6 ms·
The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better
by rwyinuse 9mo ago
The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days.
The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.
- nxm 9mo agoYou mean China and India which are building coal power plants at record pace as we speak.
- Sharlin 9mo agoWhataboutism. The truth is that neither China nor India will ever reach the cumulative emissions of the US, probably by a very large margin. Those who have already put the most CO2 into the atmosphere have the greatest moral responsibility to become CO2-negative yesterday – and to do everything they can to help other, less wealthy countries do likewise.
- bracketfocus 9mo agoYour claim doesn’t seem as definitive as you present it, for China and US at least. Comparing China and the US it seems like theres a 150 billion ton difference in the cumulative emissions. Most recent data shows China emitting ~8 billion tons more than the US annually. At that rate that’s about ~20yrs until they flip. China’s emissions appear to increasing exponentially YoY whereas the US has seen reductions in recent years. That makes it seem like they’d flip in less than 20 years. Obviously, the emissions on a per capita basis are still nowhere close. From: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
- alkonaut 9mo agoWhile they do, 2025 was also the first year that the fraction of coal dropped in both China and India. In india it dropped by 3% and in China by 1.6%. So they build out fossil, but they build out non-coal power faster. China also hopes to peak coal in absolute terms by 2030. That's something at least.
- realusername 9mo agoUnfortunately, the environnement doesn't work with percentages but raw emissions
- azan_ 9mo agoChina is also building renewables and nuclear at record pace and their per capita emission is much lower than USA. If we also take historic emission into account (and we should - the CO2 from decades ago is still in atmosphere!) then China still has a lot of budget to catch up with USA. Honestly, the China argument is getting really tiring.
- dangus 9mo agoI have always found the American perspective on this subject annoying precisely because of the crazy emissions and consumption per capita in the US. It feels like US citizens intentionally or not gatekeep wealth, and do nothing policy-wise about the unsustainable consumption patterns besides going to war for oil. No serious attempt to increase transit ridership, no serious attempt to electrify the automotive industry, no serious attempt to build a domestic renewable energy production pipeline, no serious attempt to curb suburban sprawl, no economic disincentive on single use items like fast food packaging, no serious effort to move public health education toward healthy low carbon diets (less red meat, less dairy from cows), no corporate-level disincentives to waste (e.g., companies throwing out returned items when it’s cheaper), no serious effort to move to high efficiency construction and HVAC practices. The list goes on and on. In the American perspective other counties like China are at fault for everything despite being the world’s foremost consumer of resources and one of the biggest ideological sticks in the mud for progress.
- jakkos 9mo agoPer capita, China and especially India emit far less CO2e than the US.
- SilverElfin 9mo agoDoes it matter what they do? These are countries that are poorer. We should be eating the cost of reducing our per capita emissions because we are wealthier. Why would you expect the world’s poor to be the ones to shoulder the burden first?
- luxuryballs 9mo agobut it doesn’t prove there won’t be worse side effects from adding new stuff into an already complex problem
- estearum 9mo agoYou should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds like marketing or economics.
- azan_ 9mo agoWhy is that? Could you say something more?
- estearum 9mo agoUnknown second order effects Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable No way to undo it once done If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks and almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe.
- FloorEgg 9mo agoI'm no expert in this subject and I don't have any strong opinions on it. The point of this comment isn't to debate one side or the other. That said, your comment stands out to me to be self-contradictory and unscientific (by way of being alarmist and not backing up an extraordinary claim ). > Unknown second order effects This sounds right. > Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable Since I don't know a lot about this topic I'll take your word for it. > No way to undo it once done This doesn't sound quite right, my intuition says more likely "no known way to undo it once done". > If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks Wait... So, to undo it all we have to do is stop doing it? Doesn't this contradict the statement right before it? > almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe This statement makes me suspicious of the credibility of the rest. This is an extraordinary claim and I think deserves way more explanation if you want to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. It would be a lot easier to accept "decimates human civilization" than "eradicate all life on earth". Life is extremely resilient. How exactly would it eradicate all life on earth?
- mempko 9mo agoFor those not understanding why aerosols dimming the sky is not a solution is it won't stop ocean acidification and obviously just slows down the warming, not stopping it. The thing we need to do is remove CO2 but unfortunately that will take more energy than putting it up there is in the first place.
- estearum 9mo agoCritically, it actually builds tension and the risk of a “climate snapback”. Where if humans can’t perpetually dim an ever-increasing amount, then the entire global system snaps back and destroys actually all or nearly all life on earth.
- whimsicalism 9mo agoIt gives us a bridge to figure out sequestration. Snapback is if we go from 100% to 0%, not just if we can't keep up with carbon emissions.
