This is a by-product of modern society (maybe late stage capitalism). We need to be sold a “solution” to a problem. Reducing consumption is not something that can easily be sold hence these carbon capture, recycling plastic “solutions”.
Unless someone can make money off of it, reducing emissions is going to be difficult.
Imagine if you could get FREE MONEY by not using all your energy coinz!
The only examples this article gives of irreversible damage:
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homes destroyed by hurricanes: clearly and obviously reversible. Build new houses. Fin.
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rising sea levels: reversible. Cool the climate, get more glaciers, lower sea levels. Obviously it’s more of a “100 years from now” solution, but it’s definitely a solution.
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lives lost: yeah, that’s a fair point.
And also irreversible is The decline of biodiversity. Once a species is extinct it won’t come back.
And to those who say “well, the Earth will bounce back”: we’re much closer to the end of Earth’s ability to support life than to the beginning. Earth doesn’t have endless time to evolve new kinds of creatures. We could be doing damage from which Earth’s biodiversity never recovers.
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If the people won’t rise up for the sake of their own children then the only solution is to out spend climate change. Capitalism won’t save itself, it will monetize the downfall. So in a way these tech companies are doing exactly what their suppose to but not really what they should.
People won’t even rise up for their own sake. gestures in every general direction
Can’t argue with that. At the end of the day we are another mammalian creature that runs around killing, fucking, and shitting then we die. The ecosystem of today dying is of no consequences to the dinosaur, the wooly mammoth, or what ever critter that roamed these same lands. I say build the buildings big enough and strong enough for the sentience of tomorrow to unearth them and wonder. Wonder hard enough and we are reborn.
Not sure if the future tense ‘will’ is appropriate here
Then I guess you guys have no use for this climate change reversal machine I made. I knew it was a shit idea. I’m so stupid. I’m scrapping it now.
The problem is people are only going to change their behaviour once the consequences hit them, and with global warming, the consequences won’t really hit them until a long time later.
The second problem is the consequences are dramatic. And very hard if not impossible to turn around.
To really get people and companies to change their behaviour, we would need an immediate consequence to behaviour that is bad for the environment.
Bottom line is, some people try, some people don’t give a shit, and in the end we will have to deal with it.
I hope governments are watching carefully, we will need to keep a lot of water away from us in the future, and we’ll have to deal with the changing climate too.
We’ll have a big environmental 9/11 moment where a major American city becomes permanently uninhabitable and then there will alot of handwringing about “What could we have done!?” Then we’ll start getting lukewarm serious about it for maybe a few years, but by that point it’s way too late.
people are only going to change their behaviour once the consequences hit them
Or if there’s a proper incentive to change. We’re seeing that incentive today with solar becoming cheaper than other energy sources, so it’s getting a lot of adoption. We do incentivize those, but they’re honestly about at the point where we don’t need subsidies to get people to switch, and the subsidies merely accelerate adoption.
I’m a perennial optimist, and I’m confident we’ll continue to innovate our way out of problems. We’ll be late like we always are, but we’ll also innovate ways to “catch up.” Maybe we’ll mess w/ geoengineering in the arctic (we’re already experimenting w/ cloud seeding and thickening glaciers), or maybe we’ll come up with other options in the future. I honestly don’t know, but what I do know is that once we’re convinced there is a problem, we do a pretty good job of solving that problem. Look at COVID vaccine development, lead poisoning, or recovery of endangered species.
We’re usually late, but we are also pretty good at engineering our way out of problems. Solutions probably end up costing more than they would with prevention, but I’m confident we will come up with solutions, it just might take a bit of… encouragement from mother nature.
This is clearly a “why not both” situation.
Emissions must be cut and new technologies for reversing existing damage must be developed. There’s a whole bunch of different things that needs doing, because there is simply no single solution, but using one approach to argue against another is certainly not helping anyone.
There’s a point made at the end of the article that most people seems to have missed entirely:
Existing facilities that can filter carbon dioxide out of the air only have the capacity to capture 0.01 million metric tons of CO2 globally today, costing companies like Microsoft as much as $600 per ton of CO2. That’s very little capacity with a very high price tag.
