Yeah, sad thing is we are already signed up for the next 20 years, as in even if we stopped emitting everything tomorrow, we would still have +2°C in 20 years…
And how realistic is stopping everything tomorow?
+3°C… we would need to have a new coronavirus crisis every years, not just a new one, but stack them on top, in terms of emissions. Ofc you can’t have more then one global confinement at a time (doesn’t make sense to double confine someone) so that wouldn’t even work.
We. Are. Fucked.
We aren’t locked in for the next twenty years, only the next ten years.
We could build a thousand RBMK like nuclear reactors in a decade and then suck out 50 ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere in another decade.
Would cost $500B to $1T or so.
We just don’t really think global warming is serious enough to warrant an action plan at the scale of the Manhattan project, Apollo program or Messmer plan.
We’re not locked in for the next 20 years. Not for the next 10.
The carbon in the atmosphere is going to be there for the next millenium and the temperature won’t level out till the 2100s if we stopped all carbon emission right this second.
Furthermore, if we did stop all emissions right now, the planet would get 0.5-1.5 °C hotter within a year or two due to the end of the aerosol pollution cooling effect that’s been cutting the effects of carbon induced climate change in half this whole time.
This year is so hot because they put limitations on sulfur emissions from shipping boats in the Pacific. Those emissions were cooling the atmosphere, but the aerosol emissions (which that sulfur is one of) only last in the atmosphere for about 2 weeks before they’re rained out of the air.
We’re fucked.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a speculative technology at the moment.
Like, yes, we “can” do it, if you ignore all the materials and energy needed to perform that process. And that’s just in theory, in practice its bound to be far more difficult.
No matter how you put it, it’s easier to just… Not release the pollution in the first place. If it’s too difficult to stop polluting, it will certainly be too difficult to remove that pollution that has been already released. Entropy and all that.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is something we should only really start thinking about when the world already runs nearly entirely cleanly.
You ignore political realities.
An Apollo scale program to extract carbon emissions from the atmosphere could be financed by the OECD countries without heavily impacting their economies.
Building a thousand nuclear plants with reduced safety requirements in a remote place would not run into NIMBY problems.
Stopping emissions globally would require Chinese political will, since they emit more than all of the OECD combined.
I think that there need to be a specific tipping point/trigger when everyone and their mother direct funding towards fixing the problem.until then the majority of people won’t simply care
I’m genuinely curious at this point if that point even exists. Like, I’ve had legitimate conversations with multiple people and i’ve asked them “what would need to happen for you to believe in human’s causing climate change?” The answer is generally something along the lines of “I’m not sure it’s even possible for humans to have that big of an effect on the earth.”
I would imagine there are tons of people out there who think the same, people with VERY deep pockets and in equally powerful positions that would never change course on their money making machines. Literally the only way I see substantial change happening is if it becomes incredibly profitable.
The rich and powerful have to see very direct problems that affect them. Kind of like when social conservative politicians take an anti-LGBT position, then turns out their kid is trans, so then they pivot to being pro-LGBT in rhetoric so they can keep talking to their kid.
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