Comment by Teever
8 hours ago
But we still need to remove all the excess co2 that we released into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution if we want to reduce the temperature back to what it was before we started disrupting the natural state of the plane.
We and previous generations took out a loan and the payment is coming due.
Because of the framing about degrees in celcius change people are thinking in small numbers, like "oh, it's just 1.5'C over normal. oops, we missed that, well maybe we'll get it at 2.0'C. They don't realize that if we want normal we ahve to reduce the temperaure and to do that we need to take that c02 blanket off that we've been tightly wrapping around our collective bodies for decades.
And that endeavor is nearly unfathomable. Think of all the energy used by humanity since the industrial revolution and the energy we're going to be producing in the time period that we attempt to sequester the previously poduced C02. All of that needs to be accounted for.
And then there's the surplus energy roiling around in the system now, and the collapse of food webs.
I don't see how we get our way out of this in the next 50 years.
With ice caps melted off, just removing all the excess CO2 isn't even enough since with that reflective surface gone, more energy from sunlight stays in the atmosphere than previously when more of it was reflected back into space instead of nowadays being absorbed by the ocean.
Absolutely. People seem to think that we just need to recycle more, seal some cracks in the house with foam, install some solar panels, and buy an electric car.
They underestimate the scale of the intervention that will be required to stave off the potential end of human civilization as we know it. If we have any hope of continuing to live at something resembling the quality of life that we've grown up in it will require radical science fiction like developments.
We're going to need things like space based solar shades to regrow glaciers and icepack, advanced breeding and cloning and ecosystem engineering to reconstruct collapsing food webs, and I think the big picture thing is that we're going to need to engineer people to reduce susceptibility to addictive food and manipulative marketing.
> If we have any hope of continuing to live at something resembling the quality of life that we've grown up in
Chances are, developed countries won't be hit that hard, at least for a generation or two.
That’s true. It’s more of a policy issue that’s like carbon credits… nice on paper but a big nothing burger. Look at F1 and Porsche talking about sustainable synthetic fuels.
When you compare round trip efficiencies and economics it makes sense to just not burn the hydrocarbons to begin with.
Yes
For the atmospheric one, grow trees and algae