“We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid,” study coauthor Gaurav Ganti, a research analyst at Climate Analytics, said in a press release. The priority needs to be preventing pollution now instead of cleaning it up later.
It’s obviously a matter of “why not both?”, and both the article and the scientists behind the report agree on it. However, a lot of people are betting their eggs on the idea that climate reversal technology will suddenly become a lot more effective and cheaper than it is right now. And sure, that may be the case, or not. For how many years have we heard of flying cars or self-driving autonomous vehicles and predicted that they were just around the corner, at most a few years away, but nada so far? Betting on the invention of a new technology that’ll make a very expensive process today way cheaper is a VERY naive and bad approach.
Exactly, which is why I don’t get the point of this article.
Yeah, even after we get emissions under control there will still be problems, and we’ll tackle those when we get there.
Yeah, though I think currently only emissions cutting should be implemented, mostly because damage reversing tech like DAC take green energy that could otherwise be used to more effectively cut emissions elsewhere. Once we start getting excess green energy to do such things, then it should be implemented. It should still be researched and developed now tho
Most problems would simply not be a problem if we drastically reduce the human population. Which would not only avoid the issues caused by climate change but also would prevent further increases in pollution and CO2 emissions.
I don’t know why the best solution is often the less talked about. Just stop having so many children. We don’t have 70% infant mortality rate like we used to, there’s no need to have 4 kids to preserve your legacy.
One difficulty with that is that the way we organize economies currently depends on having a working-age population that is large enough to support the non-working population. When you have far fewer workers than retired people you start having problems. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but it’s another instance of how any plan to seriously address climate change tends to require deep changes to how we run society. The current systems can’t simply be tweaked to make the problem go away.
We already have far more people than necessary jobs. One person with modern trchnology can produce way, way more than one person could even just a century ago.
It’s not about necessary jobs, it’s about paying into social security / pensions.
If the jobs aren’t necessary, then surely there’s a way to organize society without those jobs existing.
This is the fundamental argument behind universal basic income.
As to the question of how to fund stuff like pensions or UBI without everyone working, the answer is simply to tax those who are working more, especially those making huge amounts of money.
currently depends on having a working-age population that is large enough to support the non-working population
This is only a problem if production does not increase dramatically, as it has for the last century. The reason it feels like there are insufficient working people is because parasites siphon from the resource distribution between more and more productive workers and their non working counterparts
There is a lot of things wrong on how we organize the economy.
If we are going to change that we may as well change it good.
if we drastically reduce the human population. Which would not only avoid the issues caused by climate change but also would prevent further increases in pollution and CO2 emissions.
Ignoring the genocide-apologist trend, the pandemic did wonders to reduce global warming…, perhaps start taxing more the companies that force back-to-office when they could clearly keep most of their work force at home?
And, eliminate Euclidean zoning in the U.S., so that people can live near where they work, or work near where they live. (Not all of us can do it, or like working from home.)
Yup, mixed zoning would do wonders. Why we don’t do that is beyond me…
What genocide? Just sensible reproduction. There’s two options. 10 billion people living miserably like during the pandemic. Or maybe 1 billion people being able to live good lives.
What about 2 billion people living pretty-good lives or 9 billion people living less-miserably? That’s at least two more options right there.
There are infinite options we start doing fractions! (Please don’t)
So who should go? You?
I’m pretty sure he said have less children, not start death camps.
I literally said just having less children.
And I’m totally ok to only having between one or zero children myself.
China tried it, didn’t go too well… good luck trying it on a global scale…
Chinas problem was also a still very uneducated and traditionalist populace, that insisted on having boys as heirs. Leading to abortions or straight up murder of female infants. That wouldn’t really be a global issue I beleive
Derived problems were product of a sexist society should be avoidable, you know, ending sexism…
Or are you supporting that people should be able to want male babies over female ones?
Oooooh, of course, how could i forget? Blame the cis white male and the patriarchy, or course!
