Thawing permafrost, faster even than climate models predicted, could release so much carbon that feasible reductions in human carbon output will never be enough. [1]
A similar worry is methane hydrates. [2]
It seems that the only remaining hopes are rapid progress on carbon sequestration on a vast scale, or risky geoengineering.
The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the idea that increases in sea temperatures or drops in sea levels can trigger a strong positive feedback effect on climate: first, warming causes a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and seabed permafrost; second, because methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, temperatures rise further, and the cycle repeats. This runaway process, once started, could be as irreversible as the firing of a gun.
"the idea of a ‘methane time bomb’ coming from warming sediments and permafrost is one thing we don't have to worry about in connection with global warming,"
"The researchers believe that soil and marine bacteria that feed on frozen fossil methane as it melts may explain its limited release, by preventing the methane from ever reaching the atmosphere."
I think someone yesterday made a comment here about the value or otherwise of university press releases. That quote is pretty cringey when you think about the effect it will have on the average layperson's understanding of the problem.
Nothing in the abstract or longer explainer contradicts those quotes, whether you consider them "cringey" or not.
"The authors show that the 14C methane signature is relatively constant through this abrupt methane rise. They use a mass-balance calculation to show that this could not have happened if the rise was caused by emissions from geological sources, including hydrates"
"Natural geological methane emissions are expected to have been higher during the past than in modern times12, and so the authors' estimate of emissions 12,000 years ago can be taken as an upper limit for today's climate system."
The closest is the caveat that modern warming may go warmer, and thus further historical analysis and modeling is needed.
If you cannot see what I mean about how that quote was potentially deceptive because of its lack of context, I don't know what to say to you. (but I'm not one of those who downvoted you)
The differences between deglacial and modern warming preclude us from unequivocally ruling
out the possibility of large-scale natural methane releases to the
atmosphere from old carbon reservoirs in the future. Our results do,
however, suggest that such releases are unlikely. This is consistent
with recent atmospheric observations, which suggest that renewed
growth of atmospheric CH4 since 2006 is not driven by emissions
from the Arctic29, where the most vulnerable old carbon reservoirs
are located today. Instead, our results support the hypothesis that any
future increases in natural CH4 emissions to the atmosphere will be
driven by contemporaneous sources such as wetlands.
Another piece of context is that the "don't have to worry" quote was from "Scripps Oceanography geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus, who has been involved with this research project since 2000 and leads the study of ice core records at Scripps." He's in no way a global warming skeptic, but rather an advocate of decarbonization by 2050 to reduce anthropogenic warming, yet he says the sudden arctic methane release is something we don't have to worry about.
There is always more context. Basically anything can be "potentially deceptive", but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate. This appears to be a case where the university press release did a pretty good job of remaining true to the paper.
It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
> Basically anything can be "potentially deceptive"
Come on, stop being disingenuous.
> but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate.
The quote you posted bereft of greater context (Which you've now tried to provide. Well done!) could deceive a number of people. It's both potentially deceptive and, in those instances where it deceives someone, deceptive. The linguistic implications alone are... tremendously boring, to be honest.
> It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
The face-value perception of the quotes I posted ("'methane time bomb’...is one thing we don't have to worry about" with the link for context) is the actual, correct meaning of the quote and conclusion from the climate scientists.
With the face value matching the deeper conclusion, where is the deception?
Methane converts to CO2 on its own. That's why it receives less attention than carbon dioxide, even though it absorbs more infrared energy. The CO2 lasts effectively forever, and is more important for the long term change in the climate.
It would be less-bad for the climate overall if we didn't get the extra temporary energy bump from methane, and it were "only" carbon dioxide directly. But no, there's no way to do that efficiently. The methane stores are spread over many thousands of square miles. It's just to diffuse to operate on directly.
I'm a little confused on this issue. How did all that carbon end up in the permafrost soils in the first place? Presumably because the climate was warmer, and vegetation grew and locked up carbon there. So now the climate there is warming, won't vegetation growth take off again? I'm not denying there's the potential for lots of CO2 and methane to be released, but also there's the potential for more CO2 to be locked up too. At what point does the process switch over from releasing greenhouse gasses to vegetation removing them again?
The planet goes through natural carbon cycles. For example, natural orbital variations cause a little initial heating, then feedback effects like permafrost melt kick in, taking the planet several degrees further.
Then, over millions of years, the carbon gets absorbed again. Rock weathering removes CO2, and layer after layer of plant material gets sequestered in the ground.
The warming events cause mass extinctions. Hardly anything lives at mid-latitudes, and crocodiles swim at the poles.
There's a lot of geological evidence for all this, and it's the reason people are so worried. If negative feedbacks were quick then we'd see a stable climate in the geological record. We see the opposite. It doesn't take much of an initial shove to tip things into catastrophe, and millions of years to get back to a climate like our own.
PBS's Eons Youtube Channel has great videos on this topic. Really, all their videos are amazing and very binge-able. Four that may be most relevant are:
The issue isn't really that the world is going to turn into an inhospitable dustball or watery doom. It's that climate change is going to obliterate the apple cart for humanity.
We like to build big complicated high-cost centers right on the coast. Rising sea water = bad for us.
We like to build expensive permanent buildings. Crazy weather = bad for us.
We like to farm monocultures in predictable climates. Unstable seasons = bad for us.
'Life' is going to be just fine. It's just gonna be super inconvenient for us humans.
Actually "life" isn't going to be just fine - we're going to lose a lot of biodiversity along the way too, and the less we do to prevent warming, the more we'll lose. But my question wasn't about the big picture - it was about the specifics of permafrost thawing.
We're always losing a lot of biodiversity, and we're always gaining more through evolution. That's how it works.
I'm not trivialising the current mass extinction event. It's not great. But pinch points like these have a way of producing some of the best performing creatures we've ever seen.
We will one day gain new biodiversity, but not on human timescales. Evolution moves far far slower than climate change. We are going to loose many things.
