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[flagged]

robomartin 2y ago
For once I would love to see those downvoting pushback against the cult of planet-saving to present an argument against the facts as presented. Take that chart and explain how erasing 14% or even 50% of emissions can save the planet. Then explain how heat pumps or banning ICE vehicles --which is insignificant when compared to erasing massive modern civilizations-- is superior to erasing entire regions of the planet. You might not like what I said. That does not make it wrong.
- usrusr 2y ago
  Even if tomorrow a giant space-maid robot came by and stole much of our atmospheric CO2 we'd have to eventually make do without fossil fuels. Because if we continue they'd all be oxidized to the lowest energy state (CO2) one day. Giant space-maid or not. Is it that terrible to start a little earlier? Inconvenient, sure, I'll give you that. Massively inconvenient.
- panstromek 2y ago
  You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense.
  - robomartin 2y ago
    > You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense. No. I am telling you that there is no way we can solve it. Doing so requires violating the laws of physics and science in general. That's what does not make sense. What is clearer proof of the fallacy than knowing precisely how our planet behaves without humanity on it? We know this. Accurately. It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change. I've seen politicians claim we can fix it in 20 to 50 years. Does anyone challenge this nonsense when uttered? No, of course not. They are claiming we can accelerate a planetary scale problem by a factor of ONE THOUSAND or more and nobody bothers to ask "How?" or "Where is the energy going to come from?" or "How much additional pollution and damage will the proposed process generate?" or "Are you insane?". We desperately need to start talking about reality and leave these fantasies behind.
    - mcphage 2y ago
      > It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. > Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change Trivially false—humanity has already changed the CO2 ppm by larger, in a shorter span of time. For the most part without even noticing.
      - robomartin 2y ago
        > Trivially false—humanity has already changed the CO2 ppm by larger, in a shorter span of time. For the most part without even noticing. You are trivially confused: The time, energy and resources required to emit these gasses is insignificant when compared to what it will take to capture them back. That's the problem, and that's what most casual observers refuse to think through and understand. Go buy a 10 kg bag of fine flour. Walk around your home or office spreading the stuff everywhere. Now clean up every single particle. Easy to make a mess. Not so easy in time, energy and resources to clean it up. That's the problem.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        This is why glitter has been banned from my house.
        fuzzfactor 2y ago
        No matter how wonderful or dazzling, often the genie is best kept within the bottle :) And Pandoras held far from any boxes just for good measure.
        kragen 2y ago
        > The time, energy and resources required to emit these gasses is insignificant when compared to what it will take to capture them back. I explained why this is incorrect in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424292.
    - panstromek 2y ago
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  I didn’t downvoted you but can add some thoughts on what you said: - erasing the USA from the map would very surely reduce some other countries emissions (world factory…). One could argue it would also remove a leader (literally) in consomptionmania and that would give space for other countries lifestyle inspirations. - by "saving the planet" people mean many different things, arguing against this expression won’t bring much discussion. For me it’s mostly preserving access of the ressources that made humanity so bliss: diverse fauna, diverse flora, clean air and water and a bit of minerals. - your chart is about CO2e but it’s just a part of the equation. I deplore organizations and govs tends to focus on those levels, they’re often not only a cause but also a consequence. Ecologie is a vast, domain. - I agree banning ICE is ridiculous, just a bit less than the 90’s moto "remove you wall charger when not in used to SAVE THE PLANET". Those measure are politic (to secure car usage while oils keep draining) and economic (many new car sales, new infrastructures for charging).
- kelnos 2y ago
  I see plenty of valid arguments in replies to you that seem reasonable. You're just ignoring them and repeating the same things over and over.
  - kragen 2y ago
    To be fair, at the time you made your comment, those arguments against robomartin were only correct, not valid. Some of them were not even correct. They were almost entirely unsupported assertions rather than valid arguments from verifiable facts. Hopefully my comments have improved that situation.
toss1 2y ago
The charts and data you cite are not an argument to do nothing. They are a very strong argument to immediately commence CO2 removal (and ironically, one of the arguments against it is that it might let the CO2 polluters 'off the hook' for reducing their emissions).
- lttlrck 2y ago
  He did not say "do nothing". > There are legitimate and worthy reasons for which we should clean up our act. What is the very strong argument to commence CO2 removal in the face the charts and data?
  - toss1 2y ago
    See my reply above for two very sound reasons
- robomartin 2y ago
  > They are a very strong argument to immediately commence CO2 removal You do realize that removing CO2 will require massively more energy than what went into adding it to the atmosphere, right? In other words, unless you know of a way to violate the laws of physics without consequence, the concept of viable CO2 removal is a bad joke of tragic proportions. Anyone proposing this should be instantly laughed off the stage. This is a fantasy. Which is why every single proposal for CO2 removal has failed as the scams they actually are.
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    That's not true. You've got a requirement to reduce entropy but none to pack it back into energy dense fuel.
    - robomartin 2y ago
