Feasible in what sense? If every nation converts to nuclear power and we start building large scale scrubbers, we could at least reverse some of the changes we've already contributed.

Is that feasible for our generation? No. — Tate

Nuclear (maybe some renewables) and electrification of everything, is what is needed, as well as a fundamental rethinking of agriculture. Forget scrubbers, concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the air are to small to make it worth it to actively pull them out.

It's not feasible in normal times, no, because of the sheer scale of it. Maybe it would be possible in something akin to a transitioning to a wartime economy, like the US or Germany in WWII. That may seem unlikely right now, but we don't know what will happen in volatile times... look at the war and energy crisis in Europe right now. Nobody could have predicted that a few years ago.

Times are definitely a changing.

electrification of everything, is what is needed, — ChatteringMonkey

I think nuclear is the higher priority, though. Electricity is mostly generated by coal or gas.

Forget scrubbers, concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the air are to small to make it worth it to actively pull them out. — ChatteringMonkey

Really? Is there research on that? Just curious.

Times are definitely a changing. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, but it doesn't seem to be in the direction of global cooperation. And democratic governments are generally screwed. Apathy takes over.

I think nuclear is the higher priority, though. Electricity is mostly generated by coal or gas. — Tate

Nuclear is electricity-production, that would have to replace all other current electricity-production (which is 20% all total energy-use) and also everything else that uses fossil fuels directly as energy, like transport or factory-ovens (which is the other 80%). That latter 80% needs to be electrified first, before we can use electricity as the energy-source, like we are doing now with the electric car.

Really? Is there research on that? Just curious. — Tate

I'm just relying on experts here that seem reliable to me. We have scrubbers already as prototypes, but they seem woefully inefficient energy-wise, and therefor hardly scalable... which makes sense if you consider that greenhouses gasses, while high enough to raise temperature, are still very small concentrations in the air.

Yes, but it doesn't seem to be in the direction of global cooperation. And democratic governments are generally screwed. Apathy takes over. — Tate

I think it could go any way still. Apathy, or even open conflict because of higher stressed relations and scarcity, are all definite possibilities... but so is cooperation, for instance if the need is truly high. In WWII the US and the USSR commies were besties and fighting side by side to defeat the fascists... go figure.

Nuclear is electricity-production — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, I know. I just meant that switching to electric cars won't limit CO2 emissions until we have a replacement for coal and gas power plants.

We have scrubbers already as prototypes, but they seem woefully inefficient energy-wise, and therefor hardly scalable... which makes sense if you consider that greenhouses gasses, while high enough to raise temperature, are still very small concentrations in the air. — ChatteringMonkey

Forests scrub the atmosphere every summer. I think we can come up with something. Or at least it's too early to give up.

think it could go any way still. Apathy, or even open conflict because of higher stressed relations and scarcity, are all definite possibilities... but so is cooperation, for instance if the need is truly high. In WWII the US and the USSR commies were besties and fighting side by side to defeat the fascists... go figure. — ChatteringMonkey

You're saying a global catastrophe could be the solution to global conflict. Could be.

I know there's people focusing especially on existential risk, for humans to survive as a species, but frankly I couldn't care less about "the species" if the world is turned into an arid hothouse where most of the other species have died off and only small portions of the globe are really livable without technological assistance. Seriously, I don't get this type of reasoning, it's like saying to someone you will lose most of your limbs, your eyes, your stomach etc, but don't be alarmed we can keep you alive just fine by hooking you up to this machine for the rest of your life. — ChatteringMonkey

:100:

Humans seem to have long forgotten that the other species are 'our own' as well and that our survival/quality of life heavily depends on their survival/quality of life.

Yes, I know. I just meant that switching to electric cars won't limit CO2 emissions until we have a replacement for coal and gas power plants. — Tate

Ok, yes sure... but we need both rather soon.