True, and that's precisely what I was talking about. We've rocked the boat. We're likely to fall out, as are a bunch of other species. Not everyone will, though.
Life may survive as a concept, but few people want to live in a world populated by jellyfish and cockroaches. The cute, cuddly megafauna (whales, snow leopards, humans etc) certainly do care about what we do to this planet. I'm on the side of the snow leopards and really do not care a jot about the jellyfish. The argument that "life shall be OK" is a delay tactic, a reason to procrastinate the coming nightmare.
It’s not a linear process, it’s chaotic. I’ll attempt an analogy: We ended up in a Goldilocks state where this freezer emerged to keep things cool. The freezer is beginning to malfunction; it’s starting to melt. We discover it’s because we never cleaned the coils. So we clean the coils. But now we discover that the dirty coils led to the freezer overloading. So now the coils are clean but the freezer is still busted...
There are ideas out there to clean the coils (carbon sequestration). But in terms of fixing the broken engine, we’re just kind of hoping it restarts itself once we put things back into a state of normal operating conditions. But it might not [depending on how long we wake to take action; we’re hopefully still in a stage where the coils just need cleaning]. Or at least not at a time scale that matters for humans and a huge chunk of the world’s biome.
As I understand it, for much of the permafrost, there's ongoing vegetation growth, and has been for millennia, with a carbon cycle that's sequesters more carbon than most other places. The plants grow slowly, extracting CO2, die, but don't rot due to conditions, so the levels stored in the soils keep on increasing, and the land rising.
Not dissimilar to peat bogs in temperate regions, though the detail is different.
A thaw would release the thousands of years of stored carbon, and could promote growth that sequesters less carbon.
>At what point does the process switch over from releasing greenhouse gasses to vegetation removing them again?
After all the methane is released from the clathrates.
Presumably you are not going to have it turn into a carbon sink until it is a good site for things to grow and that is not while there is still permafrost.
The way I understand it is that it's about the rate of release/recapture. Permafrost will release carbon much faster than the new vegetation can keep up with. Eventually (after centuries? no idea really) it might all be recaptured back but the damage will already have been done.
"Instead of a few centimetres of thaw a year, several metres of soil can destabilize within days. Landscapes collapse into sinkholes. Hillsides slide away to expose deep permafrost that would otherwise have remained insulated."
As Feynman said, nature cannot be fooled. A rise of 3 degrees between say 19 C to 22 C may not feel that bad for us humans, but a rise of 3 degrees between -2 C to 1 C passes through the point where water changes from solid to liquid...
Wet-bulb temperatures exceeding 35°C are deadly to humans. Already with the current +1 degree warming we see some heat waves reaching close to those temperatures. So a few degrees more in humid climates can actually feel very bad to humans too.
Wet bulb temperature is different from thermometer temperature. It's a combo of temp + humidity. Once it exceeds 35C, humans can't cool off from sweating alone. Unless inside active climate control, the body shuts down in a few hours.
During 2006–2010, 10,649 deaths
of U.S. residents were attributed to
weather-related causes of death
(Table 2). Exposure to excessive natural
heat, heat stroke, sun stroke, or all were
cited as either the underlying cause or a
contributing cause of death for 3,332
(31%) of these deaths, and exposure to
excessive natural cold, hypothermia, or
both was cited for 6,660 (63%)
A 3 degree rise has the effect that close to the equator, temperatures rise perhaps a degree or so. Close to the arctics though, it would be closer to 9 degrees.
I think it's 100% because the changes are so slow(in human terms). Vast majority of people don't yet see anything that would make them go into this full-on panic mode, so....they don't. Yeah the permafrost is melting, but I have bills to pay this month. What am I going to do? Go and protest all day? What is my kid going to eat in the meantime?
And I think this slowness of reaction is also what will make any sort of solution extremely difficult to implement - people will complain that they are feeling the impact of any solution right now(like, if plastics were banned tomorrow), while the climate won't improve for a long time - even if we stopped our emissions entirely the climate would keep getting worse for decades until any meaningful improvement would be observed.
"...renewables (including biofuels, waste and hydro) are responsible for almost the same share of energy today (14 per cent) as supplied in 1971 "
We can shave of percentages by stopping eating meat and so on but fossil fuels are still the major culprit in carbon emissions.
From economical point of view it's catastrophe today (just stopping using fossil fuels cold turkey will destroy the economic structure of our civilization) versus catastrophe tomorrow.
The first official warning by an expert panel to the US President was 1965. We did pretty much nothing since then to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel. We could have for example switched all electricity generation to nuclear with 1965 technology and changed building standards to require proper insulation and electric or district heating. That would have bought a lot of time that we don't have now. We could also have instituted a carbon tax and slowly (over the course of the last fifty years or so!) pinned it to the cost of extracting carbon from the atmosphere.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. We're here now, we can't change the past, and blaming previous generations is a waste of time when we need to act now. Most of us know what to do. We just need to start doing it.
And we won't, for the same reasons they didn't in the past: it is too inconvenient. If we are ever to solve problems like this we need to embed within our culture the desire to sacrifice convenience for a future we may never see, and that's more or less the antithesis of current cultural norms. We need to take responsibility for this ourselves on an individual level and stop just pointing fingers and making excuses why it can't be done.
What do we need to do? I don't see how we can reduce carbon emissions by 18% per year for the next ten years. Right now we don't even get the second derivative right, emission rates are still on the rise. It doesn't really look like our politicians worldwide will start an effort comparable to ramping up the WW2 war industry to decarbonize the economy in the next decade. On the contrary, conservative climate denialists are on the rise.
What we can do is to skip unnecessary travel, use public transport whenever we can, stop buying fairly useless consumer products for our own leisure, and the most important ones: realise that reducing our collective carbon footprint will result in considerable reductions of one's individual standard of living.
We, as individual consumers, need to reduce the carbon emissions ourselves as much as possible no matter what the politicians say. Deniers are going to be a problem until shit hits the fan for real, and waiting until everyone is convinced will simply be a waste of time.