      > You've got a requirement to reduce entropy but none to pack it back into energy dense fuel. C'mon, this is laughable. What are we going to do with it? Fill-up massive balloons? Also, I have never suggested that the objective should be to pack it back into energy dense fuel. You are trying to talk your way around violating the laws of physics. Look, it's OK if you want to believe this. However, this does not change reality. This is why every single so-called solution has failed and ultimately is discredited. As I suggested to someone else. If you don't see the point, do this: Go to the store and buy a 10 Kg bag of finely ground flour. Walk around your office or home and start throwing flour everywhere. Coat every single surface and crevice with it. Make sure it goes into your TV, computer, air conditioning system, setup a few fans to blow it around. Now go back and retrieve every single particle. The time, energy and resources required is astronomical when compared to the damage you can cause in 30 to 60 minutes. Anyone with minimal critical thinking capacity can understand that it will take weeks, if not months, of a very serious effort and lots more energy to remove every grain of flour. Note that there is no requirement to put it back into the bag. You can eat it, cook with it. I don't care. Yet, you must repair the damage you caused down to the last particle. Are you suggesting you can clean the room/office using less time, resources and energy than that required to create the disaster? I hope not. That's the problem. You need to understand that small-scale hypothetical first. Now expand it to a planetary scale, where you have CO2 floating around the atmosphere at all levels, over every continent and ocean. The mere suggestion that we can actually claw this back should be ridiculous to anyone who stops to really apply some thinking to this problem. It's a fantasy.
tzs 2y ago
Arguing that we cannot affect change to planetary scale conditions is an interesting argument, considering that the problem people are trying to address is a change to planetary scale conditions that was caused by humanity.
- robomartin 2y ago
  I can understand how that might sound nonsensical. Here's where a simple thought experiment might help understand the difference. To clarify, we should note that I have never --ever-- in my many comments on this subject denied the genesis of the problem. It is clear as day that we contributed a massive amount of CO2 and other gasses to the atmosphere. Let's get that out of the way. This isn't about denial of that fact. Thought experiment: Take an warehouse the size of a Home Depot (approximately 10K square meters or 100K square feet). Seal it. Nothing new comes in or goes out. Air, water, nothing. Make a 1 cubic meter pile of wood in the center of it and light it on fire. Let it burn out. Your job, now, is to clean it. The energy content of 1 cubic meter of wood is in the order of 3 MWh. How much energy will it take to clean 100% of the gasses and particulate matter generated by the burn and deposited on every square millimeter of this warehouse? Of course, this question is impossible to answer, other than to suggest it will take a lot more than the energy expended to create the problem in the first place. This is a basic principle in physics. Right? You cannot use less energy to reverse a process. Another way to describe this principle is that it is far easier to cause destruction than it is to reverse it. It is much easier to implode a building in Las Vegas than to clean it up and build a new one. Etc. Humanity burned fossil fuels with incredible energy content per cubic meter. Massive, unthinkable amounts. This is how we caused change. And it will take massively more energy to reverse these changes. And to do so quickly, it will take POWER. Massive amounts of it. Energy is power over time. It is easy to talk about energy and lose sight of this. Cleaning that warehouse to reverse the effects of the burn will take orders of magnitude more time than what it took to burn a cubic meter of wood. And so, my argument is not at all misaligned with reality. Yes, we did this in a very short period of time. And yet, no, we cannot and will not fix it in anything even remotely resembling a human lifetime no matter what we do. If humanity ceases to exist it will require 50K to 100K years per 100 ppm drop. If we still exist, even if we implement the most draconian of changes, nothing will change. Not one bit. In fact, it is far more likely that atmospheric CO2 levels will continue to rise. It would be far more intelligent to understand this and work on how to live in this reality. The planet will take care of itself. And no, humanity isn't going to die off any time soon unless we start launching nukes across continents.
deergomoo 2y ago
Reminds me of that old George Carlin bit. "The planet is fine. The people are fucked"
- robomartin 2y ago
  This is true.
ifdefdebug 2y ago
This is bullshit. We, humanity, made a HUGE dent just in the last few decades, albeit in the wrong direction warming up our planet to dangerous levels. So we can't revert it back? Everybody knows that already, and that's not what it's all about. It's not about going back to previous levels, it's about damage control and keeping things at some survivable level, instead of burning it all to ashes within the next few decades. So please don't make braindead, dangerous and lazy arguments that we can't make a difference. We are making a difference. We have to stop making a difference if we want to survive.
- kragen 2y ago
  Of course we can revert it back. I've explained in more detail at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42423291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42423291.
- robomartin 2y ago