Forests scrub the atmosphere every summer. I think we can come up with something. Or at least it's too early to give up. — Tate

Scientific consensus seem to be that it's really hard to get greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere, and that it's also hard to see inventions or innovations that would do it. Forests can help a bit, sure, but from what I gathered it's not that big of a percentage.

You're saying a global catastrophe could be the solution to global conflict. Could be. — Tate

Yeah something like that, I guess. We'll see what Europe ultimately does in reaction to the energy-crisis, but it certainly has changed a lot of minds in a short time. For instance, a lot of countries were set on phasing out nuclear for years now, and now they are all reconsidering. A crisis certainly seems to create political will like nothing else does.

Yes certainly, we are part of the biosphere and it is part of us. Case in point the recent revaluation and attention for the gut-microbiome in medicine and dietary sciences.

Scientific consensus seem to be that it's really hard to get greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere, and that it's also hard to see inventions or innovations that would do it. — ChatteringMonkey

Check out this article. It's a review of several potential approaches.

I was talking to two ladies with whom I otherwise chit chat about the weather, gardening, and such. — baker

I really find this hard to believe.

You think the UN will take over and make the revolution? — Olivier5

The signed treaties have made some progress. The Montreal Protocol have almost eliminated CFCs and the Paris agreement for net-zero emissions.

↪yebiga By not being a fucking idiot, lol — _db

There is a rather foundational philosophical tradition, where I begin a discussion on a complex subject by assuming I'm the idiot.

Ok, maybe I agree that this kind of alarmism as a political strategy isn't all that helpful, in that it potentially alienates those that weren't already convinced even further. — ChatteringMonkey

Wrong models won't just alienate those that aren't already convinced, they simply can contribute to wrong policies. It's not just pep talk. If a forecast is ulitmately proven wrong, we cannot excuse it because "it supported the good cause". Something "for the cause" isn't the way to make models about the future, especially the ones that you base your actual policies on. The issues are complex, not so simple to be good or evil as people want them to be. And furthermore, to criticize models about their validity when they are wrong isn't some "climate denier" scheme, it's basic way to do science. And strawmanning this, like responding "oh, so you are denying climate change?", doesn't help. The models really need to be accurate, realistic and not simple extrapolations from linear models, where the end result is that you are forecasting the year when the human race, or all species, are extinct.

Just take the extremely stupid Chinese "one child" policy, a real product of the fears of the overpopulation debate in the 1970's implemented in 1980. Or similar policies in Singapore: that there simply will be too many SIngaporeans / Chinese and hence drastic measures were taken to limit population growth. All because of the threat of overpopulation, which ought to have resulted in widespread famines twenty years ago. And now both policies have backfired and they face a bigger problem now (Singapore is desperately trying that Singaporeans would have more children). India utterly failed in any kind of population growth limitations and guess what: it's fertility rates have gone down. The simple fact that prosperity alters the need for people to have children was shown again to be true, but I'm not sure how anyone saying this would have succeeded in any of the overpopulation debates in the 1970's. The Malthusians would evidently have won the day as they did. And likely will win a public debate, because that's what people want to hear.

fertility rates have gone down — ssu

This probably isn't biological but more of a sociological phenomenon. The age of puberty for girls is falling according to reports and they've chalked it up to improved nutrition. The takeaway - a much longer period during which females are fertile (do the math).

Yet, fertility rates are paradoxically going down, more in some countries than others. The explanation - women have other/bigger fish to fry i.e. starting a family has been deprioritized.

Even so, we can't really rule out a genetic cause for the change in our behavior - it could be hardcoded for all we know.

Now to think how your attitude that you outline above would fare in such real world situations. Both of them are middle class ladies in their fifties. You think calling them morons would somehow be helpful?

I actually doubt that there exist studies on this particular topic. But if I remember correctly, there are those studies where people were being insulted prior to taking an IQ test and the people did worse on those tests. This certainly speaks against your attitude.

...