So, in other words, focus less on what others do, more on what you do, and make sure to prepare as much as you can for whatever the future holds. Not saying everyone should become a prepper (although it's a fun hobby!), but the fact that people blindly believe that the future is a straight line is scarier, regardless of where they believe that line is pointing.
Individuals reducing their carbon footprint by reducing consumption is all good, but it is really a drop in the bucket in the big picture. I would be worried that focusing on that could be counter-productive with a higher chance of making people either feel that they have "done their part" (if they have personally done these minor reductions) or induce general apathy over the fact that the only way forward is to reduce your quality of living while knowing that it won't make any real difference anyway.
If we really want to make a change we have to focus on big picture solutions. Instead of being against, we need to focus on what we want to move towards.
The only way to reduce our dependency on carbon fuels within a realistic timeframe is an aggressive rollout of renevable energy like wind and solar, _and_ nuclear. If we were really serious about this, we would do massive investments in nuclear, building lots of new plants and also stepping up the research in technologies like molten salt and thorium based reactors.
If we should take to the street and demonstrate, it should be _for_ actual solutions like that, rather than _against_ minor things that don't make much of a difference anyways.
Definitely! I'm not against big picture solutions -- I just don't see then need to postpone action on an individual level until a big picture solution has been put in place.
The changes we need to do will require a large cultural change in order for people to accept them. We need to accept collective AND individual responsibility for something that affects the entire biosphere. Increasing taxes on fuel won't change the way people think, any more than getting rid of plastic straws will. After all, most large changes can be summarized as a long sequence of smaller events (not sure if that last part sounds right -- English isn't my first language).
That's like a landslide were each pebble of dirt doesn't consider itself responsible for what's happening, on a bigger scale, even tho all the pebbles keep doing the same thing leading to bigger scale consequences in the first place.
Many a mickle makes a muckle, this applies to pretty much everything.
If everybody keeps acting like their individual contributions are completely meaningless, then nobody will change anything about their own ways and thus large scale change will remain a pipe-dream.
The vast majority of carbon emissions is out of individual control.
The longer you keep parroting this corporate propaganda, the more fucked we are. This needs strong government intervention, now.
Preferably paid for with massive, backdated windfall taxes on every company and shareholder that ever materially benefited from environmentally destructive companies.
Obviously not going to happen, but let's not pretend me or you are responsible for the industrial levels of pollution, and the last few decades of climate change denier lobbying, when those companies full well knew the damage they were doing.
> but let's not pretend me or you are responsible for the industrial levels of pollution
Let's instead pretend our chosen lifestyle of abundance and wastefulness doesn't factor into any of this at all?
Who do you think these companies are selling their products to? Thus financing their operations in the first place? Externalizing the blame for this solely on the industry, like consumers have zero responsibility or impact, might be convenient but imho it only serves to shift the blame from one party to the other and vice versa, so that ultimately nobody feels responsible and thus nobody starts acting.
To tackle this will require efforts on both ends. Because the industry will simply react by "There's demand for it, so we do it", while consumers go "The industry is doing it, somebody needs to force them to change, but don't you dare to inconvenience ME!".
Literally, nothing stops us from doing both: Being responsible consumers and properly regulating the industry.
Suppose everybody did this and reduced their carbon footprint by 30-50%. They still have to eat and not freeze to death in winter, but we need to become completely carbon neutral. Individual action is definitely necessary, and can buy us valuable time, but there is only so much individuals can do.
> From economical point of view it's catastrophe today (just stopping using fossil fuels cold turkey will destroy the economic structure of our civilization) versus catastrophe tomorrow.
I think this is a false dichotomy, and so do many economists [1]. We can start phasing out out the non-essential use of fossils and come up with replacements for the remainign parts in the coming decades.
Painting it as this kind of desperate dichotomy is generally playing into the hands those who don't want us to address climate change.
Remember that the changes aren't only chilling on the economy - the energy overhaul is an enormous global public works project.
We are using energy and energy-intensive products in really wasteful ways because of their low cost in our everyday lives (consider oversized cars and low occupancy, available savings from turning heating & cooling to lower levels, going veggie in food, cutting air travel, not to mention all the wasted energy in commercial/industrial side due to low energy costs).
I think the biggest hurdle is that the incumbent investments in hydrocarbons have quite a lot of future profits to tied up to continued usage of said resources. The negative externalities of hydrocarbon eceonomy should be tied more forcefully directly to their usage. But even that would not discourage investors from doing all they can to keep up the demand for oil.
That's the endgame I expect: climate refugees leading to (possibly nuclear) war. With a much smaller human population (and perhaps a bit of nuclear winter), atmospheric CO2 will return to pre-industrial levels, and things will return to normal in a couple millennia. The remaining humans will migrate down from Alaska and Siberia, and build new cities on top of the ruins.
Climate change is a "solved" problem, but the solution isn't something I would want to live through.
I can see advanced civilization taking a (possibly long) pause. But there will be so much space to expand into for the survivors, and caches of technology to discover. Someone will eventually discover and re-tool.
Switch to electric transportation as quickly as possible.
Change your mind about needing a personal automobile, and share it with as many people as possible. Use public transportation if you have it, and insist in your community investing in public transportation systems if you don't.
It'll be up to the good citizens of Houston to work out how to solve this problem. I imagine electric transportation would still work there. But, I do also think that a lot of American cities are going to have to work out how they're going to stay inhabitable without requiring a massive refactoring of their landscapes.
Because panic does not bring about solutions. Nobody is disagreeing that there is an issue. Nobody. I believe there are a number of people pointing out the problem, over and over, civil disobedience etc, but there is nobody pointing out a viable solution. I believe that is why nobody responds to civil disobedience. I think if people came up with a viable solution we would be all over it. Technological change is probably the answer (as it was to the ozone hole). I think electric vehicles eliminating fossil fuel powered vehicles as sure as flat screen TV's eliminated CRT's is an answer. I think a lack of acceptance of nuclear power is an issue, and nuclear power is an efficient viable solution. Solutions have to be socially acceptable and able to deliver mass change - a solution of turning off coal plants is not an answer as it would destroy civilisation, economies and populations in the same way that climate change would - no equally efficient and inexpensive replacement. Activist groups have not realised that Civil disobedience is not an answer, it is just pushing the question over and over. Solutions are what is required!!