  > We are making a difference. No. We are not. And we cannot. That's the point. I realize this is uncomfortable for you to accept from your current understanding of the matter. It takes some effort and an open mind to get past the indoctrination and constant messaging before one can understand reality. Not to get political, but this is a good example: Lost of us understood that Biden was in cognitive decline years ago. This was was obvious to anyone who could elevate themselves above the constant lies and manipulation from every politician and media source aligned with the "approved" messaging. It was only when the lie was impossible to hide that everyone who used to lie and support him turned against him, instantly. At the time I used to say: They are not trying to pop him like a pimple. And that's what happened. Same with this ridiculous fantasy of being able to affect climate change at any level. I don't care if the discussion is about keeping it as it is today or reversing it. This is is irrelevant. The entire idea is a fantasy. I don't know how much longer it will take for the truth to come out. At some point researchers, politicians and those pushing this for financial gain will have no choice but to accept reality. When that happens, I hope everyone pounding me hard on this here has a moment of honesty and reflects on just how dumb they were to believe the lies they were sold. Today the cult is so strong and prevalent, particularly here on HN, that it is suicide to even dare speak one word in opposition. That's a sad reality with equally sad parallels in the political dishonesty we just witnessed in the US.
antod 2y ago
"saving the planet" as a phrase is something I usually seem to hear more as a strawman against doing anything at all. The advocates for taking action are usually talking about limiting damage rather than restoring anything.
- robomartin 2y ago
  > The advocates for taking action are usually talking about limiting damage rather than restoring anything. No, they are pushing nonsense for political and/or financial gain. Why? Who would push back against "saving the planet"? How many researchers are going to destroy their careers in a politically and financially-lucrative environment by speaking out against any of this? Remember that we now know, without a shred of doubt, that the mass media has been pushing lies to their audience for quite some time. The climate madness is just another part of this problem. Please read this research paper from Google. It has become increasingly difficult to find it. I have a dozen links that stopped working for whatever reason. This was published on Spectrum, IEEE in December of 2014. A serious publication. The paper is from Google's research division. The title is: "Energy's Creative Destruction". I found it (again) here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273392977_Energy's_creative_destruction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273392977_Energy's_... This study made the researchers realize the futility of what was being pushed by everyone at that time. This also happens to be the paper that launched me into a year-long effort to finally try to understand this topic. Frankly, once I found the correct scientific perspective, it really wasn't that hard to get a grip and understand that we are being sold a fantasy. The research stopped without moving on to evaluate the viability of the various CO2 capture methods floated around that time (a 7 year effort that started in 2007). Everything since then has been debunked as, at best, ineffective and, at worst, impossible. A year later the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany released this finding: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggressive-co2-removal-will-take-more-700-years-1513897 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggr... Quoting: "Findings suggest that "even a probably unfeasible CO2 extraction rate" of 25 gigatonnes per year could not re-establish pre-industrial conditions or a low emission state with the period simulated (until 2700)." Most recently: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-would-we-have-remove-air-counteract-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-woul... Quoting: "It's so much harder to capture carbon than it is to just not emit it to begin with,” says Harvey. “When your bathtub is overflowing, you don't reach for the gold-plated mop—you just turn off the faucet." And there's more. In other words, it's a fantasy. All of it. Time to snap out of the Matrix and start to discuss reality.
nicoburns 2y ago
In the short term (next 100 years or so), the aim isn't to improve things. It's to make it get only a little worse rather than dramatically worse.
- robomartin 2y ago
  That might be a sensible objective. It does remain to be seen if this is actually possible at all. Same problem: The concept of net zero carbon is admirable, yet the reality of achieving something like that is closer to a fantasy than reality. In other words, we might be able to slow the rate of CO2 contribution. It is likely impossible to get it down to zero. Maybe in a few hundred years? That's as easy to predict as someone in 1824 predicting that we would have computers on every desk and our pockets, MRI machines, etc. Note that achieving net zero does not slow down or reduce atmospheric CO2 accumulation. It will continue to rise. And, of course, to reverse course, not only do we have to achieve net zero (which is impossible), we would have to go net negative in a very substantial way. And that's where the "WTF are you talking about?" part comes in when listening to the fantasies being sold. Going net zero would require planetary scale resources and energy we cannot even imagine. Going negative is orders of magnitude worse. When you move and use resources of any kind at a planetary scale, you will use unimaginable amounts of energy. Physics tells us that no process can ever be 100% efficient. In fact, most complex processes are quite inefficient when evaluated from start to finish. Assuming, say, 50% efficiency, that means that we would have to generate twice the planetary scale energy required to achieve this (if it were possible). The same is true of resources such as minerals, manufacturing, processing, transportation, digging, whatever. Which, in turn, means that we would then introduce a seriously massive amount of pollution and cause collateral effects/damage to the environment, again, at a planetary scale. That's where the conversations go loopy very quickly. Its easy to say "cover the Equator with solar panels". It isn't easy to explain how we would do that without destroying entire ecosystems around the planet and introducing so much additional pollution that things would get worse rather than better. The planet will address this problem naturally. We can clean-up our act to help. Yet, we should not go to insane lengths in doing so. The risk is to cause more damage and to do so at a very serious scale. In other words, in an effort to save life on earth we could, instead, succeed at killing everything on this planet.