The supremacist attitude that some environmental activists have certainly isn't getting through to such people, and if anything, it's only making them dig their heels in even more. — baker

It's not about 'getting through' to people. People rarely modify their behaviour based on rational argument. If they're going to dig their heels in, then something already exists which makes them feel more comfortable with their current beliefs and all the while that exists no amount of rational argument is going to persuade them otherwise. Rational argument just isn't the iron fist people seem to think it is, it presents options is all, if people don't want to take the option you offer, they won't.

The point about excluding people from discussion who haven't done their due diligence, who haven't earned the right to be taken seriously, is not about magically persuading them of your opinion by such action, it's about allocating your limited reserves of bandwidth to more productive activities than pretending to have a rational argument with people who don't even share your criteria for argumentative power. It's like trying to play chess against someone who disagrees with you about what the rules of chess are.

Insults serve a purpose in social relations, they didn't develop for no reason. They're about ostracising people. Making it clear that people do not meet the criteria for membership of you group. If people are upset about being ostracised thus, then they need to question why they wanted to be a member of that group in the first place.

In my experience, most people who are annoyed about being ostracised from more serious, academic, style discussion want to be a member of that group, want to be allowed into that debate, for the very reasons they are being ostracised (it has a certain kudos because the people involved have done a lot of due diligence), they just ant to shortcut the hard work and be allowed in anyway. There's nothing noble about laziness.

it goes both ways. The environmental activists need to earn their right to be taken seriously as well. — baker

Absolutely. I have very little truck with the modern environmental campaign groups either. It's little more than a social event, with a greater concern for their Facebook profile than for the issue over which they're chanting their vacuous platitudes.

The models really need to be accurate, realistic and not simple extrapolations from linear models, where the end result is that you are forecasting the year when the human race, or all species, are extinct. — ssu

I don't think anybody seriously invested in the topic is really claiming definitively that we are going to go extinct, they're just using 'existential threat' as concept that isn't technical but rather figuratively and political, to indicate that it's going to be really really bad if we don't do anything. I think it means something like an existential treat to our current way of life, loosely... and not to the species.

Wrong models could inform bad policies, but we aren't really talking about the models here I don't think. The climate models themselves are, in all their uncertainty, actually pretty clear. If we emit x amount of greenhouse gasses we can expect between y and z amount of global warming. We are talking about what the effects on human civilizations would be, and as far as I know there are no models for that because it's just to complex to model. Nobody can really predict these kind of things beforehand with any kind of certainty.

To demand accurate, realistic non-linear models before we can make any sort of claim about this is effectively the same as saying we should just remain silent about it, which can't be a good idea either because then we would have no impetus at all for said policies. So saying it is an existential treat to our way of life and building policies on that, doesn't seem to far off base, even if it is unsure.

Check out this article. It's a review of several potential approaches. — Tate

I can't read the whole article, only the abstract, but it does seem to be going for more or less the same conclusion as I have been earlier, namely that it works but isn't efficient/is to costly, which makes it doubtful that it could be scaled up.

"Besides several advantages, NETs present high operational cost and its scale-up should be tested to know the real effect on climate change mitigation. With current knowledge, no single process should be seen as a solution."

It is too late to stop global warming. The best we can do at this stage -- after two decades of disinformation by big oil fucked up people like you so that nothing be done to reduce CO2 emissions -- is to mitigate the worst effects, by radically reducing our CO2 emissions. But of course we won't do that either.

The next best thing we can do is try and adapt to climate change.

The signed treaties have made some progress. The Montreal Protocol have almost eliminated CFCs and the Paris agreement for net-zero emissions. — L'éléphant

I am all for it, and lament the lack of US support for the Kyoto protocol. But my interlocutors were expressing concerns that the UN will replace national governments and force a global no-carb revolution. I don't think that's in the cards.

I can't read the whole article, only the abstract, but it does seem to be going for more or less the same conclusion as I have been earlier, namely that it works but isn't efficient/is to costly, which makes it doubtful that it could be scaled up. — ChatteringMonkey

Sorry about that. The body and conclusions aren't pessimistic. They admit it's going to be a challenge and conclude that multiple technologies are a better than a single solution.