SO WHAT? The USA doesn't rule the world. What is your solution? Convincing everyone that there is a problem is not a solution. We just end up with everyone convinced there is a problem. Wasted energy. What is the solution?
What an unnecessarily hostile response. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything - one of the issues is that you have people who not only deny it's happening, but are trying to convince people it's not happening. Regardless of your assertion, the evidence is there that the issue is extremely polarised.
I was pointing out that it's not as simple as wanting to believe that everyone is on the same page, here. It's not easy to even get people to recognise the issue, let alone starting from a point where we're all pulling in the same direction.
The solution is a carbon tax that is tied to the cost of extracting carbon from the atmosphere and storing it for geological time periods. The sooner we start, the gentler we can ramp it up.
The more people know about it, the more they are. Talk to academic ecologists. It's also very gradually dawning on the general population, but slow-motion catastrophes are hard to address with urgency given the many demands on peoples' attention. Add to the mix a firehose of lies and propaganda from the Murdoch media which has given many a false impression that climate collapse is scientifically controversial.
There are signs of panic amongst the very young. A widespread rebellion is the only thing that could move fast enough to save us at this point, and I can't see where that could come from other than our youth. The chances aren't good, but if there are signs of hope, that would be where to look.
I think humanity has a built in "we'll figure it out" belief. I've seen people even here go "well, we'll just get used to the new normal". I think that, as things aren't immediately catastrophic they aren't that bad, and we'll figure it out at the 11th hour, like the race of superheroes that we are. Because nothing has ended the world so far, this one won't either. We'll just figure it out.
It is an actionable solution. Riots got the poll tax repealed. Civil disobedience achieved independence in India, and civil rights in the US. A march from A to B highlights something - and is always easy to ignore. They always are.
The aim of XR is not to tell about climate change. Everyone should know about that. The science was settled decades ago. Just about everyone knows what needs to be done, too. Yet governments do nothing but bleat on about an opportunity from shale oil, or some new coal contract. Then bring a little green washing with far future targets, long after they have retired, or outlawing plastic bags.
Civil disobedience and intentional law breaking does not aim to tell anyone the problem, it's bloody obvious. It aims to become a permanent and ongoing drain upon resources. Like a tax or a labour strike. To cause actual costs to the system and state, their people and potentially companies. Costs of policing, of removing chained up protesters, of flooding the courts with formerly law-abiding citizens.
Because of a few great wins in history, we have a rather romantic and rosie notion of civil disobedience, protesting, marching, and general civil disruption. And so they've become well-worn tools of the modern activist. Its worth questioning whether these are the best tools to use in so many circumstances.
Its a very real possibility that the gamble doesn't pay off. It might even drive polarization and skepticism among the very people you need to reach the most. It may just create civil unrest and reduce our resources, leaving us less able to fight climate change. Or a few smart people who might otherwise be able to contribute to a solution, end up spending their valuable time in jail, instead.
Survivor bias in civil disobedience makes some people think that “on average” it produces positive results, especially when the cause is “just” (which every violent extremist does, of course). Anyone even casually familiar with history would blush at such arrogance.
> rosie notion of civil disobedience, protesting, marching, and general civil disruption
Personally I see protesting and marching as a nice Saturday afternoon out that achieves precisely nothing. Just look what the massive march and demo against the Iraq war achieved - nowt. It's important not to conflate them with civil disobedience which has very different aims and tactics.
It's being an ongoing thorn in the side of the state that has historically made a difference. I certainly don't see that as a well-worn tool of the modern activist - it's a forgotten tactic, replaced by one-off marches or demos, and the online petition. Which achieve almost nothing.
If a few smart people feel it's gone too long being ignored that they are now willing to risk prison, well good on them. If they're smart enough and presentable enough to not be easily dismissed as eco-nuts by the right wing media, they can often achieve positive press for their aims. It's hard to dismiss a retiree with 40 years in industry, doctor, or IT consultant quite so easily.
It remains to be seen if the gamble and assessment of public opinion is correct. For both XR and the school strikes, the public reaction has appeared hugely positive so far - far more so than I would have expected. Which is a problem for a government that would prefer not to act.
Of course it was a good thing, it was a flat rate per head, regardless of income or wealth. Making it one of the most regressive taxes we've had. Trivial for the income of many HN readers, crippling for a typical nurse, teacher or shop worker.
You're absolutely right, I was just pointing out in your post you believe that governance via violent extremists is good, but governance via land-owners (wealth) is bad. How do you reconcile that: is there any underlying principle behind your belief? Should we enshrine violent tactics into law as a Good Thing or should we, as a society, oppose you and your kind with all our might?
I very clearly don't advocate violent resistance, but civil disobedience. An entirely non-violent resistance, such as seen in the school strikes and XR protests, or the well known historic examples.
The anti-poll tax riots were as counter productive as they were productive due to their violence. A reasonable police response is necessarily very different to a reaction to polite society women chaining themselves to railings seeking suffrage, or the entirely non violent blocking of bridges of XR. Yet they are an example of law breaking achieving change. So no, using it as a for-instance of change is no indicator whatsoever I believe in violent extremism. I don't.
Violent tactics can entirely reasonably provoke a draconian response. A draconian or violent response to entirely peaceful protest, such as XR or civil rights protests is counter productive for government, and may actually incite riot.
I'm reasonably comfortable with XR's aims, which are, off the top of my head: Tell the truth about the scale of the problem and time available in all parts of the state, and zero carbon by 2025.
That would require a rethink of almost everything to be sustainable, and a short enough timescale that governments can't simply kick it into the long grass of "not during our term".