[flagged]

For once I would love to see those downvoting pushback against the cult of planet-saving to present an argument against the facts as presented. Take that chart and explain how erasing 14% or even 50% of emissions can save the planet. Then explain how heat pumps or banning ICE vehicles --which is insignificant when compared to erasing massive modern civilizations-- is superior to erasing entire regions of the planet. You might not like what I said. That does not make it wrong.

usrusr 2y ago
Even if tomorrow a giant space-maid robot came by and stole much of our atmospheric CO2 we'd have to eventually make do without fossil fuels. Because if we continue they'd all be oxidized to the lowest energy state (CO2) one day. Giant space-maid or not. Is it that terrible to start a little earlier? Inconvenient, sure, I'll give you that. Massively inconvenient.
panstromek 2y ago
You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense.
- robomartin 2y ago
  > You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense. No. I am telling you that there is no way we can solve it. Doing so requires violating the laws of physics and science in general. That's what does not make sense. What is clearer proof of the fallacy than knowing precisely how our planet behaves without humanity on it? We know this. Accurately. It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change. I've seen politicians claim we can fix it in 20 to 50 years. Does anyone challenge this nonsense when uttered? No, of course not. They are claiming we can accelerate a planetary scale problem by a factor of ONE THOUSAND or more and nobody bothers to ask "How?" or "Where is the energy going to come from?" or "How much additional pollution and damage will the proposed process generate?" or "Are you insane?". We desperately need to start talking about reality and leave these fantasies behind.
  - mcphage 2y ago
    > It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. > Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change Trivially false—humanity has already changed the CO2 ppm by larger, in a shorter span of time. For the most part without even noticing.
    - robomartin 2y ago
      > Trivially false—humanity has already changed the CO2 ppm by larger, in a shorter span of time. For the most part without even noticing. You are trivially confused: The time, energy and resources required to emit these gasses is insignificant when compared to what it will take to capture them back. That's the problem, and that's what most casual observers refuse to think through and understand. Go buy a 10 kg bag of fine flour. Walk around your home or office spreading the stuff everywhere. Now clean up every single particle. Easy to make a mess. Not so easy in time, energy and resources to clean it up. That's the problem.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        This is why glitter has been banned from my house.
        fuzzfactor 2y ago
        No matter how wonderful or dazzling, often the genie is best kept within the bottle :) And Pandoras held far from any boxes just for good measure.
      - kragen 2y ago
        > The time, energy and resources required to emit these gasses is insignificant when compared to what it will take to capture them back. I explained why this is incorrect in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424292.
  - panstromek 2y ago
aziaziazi 2y ago
I didn’t downvoted you but can add some thoughts on what you said: - erasing the USA from the map would very surely reduce some other countries emissions (world factory…). One could argue it would also remove a leader (literally) in consomptionmania and that would give space for other countries lifestyle inspirations. - by "saving the planet" people mean many different things, arguing against this expression won’t bring much discussion. For me it’s mostly preserving access of the ressources that made humanity so bliss: diverse fauna, diverse flora, clean air and water and a bit of minerals. - your chart is about CO2e but it’s just a part of the equation. I deplore organizations and govs tends to focus on those levels, they’re often not only a cause but also a consequence. Ecologie is a vast, domain. - I agree banning ICE is ridiculous, just a bit less than the 90’s moto "remove you wall charger when not in used to SAVE THE PLANET". Those measure are politic (to secure car usage while oils keep draining) and economic (many new car sales, new infrastructures for charging).