Yeah. Thanos should simply have made half of all living beings gay. Much less violent and this would probably also make future generations more likely to be gay too. So it‘ll probably have a much more longlasting effect than killing 50% once.
Gayness saves lives. I’ve always said it!
Dibs on Vault 12!
Two types of people reading this:
“Oh no! We should do everything we can to mitigate the damage.”
and
“Fuck it, might as well keep doing what I’m doing.”
And it’s the latter that got us here in the first place.
It’s the parable of office pizza: some people take 1 slice because there are many people to feed.
some people take 3 slices, because there are many people to feed.
“Fuck it, might as well keep doing what I’m doing.”
And that last group is going to be angry when they can’t keep doing their stuff when insurance rates go insane so they can’t buy houses or cars, or when food prices keep going up even faster than they are now.
But but but… It’s because immigrants. And trans somehow idk
It’s the modern version of sacrificing people in a volcano to appease the gods.
Two types of people reading this, the cannibals, and the cannibees
And now I’m just picturing myself cracking open a can of beer only for bees to start flying out!
And industrialists!
It doesn’t make any difference what got us here in the first place. What matters now is what options are the best from now moving forward.
These scientists seem to say that trying to reverse climate change isn’t the right path forward. I wonder why.
edit: I wonder what makes them think that reversing climate change won’t work.
Someone was so offended by their misreading of my comment that they went through and downvote-bombed every comment in my history.
What they’re saying is that trying to reverse climate change won’t be enough. It doesn’t mean it isn’t the right path, just that it won’t go far enough.
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive. – Hannah Arendt
Because it won’t work? That’s what I got from the article. I’m not sure what else you’re implying.
I mean why think it won’t work.
The article is literally right there. Why are you being weird about this?
Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.
Really?!
!We shit on redditors for being arrogant and having grating personalities.
Yet it’s ridiculously common to come into a thread here and see it flooded with low effort “well duh!” Comments.
Lemmings apparently know everything and everything is obvious to them.
Which doesn’t even make sense here. A lot of smart people are dumping money into carbon capture as a way to offset what we’ve done. Yet here you are, so smart, that this is obviously wrong.
Tipping point has tipped?
The one I remember scaring the hell out of everyone is the permafrost melt.
Thaw out enough permafrost and it releases enough greenhouse gasses to self perpetuate. No human interaction required.
https://www.space.com/methane-beneath-arctic-permafrost-climate-feedback-loop
Yeah and it was pretty much going once we hit the twenty teens but took awhile to notice. At this point its about slowing things down as much as possible.
Startups are developing a whole suite of technologies to try to help
Do not think that they are seriously trying to save the planet.
(If they had wanted that, they should have done it 30-40 years ago)
They just want to make money, like everybody else.
Yeah no, it’s just about the latest money grab before we all die
They’re are decent people in this world who want things to be better. Sometimes they even have money.
Also, because we can only really see the world as ourselves, we tend to think everyone else thinks like us. So it’s very telling when people think everyone else is evil.
It isn’t exactly that we think everyone is evil, we just doubt that anyone with profits in mind is doing much, or any, good for humanity.
“we don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.”
I mean, the whole “startups are doing x” is really code for “venture dollars have been made available for entrepreneurs to explore x”. Startups these days are chasing fields which have investment dollars, so this means the rich are starting to invest in the tech a little more earnestly
Do people seriously think we could “reverse” climate change?
That’s not how the climate works.
Are you trying to tell me that the spirit of capitalism won’t return to us, dressed in the splendor of new technology, to absolve us of our past planetary transgressions, and take us to a new, perfect place amongst the stars where we will live in profit and harmony for ever?
Well, thats the second time I’ve fallen for that story…
Lol this is the same argument I’ve heard from climate change denialists for years: we can’t possibly change the climate!
Now doomers are saying the same thing, but even more ridiculously because they almost certainly believe we have changed the climate already.
I think the issue people are arguing is you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You’re not going to reform glaciers by choosing to drive an EV. You’re not going to stop increasing rates and extremes of floods by turning off the basement lights when not in use.
