
What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped? - hundt
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending
======
adrianN
The thing is, it's already too late to prevent pretty terrible effects of
climate change, but it's not too late to stop it from getting _even worse_.
Every tenth of a degree can make a world of difference. So while we will most
certainly not stay below 1.5°, the difference between 2 and 3 degrees is huge,
and the efforts we make today decide in what world we'll live in. Resigning to
the inevitable now is a surefire recipe to get to the absolute worst case
scenario where the survival of our technological civilization is very much
uncertain.

~~~
Bombthecat
But would there be a difference between 5 and 6?

~~~
gambiting
From what I understand no - warming by 5 degrees will cause all phytoplankton
to die off and as a result we'll run out of oxygen(not immediately of course,
but we inevitably will).

~~~
leereeves
The world was once 8C to 14C hotter than it is now (during the Eocene) and it
didn't run out of oxygen. In fact, this was the epoch when modern mammals took
over the world.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene)

~~~
adrianN
Prehistoric warm periods didn't happen as fast as what we're doing. If you
give nature thousands of generations to adapt to warmer temperatures it's not
as big of a deal. If you do it over a hundred years or so, ecosystems have a
much harder time to adapt.

~~~
leereeves
Ecosystems can adapt very quickly with a little help.

We often see just a few members of an invasive species transplanted into a
favorable environment multiply and spread and end up dominating the local
ecosystem in far, far less than a hundred years. Let's use that to help
ecosystems adapt to climate change.

~~~
adrianN
We have pretty poor experience with trying to help ecosystems. Let's hope that
we don't have to resort to that.

------
ghobs91
1\. Even if we can't completely prevent it, we can stop it from being much
worse.

2\. Regardless of the climate changer factor, polluting the air causes cancer,
damages ecosystems, harms our food supply, etc.

The mentality of "we can't prevent it, so why bother trying" is like
accidentally shooting yourself in the foot, and when finding out it'll have to
be amputated, proceeding to shoot your other foot because "what's the point?".

~~~
jbattle
Did you read the article? That's not what it's about at all. The author is
saying that we aren't going to "stop" climate change. So instead we should be
strategizing how to proactively invest in systems (both natural and man-made)
to make them more resilient in the face of changes to come.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Which all conveniently line up with one major political platform. "If you
frightened by the coming climate cataclysm, then you should also agree with me
on _everything_."

It's very well-written, but it's not rational. The content is more political
than scientific.

~~~
tw04
It doesn't matter in the least if you agree with a candidate on everything.
This one specific subject should be a deal breaker though, regardless of just
about any other stance. Your opinion on free market is irrelevant in the face
of Extinction.

~~~
leereeves
Alarmism only discredits the effort to respond to climate change.

~~~
AstralStorm
Why? If people are not alarmed, they won't take the necessary extreme measures
and extreme and global measures is what we all need.

People become desensitized to it, unfortunately.

Mostly policy is necessary though, and politicians love half-hearted efforts.

~~~
leereeves
People just don't believe it, largely thanks to past alarmist warnings (like
An Inconvenient Truth) that have already proven false.

------
chillacy
There are now 3 positions in american discourse on climate change:

1\. It's not happening / not real

2\. It's happening and we can still prevent it

3\. It's happening and it's worse than we all think

Externalities aren't correctly priced into our market and we're suffering the
consequences.

~~~
perl4ever
"Externalities aren't correctly priced"

If you can say that, it follows that you have calculated or are aware of the
correct price. So, I really want to know - about what is the correct price of
the externalities of a gallon of gas that aren't included in, say, the retail
price in California? Is it closer to $0.01, $0.10, $1, $10, $100, or $1000?

~~~
AstralStorm
The problem is akin to computing value of human life. If you burning gasoline
will kill 3 humans and make life a misery for 20, what's the proper price?

Many would argue it's infinity. It's not safe to continue burning fossils in
any way, shape or form, not burning fresh biomass either. Reclaiming biogas is
probably the only sane way of burning anything now... (Prevents methane
releases.)

Unfortunately most people don't or can't run moral calculations like this.

