This is impossible to fix with capitalism. Capitalism demands infinite growth. We're going to have to start working on antigravity now to escape this dead planet (the plot to interstellar).
Technically capitalism will probably have a maximum co2 level, probably far after we see how harmful it is and it starts negatively impacting it.
I always want to reply with that chart on every post about some magical new climate technology. Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire. That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters. Wind and solar are great but we’re still approving gas/coal/oil projects, at least globally.
It’s like with the water crisis in the American West. They guilt trip individuals into feeling bad about taking showers but it’s like 80% agriculture. And the majority of that is for animal feed. (I’m not saying everyone go vegan. That’s about as unrealistic as asking everyone to stop fucking to keep the population from growing. I’m saying don’t grow alfalfa in the fucking desert and then blame people who bathe.)
This is an excellent point. The energy transition is more accurately an energy addition. Some renewables on top of a still-increasing pile of burning fossil fuels.
Same with EVs. More are being sold every year but more ICE cars are being sold, too.
Until the fossil fuel industry actually shrinks, things are hopeless.
Seeing those alfalfa farms all over my desert state turns me into an extremist.
There are huge vegetarian populations though (think about India), app it's not completely against human nature....
Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire.
I say it all the time. The only possible way to keep carbon from outside the carbon cycle from entering the carbon cycle is to stop taking carbon from outside the carbon cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle. No amount of coal plant filtration or growing trees or building wind farms will take carbon from inside the carbon cycle out of the carbon cycle.
400 ppm is too much, and the mechanisms for putting that carbon in the ground is gone and never coming back. The best we can possibly do is stop making it worse, and we won't, because everyone wants to have a whole chicken in their fridge that'll end up rotting because the availability of goods, whether we'll actually consume them or not, is the most important thing in the world.
I don't see a dent...
You won’t. We’re combatting near-exponential growth. Each year we need to increase our efforts just to prevent worsening, let alone reversal.
This is because the largest accelerant is completely out of our control now. As the ice caps melt, desalinating our oceans, rich black soil is exposed. This soil absorbs and retains heat far more readily than the white ice, accelerating the warming of nearby ground ice. As bacteria begins to break down the newly thawed decaying organisms, large amounts of methane is released into the atmosphere. Methane traps 28x more heat than CO2, then it breaks down into CO2 and water after a decade where it continues to retain heat for centuries.
Not quite correct on methane's half life. The 28x number is based on normal effect and breakdown over a century's time. Over 20 years it's around 84x more than CO2. Over the first few years it can be far over 100x. The caveat of using these numbers now is that they were based on a stable cycle of methane and its fixed-rate reducers in the atmosphere, something that has obviously changed.
The IPCC still sticks to the 28x number though, because it looks better on the spreadsheets. When they even include methane feedback loops, which to my knowledge they still haven't really worked into the hard numbers. Why? Because we're not very sure on how much is being released from year to year, as it's hard to measure. So since the IPCC only works with known variables, they just leave it out of the equation. Makes sense, right? :clown face:
You're right on the rest though. The best result is the methane breaks down quickly, into more CO2 and water vapor. Both GHGs, and the additional water adding to the water content in the atmosphere. Yet another feedback loop.
Wow. Thank you for the detailed correction!
Perhaps we should start actually trying
But we’re out of ideas!
Fine. I'll finally give up plastic straws.
Breaking news, global warming stopped.
Whatever dent we make today will be visible in decades. This is Moses in the desert, people, if we do what's right, we won't see the promised land, but our descendants will
And yet you can see the small dent the collapse of USSR made.
The solution is simple: we just need to collapse another 100 USSRs and drop that to two USSRs per year. We did it guise, we solved the climate crisis!
I find the people with hope genuinely confusing at this point.
To lose hope for a better tomorrow is to roll over and accept the worst
I'll fight to my dying breath for a better tomorrow because I have hope in achieving that goal
Even if that better tomorrow is only slightly better than no change or if that better tomorrow is making sure that those I care about aren't completely up a creek if shit goes sideways
Anything is better than rolling over and letting the world go to shit like a loaded up semi with no brakes down a mountain
Because the alternative is to become a pessimistic doomer and tune out pretending it's all hopeless?
Oh the earth will recover eventually! It's even possible humanity survives in some form!
I bought CO2 sensors for an Arduino project. The firmware is calibrated to 400 ppm. It is rapidly becoming in accurate because baseline keeps going up.
That period between 1990 and 1995 where there seems to be 3 consecutive years where it slowed to a relative crawl... Imagine if we did that. What if we plateaued there for a few years - decades even - and then started dropping. A wonderful thought.
I think that’s partly due to the fall of the soviet union, which caused a noticeable drop in carbon emissions.
The chart indicates another way to fix global warming. We could add to the atmosphere. It would take a massive amount... Maybe have boil the ocean?
Fuck yes, straight into the wall full speed. Don’t even tap the brakes.
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