I would question your assertion that we all know there is a problem. I imagine the vast majority of people don't. They may be vaguely aware of climate change, but most people just think surely it can't be serious and it'll be ok, we'll work it out when it does become a problem.
Just the other day the UK courts have dismissed any attempt at blocking an extra runway at Heathrow airport. We need this runway to increase the number of flights out of the UK. Good for the economy etc.. If that isn't a symptom of the vast majority of people being in complete denial I don't know what is.
Actionable solution no. 1.. don't build more runways.
The law is the law. The courts can only uphold and interpret what's written.
So before we can get to no more runways we need governments that react appropriately to the problem, and build climate change and environmental consequences into laws. Strong laws that restrict and tax carbon, building regulations, transport, well everything.
> We all know there is a problem. Absolutely no-one denies it.
You keep angrily repeating this, and it's very obviously wrong. Nobody is going to take you seriously if you keep doing this, even if they're natural allies in whatever cause you're part of.
Spend double digit percentages of our annual budget on decarbonizing the economy.
Have for example a look at how much the Iraq war cost over seven years and imagine how many batteries and solar panels could have been build with that money and how many homes could have gotten improved insulation. And that was really just a minor blip compared to the efforts that went into WW2.
Countries like the Maledives invest in land; that's a sensible thing to do that will save existences. What's not sensible to do is restrict fossil fuels in Europe wile China is still ramping up; it's symbolism that does not help a single person.
Every ton of carbon counts. Every Euro invested in carbon neutral alternatives makes it cheaper for poorer countries to switch. A EU wide carbon tax that is also applied to imports would perhaps also sway China into putting more effort into reducing their emissions.
There is a benefit in starting to restrict fossil fuels early. It has to be done at some point anyway because the backing resource is limited and contributes to the human-hostile terraforming of our planet. Continuing with burning coal and oil is simply a losing proposition.
Also, while defossilizing the industry base, it makes sense to enhance, increase and automate local factories to make it viable to produce things locally and not half a world away. Add a functional and effective system for recycling materials to use for new production, etc. and the long term trend is clear: China's role as the production hub of the world will diminish dramatically. From this perspective I do not understand why China does not seem to be racing like mad to restrict fossil fuels.
The appendix of last year’s IPCC report contained a list of potential solutions. Repairing damaged soil was high on the list. Trees are an obvious thing; we should be planting large numbers of trees. Large scale reforestation as well as everywhere else we can fit them. But soil holds the potential to sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
Degraded soil lacks microbial life. If usually ends up that way from conventional farming and poor land management. Repairing it would mean moving away from conventional monocrop farming towards rotational grazing [and other alternative practices]. A good reason to eat mostly local food from small organic farms, and if you eat beef to at least make sure it’s grass fed, pasture raised. This also cuts down on the carbon cost of transporting food halfway across the world in trucks and planes. (Those transportation costs are not factored into the EPAs estimates for how much agriculture contribute to climate change. Neither are the emissions generated in producing all the chemicals used in agriculture. They also don’t factor in how much carbon would be sequestered in all the acreage currently used for conventional farming, if it were to be replaced with practices like Silvopasture and agroforestry, or healthy pastures.)
The issue of climate change is a systemic one. A centralized food production system that relies on fossil fuels for both inputs and outputs (petrochemicals as well as transportation) has resulted in a society of sprawl. You don’t have to have a farm down the block anymore, and you can drive 30 miles to work. It’s all connected.
One idea is we can move back to a model of small local farms, keeping communities more tightly knitted and less sprawled. That would limit food choices more towards what’s in season, or has a long shelf life. Arguably, while limited by seasonality, the food would taste better since these days we engineer for transportability over taste. Another option would be to keep with a centralized model but rapidly decarbonize it; electric trains, agroforestry, etc.
I personally think the decentralized model has the potential to be very beautiful. But we should be pragmatic and take whatever the best elements are of either path and just start making changes.
Why doesn't the article provide any temperature data showing, one would think, some unusual increase? 'Climate Change' doesn't make things melt: heat does.
Interesting. He concretizes unforeseen consequences of screwing with the global ecosystem. I'm not sure that it's useful, though. Reality is frightening enough.
I've lived through a few situations where I did something stupid, and surprising stuff happened. Too quickly to do anything about, but slowly enough to appreciate how bad it was going to be. My first faceplant on a snowboard, for example. So anyway, regarding global climate change, the last 30 years has been like that. And surprises just keep coming.
> Change is not difficult really, but the majority do not want to make deep sacrifices and would rather be a happy fat cat.
The 90s dotcom boom took some vaguely 'smart' people, then gave them enough money that they are the richest people in the world. These people now sit on their asses and donate pitiful amounts of their money away (Bezos donating 30,000 to a couple of children is the equivalent of an investment banker tossing a spare 5p coin at a homeless person. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it's less than the bare minimum that we should expect. For comparison, if less than two thirds of the 1.1bn raised for the Notre Dame were donated to Flint, Michighan, then the people there could be drinking clean water by now...) to keep people appeased while the people working for them (in the case of, say, Amazon) literally starve and faint from exhaustion, and get less than minimum wage for it.
I do not think you mean 'the majority'. I think you mean, the three bus-loads of ~90 CEOs and middle executives that, if they happened to crash/explode, would literally solve climate change overnight.
The report found that more than half of global industrial
emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25
corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical
emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is
large enough to have contributed significantly to climate
change, according to the report.
and
A Carbon Tracker study in 2015 found that fossil fuel
companies risked wasting more than $2tn over the coming
decade by pursuing coal, oil and gas projects that could be
worthless in the face of international action on climate
change and advances in renewables – in turn posing
substantial threats to investor returns.
> "I think you mean, the three bus-loads of ~90 CEOs and middle executives that, if they happened to crash/explode, would literally solve climate change overnight."