~~~
perl4ever
If you don't or won't run calculations, that's fine.

Using the word "externalities" though means you _will_ and _did_ and you
_accept_ the use of numbers which are not "infinity" and can be compared to
other numbers.

When you give away that you don't care at all about the meaning of the words
you use to try to get leverage, it might as well be the buzzing of gnats.

You can't take language wholly as a means to manipulate people and be
transparent about it and expect it to continue to work.

Anyone who actually believes that the damage done by burning one gallon of gas
is "infinity" would be willing to sacrifice humanity to avoid it. But I'm
_not_ interested in debating whether that's a correct ethical perspective!
You're entitled to feel whatever you feel.

My irritation is with people who appropriate economic jargon without the least
intent to communicate the ideas a word denotes. To me, destroying the
communication value of a word, is like some sort of semantic atrocity.

(note, "you" is the generic you, I'm not blaming you for the original poster)

------
imtringued
To stay sane of course. Dying from climate change isn't that different from
dying of old age. If every day you remind yourself that you are going to die
one day then you are putting yourself under mental stress. If it is hopeless
as the title implies and there is nothing you can do to stop it, then thinking
about climate change will just make your life worse than it already is.

I'm actually optimistic that it's possible to prevent the worst effects of
climate change from a technological standpoint but I have no hope that we can
resolve the prisoners dilemma. Making a quick buck is simply too easy.

------
yyyk
"Some climate activists argue that if we publicly admit that the problem can’t
be solved, it will discourage people from taking any ameliorative action at
all... But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any
world-improving action... these are all meaningful climate actions"

1) Argues that giving up hope does not mean the end of attempts to ameliorate
warming.

2) Proceeds to define 'climate action' so broadly that just everything is a
climate action, which will disperse and confuse efforts so much, no action on
climate will be taken.

~~~
ForHackernews
No meaningful action is being taken on climate change:
[https://climateactiontracker.org/](https://climateactiontracker.org/)

How is this article's position going to make that worse?

~~~
adrianN
It ensures that no meaningful action will be taken in the next years either.

~~~
ForHackernews
How are you so sure of that?

We've been trying it your way for 40 years and gotten nowhere
[https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/c5rjs2/its_that_eas...](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/c5rjs2/its_that_easy_oc/)

Maybe telling everyone the truth at this late stage will produce some kind of
meaningful reflection. Even it doesn't, it'll still just be the status quo.

~~~
adrianN
"It's too late for meaningful action" doesn't sound like a slogan that
inspires unprecendented change.

~~~
jobigoud
Yes but at the same time not enough people truly believed scientists when they
said it was critical, so maybe people won't quite believe the "point of no
return" aspect either, and will just react from the remorse of having fucked
up the ecosystem. I'm not advocating that approach (yet) but just want to
point that it's not a guaranteed failure.

------
OBLIQUE_PILLAR
Jonathan Franzen is not an expert in the possible effects of climate change.

He's an expert at writing novels in which everyone sounds like they have a
Creative Writing MFA from Swarthmore.

This is silly.

------
armagon
The book "Superfreakonomics" had a chapter on simple, cheap solutions to
problems, and suggested one for global warming -- there was a 'year with no
summer' in which a volcano introduced chemicals into the atmosphere (sorry, I
don't have the details handy) which cooled down the earth, and that we have
huge amounts of the stuff as a waste material -- we'd just need to put it into
the upper atmosphere.

Now, I see that the science is disputed, and I understand that there'd be
political problems with who controls the thermostat, but the idea was really
cheap -- something like $40 million to get going and a million every year to
continue. Way cheaper than government initiatives that haven't actually done
anything.

Why can't we pursue something like this, or even try them out?

~~~
fuzzy2
Because we don't understand enough to be sure it wouldn't cause unintended
negative side effects.

I read that one possibility is less rain. Which is obviously something we
don't want. It's already not enough.

~~~
faissaloo
We don't understand enough to ensure anything we've done wouldn't cause
unintended negative side effects but as it stands we're headed for utter
destruction so doing something might be better than nothing.

