Edit: trigger warning: I got nothing against you, I don’t know who of what you are but… what follows is a very cold dose of reality. Be warned, beware.
Well yeah, that is because we ARE defeated, pretty much. By our greedy overloards. And we let them for decades. And right now, at this point, this is so bad that even if we dead stop all CO2 output today, we’re still going to be cooking 20 years from now and we’ll be cooking for centuries, maybe even a Millenium before things turn better. This is not doomsday thinking, this is physics.
If you think we can make things better by pulling the CO2 out of the air then let me give you a little cold shower. Pulling all the CO2 out of the air to levels pre industrialization will take about the same amount of energy we got out of burning all those girls since the industrial revolution started, centuries ago.
Basically, for the next centuries, we will need to spend 50% of the worlds energy budget to scrubbing CO2 out the air. And that is only a small part of the picture, because now you have the CO2, and that is in bizarre large quantities. We’re talking cubic kilometers per year. You need to store that somehow and if it escapes, you’re all back to the start again. So you convert it into plastics? That too costs LOADS of energy and those too over time will degrade and can cause pollution issues. Maybe convert them into billions of diamonds?
Either way, that conversion and or storage too will take up about another similar amount of energy. So now we’ll be spending 60-70% of the worlds energy budget for the next centuries on scrubbing and converting and storing that co2
This is not imaginary, this is not panic mode, this is not doomsday thinking. This is the real world bitch, there are not free lunches
And meanwhile we’ll be cooking. Loads of animal species will go extinct, food production will dalter causing massive starvation, which likely will cause loads of wars.
People were talking about rising sea water levels for quite a while but I have no idea why. High temperatures will fuck us over long before. Hell, high temperatures are fucking us over already. All that you’ve seen with forest fires? That’s the beginning. Expect every year to become worse, period.
We MIGHT be able to save the world by spraying sulfuric compunds into the upper atmosphere. We did it before in the lower atmosphere with pollution, it caused shit acid rain, it lowered temperatures because it reflects sunlight. We can spray it around in the upper atmosphere using airplanes. It’ll still cause (less) acid rain but we’re at the point where we need to start choosing if we cut off an arm or lose both legs…
Make no mistake. This is not a “hole in the ozone layer” type problem that can be resolved in a decade. This problem has been brewing for centuries and will take centuries to resolve, in the best case.
Worst case, the ocean starts to burn up a lot of CO2 locked in at the bottom, permafrost starts belching the CO2 locked in there and next thing we’re not worrying about global 2 degree rise, were worrying about a 10 degree rise. On the local levels, temperatures may already get to 10-15 degrees higher than normal anyway today.
In any case, all of those best case scenarios is if we dead stop today and we’ll, fuck that shit. We’re not stopping, we’re not even lowering, we’re increasing because fuck the next generations. The elites who make the decisions don’t give a shit. I cannot do anything myself. So yes, I have a defeatist attitude. Because we’re fucked. You’re fucked. We’ll still live, though. The next generation is that generation that truly will be fucked with a cactus. They actually may not live to see the end of the world.
Fyi, I’m an Earth Scientist working more than 20 years along with others that contribute heavily to the IPCC climate models, and advise the US executive branch on climate issues. I do know a thing or two. Humans have done pretty well through the last ice age when global temperatures were, on average, about 6°C cooler than now. Proto-humans and other primates have lived in much warmer climates than now. Humans can and likely will survive the climate crisis.
The biggest questions are how warm and how fast? How will we sustain ourselves. Globally, we need to shrink in population, and by all accounts it looks like with populations advancing few children are born and later.
I’m not at all optimistic about climates impact on us, but to say we’ve lost is not helpful.
What a defeatist attitude.
You mean about climate change?
Edit: trigger warning: I got nothing against you, I don’t know who of what you are but… what follows is a very cold dose of reality. Be warned, beware.
Well yeah, that is because we ARE defeated, pretty much. By our greedy overloards. And we let them for decades. And right now, at this point, this is so bad that even if we dead stop all CO2 output today, we’re still going to be cooking 20 years from now and we’ll be cooking for centuries, maybe even a Millenium before things turn better. This is not doomsday thinking, this is physics.
If you think we can make things better by pulling the CO2 out of the air then let me give you a little cold shower. Pulling all the CO2 out of the air to levels pre industrialization will take about the same amount of energy we got out of burning all those girls since the industrial revolution started, centuries ago.
Basically, for the next centuries, we will need to spend 50% of the worlds energy budget to scrubbing CO2 out the air. And that is only a small part of the picture, because now you have the CO2, and that is in bizarre large quantities. We’re talking cubic kilometers per year. You need to store that somehow and if it escapes, you’re all back to the start again. So you convert it into plastics? That too costs LOADS of energy and those too over time will degrade and can cause pollution issues. Maybe convert them into billions of diamonds?
Either way, that conversion and or storage too will take up about another similar amount of energy. So now we’ll be spending 60-70% of the worlds energy budget for the next centuries on scrubbing and converting and storing that co2
This is not imaginary, this is not panic mode, this is not doomsday thinking. This is the real world bitch, there are not free lunches
And meanwhile we’ll be cooking. Loads of animal species will go extinct, food production will dalter causing massive starvation, which likely will cause loads of wars.
People were talking about rising sea water levels for quite a while but I have no idea why. High temperatures will fuck us over long before. Hell, high temperatures are fucking us over already. All that you’ve seen with forest fires? That’s the beginning. Expect every year to become worse, period.
We MIGHT be able to save the world by spraying sulfuric compunds into the upper atmosphere. We did it before in the lower atmosphere with pollution, it caused shit acid rain, it lowered temperatures because it reflects sunlight. We can spray it around in the upper atmosphere using airplanes. It’ll still cause (less) acid rain but we’re at the point where we need to start choosing if we cut off an arm or lose both legs…
Make no mistake. This is not a “hole in the ozone layer” type problem that can be resolved in a decade. This problem has been brewing for centuries and will take centuries to resolve, in the best case.
Worst case, the ocean starts to burn up a lot of CO2 locked in at the bottom, permafrost starts belching the CO2 locked in there and next thing we’re not worrying about global 2 degree rise, were worrying about a 10 degree rise. On the local levels, temperatures may already get to 10-15 degrees higher than normal anyway today.
In any case, all of those best case scenarios is if we dead stop today and we’ll, fuck that shit. We’re not stopping, we’re not even lowering, we’re increasing because fuck the next generations. The elites who make the decisions don’t give a shit. I cannot do anything myself. So yes, I have a defeatist attitude. Because we’re fucked. You’re fucked. We’ll still live, though. The next generation is that generation that truly will be fucked with a cactus. They actually may not live to see the end of the world.
Fyi, I’m an Earth Scientist working more than 20 years along with others that contribute heavily to the IPCC climate models, and advise the US executive branch on climate issues. I do know a thing or two. Humans have done pretty well through the last ice age when global temperatures were, on average, about 6°C cooler than now. Proto-humans and other primates have lived in much warmer climates than now. Humans can and likely will survive the climate crisis.
The biggest questions are how warm and how fast? How will we sustain ourselves. Globally, we need to shrink in population, and by all accounts it looks like with populations advancing few children are born and later.
I’m not at all optimistic about climates impact on us, but to say we’ve lost is not helpful.