- estearum 9mo agoCan’t figure out carbon taxes today but thankfully we’ll have a knife’s edge to walk on total catastrophe until we figure out sequestration.
- whimsicalism 9mo agoi think we should be exploring all. carbon tax would be great, but currently seems politically impossible outside of Europe (and even challenging within)
- estearum 9mo agoYou’re missing the point: if we can’t find the political will to implement solutions today, why would we find the political will to implement solutions tomorrow?
- red75prime 9mo ago> Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically And to sequester hundreds of billion tonnes of co2, once humanity reaches carbon neutrality.
- malfist 9mo agoThere was some promising research showing that you could recapture co2 and catalyze it into methane pretty efficiently. I wonder whatever happened to that. It'd be nice if we could continue burning "fossil" fuels by recapturing and reusing. With enough solar power, the efficiencies don't matter a lot. And with reuse we wouldn't have to change any of our chemical processes or equipment that we've already built in the modern plastic era.
- eimrine 9mo agoDon't lie. Converting burned fuel into unburned one is not as simple as oxidation-reduction reaction at all. But also the CO2 in atmosphere is spreaded. If you remind that we can mine the inert gasses from the atmosphere - the amount of energy is worth of consideration in that case.
- whimsicalism 9mo agocondensing the co2 to the necessary concentrations to drive these reactions is basically never economical - we will need widespread energy abundance before non-organic based removal becomes viable.
- letmetweakit 9mo agoI’m far from being an expert but geoengineering gives me the shivers. Dumping boatloads of chemicals into the atmosphere, a lot can go wrong.
- tosapple 9mo agoWeapon of mass de-desertification. You can spray it from anywhere, source it from god knows where. What flavor of snowcone do you want this week?
- red75prime 9mo agoFortunately, we have volcanoes that were doing it in an uncontrolled manner for a long time. I think we have survived.
- fenwick67 9mo agoconversely, the mechanism by which the KT impactor killed off the dinosaurs was atmospheric
- counters 9mo agoWell, the problem is that what we would need to geoengineer the climate would be equivalent to a continuous, yearly sequence of large volcanic eruptions. So the analogy starts to breakdown, because the handful of examples we have of these sorts of periods with high volcanic activity were actually pretty bad for civilization at the time: 1. 530's-540's Cluster - contemporaneous historical notes over both the far East and Western civilizations clearly illustrate widespread famine due to crop failures, most likely due to the cooling that this period sustained (sometimes called the "Little Antique Ice Age"). The famous Plague of Justinian also occurred in this period, and was likely exacerbated by famine. There's also the Norse "Fimbulwinter" mythos - a period preceding Gotterdamurang - likely inspired by this period. 2. 1250's-1280's Cluster - Suspected to have triggered the "Little Ice Age", and triggered contemporaneous crop failures in both South America and Europe. 1258 is known as one of the "Years Without A Summer." 3. 1808-1815 Tambora Cluster - Culprit behind the even more well-known "Year Without a Summer" in 1816, which produced one the more recent great famines in Western Europe in Switzerland. Agriculture-induced famines led to a wave of civil unrest across Europe. So yeah - we obviously survived these periods. But I wouldn't exactly cite them as endorsements for any sort of geoengineering activity analogous to vulcanism.
- orson2077 9mo agoGood lord, read Termination Shock by Neil Stephenson. Stratospheric aerosol injection is effective, but comes with severe risks, and can even be used as a strategic weapon (e.g. inject your sulphur over X and disrupt the monsoon in the Punjab, fucking their agriculture).
- mosura 9mo agoCareful now, that is dangerously close to admitting weather manipulation has been known about and possible for decades, and not merely a conspiracy.
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoit has been known and done many times in open, what you're on about ?
- mosura 9mo agoSo we have already reached the stage where we deny ever claiming otherwise. What a future this is turning out to be. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
- decremental 9mo ago[dead]
- rossjudson 9mo agoNeil Stephenson is predicting way too much of the future. Tenses are hard. Again: Stephenson predicted way too much of the present.
- counters 9mo agoHe has a knack for being scarily prescient. I didn't expect we would seriously be discussing geoengineering in the 2020's (I gave it until at least the early 2030's, given the technical complexity of building the actual delivery system for any planet-scale intervention), but here we are.
- fenwick67 9mo agoSulfates are not good to spray into the air, they are bad for you
- SilverElfin 9mo agoI am very against that kind of fix. We have no idea what the long term side effects will be and it may be impossible to clean up. We have gone through this type of reckless action before, and it can take decades for us to understand the downsides.