~~~
AstralStorm
No. Doing wrong things can be much worse than doing nothing. If you kill off
too much biosphere for example, there goes humanity.

Volcanos tend to throw a lot of sulfur in the air which is deadly. We could
disperse dust in other ways, but the risk is that we'd increase albedo of
Earth and cook it even more.

------
frabbit
I have heard meat-eating car-drivers push this line of thinking for at least
two decades. You know the sort of person: willing to rag on the republicans or
the Koch brothers for being bad, but ultimately unwilling to do anything
except moan about how it is all too hard.

~~~
swayvil
The billionaires choose the song, we only dance to it.

Unless you fancy a cardboard box under a viaduct.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
...until it's so far gone folks start reaching for pitchforks or
constitutionally enshrined assault weaponry.

------
gmuslera
If it can't be stopped, then we must assume that what could happen will. Like
when someone shoots a bullet, and we observe the action in slow motion while
the bullet is going, there is no way for the target to move out, and we must
assume that a murder has been commited, even if the target is not dead yet.

So, in this particular case, a mass murder has been commited, and what we
should do to put on trial the ones that shoot the bullet, and the same to the
ones that intentionally hid the evidence (maybe taking out our chances to
avoid preventing it).

And then, without them around keep trying to deny that there is no climate
change, we may focus on mitigating the effects and avoiding to get worse
without more interference.

~~~
unicornporn
Listen "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy":

[https://www.soundcloud.com/user-56712817/deep-
adaptation](https://www.soundcloud.com/user-56712817/deep-adaptation)

Or read it:

[https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)

------
tempsolution
It is a bit like with a formula one car. If you go through the curve with 100
mph, you will die, because you really need to go through the curve at 200 mph
for aerodynamics to give you enough downward force to keep you on the track...

We are in a very similar situation here. We need to aggressively speed up and
focus our engineering efforts to understand nature and to potentially "suck
the gases out of the atmosphere" (one solution, we put it there, we should be
able to get it back out, if that was really the reason anyway).

Never in mankind's history have the odds been so in our favor. Our technology
improves at unprecedented speeds and its only going to go faster. It has to go
faster, that is. Otherwise we actually might be wiped out.

I never understood why people think its a good idea to dial back progress &
technology to where we were a few hundred years ago... The earth will die
anyway in a few billion years. There is only one way forward: Out into space.
At the current rate we will be able to do just that, within the allotted time.
Even if we can't save earth in the end (who knows), we will still have enough
time to leave the sinking ship. But we also have a pretty good shot at to
repair the damage we have done.

But the answer for both trajectories is the same: Technology, more technology
and faster, faster. If that means more pollution, that's okay. As long as we
advance faster than we destroy (which we are doing already), we are golden!
Stopping or going slower is what will kill us.

So people, stop whining about pollution and global warming. There is no way to
stop that other than technology. Developing countries are not going to stop
polluting. Most notably seen with the Amazon. We have no true control over
what other countries do. But we can repair the damage they do, via technology
deployed on our home soil. That is precisely what we must do & develop.
Waiting for global consensus and contracts is waiting for death... Hell, they
can't even agree on some minimal pollution numbers between the G7 countries.
How the hell are you going to get all 200 nations into one basket. It's
ludicrous.

