The scariest climate plot in the world | do not let small children read this
The scariest climate plot in the world | do not let small children read this
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This graph is neglecting future advances in energy production and CO2 removal. I bet temperatures will be elevated for no more than 200 years before humans dial in their desired CO2 concentration.
Edit: and y'all are neglecting future advances in energy production and CO2 removal too
It's very easy to release CO2. It's FAR harder to recapture it. Much of our generation is less than 20% efficient. Assuming they get it up to 50% efficiency in recapturing CO2 (which would be impressive, plants are around 4-6%) they would have to expend 10x the energy we have, since the industrial revolution to undo the changes. That's a HUGE burden to put on future generations. If we can't not burn it in the first place, why do we expect them to do so much better than us?
That's going to require:
- Essentially free energy
- Industrial carbon removal ~8x the size of the current oil industry paid for out of taxes
- actual geological sequestration, and not just "let forests grow" kind of stuff
- No more non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions
Sounds do-able imo
you do realize for instance that fusion would not be essentially free energy if we figured it out. It would need to be something more akin to zero point modules.
It doesn't matter if it's free, it just matters that it's nearly carbon free and in excess.
the excess needs to be so great for carbon capture as to be practically free. fusion requires tritium and its not as easy to get as people think.
Well we'll just build more energy production? Small reactors, big reactors, renewables, fusion, whatever. What choice do we really have?
there is limits to it all though and we have to meet our energy needs in the interum. capturing carbon is way more intensive than not using it to begin with. I doubt that we will every realy be able to do it. Sometimes things are not a choice but just a reality. We will do what we can and live or worse not with what is. Its the whole reason the graph is scary.
I don't understand why you want to win this argument. Do you want me to give up all hope? You haven't convinced me of your position, so I won't. Yes, it's possible you're right, but there will be advances in the field we can't predict at this time plus we're adding more and more low carbon energy to our capacity every day. It's just a matter of outrunning our demand. It's totally possible to get a grip on this problem and get ahead of it.
No worries. Its fine for people to have differing viewpoints and we don't have to convice each other. I wish I could have yours honestly but for me the math just does not add up. There are some technologies that are possible to mitigate it but none might even materialize. AI (to get us to scifi level stuff), mind uploading, maybe genetic engineering. There are even a few that have come to mind at times that I can't recall now (actually just recalled one which is channeling heat right into space). but wind, solar, nuclear, tidal, etc combined with population combined with consumption. It won't work and that is not even taking into account carbon capture to bring it back to normal which as the one guy said requires virtually limitless energy. I mean it will take more energy than what we got from fossil fuels to bring it back to neutral and that is a lot of energy.
I'm starting to think you don't want it to work. All of the mentioned factors can be altered and your numbers are constantly in flux, constantly improving. Now don't assume I'm naive, it'll get worse before it gets better, but it'll get better. This is a multigenerational undertaking and progress will look excruciatingly slow to us poor mortals living in the endeavor's first generation.
i would agree with you if not for the very real possibility of total societal collapse due to climate change.
future scientific discoveries, very complex in nature due to the incremental advances already made, need a long time of social stability to be achieved. lots of specialists that spent 20 years in school, lots of special resources, lots of functioning scientific grade equipment, lots of logistical support. if we are talking about complete control over the quantities of whatever gas there is on the atmosphere, then than makes it 1000 more difficult to achieve and implement.
so, no. 200 years will not be enough time to achieve that kind of control over the atmosphere.
So no... 200 years will be enough. Surely you know how much turmoil the world went through as humans were building up the infrastructure to accidentally alter the global climate. It was anything but stable, yet somehow here we are arguing about how long it'll take to fix this. 200 years of targeted research in an unstable world will be more than sufficient. It's happened before, it'll happen again.
so you think that a humanity going from climate disaster to climate disaster on a global scale, will have the resources to achieve total atmospheric control?
and please explain to me how putting co2 in the atmosphere is as easy as taking it out? because i can burn down 20000000 trees in a day but you can't grow 20000000 in a day.
so no, 200 years for total atmospheric, considering the future that waits us, is simply delusional.
It's obviously not as easy. It's a matter of low carbon energy production. Make enough energy and you can do whatever you want.
I don't believe in technomagical solutions that might come save it all
Edit: and y'all are neglecting future advances in energy production and CO2 removal too
I hope there are advances too. But 70 years ago they also thought we'd be flying around in cars and have colonized multiple planets by now.
Should I now list all the things they didn't predict? Seriously what kind of argument is that?
The argument is that you're not making an argument based on science. You're assuming science is going to fix things. But the best evidence we have whether science can fix these specific things is whether they've been fixed. They have not. So the most likely outcome is in fact that they won't be fixed, unless you have some specific insight into specific carbon removal technologies - in which case, please share.
Yes, new things will be invented that don't exist, my argument is not that nothing will change. But you're the one who said "This graph is neglecting future advances in energy production and CO2 removal." That's completely unpredictable and adding assumptions about that is unreliable.
Bro your argument is worse than mine. I'm saying things will change in ways we cannot predict, and probably for the better since we are powerful humans with desires. You're saying they haven't changed already, therefore they will not. What the hell is that?
they're saying that plotting future hopes on a graph is both impossible and undesirable. we can't just assume that things will get better unless there is provable evidence that it will, and we definitely can't just make a dotted line going back to pre-industrial CO2 levels because we think someday we will solve this problem with technology that doesn't currently exist.
Do you mean that the technology does exist, but, for example, the fossil fuel industries want us to use the technologies that keep them in business?
I've also heard the owners of shops want to sell their products (it's not speculation)
And then there is your average consumer, or at least where l live, who is either not thinking that much about pumping fuel into their 'beloved' CEV or is concerned, but, for example, it's not as if governments & industries are helping.
Do you mean that the technology does exist, but, for example, the fossil fuel industries want us to use the technologies that keep them in business?
I've also heard that the owners of shops want to sell their products (it's not speculation)
And then there is your average consumer, or at least where l live, who is either not thinking that much about pumping fuel into their 'beloved' CEV or is concerned, but, for example, it's not as if governments & industries are helping
It depends on if we are still profit driven. If we are profit driven then it's likely we wouldn't manually dial in anything unless there was a significant and immediate profit to be made from repairing the climate that was far greater than the profit from destroying.
I would agree that the chart definitely does not take into account any major political realignments either.
lol. 200 years. so a period like between 1823 and now. So like 4x the change I have seen in my lifetime and then we will dial it down. I mean I do think we will dial it down quite a bit in that time but not because of a lack of desire.
What?