No matter how many executives you propose to eliminate, the consumer demand for the goods those companies provide is unlikely to go away. People consume energy and it's unlikely that we'll be able to reduce our usage meaningfully in the near future.
If we want to meaningfully reduce energy usage it's going to take organized collective efforts around the planet.
> consumer demand for the goods those companies provide is unlikely to go away
consumer demand is a very artificial phenomena that requires a massive propaganda campaign to keep it alive. I am talking about marketing of course. All we have to do really is to ban advertisement (wishful thinking of course). Without it consumer demand will wane super quick.
> the consumer demand for the goods those companies provide is unlikely to go away.
There wouldn't be consumer demand if the companies in question hadn't covered up the damage that they do. You can hide behind 'consumer demand' but that really is just a meaningless term, practically speaking, through what is almost a total control of the major press outlets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch), and rabid advertising, the consumer can be manipulated to like or dislike anything. Especially if you suppress certain details like "buying oil is killing the planet". It isn't like the companies in question didn't have 40 years to diversify into sustainable energy sources.
You argue against the state having control, but at least if that were the case the state could have enforced a gradual tapering off and eventual stoppage of these types of energy. Unfortunately we no longer have the time to do that.
In fact, you are using exactly the same arguments that the oil industry used, to cover up climate change.
Privately, these companies did not dispute the links
between their products, global warming, and ecological
calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the
connections.
and
Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for
their products. In Shell’s study, the firm argued that
the “main burden” of addressing climate change rests
not with the energy industry, but with governments and
consumers. That argument might have made sense if oil
executives, including those from Exxon and Shell, had
not later lied about climate change and actively
prevented governments from enacting clean-energy
policies.
> People consume energy and it's unlikely that we'll be able to reduce our usage meaningfully in the near future.
The only reason people consume unsustainable energy is because the alternative is expensive, and people are not paid properly enough to be able to afford such luxuries as a clean conscience.
The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as a year or
more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government
aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of
the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk
of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.
and
It's time that America comes to understand that many of
the nation's biggest disparities, from education and
life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to
economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a
Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty.
Do I? I've reread what I wrote and don't think I made any such statements -- but if I did, that was _not_ my intention. State and planetary intervention seems to be our only way forward.
> The only reason people consume unsustainable energy is because the alternative is expensive
Yes, absolutely. And this is further complicated by the emissions that developing nations tend to output as they advance and grow. As long as coal remains as cheap and as sought-after by developing nations we will have a hard time reigning in the harmful emissions.
Birth control limits. We can be happy fat cats and solve global warming just by having fewer people.
Richness is resources per person. Resources on the planet are approximately fixed with occasional (large) increases from tech advances. The divisor, on the other hand, can be changed from 7 billion to 1 million. We would all be 7 thousand times richer. I would immediately own 5 abandoned Ferraris, and there would be hardly a need for any speed limits.
I have a rule. Anyone who advocates or otherwise wishes to impose systematic methods of extermination on other people should be the first people to be chosen to be subject to the system.
You want people in the boat to resort to cannibalism? Ok, you're first to be eaten.
You want to throw someone out of the hot air balloon? Ok, you first. Jump.
If you want to serilize people? Ok. You first. Go to a doctor and demand to be sterilized. If they won't do it, either find a doctor that will, or grab a knife and do it yourself.
You want a second plague? Ok. You first. Volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, go to a plague-ridden country, and deliberately infect yourself with something horrible.
You want to bomb people? Ok, go join Doctors Without Borders, or another aid effort, and help bomb victims. Put yourself at risk of being bombed. Join the millitary and put yourself on the other end of the shelling.
People rarely wish for these things to happen to them. Be the exception.
Fine, I only want 0 then. Argument won. I'd rather have 0 kids and fix humanity and global warming than have a kid. The fact that you'd rather nitpick my argument and call it hypocritical in the face of extinction...
It's like...God is on a mountain with his arms raised in a Y saying "I have the secret to you're humanity:" and you say "ACTUALLY IT'S YOUR".
Don't kid yourself. It's not "consumer demand" that's doing the harm, it's companies. Companies aren't interested in fixing this because fixing it is not profitable. But you can't blame that on the consumers.
The obvious solution is to make it less profitable not to address these problems but that means passing crippling regulations that will result in companies going under, markets shrinking, jobs being lost and products vanishing. In other words: political suicide.
And it doesn't even take consumers protesting about these things, it's enough if a few billionaires or megacorps use their political power to push back on these attempts of "regulatory overreach" or whatever riles up the conservative vote today.
Literally noone in a position necessary to do something against the climate crisis has any incentive to do anything meaningful to stop it.
But what is profit? Companies selling at the price where customers think "Oh that's a great price! I'll buy it!". How to get a cheap price? Manufacture where labor is cheap. And/or where there are low carbon taxes. Or where the EPA has been told by the leader of the country to ignore pollution by your factory. And using the best-priced raw materials (more easily to get from suppliers that don't have to spend a lot of money complying with regulations...).
If only price labels are more something along the lines of "Price: 300 USD, 3kg of CO2, 400l of polluted water, 40ha of ruined farmland"...
If we're going to climb the abstraction ladder of blame, then it's not the companies -- it's the consumption of energy and the release of various greenhouse gasses that's doing the harm, not the companies. But that's not a super-useful fact.
We could globally outlaw capitalism, and I'd fully expect that the resource demand would just be replaced by governments (as is basically the case with China Coal & Saudi Oil) providing these materials since people are going to riot if you take them away.
Like how do you foresee the average person reacting if they can only get 5 gallons of fuel per week, that their food selection is reduced to what's available in a 50-mile radius of where they live? That they can't have air conditioning for more than a few hours a day? These are near-apocalyptic scenarios that we're talking about if reduce our energy usage to sustainable levels.
Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for
their products. In Shell’s study, the firm argued
that the “main burden” of addressing climate change
rests not with the energy industry, but with
governments and consumers. That argument might have
made sense if oil executives, including those from
Exxon and Shell, had not later lied about climate
change and actively prevented governments from
enacting clean-energy policies.