This is not what the article is about at all. I’m not even sure how you would get that from reading the headline alone.
I’m talking about the comments, not the article.
How do you even get that from the comment I was responding to?
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Glaciers formed over millennia. If they melt, they’re gone, even if we drop CO2 to pre-industrial levels. The Antarctic ice sheet is millions of years of snow that fell at the rate of a few inches a year and just didn’t melt. If significant portions of that fall off and melt, it’ll be millions of years more for the water it adds to the oceans to cycle back to the ice sheet again. The changes we have made will not be reversed automatically or in many cases at all.
It’s because I didn’t go on a rant about capitalism.
Remember it used to be called global warming, because that’s what’s actually happening. But morons thought a cold winter day disproved global warming, so it was renamed climate change.
And yes we can reverse global warming, but obviously that won’t recreate polar or mountain ice, or lower sea levels quickly, but we can get the temperature down to stop it first, which will also curb the increase in natural disasters, then the restoring of sea levels and ice will take at least decades and probably centuries.Hm I always remember hearing this:
In a confidential memo to the Republican party, Luntz is credited with advising the Bush administration that the phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, which he called a “less frightening” phrase than the former.
My point is that slowing down the heating of the planet is doable (though you’d need the majority of the world contributing, which is highly unlikely to happen), but we can’t reverse the damage that has already been done, which some people seem to think is possible.
We’re not as powerful as we think we are.
There are gasses and particles that can be released into the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight and warmth away from earth. In theory that could be done very quickly.
We’re not as powerful as we think we are.
We could cause a new ice age easily. Just fire off a few percent of the nukes, and we will revert to an ice age almost immediately.
Of course a side effect would be massive starvation.There are gasses and particles that can be released into the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight and warmth away from earth. In theory that could be done very quickly.
As far as I remember, that was tried with ships and it has some collateral effects that cause different damages to the oceans.
I think I recall the opposite. After having somewhat cleaner fuel, the ships cleaner exhaust caused more warming as the sulfur in the fuel was having a side effect of mitigating warming somewhat. It was raised as a point of maybe we should consider the approach of we are in dire straights.
I remember to have read that change caused some other problems, and these collateral problems were unexpected.
But I don’t remember if the problem were about the ocean currents or that the ocean was warmer or a mix of the two plus something else.
How is that relevant to ships? It’s released to high in the atmosphere.
My point was that this already tested on a smaller scale with ships: the fuel changed and that changed the exhaust fumes ability to reflect sunlight which cause some problems the proponents of the solution have not foresee.
there is debate on that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t renamed because people were morons about child weather, at least not completely. It’s always been “climate change”, because that’s a better representation of what is happening.
The climate is changing, and one is the main side effects it’s global warming… But there’s extra fun side effects, like ocean acidification, that aren’t because of the warning
Global warming is the driver of climate change.
We just change it to something else.
They say scientists are saying this but is it like all scientists, the majority of scientists, a significant or intelligent minority of scientists, or is it just like this one person and because it’s an alarm worthy headline it’s being amplified?
Dude, have you read the article? this is from an article on Nature.
Nature! Not the flat earth society scientific newsletter.
For publishing on Nature it is necessary that a number of the most well reputed experts in the field have peer reviewed the article.
By modern standard of “science”, publishing on Nature or Science is the closest to get to “consensus”.
I see your point in some newspapers articles but this is not one of that cases
Oh any worth their salt has been saying it for years. Climate change can be seen in nearly all disciplines of science. But every time we hurdle a new tier of awful they say it again so that when the end comes for us all due to our own hubris, the last man in a lab coat will scream the collective scream of his people “i told you so” before spontaneously combusting
Oh any worth their salt has been saying it for years.
For decades even.
Close to all scientists
It is a pointless endeavor.
If you lived in the medieval, would you have rooted for the apocalypse?
It’s just a rational view of what has been happening my entire life. Nothing is going to stop climate change now. We will only be able able to mitigate the effects.
No need to be such a Nihilistic Nick…
It is not rational to think that humanity will stop Climate Change.
