Comment by godelski
3 years ago
Can we stop the anti-sequestration movement? Let's just think about it for a second. How do we get to net zero if we account for lifetime emissions of energy sources? Even solar has lifetime emissions. You have to remove it from the atmosphere. (We'll ignore processes that can't be decarbonized, but that just adds to the problem)
So what do we know? We know that forests are hard to plant and that their early lifecycle is a carbon source. Still, we should plant trees. Ignoring this, US citizens alone would need to plant 500 trees per year to offset their current footprints[0]. That's 165 billion trees a year, and a densely packed forest has 4-6 sqft per tree. The US has just over a trillion square feet. You do the math. (even dramatic reductions in footprints don't solve this problem)
Okay, so trees aren't enough. Luckily we know land management is one of the best carbon sink techniques available. But we run into a similar problem, just with more efficiency than above. So what is the result? We have to use a variety of techniques, both natural and artificial, to scrub carbon from the air. Not to reach net negative (which should really be our goal), but just to even reach net zero! Yes, big oil is going to fund this. Why? Because when carbon taxes come in, they can keep their plants up by scrubbing a percentage of their carbon to match that tax. (They also want PR and this is cheap PR) If they somehow could scrub all the carbon (they won't), then what do we care? The goal is about carbon emissions, not source of energy. I just don't see them surviving, but of course they're going to try to hold on as long as they can instead of adapting and surviving. Their loss.
[0] https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/reduce-co2-...
imo, as a global priority, reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed.
incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon issues
if we use info from this wonderfully fleshed out cost-benefit analysis by bjorn lomborg i bet we could get the best of value out of our current fossil fuels while not impoverishing our children and grandchildren:
https://i.imgur.com/1vklbRo.png
> reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed
I'm not sure what you mean. The last 50 years (and even 5) have been far more bark than bite.
> incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon issues
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I worked on nuclear in a previous career and still have friends there, including fusion (including the big labs). Being bullish, fusion net gain is still 10 years away. It'll take decades to add to the energy portfolio after that. The case for fusion is worse than the case for fission. We should work on both, but we can't hold out for future technologies (we can say the same about storage). We needed to act decades ago, pushing it off by a few more decades is not going to solve the issue, it is repeating the same mistakes.
> fleshed out cost-benefit analysis
I wouldn't trust any of these. Zero of them. You need to have a pretty good understanding of these systems (highly complex) to even understand if the analyses are good. Every single one has a bias and is highly politicized. The more politicized a topic is, the higher level of expertise you need to understand who is telling the truth (politicization adds large amounts of noise).
> Bjorn Lomborg
Who is a political scientist. He isn't a climate scientist, nor even a scientist. Here's a rather well known scientist, Stefan Rahmstorf (studies physics of oceans) discussing Bjorn[0]. You can check Bjorn's scholar page[1] to even verify that he's not doing actual science bust just writing opinions with no supporting evidence. Please stop supporting hacks.
[0] https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/08/bjorn...
[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=HUMF5c0AAAAJ
fusion being decades away isn't a problem, we have time.
the only things in that cost benefit analysis are politicized are what people are currently pushing en masse, what he points out doesn't offer any benefit from a cost perspective. plus you contradict yourself, you say it needs a complex understanding but you dismiss it before analyzing it yourself, he's got books and scientific publications on this, go check for yourself.
all of his strongest suggestions are about preserving biodiversity, curing disease, technological improvements, trade restrictions, and contraception. Where are you getting the politicized part?
and he has a background in political science and is doing macroeconomic research, he's not claiming to have a cure for temperature increases because he works off the IPCC's data, which is the known standard for climate science. he's giving simple policy (oh look political science, its almost like this is a multifaceted conversation, are you trying to shut it down like people did with "the science" over covid?) implementations that can have massive net benefits.
he's not a "hack" (insults are at the bottom of the hierarchy of disagreement, if you want a reason to dismiss someone's opinions its that they do this). he's gone on tons of podcasts having open discussions about these things, if Stefan Rahmstorf can hold an actual discussion with him I'd love to see it.
your link doesn't work. But if all Stefan has it petty insults like calling him a "hack" then I'd guess he's not open to any kind of discussion, which is a red flag.
If we don’t reduce carbon emissions—heck if we don’t stop carbon emissions—there will be no future for our children and grandchildren to either prosper or impoverish in. Not reducing carbon means we are all going to die. The earth will heat 4-5 degrees. Human societies will not function as we know them today, governments will break down, wars will be fought, famines will linger. However much money fossil fuel gives us today will have no effect on that future, as we will all be dead.
the 4-5C model is a fraudulent model that's been pushed for political agendas, it mistakes the temperature changes that happen as distance from the equator increases.
Realistically, the world is going to see a 1.5-1.9C increase by 2100. These are the IPCC's current projections, which is the most well known standard.
everything you say is the dogma of alarmists, its not that i don't think you care about this, I'm certain that you do, but you're working off incorrect information and its doing more harm than good.
some of the worst implications will be a biodiversity loss in places near the equator, and there is basically not much we can do to stop it. although hopefully i'm wrong as there's a lot of ecological folk trying to remediate future problems in this area.
the worst thing we can do to ourselves as a society is panic and turn all of our attention towards climate-based dogma. europe did this and russia found it as a reason to attack ukraine. in reality, we have multiple priorities that need to be sorted. climate is on there but its not the only one. its important to keep people wealthy enough to care about the climate, because otherwise they burn fuel sources that are worse for it, ie wood and coal. and we also need global societies to develop scientifically/economically so we can achieve nuclear fusion faster for the very goal that you're concerned about.
to summarize a solid policy-based strategy, and complex-web of problems concept to solve our climate problem is that:
increase in global trade -> leads to -> increase in economic prosperity -> leads to -> increase in scientific development -> leads to -> faster development of fusion
now the economic prosperity part isn't simple because there are foreign governments that are showing themselves to be hostile towards western institutions and operations, taking advantage of their own development to act maliciously. this isn't great as it makes us divert resources away from these important problems. but if we only focus on the climate the west will be eaten up by someone who doesn't care about it at all.
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nuclear fusion will be achieved but nobody question if it will be economically convenient, even with global carbon tax and esg frameworks. As today we are in the realm of hundreds of billions for "sperimental" fusion facility, just comparing to fission plant cost, they have balloned exponentially from sperimental phase decades ago