Sorry about that. The body and conclusions aren't pessimistic. They admit it's going to be a challenge and conclude that multiple technologies are a better than a single solution. — Tate

No problem.

I have nothing against such potential solutions in principle, but I am a bit skeptical yes. Usually they can work fine as prototypes in a lab - which is the context wherein they are studied - but ultimately they often fail as real world scaled up solutions because of the energy or other costs.

This is by no means restricted to greenhouse capture innovations, but applies to innovations in general. Scientists do have some incentive to shed a positive light on their research projects, because that is more likely to secure future funding... and they typically don't have all that much specific knowledge of what it takes to successfully place something in the market.

And so very little of these lab-innovations actually end up being a success. Also energy presumably will be even more expensive if we need to phase out fossil fuels, so operational costs being high doesn't bode all that well going forward.

Sure. I'm just more optimistic. I guess because we do have a tendency to be mind-blowing when we want to be. :grin:

If climate change is as serious as some are saying, and not close to being solved, as appears to be the case, will anything short of a major revolution suffice?

No people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood, whatever the answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that.

-- Samuel Clemens

This probably isn't biological but more of a sociological phenomenon. — Agent Smith

Prosperity and wealth is a sociological phenomenon, so yes, it hasn't got anything to do with biology.

I find those quibbling over whether the term “existential threat” really applies to climate change rather amusing. Especially when it’s become clear, over and over again, that projections have been far too optimistic. The latest about the Greenland ice melt is one example.

There are solutions to climate change. Many of them are under way. Those who believe it’s hopeless are entitled to think so — they may be right. But we can’t act on that basis.

We should recognize that if global warming is an automatic consequence of capitalism, we might as well say goodbye to each other. I would like to overcome capitalism, but it’s not in the relevant time scale. Global warming basically has to be taken care of within the framework of existing institutions, modifying them as necessary. That’s the problem we face.

When we turn to human nature, the first thing to remember is that we know essentially nothing about it. It’s what I work on all the time. There’s a few small areas where there’s some understanding of cognitive human nature and very little about the rest. It’s all surmise.

If it is true that human nature is incapable of dealing with problems developing over a longer term, if that’s a fact about the way humans are structured and organized, we can, again, say goodbye to one another. So let’s assume it’s not the case.

Then we work within a set of parameters. The fundamental institutions are not going to change in time. Human nature allows the possibility of thinking about what’s going to happen in a couple of decades, even centuries. Assume all that.

Then we turn to solutions. And there are solutions within that set of assumptions. So let’s proceed and work on them. If those assumptions happen to be wrong, tough for the human species. It’s what we have. — Noam Chomsky

I think that sums it up better than I can.

There are solutions to climate change. Many of them are under way. Those who believe it’s hopeless are entitled to think so — they may be right. But we can’t act on that basis. — Xtrix

One need not hope in order to undertake, nor succeed in order to persevere.
-- William I, Prince of Orange

Even if avoiding global warming is now impossible, realistically speaking, mitigating its worst aspects remains a useful task, and so is trying to slow down the phenomenon development so as to give us time to adapt.

they're just using 'existential threat' as concept that isn't technical but rather figuratively and political, to indicate that it's going to be really really bad if we don't do anything. — ChatteringMonkey

Oh I agree. But the problem is when the discourse stays on that level when making actual decisions. Politicians just love grandstanding and hence the problem is that rhetoric and actual decisions can part to totally different realms. When an administration that likely has few years to go until the next election makes an "ambitious" plan for the next twenty years, one can be doubtful of what actually will be done in the next decade or two.

This is a basic problem especially in energy policy, which is quite central to the actual environment policy. Since at least 40 years the emphasis has been to "transfer to renewables". Well, that's really happening only now and the current energy crisis shows just how much dependent we are on oil and gas.