kelnos 2y ago
I see plenty of valid arguments in replies to you that seem reasonable. You're just ignoring them and repeating the same things over and over.
- kragen 2y ago
  To be fair, at the time you made your comment, those arguments against robomartin were only correct, not valid. Some of them were not even correct. They were almost entirely unsupported assertions rather than valid arguments from verifiable facts. Hopefully my comments have improved that situation.

toss1 2y ago

The charts and data you cite are not an argument to do nothing. They are a very strong argument to immediately commence CO2 removal (and ironically, one of the arguments against it is that it might let the CO2 polluters 'off the hook' for reducing their emissions).

lttlrck 2y ago
He did not say "do nothing". > There are legitimate and worthy reasons for which we should clean up our act. What is the very strong argument to commence CO2 removal in the face the charts and data?
- toss1 2y ago
  See my reply above for two very sound reasons
robomartin 2y ago
> They are a very strong argument to immediately commence CO2 removal You do realize that removing CO2 will require massively more energy than what went into adding it to the atmosphere, right? In other words, unless you know of a way to violate the laws of physics without consequence, the concept of viable CO2 removal is a bad joke of tragic proportions. Anyone proposing this should be instantly laughed off the stage. This is a fantasy. Which is why every single proposal for CO2 removal has failed as the scams they actually are.
- hgomersall 2y ago
  That's not true. You've got a requirement to reduce entropy but none to pack it back into energy dense fuel.
  - robomartin 2y ago
    > You've got a requirement to reduce entropy but none to pack it back into energy dense fuel. C'mon, this is laughable. What are we going to do with it? Fill-up massive balloons? Also, I have never suggested that the objective should be to pack it back into energy dense fuel. You are trying to talk your way around violating the laws of physics. Look, it's OK if you want to believe this. However, this does not change reality. This is why every single so-called solution has failed and ultimately is discredited. As I suggested to someone else. If you don't see the point, do this: Go to the store and buy a 10 Kg bag of finely ground flour. Walk around your office or home and start throwing flour everywhere. Coat every single surface and crevice with it. Make sure it goes into your TV, computer, air conditioning system, setup a few fans to blow it around. Now go back and retrieve every single particle. The time, energy and resources required is astronomical when compared to the damage you can cause in 30 to 60 minutes. Anyone with minimal critical thinking capacity can understand that it will take weeks, if not months, of a very serious effort and lots more energy to remove every grain of flour. Note that there is no requirement to put it back into the bag. You can eat it, cook with it. I don't care. Yet, you must repair the damage you caused down to the last particle. Are you suggesting you can clean the room/office using less time, resources and energy than that required to create the disaster? I hope not. That's the problem. You need to understand that small-scale hypothetical first. Now expand it to a planetary scale, where you have CO2 floating around the atmosphere at all levels, over every continent and ocean. The mere suggestion that we can actually claw this back should be ridiculous to anyone who stops to really apply some thinking to this problem. It's a fantasy.

