Don’t think I need to summarize this one. This is bad news for everyone.
So, what does this all mean for us? It means we have even less time to get our act together. Reducing emissions isn’t just a good idea — it’s crucial.
I don’t think this will motivate countries to dramatically increase emissions reduction efforts, but I think it will motivate countries to begin geoengineering. Geoengineering is cheaper and easier than rapid emissions reduction, and the results are more immediate. Yes, it doesn’t solve the core problem, which is the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, but it treats the symptom, albeit temporarily. Why put a lot of time, money, and effort into fixing the core problem when you can spend comparatively less time, money, and effort just treating the symptom? Then you can just pretend the core problem doesn’t exist and go about business as usual.
Edit: sorry, I should have added the /s.
I don’t think you realize what a collapsed ocean current means for us. This is existential, not business as usual. Anything we do from here on out that isn’t in service of stopping this is signing our species death warrant.
Haha fricking euros enjoying their moderate climate - wait until they find out what’s real Midwest winter is like. And they want to take my truck and my gas stove? Eff them.
/too many conservatives probably
I’m way more worried about mean sea level raising above much of our lower elevations. We’re already raising dikes, also making them wider so they can easily be made even higher in the future, accounting for the most pessimistic of projections, but you can’t really keep water out with dikes when the sea is pushing groundwater up. You can do it like the Dutch but if their pumps ever fail they’re royally fucked. Electricity, availability of huge amounts of energy in general, is not something you want to rely on in these matters if you can avoid it.
We’re probably going to end up with large areas of salt march interspersed by towns on mounds and a couple of lakes to construct those mounds, the dikes only making sure that they’re high, not low, salt marches – not elevation-wise but regarding how salty they are, how often they get flooded. The alternative would be to give up the marches completely and knowing our Frisians no that won’t happen. Barley and sugar beets are naturally salt-resistent, btw, more plants are getting bred for it. Not to mention tasty veggies that allow you to retire your salt shaker
tl;dr: Wat mutt, dat mutt. Imagine Sisyphus happy.
Geoengineering is cheaper and easier than rapid emissions reduction
I don’t know if your whole comment is sarcasm, but every part of this statement is wrong. We are in the very, very early stages of developing the technologies needed for the level of geoengineering required to mitigate what we have already done to the environment. To roll it out to the levels needed would be far more difficult and expensive that converting our entire way of life to renewables, which should really say how hard and expensive it would be given how utterly daunting of a task full conversion to renewables is.
Now, putting in token investment and paying lip service to geoengineering, that’s cheaper and easier than switching to renewables. But that’s not even treating the symptoms. That’s just your standard con game against the broader population to try to manipulate the conversation.
To roll it out to the levels needed would be far more difficult and expensive that converting our entire way of life to renewables
The cost of geoengineering solutions has been estimated to be less than $5b/yr, which includes R&D. In other words, this is something that the government of New York City (annual budget: >$100b) could easily do alone without any international support, even in the face of significant opposition.
In contrast, ending fossil fuel use requires significant international cooperation and is regularly stymied by opposing interests. NYC obviously cannot do it by itself.
So from a pragmatic perspective, geoengineering is definitely the easiest solution. In fact IMO the lack of progress on emission reduction makes it inevitable, at some point some country will weigh the risks of climate change and take matters into its own hands.
at some point some country will weigh the risks of climate change and take matters into its own hands.
Yeah, I could see that happening. Maybe even the US. Maybe Elon Musk reads a Twitter thread about geoengineering, decides it’s the solution to warming, starts a company called GeoX and convinces Trump and the Republicans to give him and GeoX $5 billion a year, he buys a bunch of jets, fills them with sulfur dioxide and has them fart out a bunch of it around the Arctic every year. GeoX stocks soar, Musk becomes the first trillionaire, and the US federal government has added only a trivial amount to its already vast debt total. It almost doesn’t matter if it works or not.
The cost of geoengineering solutions has been estimated to be
A thought experiment on developing a and maintaining an aircraft fleet to inject dust into the stratosphere. Assuming global cooperation. Assuming that solution works. Assuming you can scale up the dust production without driving up cost. Assuming there are no side effects. Assuming variations in weather don’t trigger war now that there’s someone to blame. Assuming it doesn’t disrupt our food production. Assuming it doesn’t lead to additional extinction events. Assuming -0.3°c over 25 years is enough
Yes, it was sarcasm. But, I think the push for solar geoengineering, or as some people are calling it “solar radiation management” is coming.
Geoengineering is the most expensive, least effective choice. It risks making things worse and it risks triggering conflict over local effects. It’s not a good idea.
… but it’s starting to look like a necessary one, because we keep screwing up even more
You tried, but your tone and wording was off. Some people would state all that fully believing things can continue and we’ll tech out way out of trouble. And we WILL absolutely jump to geoengineering to try and preserve status quo, cost or not. The alternative is to change society dramatically, and that won’t happen voluntarily. And the great news is once we start geoengineering, we dare not stop because the reaction will spike things even worse.
Basically it’s too late to stop the process. Even if we switched to renewables entirely, there will be a lag. That lag is now in a positive feedback loop.
I remember some of the early research showing this when I was in college in the late 90s/early 00s. It’s mostly following the worst-case scenario models from the time, except 50 - 80 years ahead of schedule.
Whether you can risk it or can’t. Its time to disobey our leaders. They dont care. They’ve built protections for themselves. They plan on feeding us to the storms.
If only we knew about this 50 years ago, surely we would have done something!
Big Oil: side eye Muppet meme
Fun fact: They knew since the 1950s and have been lying about it for over 70 YEARS!
It looks really important but dam that site is cancer on mobile.
Huh. That’s oddly freeing
“Oh we’re all fucked guaranteed. The stress is gone”
I mean, still gonna be for eco measures and such, but it’s like a weight is off my shoulders in terms of worry
It’s not freeing. We may have locked in some really bad changes but it can always get worse. It more critical than ever to get a handle on our green house emissions
It’s freeing for me in that, “No matter what, we’re at the guaranteed fuck stage. My brain is now freeing up the energy that goes to unproductive worry, and it can now be spared for productive minimization of damage”, which I thought was clear with me saying “Still gonna be for eco measures and such”
The Earth will survive and the humans will get what they deserve.
Millions of species will go down with us, some already have been relagated to extinction by our actions.
The dinosaurs got wiped out and new life flourished. The same will happen again.
Oh then in that case nbd that we take millions of species who were living in harmony with nature with us. Serves them right for . . . existing in the same 20,000 year period we did.
The dinosaurs got wiped out by a catastrophic meteor impact (or so we think). This is different. We are changing the climate at an accelerated pace that’s never been seen before. Species adapt to things over time. You can’t adapt if the weather isn’t stable, and things dip between super hot and super cold, or visa versa, they stay super hot or super cold. We have other examples of worlds like that in our solar systems, and they are dead worlds.