On that note, keep in mind that countries like the USA are the world's number
one polluter. Developing countries do some serious shit, but on a smaller
scale.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
If we can't keep biosphere 1.0 viable, we have bugger all chance of creating a
viable and sustainable extra planetary one. Besides how many launches will be
needed to get 7bn to biosphere 2.0? Whatever the answer it's cheaper and
easier to address AGW right here, right now. Or does your backup plan only
involve sending a tiny few off planet?...

~~~
tempsolution
Why would you think that we send 7bn people into space? There should not have
been 7bn people to start with. It just happened because somehow species tend
to multiply until their environment can't sustain further growth. In space, it
will be MUCH harder to sustain a population, as a result, the population there
will be much smaller (think of maybe 100.000), at least in the early stages.

I agree that we should be able to save the earth. I think both are possible
and also intertwined, because whatever our solution, it will likely require
advanced capabilities to deploy technology into earth's orbit, be it large
scale solar shielding, some atmosphere transformers, or whatever.

Still, repairing earth and creating space ships are two different things. We
did not design earth, and the size of it makes it hard to control. It will be
MUCH easier to sustain life in an underground lab (or space ship) than it is
to repair earth. At least conceptually. But of course you have a point that we
should not abandon most of the population for two reasons:

1\. It's a bit cruel and probably only the worst of mankind will survive
again, as it always did.

2\. Project "Space" might turn out to be one hell of a disaster, since it's
hard to predict how humans will fare in space. So we should have a backup
plan.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
If we can't avoid overpopulating a planet, how and why should we think will we
avoid overpopulating Mars or Mini Ringworld?

Well if plan B in space is for only some, it's not saving humanity but is a
"fuck you" to most of them. I think some pretty core human problems will show
pretty damn quickly after that:

Once the remaining 6.9bn realise they're not invited to the party, that there
is a definite plan for all the wealthy and politician types to piss off to
Mars or some space station, the rest might very reasonably decide that's a tad
unfair. Especially if their own future is some apocalyptic die off, perversely
made worse by all those emissions from the thousands of rocket launches. They
might sensibly think that instead of quietly waiting for the 4 horsemen to
show up with their exit, better to go out by trashing all the supply rockets
and bases of project space, and reach for petrol, pitchfork or assault rifle.
Maybe one more emission laden launch to blow those entitled assholes out of
orbit...

We haven't yet shown viability in any of the sealed biome experiments. Not
once. The old Russian experiments back during their lunar programme got
closest.

Hence me thinking much cheaper and simpler just to address the damn problem
properly. :)

------
Yetanfou
What if we stopped talking in apocalyptic terms and started looking at ways to
live on a planet which, for whatever reason, is endowed with an ever-changing
climate which has given it everything from dragonflies with a 70cm wing span
to blue whales to sentient self-conscious primates with a tendency to speak of
terrible things which are about to come true if action is not taken _right
now_.

Also, use common sense. It will tell you that it is a good thing to be less
dependent on energy sources which are directly linked to one of the most
volatile regions in the world. Alternatives exist, from nuclear in its many
guises which can take care of the base load to solar and wind which can help
but can not take care of the base load due to their inherent unpredictability
and - in the case of solar - absence during ~50% of the day. Geothermal can be
a good source in many regions. Common sense will also dictate that it is high
time to seriously start looking at better ways to store energy so that those
unpredictable sources can be used more efficiently while keeping the
distribution networks from melting down.

And, please... stop following the talking points of political organisations
which have taken up the climate banner to further their own goals. Stop the
McCarthy-like hunt for anyone who dares to voice a differing opinion. Stop all
that polarising nonsense and maybe, just maybe the world will be better off in
the end.

------
frabbit
I have honestly wondered whether a rational, amoral planner would be readying
the release of some pathogen(s) from which a reasonable number of people would
survive.

I wonder what the signs of such preparation would be?

Obviously you would want to make sure that nuclear power stations, refineries
and dangerous chemical plants were either capable of a graceful shutdown or
that there would be enough trained operators in place.

You would want some sort of armed forces under your control.

Food production chains would need to be local and secured and self-contained.

What else?