tzs 2y ago

Arguing that we cannot affect change to planetary scale conditions is an interesting argument, considering that the problem people are trying to address is a change to planetary scale conditions that was caused by humanity.

robomartin 2y ago
I can understand how that might sound nonsensical. Here's where a simple thought experiment might help understand the difference. To clarify, we should note that I have never --ever-- in my many comments on this subject denied the genesis of the problem. It is clear as day that we contributed a massive amount of CO2 and other gasses to the atmosphere. Let's get that out of the way. This isn't about denial of that fact. Thought experiment: Take an warehouse the size of a Home Depot (approximately 10K square meters or 100K square feet). Seal it. Nothing new comes in or goes out. Air, water, nothing. Make a 1 cubic meter pile of wood in the center of it and light it on fire. Let it burn out. Your job, now, is to clean it. The energy content of 1 cubic meter of wood is in the order of 3 MWh. How much energy will it take to clean 100% of the gasses and particulate matter generated by the burn and deposited on every square millimeter of this warehouse? Of course, this question is impossible to answer, other than to suggest it will take a lot more than the energy expended to create the problem in the first place. This is a basic principle in physics. Right? You cannot use less energy to reverse a process. Another way to describe this principle is that it is far easier to cause destruction than it is to reverse it. It is much easier to implode a building in Las Vegas than to clean it up and build a new one. Etc. Humanity burned fossil fuels with incredible energy content per cubic meter. Massive, unthinkable amounts. This is how we caused change. And it will take massively more energy to reverse these changes. And to do so quickly, it will take POWER. Massive amounts of it. Energy is power over time. It is easy to talk about energy and lose sight of this. Cleaning that warehouse to reverse the effects of the burn will take orders of magnitude more time than what it took to burn a cubic meter of wood. And so, my argument is not at all misaligned with reality. Yes, we did this in a very short period of time. And yet, no, we cannot and will not fix it in anything even remotely resembling a human lifetime no matter what we do. If humanity ceases to exist it will require 50K to 100K years per 100 ppm drop. If we still exist, even if we implement the most draconian of changes, nothing will change. Not one bit. In fact, it is far more likely that atmospheric CO2 levels will continue to rise. It would be far more intelligent to understand this and work on how to live in this reality. The planet will take care of itself. And no, humanity isn't going to die off any time soon unless we start launching nukes across continents.

deergomoo 2y ago

Reminds me of that old George Carlin bit. "The planet is fine. The people are fucked"

robomartin 2y ago
This is true.

ifdefdebug 2y ago

This is bullshit. We, humanity, made a HUGE dent just in the last few decades, albeit in the wrong direction warming up our planet to dangerous levels. So we can't revert it back? Everybody knows that already, and that's not what it's all about. It's not about going back to previous levels, it's about damage control and keeping things at some survivable level, instead of burning it all to ashes within the next few decades. So please don't make braindead, dangerous and lazy arguments that we can't make a difference. We are making a difference. We have to stop making a difference if we want to survive.

kragen 2y ago
Of course we can revert it back. I've explained in more detail at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42423291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42423291.
robomartin 2y ago
> We are making a difference. No. We are not. And we cannot. That's the point. I realize this is uncomfortable for you to accept from your current understanding of the matter. It takes some effort and an open mind to get past the indoctrination and constant messaging before one can understand reality. Not to get political, but this is a good example: Lost of us understood that Biden was in cognitive decline years ago. This was was obvious to anyone who could elevate themselves above the constant lies and manipulation from every politician and media source aligned with the "approved" messaging. It was only when the lie was impossible to hide that everyone who used to lie and support him turned against him, instantly. At the time I used to say: They are not trying to pop him like a pimple. And that's what happened. Same with this ridiculous fantasy of being able to affect climate change at any level. I don't care if the discussion is about keeping it as it is today or reversing it. This is is irrelevant. The entire idea is a fantasy. I don't know how much longer it will take for the truth to come out. At some point researchers, politicians and those pushing this for financial gain will have no choice but to accept reality. When that happens, I hope everyone pounding me hard on this here has a moment of honesty and reflects on just how dumb they were to believe the lies they were sold. Today the cult is so strong and prevalent, particularly here on HN, that it is suicide to even dare speak one word in opposition. That's a sad reality with equally sad parallels in the political dishonesty we just witnessed in the US.

