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Entropy is inexorable and must always be resisted. Humans need to drink water and eat food, again, and again, and again. Unimaginable amounts of time, effort, a
by exoverito 2y ago
Entropy is inexorable and must always be resisted. Humans need to drink water and eat food, again, and again, and again. Unimaginable amounts of time, effort, and resources are spent every day maintaining civilization. If we build out solar panels, we will have to replace them in 20 years. There is no free lunch.
We don't know how bad the climate will be at 800 ppm. 300 millions years ago, during the Carboniferous era, there were vast forests and very high CO2 levels, around 1000 to 5000 ppm. If the Earth gets too hot we will simply do stratospheric aerosol injection. If climate change turns out to be overhyped, then we get the CO2 fertilization boost for free, win-win.
Regardless, the real solution is next level energy production from advanced fission, deep geothermal, and ultimately fusion power. With a vast surplus of energy we could do wildly impractical things like filter sea water for gold, and of course extract extremely diffuse gases from the atmosphere. Renewable energies are very low energy density, and more akin to farming from a physics perspective. They make sense in certain situations, but are not reliable for powering an advanced industrial civilization.
I also suspect people's intuitions are out of perspective in terms of time scales. It seems likely AGI will arise within the next 20 years. Climate change is nothing compared to the singularity and rise of superintelligence.