~~~
jobigoud
There is a tick that renders people allergic to meat. The villain could start
with that and let the market work out the details.

~~~
frabbit
Not to forget anti-vaxxers: spread a meme that selects exactly the type of
person you cannot rely on to be rational and then supply the corrollary.

------
benologist
Alongside this is a story celebrating how more people are using 100 - 200
grams of internationally-shipped and hand-delivered plastic on the equivalent
of a 256mb usb stick to distribute music instead of the internet.

Most of us can't wait to replace our massive-carbon-sink computer with a new
one and put the old one in a cupboard.

Sacrifice was key to beating this and we didn't do it and we might be getting
worse.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
If we decarbonised power, industry and transport, we could afford to use a
little vinyl for a niche hobby, some plastic for the few specialist packaging
types that can't be done better in something else, for the medical uses and
such like. We probably should be celebrating the rise of _ownership_ over a
monthly subscription to listen only while you pay. Until we are told the
calculated impacts of each, neither of us knows the better choice for the
planet.

If we adjusted the rules of the capitalism game such that sustainability,
repairability, life of product, company and planet were baked in, that carbon,
pollution and environment cost _has_ to be displayed on labels and every
service. Maybe simple taxes can do that, maybe it needs a little or a lot more
creativity.

------
tormeh
Really disheartened that it will hit during my lifetime. Had hoped to dodge
it, really.

How do you, as an individual, prepare for this?

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Basic stuff. Learn horticulture, soil science. Understand whether or not your
area is viable for a sustainable settlement and move along if it's not. Best
to do all your moving while you can still afford to drive.

Do exercise, strength training, cardio. Bodyweight stuff or yoga is great for
everyday life activities. How far can you carry 60 pounds of supplies and
equipment?

Make friends, obviously.

Learn how to resolve conflict non-violently. You and everyone else will
constantly be running into conflicts and someone is going to have to remember
how to meet everyone's needs without killing people.

~~~
faissaloo
It's also probably a good idea to learn how to resolve conflicts violently and
accept the consequences of that.

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Slug throwing is pretty basic stuff. Doesn't take very long to learn that.

------
aerophilic
One solution, which I admit is out there, is what if we actively cook the
earth?

While yes, it would be an engineering challenge, I think it is quite
reasonable to create an “adjustable solar shade”. Basically build up enough
reflectors at the Lagrange point to selectively “cool” parts of earth. Yes, it
would be a massive undertaking, but could potentially be done mostly
autonomously.

If our timeline is 30 years, this may be more achievable than alternatives.

Elevator pitch: use materials from asteroids to build huge reflectors in
space. Side benefit is it would enable large scale mining of the sky.

~~~
aerophilic
Heh,

Realize I meant “shade” not cook =p. In any case, hopefully intent is clear.

------
unicornporn
You need to listen "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy":

[https://www.soundcloud.com/user-56712817/deep-
adaptation](https://www.soundcloud.com/user-56712817/deep-adaptation)

Or read it:

[https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)

------
harimau777
I'm not sure I follow the author's reasoning. He says that what we do won't
make a difference but then says that we should do things anyways. It seems to
me like if he's right, then there is just no hope.

------
swayvil
Who's pretending? All we need is for the billionaires to stop fighting, work
together and save the world.

------
yura
Is that it? We are all going to die because one fiction writer said so? These
kinds of claims only discredit the whole discussion. Climate change is a
serious problem, but fearmongering doesn't solve anything. How about just
stating the facts, instead of chiming in with your own non-scientific opinions
and accusing everyone of pretending? Just so you can get more clicks.

------
antiutopian
There are measures we can take against climate change, they just go against
the structural needs of the capitalist system. If governments continue to put
the continuation of the system above the needs of the environment, then of
course we won't see serious action. The author accepts that this is a
permanent state of affairs and attributes it incorrectly to "human nature"
when in reality it reflects the present weakness of the anti-capitalist
movement. There is hope, but it's not in liberal politicians and eco startups,
and I get why you'd be hopeless if that's where you're looking for change to
come from.

~~~
faissaloo
You're not going to be able to kill capitalism before things go really wrong,
modern capitalism still has a stranglehold on us all and it probably won't
fall until climate change kicks into high gear and eradicates huge portions of
the western population. At least the anprims will be happy.

~~~
perl4ever
I'm not clear on why people are particularly angry at capitalism. It seems
like just a label that allows people to focus on the US fossil fuel industry,
as the US is the archetype of capitalism, while vaguely associating all the
_other_ major fossil fuel producers with the West/US/capitalism.

Is the reason Russia and KSA are producing fossil fuels because they were
infected with a specific ideology? I feel like there's a confusion of cause
and effect, like if you blamed evolution on Darwinism.