If there is a lever to make things better, and I stop you from knowing about that lever, I have stopped things from getting better. You can't argue that the lever might not have made things better, given that I was the person who suppressed the choice itself.
Alternatively, if tax day is in two months, and you do not know tax day exists, and I know, and not only do I deliberately choose not to tell you, but I deliberately stop you from knowing, then I am responsible for you not filing your taxes on time.
> Like how do you foresee the average person reacting if they can only get 5 gallons of fuel per week,
We would have had 40 years to change to electric cars and heating, so it wouldn't matter.
> that their food selection is reduced to what's available in a 50-mile radius of where they live?
Likewise the food transport industry would have had 40 years to transition their infrastructure to a sustainable state. Indeed, we might be using primarily hydroponics-based agriculture at this point.
> That they can't have air conditioning for more than a few hours a day?
The places that require air conditioning are sunny. Indeed, the entirety of america's energy requirements could be supplied by a tiny square of solar panels in the desert, so I do not see why in 40 years, air conditioning couldn't have matured to a state where it not only requires less energy, but also was sustainable.
> These are near-apocalyptic scenarios that we're talking about if reduce our energy usage to sustainable levels.
I mean, they are now, but as I have stated repeatedly, we could have had 40 years to prepare. Now we're 2 days before tax day, scrambling to prepare for the worst, because we never really had enough warning to set us on a path to the best.
I'm pretty sure regardless of the lies that companies have told (obviously bad), the thing that is directly tied to climate change is the increase in the volume of greenhouse gasses. Now, I'm sure a lot of those executives are hot-heads, but I haven't seen evidence that their off-gassing actually accounts for a meaningful portion of harmful emissions.
Of course a time machine would make things easier, and of course it would be easier if there hadn't been systemic lies and cover-ups. But we cannot control that. In the context of what we're discussing -- it doesn't matter if you completely eliminate all 100 of the cited companies overnight, the demand will still exist for the services that require energy that renewables cannot currently supply the demand for.
> I haven't seen evidence that their off-gassing actually accounts for a meaningful portion of harmful emissions.
I assume you read my post at the top and saw this:
A Carbon Tracker study in 2015 found that fossil fuel
companies risked wasting more than $2tn over the coming
decade by pursuing coal, oil and gas projects that could be
worthless in the face of international action on climate
change and advances in renewables – in turn posing
substantial threats to investor returns.
I also assume you've done research and seen these:
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says
and
"There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in
the world," climate researcher and author Richard Heede
at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado
said. "But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the
ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just
one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or
two."
Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in
the past 25 years – well past the date when governments
and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas
emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing
dangerous climate change.
Many of the same companies are also sitting on
substantial reserves of fossil fuel which – if they are
burned – puts the world at even greater risk of
dangerous climate change.
So, assuming you have done that research and have seen those, would you mind clarifying what you are saying?
> But we cannot control that.
At the very least there should be accountability that the deliberate, malicious actions of these (more or less) 90 people have put the entire species at risk. The point here is that they had enough warning and time to diversify to nuclear and renewable energy, but instead of doing that they covered it up and put us in an impossible position.
Companies only exist while there is some demand that they can fulfill. There's exceptions -- companies that manipulate the system. And of course we should expect that most companies are trying to manipulate the system to generally increase the demand for the goods they produce.
But that demand is real. This whole thread started on the idea of executives dying to end climate change.
I'm simply stating that idea is both outrageous and offensive.
Yes, companies have done bad things. Yes, they should be held accountable.
No, reparations from individual companies will not get us out of the situation we're in.
Regulation and enforcement are the only tools we've developed that seem to have any chance of working -- and we need to seriously improve upon those tools so that we can better enact change on a global level.
It's not the companies. It's the emissions, and a severe lack of regulation and guidance to curb them and those factors which increase their demand.
But you just stated that that demand is not real. That most companies artificially manipulate demand, implies that a majority of the demand is not real.
Furthermore, talking generally as you are doing, obscures the point. The demand for unsustainable, literal-killing-the-planet-and-the-species energy, would not exist if it were not for a handful of companies covering up scientific research, and lobbying politically to ensure that they are never held accountable.
> This whole thread started on the idea of executives dying to end climate change
>
> I'm simply stating that idea is both outrageous and offensive.
Why? I find the idea of the death of anyone, revolting. I am usually the first person to argue against the death penalty. In this specific instance, I find it completely and utterly inexcusable that these people chose to enable the death of billions of people, to put entire ecosystems and millions of species at risk, and trillions of lifeforms, just so they could continue maintaining a profit.
If a large amount of countries around the world, and states in America, can agree that it is just to put someone to death for harming someone, then the same people should unequivocally accept it's use in this instance. This isn't just a bad thing for the people to have done, there really is no other example in history. The number of deaths from the Holocaust literally pales in comparison to the amount of death that those individuals have tangibly, provably manipulated, all for the sake of profit.
If that comparison feels far-fetched, please remember that it is not over-the-top to state that the actions these people have taken, and continue to take through their inaction, are literally causing a mass-extinction.
If I conspired to throw the asteroid that caused the KT Extinction at the Earth, I would be held culpable, no?
Of course, perhaps it would be better to keep them alive, strip them of their wealth, and let them ride out the disaster they have created along with everyone else.
> Yes, companies have done bad things. Yes, they should be held accountable.
That's past tense. They have not just done bad things, they are continuing to do bad things, and they are manipulating things so that they will, for the foreseeable future continue to do 'bad' things.
> No, reparations from individual companies will not get us out of the situation we're in.
I agree. The companies cannot do anything to save us at this point. They should be seized by the state and put on a path to renewable energy, or otherwise shut down.
> It's not the companies. It's the emissions, and a severe lack of regulation and guidance to curb them and those factors which increase their demand.
Oh I see, so nobody is responsible then? Or are you trying to argue that the state is responsible, or that the people are responsible?