One need not hope in order to undertake, nor succeed in order to persevere.
-- William I, Prince of Orange — Olivier5

:up:

Oh I agree. But the problem is when the discourse stays on that level when making actual decisions. Politicians just love grandstanding and hence the problem is that rhetoric and actual decisions can part to totally different realms. When an administration that likely has few years to go until the next election makes an "ambitious" plan for the next twenty years, one can be doubtful of what actually will be done in the next decade or two.

This is a basic problem especially in energy policy, which is quite central to the actual environment policy. Since at least 40 years the emphasis has been to "transfer to renewables". Well, that's really happening only now and the current energy crisis shows just how much dependent we are on oil and gas. — ssu

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that because the discourse is too extreme, politicians make their plans too ambitious to soothe the public who internalised that extreme discourse... and because those plans are too ambitious, nothing gets done?

I don't know how it went down in various countries, but I don't think too much ambition was the real culprit the last 40 years. I think the problem was simply that it costs a lot of money, the effects would only be felt in a few decades way after election cycles, and ultimately people didn't care that much either. Alarmism and Greta Thunberg only really were a thing the past 5, maybe 10 years.

So yeah, the problem I'd say was mainly apathy because the effects were still so far in the future. That, and yes definitely also the fact that our dependence on fossil fuels is much more difficult to get away from than environmentalist and left parties have been making it out to be. But notice here the issue is not an overestimation of the gravity of the problem (i.e. alarmism), but an underestimation of how tied in with fossil fuels our economy really is and an underestimation of the effort required to build alternative energy-sources... those are two distinct things.

In short, the diagnosis is not the issue, the lack of good workable solutions is.

I have become nuclear absolutist, anything else is just tampering in the margins... it's the power of the atom or back to the stoneage.

Prosperity and wealth is a sociological phenomenon, so yes, it hasn't got anything to do with biology. — ssu

We can override our biology! Isn't that awesome? Hunger strikes, celibacy (voluntary), etc. Mind-blowing as far as I'm concerned. Hardwired!? Pfft! :smile:

Climate Change is normal. The impact of humans on the climate is also a factor.

Ironically it is likely those that push for ‘greener’ living, at the expense of everything else, that will magnify the potential damage to human civlization.

Examples of such stupidity are those against GM foods and genetically modified livestock (the knock-on effect is not great) and the idea that ‘nuclear power’ is somehow ‘dangerous’ and wind and solar are viable alternatives. When countries shut down nuclear power stations whilst simultaneously espousing views on climate change regarding carbon emissions … frankly it is baffling and either due to wilful stupidity, ignorance, political self-promotion and/or a combination of these factors with numerous other pieces of nonsense thrown in.

Hysteria and knee-jerk reactions made by governments, and pushed by people who have little to no understanding or training in a broad range of fields and related fields, are the biggest problem humanity face. Note: This extends into free speech and various other areas that have made mass communications such a hotbed over the last few decades.

In short, how we communicate is the biggest problem we face and it has always been the biggest problem for humanity and will remain so as long as we are human.

You can generally see if a problem is a genuine one when the problem encapsulates the multiple potential solutions in various other seemingly unrelated areas.

A great number of people are framed as ‘Climate Change Deniers’ when in fact they do not deny that the climate is changing, nor that humans have an effect on the climate, but they do question the extent of the impact humans have. This is a reasonable position to have. Those that completely deny any hint of Climate Change and how humans impact the climate are simply ignorant to basic science.

I think we are entering the umpteenth utterance of ‘everyone is going to starve’ or ‘there are too many people,’ yet again these dire warning of human civilisation collapsing have never come about. This is not to say there is not danger, only that in today’s world any such perceived ‘crisis’ is magnified tenfold by the carpet bombing of public minds via various media resources espousing all kinds of unverified nonsense as conclusive evidence. My hope is that the younger generations coming into future political prominence will be wiser to the world of sensationalism, hysteria and advertising to the extent that they can calm the storm enough to think independently.