~~~
faissaloo
Modern capitalism puts itself at the center of society and greatly punishes
anything that attempts to draw people away from holding capital gain as being
the epitome of self-interest. Yes, Russia and the KSA do indeed bend to the
will of capitalism, with varying degrees of resistance. If people were not
rewarded for this behavior it would not continue.

~~~
perl4ever
"Modern capitalism puts itself at the center of society"

Does it insist upon itself?

~~~
faissaloo
It's moreso that too many people with too much control over resources insist
on it.

------
29athrowaway
-

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Mad max apocalypse would only last, like, 15 years max. Can't keep feeding
people to the pigs (sus scrofa domesticus) forever. It really seems like there
is something about humanity that is being selected out of the ecosystem. My
guess is the over-reliance on physical violence and emotional abuse to
maintain group structures.

~~~
esarbe
I don't think so. My bet is on 'competition for resources', which is something
that every organism needs to do. Every species needs to be competitive, needs
to fight for resources. The problem only is that we are so good at competition
for resources that we've out-competed every other species on this planet.
Don't get me wrong - any species that somehow hits on similar exploits as we
did (tool use, cooperation) will find itself in a very similar situation
sooner or later; the moment where they start destroying the ecosytem that
supports them. For us that probably started with agriculture, maybe even
earlier, when we killed off all other apex predators.

So, if there's something that's "selected against", it's our unexpected
success. I don't think that there are many times in the history life on a
planet that a species lands such a jackpot.

Unfortunately we're just like Joe Shmoe after a lottery win; we spend all the
loot in one spree over the planet and wake up a few years later, facing the
consequences of our reckless behavior while we were drunk on power.

Our monkey brains just aren't built for the life in paradise.

------
grandridge
What if we stop pretending there is a climate apocalypse

~~~
jobigoud
It won't stop it either, unfortunately.

------
ghthor
Well, our cow blanket might prove useful if the sun goes to sleep and the
earth is destined for another ice age.

------
Seanzie
It appears that we have already given up. Efficient, low-carbon-emitting
natural gas power plants have been replacing coal-fired plants in the USA,
largely due to cheap and abundant fuel extracted via fracking. If that were
important, we would not be discussing bans on fracking.

~~~
hannob
They're only efficient and low-cabon if you compare them to coal, not if you
use basic sanity that building any kind of new fossil infrastructure is
madness.

Even the low carbon of fracking is questionable given methane leaks.

~~~
adrianN
Building gas plants is not terribly stupid, because we'll probably need power-
to-gas technology unless somebody finds cheaper ways to make batteries.

~~~
AstralStorm
The only viable kind of gas is biogas which you have to sequester anyway.
Other kinds speed up the catastrophe. There cleaner than some coal and oil but
that's about it. They're not even close compared to nuclear or renewables.

Why do you need gas? Can't use the electric vehicle or appliance? If you need
trace gases for manufacturing, you can sequester them instead.

~~~
adrianN
No, you can create Methane out of thin air with electricity and store that in
the existing infrastructure for strategic gas reserves.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-
gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas)

It's a very convenient way to store large amounts of energy for dark,
windstill winters. If you then have a decent number of gas plants you can turn
it into electricity to run the heat pumps in your homes.

------
robomartin
The problem with climate change is that it has now solidly left the realm of
the scientific to enter politics.

Here’s the truth:

We cannot do a thing about it.

This is scientific fact, not my opinion. I invite everyone to reproduce my
conclusion. Here’s how to do it:

Question:

How long would it take for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration if
humanity, along with all of our technology, evaporated from this planet
tomorrow?

In other words, a Thanos moment. A snap of the fingers and humanity is gone in
an instant.

Why this question?

Because that’s the baseline. This is important:

WE CANNOT DO BETTER THAN THIS RATE IF CHANGE.

Can we answer that question?

Yes!

