the first place. That's why the fossil fuel industry promoted the idea of "carbon footprints", and why Adtech make their datacenters renewable - greenwashing their business that makes money selling the whole economy of fossil-fuel derived stuff, including flights and the fossil fuel industry's actual propaganda[1][2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/ https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/ [2] https://stopfundingheat.info/greenwash-dog/ https://stopfundingheat.info/greenwash-dog/
  - twic 4y ago
    Why on earth would the Jevon paradox apply to CO2, an output of industrial processes which can be disposed of for free, not an input?
    - kelipso 4y ago
      You reduce your travel, presumably for the purpose of reducing jet fuel usage. A few things can happen. 1) Someone else buys the plane ticket anyway, due to availability or reduced ticket price, jet fuel usage remains the same. 2) The plane ride got cancelled due to low number of passengers, replaced with another plane ride, total fuel used by airline remains the same. 3) Jet fuel gets cheaper or more available, so the fuel you thought you saved gets bought for another use, total fuel use remains the same.
sampo 4y ago
> Maybe the commenter does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. There really isn't any other way to address climate change than by reducing emissions.
- madsbuch 4y ago
  There is a plethora of alternatives. Synthetic fuels and nuclear energy are well established. bio-fuels is another alternative (though it might not scale).
  - sampo 4y ago
    > Synthetic fuels and nuclear energy are well established. Yes, and they reduce CO2 emissions.
    - madsbuch 4y ago
      How? A kg of fuel should have roughly the same CO2 emission regardless of how it is produced? The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.
      - sampo 4y ago
        > How? Like this: > The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.
        madsbuch 4y ago
        Yes, you are focusing on the entire life cycle. This is a bad argument, as you can employ the same argument with fossil fuels. Fuels emit CO2. we can produce fuels by sequestration.
        sampo 4y ago
        > as you can employ the same argument with fossil fuels No you can't. "Let's burn oil/gas/coal and then re-capture all the CO2 back" is not something that you can do feasibly, economically, and at scale.

pjc50 4y ago

> does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. The opinion that it should be addressed or not? Because there's no feasible route to addressing it that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions.

madsbuch 4y ago
> that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions. You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. As the original commenter also said: He'd rather focus on earning money than saving a bit. Maybe that opinion translates to the climate debate? Maybe he wants to produce large amounts of energy with limited externalities instead of saving a bit.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  You're talking about finding a different way to reduce emissions, it is still reducing emissions.
  - madsbuch 4y ago
    Synthetic fuels do not reduce emissions. The emissions are just not from fossil fuels. Or am I missing something?
    - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
      There are fuels that consume CO2 from the air during production and then burn it during usage (net being close to zero depending on the energy used to generate it).
    - pjc50 4y ago
      I put "fossil emissions" in my original comment for a reason; things which are made from atmospheric CO2 and not fossil carbon, but then release CO2 again when used, are "net zero" and should not be counted unless you want to confuse people.
      - madsbuch 4y ago
        The normal person add fuel to their car and expects emission from the car. The discourse on qualifying different forms of fuels is way more confusing. It is also dangerous. If we allow marketing of "net-zero" fuels, fossil fuel companies will offset their fuel with CO2 certificates.
- pjc50 4y ago
  At what cost to others? The climate morality debate is complicated because it's all statistical. "Drown Bangladesh and Florida" is obviously a wrong outcome, but there's no one individual wrong action that leads there. You could come up with an approximation like "each gallon of jet fuel consumed raises the sea level by one femtometre"; each action is individually trivial, but combined they are not trivial.
  - madsbuch 4y ago
    > At what cost to others? ... I think nobody disagrees. Your entire comment is rhetoric handcuffing. Nobody proposed to let "Bangladesh and Florida drown". We are discussing ways to avoid current path of climate change which can involve other means than reducing mobility. Unfortunately a lot of people are set on an extremely narrow path, which is a moral issue. How are you going to explain to third world countries that you do not think they have the right to prosper like the US did? In the end, it is morally wrong to be single minded on the solution to the issues. We need to consider other means. Let the means compete and pick the best way.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    The statistical part is the easy part. You can handle the femtometres by estimating how much it'll cost to mitigate the damage, and taxing jet fuel per gallon in proportion (among with other CO₂ emitters). Put tax money to mitigation, and you'll even get a negative feedback loop that'll settle something reasonable. No, the hard part is that we just can't do the obvious, because there is no one global government that could mandate it. Instead, everyone at every level - individual, corporate, governmental - is better off short-term by not doing any climate mitigation, because those who do will lose business to those who don't.
- yanellena 4y ago
  >You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. Not at the scale of commercial airlines though and certainly not (yet) as cheaply.
  - madsbuch 4y ago
    Indifferent to how practical you might think it is, one can still hold the view that it is more feasible to combat climate change that way. Also, it is interesting to see, that you think it is more practical to eliminate air travel, than to employ new techniques to allow air travel while being climate neutral.
yreg 4y ago
The opinion that personal voluntary reduction of emissions won't cut it. We need more drastic measures like carbon taxes.
snthd 4y ago
It's the opposite IMHO. Reducing emissions directly will never work because of the Jevons Paradox[0] (at least for CO2 - crazy-high-CO2-equivalent-pollutants are something else). The only thing that matters is preventing extraction of fossil fuels in the first place. That's why the fossil fuel industry promoted the idea of "carbon footprints", and why Adtech make their datacenters renewable - greenwashing their business that makes money selling the whole economy of fossil-fuel derived stuff, including flights and the fossil fuel industry's actual propaganda[1][2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/ https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/ [2] https://stopfundingheat.info/greenwash-dog/ https://stopfundingheat.info/greenwash-dog/
- twic 4y ago
  Why on earth would the Jevon paradox apply to CO2, an output of industrial processes which can be disposed of for free, not an input?
  - kelipso 4y ago
    You reduce your travel, presumably for the purpose of reducing jet fuel usage. A few things can happen. 1) Someone else buys the plane ticket anyway, due to availability or reduced ticket price, jet fuel usage remains the same. 2) The plane ride got cancelled due to low number of passengers, replaced with another plane ride, total fuel used by airline remains the same. 3) Jet fuel gets cheaper or more available, so the fuel you thought you saved gets bought for another use, total fuel use remains the same.

sampo 4y ago

> Maybe the commenter does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. There really isn't any other way to address climate change than by reducing emissions.

madsbuch 4y ago
There is a plethora of alternatives. Synthetic fuels and nuclear energy are well established. bio-fuels is another alternative (though it might not scale).
- sampo 4y ago
  > Synthetic fuels and nuclear energy are well established. Yes, and they reduce CO2 emissions.
  - madsbuch 4y ago
    How? A kg of fuel should have roughly the same CO2 emission regardless of how it is produced? The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.
    - sampo 4y ago
      > How? Like this: > The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.
      - madsbuch 4y ago
        Yes, you are focusing on the entire life cycle. This is a bad argument, as you can employ the same argument with fossil fuels. Fuels emit CO2. we can produce fuels by sequestration.
        sampo 4y ago
        > as you can employ the same argument with fossil fuels No you can't. "Let's burn oil/gas/coal and then re-capture all the CO2 back" is not something that you can do feasibly, economically, and at scale.