I'm no fan of Amazon but I don't see how correcting an outright false claim is "an incredible nitpick" and I don't think that the personal attack is really called for.
Not everyone has the freedom/opportunity to pick and choose jobs they like, and even if they did, that doesn't mean Amazon should treat their workers terribly.
On the other hand many countries have successfully introduced recycling and pollution reduction measures currently and in the past. Germany's attempts to move to renewable power have largely failed, but it does show large scale economic measures are possible. France demonstrates that a switch to nuclear, if others choose to go that route, is viable. There are ongoing efforts to reduce the use of plastics, particularly in it's forms most likely to result in pollution. Our switch to electric vehicles is well under way.
We are still screwed, I'll give you that, but the degree to which we are screwed and how fast is something we can influence, and that does matter.
> Germany's attempts to move to renewable power have largely failed, but it does show large scale economic measures are possible.
I keep reading this, yet nobody bothers to actually explain how it supposedly failed?
> France demonstrates that a switch to nuclear, if others choose to go that route, is viable.
France didn't "switch" to nuclear, in the 70s they spent $330 billion of public money to build their nuclear fleet.
Since then the reactor fleet has been aging, due to a lack of private investments, and a lack of funds for decommissioning is also a very real problem, not just for France [0] but across to the EU [1].
Which is one of the reasons why France is also considering to phase out nuclear reactors, at least in part [2].
The problem in Germany is that energy costs have spiralled out of control. They have greatly expanded renewable energy sources, but have not been able to decommission a lot of fossil fuel plants because they still need them to serve peak demand at times when renewable sources are not on-line. However lack of investment in fossil plants, which they hoped to decommission, means they are ageing and prone to outages. It's only buying nuclear power from France to plug the gaps that's keeping them operational.
It's unfortunate, but such mistakes are far from inevitable in the policies of other countries. The will was there, but hard lessons had to be learned.
Yes France's nuclear power is going to be expensive long term, but French per capita greenhouse gas emissions are incredibly low. About 2/3 of the EU average and a bit over a quarter of the US. Factor in any kind of reasonable carbon tax cost, then combine it with an increased contribution from renewable, and French nuclear starts to look quite viable.
As a German, I can't follow you about our out of control spiraled energy costs.
Yes, the EEG made electricity more expensive [0], it also didn't help that energy companies abused regulatory loopholes to fill their own pockets.
But nobody can expect large scale changes like this to be free, somebody gotta pay for this and I'm absolutely willing to pay for this because in the long-term it will be worth it.
It's also my understanding that electricity exports ain't a one-way street between France and Germany, electricity exports and imports are on a pretty similar level [1].
Imho the real problem currently is a lack of proper storage technologies and infrastructure, so we can fully utilize our renewable capabilities, but I'm hopeful that we will also get there.
I have to strongly agree with the first part regarding the so called "out of control costs": Yeah, electricity is much cheaper in the US than here, but so what? Often people on HN (especially those in the states) make claims like "people ought to see the real costs on their bills", especially when it's about subsidies (e.g. via public health care). But, well, here is the thing: Energy in the US is greatly subsidized. Not necessarily monetarily, but regarding environmental costs. Gallon of gasoline for cheap bucks for thirsty cars? Even cheaper electricity for Bitcoin mining?
Yeah, I suppose a lot of the extra costs here end up in some company pockets - but if this causes people to be more responsible with their power usage then that's an acceptable trade-off for me.
As for the second part: I know a lot of grid-balancing happens cross-border in the EU, but I didn't look up numbers, so there is not a lot I can objectively say on that topic. Personally, I pay a little more for "clean" energy. I know I still get the same mix like anyone else, but my energy supplier has to buy my personal demand from more eco-friendly sources. Yes, it is still "a spit in an empty pool", but that's still better than taking a dump in the river on bathing day just because everyone else is doing it.
Energy costs in Germany haven't spiralled "out of control". Yes, electricity is quite expensive for private and small business customers, but that is, because large industry does not bear any of the transitioning costs. The coal plants are kept operating, because it is profitable to the power companies and so far no one has stopped them. This has somewhat improved in 2018. There are no "power outages" because of lacking energy supply. Equally wrong (but often told by certain people) is the story of French nuclear power supporting the grid. It is actually the opposite, when for example in warm summers German solar power delivers critical support to the French grid. Due to the lack of cooling water, nuclear energy often is challenged to match the requirements. On top of that, Germany is a net exporter of electricity (mostly due to the too high coal production, but that hopefully stops soon).
And again some wrong claims, there is 3 nuclear power plants over 19 that uses the water of rivers to cool down, in the summer there is temperature limits on the outputted water (25°c) for the aquatic life on the rivers. It is a variation of a few GW on about 60GW, that are blip on the daily consumption, and do not impact the grid.
Forgive me, when I wrote "lack of cooling water", while there might be water, but you cannot use it for cooling because of the temperatures of the river. But the consequence is the same.
Yes, France exports power, but not TO Germany. It exports ACROSS Germany to other countries. The power gets there using the German grid, but not consume in Germany.
The French power isn't needed in the German grid - the only time French power is used in the German grid might be short times when there is surplus production which needs to be absorbed in Europe.
Sorry, but what makes you claim that Germany's attempts have "failed"? We have a strong growth in reneweable energy production, over 40% of all electricity produced was reneweable. The total of 2019 is 45% so far. All of this in the presence of obvious coal protectionism. If anything, all of this is encouragement to push harder for a quicker transition.
Parent is right though, these things could have been done decades ago and are only being done now because it is relatively convenient. On the whole, people seem unwilling to make any significant sacrifice for the sake of our future. As a result we will suffer catastrophically as a species. If we're lucky, we will learn from it and in the far future we'll be able to progress while avoiding such shortsightedness.
A similar worry is methane hydrates. [2]
It seems that the only remaining hopes are rapid progress on carbon sequestration on a vast scale, or risky geoengineering.
[1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-24/thawing-permafrost-co... [2] https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/methane-hydrate...