We have 800,000 years of highly accurate atmospheric composition data from ice
core sampling. In other words, we have a time machine that tells us exactly
how the planet would behave if we were not here.

What does the data say? How does it answer my question?

50,000 to 75,000 years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration if
we evaporated from this planet.

THAT IS THE BASELINE

Any proposal for “saving the planet” has to be measured against that.

For example: Erase the US from the planet -> Save the planet in 50 years?
Nope, ridiculous.

Ban all forms if internal combustion engines? Nope. Ridiculous.

Switch to 100% renewable energy at a world scale? Nope. Again, ridiculous.

All of these are ridiculous because the next question should be: How is this
going to perform a THOUSAND TIMES BETTER than the Thanos scenario?

The answer, at that point, becomes beyond obvious: These ideas are ridiculous.

As for what would work, well, that’s a whole other conversation that starts
with reforestation at a monumental scale.

~~~
adrianN
You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes
that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the
assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people
believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.

~~~
robomartin
No, you cannot.

Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you
are suggesting at a global scale.

That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to
quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale.

EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels.

I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said
(and I've written about this a few times on HN) that migrating away from
fossil fuels is a bad idea. It's a great idea. We should do it to the extent
possible. I've done my part, I installed a 13 kW solar power system at my home
and we are on track to switch to 100% electric vehicles within, say, a year.

What is NOT OK is pretending that this is going to "save the planet". Our
migration away from fossil fuels will do absolutely nothing of note --zero--
as far as reversing atmospheric CO2 accumulation. This has been studied and
published. The conclusion was, to paraphrase, "even if we migrated the entire
planet to the MOST OPTIMAL FORMS of renewable energy sources, atmospheric CO2
accumulation would continue to INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY".

In other words, even if we did the impossible (total migration to renewable
sources at a global is likely impossible). Why? BECAUSE THE BASELINE IS 75,000
YEARS with NO HUMANS ON EARTH.

BTW, I am not yelling, using caps for emphasis.

We can discuss facts or that which we wish were facts. The difference is that
we are never going to improve anything if we insist on ignoring reality.

It is OK to say "all of these proposals are nonsense", if, in fact, they are.
It would be the same if politicians were proposing to save humanity by
reducing the planet's gravitational constant by 10%. Ridiculous, but I bet
someone out there could make a fictional case about the idea and collect an
audience...just like the flat earth geniuses.

~~~
adrianN
Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce
carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of
thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering
and seeding the oceans with iron.

~~~
robomartin
Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking
at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is:

Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about
100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle?

Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years?

The answers to these questions are simple:

A1: Fires. Massive continent-scale fires...burning forests.

A2: Massive natural reforestation and weather. Yup. Hurricanes, cyclones,
rain, etc.

While the idea of planting trillions of trees is excellent, we also have to
understand an important point. The more trees we have the greater the
probability of going backwards by decades when --not if-- a large fire rips
through millions of them. We can't fight fires at those scales. And, if we
could, you'd have to calculate the energy and CO2 we would produce in doing so
(planes, trucks, equipment, etc.).

Climate change isn't an easy problem, not even close. I don't know if I want
to laugh or cry when I hear politicians pushing some of the truly brain-dead
stuff they get behind.

~~~
jmiskovic
We can handle fires if we plant those forests. We could engineer the buffers
to stop the spreading, and develop infrastructure for early detection and
extinguishing. Not saying it's easy, but can be done if everything depends on
it.

~~~
robomartin
You are probably right. Having seen gigantic fires in CA I think it is
important to take fire mitigation very seriously. One good forest fire can
erase years of progress.

To put things into context and quantify...we know wild fires have produced, on
average, 8 billion tons of CO2 per year for the past 20 years. That is fully
25% of total annual CO2 emission, which sits somewhere around 32 billion tons
per year.

That’s a very serious contribution that makes some of the things politicians
focus on absolutely laughable.

If we plant trillions of trees and, at some time in the future, experience a
massive forest fire we could easily move backwards several decades.

What I am saying is that fire mitigation has to be a first class concern when
we speak of reforestation.