antod 2y ago

"saving the planet" as a phrase is something I usually seem to hear more as a strawman against doing anything at all. The advocates for taking action are usually talking about limiting damage rather than restoring anything.

robomartin 2y ago
> The advocates for taking action are usually talking about limiting damage rather than restoring anything. No, they are pushing nonsense for political and/or financial gain. Why? Who would push back against "saving the planet"? How many researchers are going to destroy their careers in a politically and financially-lucrative environment by speaking out against any of this? Remember that we now know, without a shred of doubt, that the mass media has been pushing lies to their audience for quite some time. The climate madness is just another part of this problem. Please read this research paper from Google. It has become increasingly difficult to find it. I have a dozen links that stopped working for whatever reason. This was published on Spectrum, IEEE in December of 2014. A serious publication. The paper is from Google's research division. The title is: "Energy's Creative Destruction". I found it (again) here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273392977_Energy's_creative_destruction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273392977_Energy's_... This study made the researchers realize the futility of what was being pushed by everyone at that time. This also happens to be the paper that launched me into a year-long effort to finally try to understand this topic. Frankly, once I found the correct scientific perspective, it really wasn't that hard to get a grip and understand that we are being sold a fantasy. The research stopped without moving on to evaluate the viability of the various CO2 capture methods floated around that time (a 7 year effort that started in 2007). Everything since then has been debunked as, at best, ineffective and, at worst, impossible. A year later the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany released this finding: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggressive-co2-removal-will-take-more-700-years-1513897 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggr... Quoting: "Findings suggest that "even a probably unfeasible CO2 extraction rate" of 25 gigatonnes per year could not re-establish pre-industrial conditions or a low emission state with the period simulated (until 2700)." Most recently: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-would-we-have-remove-air-counteract-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-woul... Quoting: "It's so much harder to capture carbon than it is to just not emit it to begin with,” says Harvey. “When your bathtub is overflowing, you don't reach for the gold-plated mop—you just turn off the faucet." And there's more. In other words, it's a fantasy. All of it. Time to snap out of the Matrix and start to discuss reality.

nicoburns 2y ago

In the short term (next 100 years or so), the aim isn't to improve things. It's to make it get only a little worse rather than dramatically worse.

robomartin 2y ago
That might be a sensible objective. It does remain to be seen if this is actually possible at all. Same problem: The concept of net zero carbon is admirable, yet the reality of achieving something like that is closer to a fantasy than reality. In other words, we might be able to slow the rate of CO2 contribution. It is likely impossible to get it down to zero. Maybe in a few hundred years? That's as easy to predict as someone in 1824 predicting that we would have computers on every desk and our pockets, MRI machines, etc. Note that achieving net zero does not slow down or reduce atmospheric CO2 accumulation. It will continue to rise. And, of course, to reverse course, not only do we have to achieve net zero (which is impossible), we would have to go net negative in a very substantial way. And that's where the "WTF are you talking about?" part comes in when listening to the fantasies being sold. Going net zero would require planetary scale resources and energy we cannot even imagine. Going negative is orders of magnitude worse. When you move and use resources of any kind at a planetary scale, you will use unimaginable amounts of energy. Physics tells us that no process can ever be 100% efficient. In fact, most complex processes are quite inefficient when evaluated from start to finish. Assuming, say, 50% efficiency, that means that we would have to generate twice the planetary scale energy required to achieve this (if it were possible). The same is true of resources such as minerals, manufacturing, processing, transportation, digging, whatever. Which, in turn, means that we would then introduce a seriously massive amount of pollution and cause collateral effects/damage to the environment, again, at a planetary scale. That's where the conversations go loopy very quickly. Its easy to say "cover the Equator with solar panels". It isn't easy to explain how we would do that without destroying entire ecosystems around the planet and introducing so much additional pollution that things would get worse rather than better. The planet will address this problem naturally. We can clean-up our act to help. Yet, we should not go to insane lengths in doing so. The risk is to cause more damage and to do so at a very serious scale. In other words, in an effort to save life on earth we could, instead, succeed at killing everything on this planet.