
There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis - Fej
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255
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kayaeb
Why does this scientific publication read like an op-ed? Absolutist language
strikes me as exceptionally unscientific.

"it’s time to panic." "We are in deep trouble." "That’s it. Forever." "
_Forever._ Think of what that word means."

Disregarding that, the paper seems to address the idea that stratospheric
albedo modifications cannot counteract atmospheric carbon buildup since they
operate on timescales of decades versus millenia. Specifically they state
that:

"Deployment of albedo hacking does not in any way “buy time” to get carbon
dioxide emissions under control, since once emitted, carbon dioxide cannot to
any significant extent be unemitted with known economically feasible
technology"

Which seems to rest on the absolutist premise that we will _never_ know an
economically feasible way to go negative carbon. Otherwise, buying time should
absolutely be a reasonable thing to consider.

The author closes with a sentence along the lines of:

"To decarbonize, however, requires building a political movement that regards
the climate crisis as a top priority."

Which strikes me as... not exactly impartial (Why would not an economic reason
work? Or a grassroots social reason?). Which is obnoxious when the author
makes specific appeals to the authority of their profession which has
authority by the very virtue of being impartial:

"As a scientist, I viscerally dislike repeating myself; I like to think that
once the truth is out there, it will somehow win out and it is not necessary
to belabor the point."

This "article" rubs me wrong.

~~~
antisthenes
> Which seems to rest on the absolutist premise that we will never know an
> economically feasible way to go negative carbon. Otherwise, buying time
> should absolutely be a reasonable thing to consider.

Well, that absolutist premise happens to be correct. There's no such thing as
_negative_ carbon. The carbon is never destroyed. Plants don't destroy carbon
either, they just store it.

What we need is to find a way to be able to store long term X amount of carbon
using X-Y carbon's worth of energy output, netting us Y carbon-free energy
output to use for productive activities. So far the best/cheapest method here
still seems to be planting trees and burying bio-char, almost entirely
replicating the process that occurred millions of years ago before bacteria
could break down lignin.

~~~
AstralStorm
Second version would be trying to bacterially attack said trees after burial
to speed up the process, making buried bogs.

Trees are slow, maybe there's something a bit more efficient.

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abledon
In Canada people fight so much over a pipeline, while the neighbors of the
north, Russia, are like,, enghhh f __* that, investing 180 Billion dollars to
dominate oil production there [1]. Like other comments have mentioned here ,
you can 't 'force' other nations to agree to do the same as you. Unfair but
you will have to lead the way.

[1]: [https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/putin-
arctic](https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/putin-arctic)

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cagenut
FWIW if anyone doesn't feel like they already know what "Plan A" is, its
fairly well infographic'd in the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5C. Study the
charts and graphs here:
[https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/#cid_6333](https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/#cid_6333)

------
mlthoughts2018
> “The upshot is that the total cumulative carbon allocation for humanity
> compatible with a 50–50 chance of keeping global warming under 2 degrees
> Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is, in round numbers, a trillion tonnes.

That’s it.

Forever.

And of that trillion tonnes, we have already used up over 630 billion tonnes,
leaving just 370 billion tonnes to go.

That might seem like a lot of tonnes, but at current emissions rate, we’d get
there in just 37 years, or 2057.”

This makes me sincerely feel that it’s likely not worth it to pursue reducing
carbon emissions except where it’s super easy and unobstructed.

Instead, it would be better to create technology and plans for how best to
live in a rapidly warming world.

I do not believe we can solve political coordination fast enough so that the
long tail of consumer demands, from floss to x-ray machines to smart phones,
can be manufactured without accumulating much more carbon emission than this
limit.

Meanwhile, suggesting we live without these things, especially when they
dramatically improve, even save, lives, is equally unrealistic.

(It reminds me of the David Deutsch anecdote in The Beginning of Infinity
where people were criticising color TVs in the 60s, as a ludicrous consumer
indulgence, totally ignorant to the possibility that they would be vital for
saving lives (surgical imaging, among other uses) decades later.)

~~~
imtringued
Using air conditioning will increase the energy usage per capita which will
accelerate climate change. More realistically a lot of people will move away
from the equatorial regions to the north or maybe even to Antarctica.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Air conditioning and heating will be needed well into the hot future. It saves
lives (especially of the elderly). Trying to “not have air conditioning” is
unrealistic, never gonna happen.

So either we devise carbon-neutral air conditioning very suddenly, or else we
prepare for hotter planet and geological-scale side effects.

(This just by air conditioning... so then multiply by agriculture, consumer
media products, medical products, transportation, etc. etc.).

------
aaron_m04
> Barring technological breakthroughs allowing for the active removal of
> massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,

Hey, this sounds like a good plan B:
[https://projectvesta.org](https://projectvesta.org)

~~~
AstralStorm
It's not enough. There are not enough olivine rock deposits. It also attacks
CO2 only, skipping methane and freon.

Simple back of the envelope math ruins this alleged plan. It can be a part of
the big effort, but alone it won't do nearly anywhere enough.

Plus the problem is, the deposits are not in the places that emit GHG. You
need to put them where they can be most effective. That's not free.

And then you have to get the world to not pump yet more GHG into atmosphere.

~~~
aaron_m04
I would like to see your back of the envelope math.

And isn't it okay that this doesn't address methane, etc. as long as it
sequesters enough CO2 to offset the radiative forcing from the extra methane?

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nkingsy
I was tolerating the bombastic language until Russia started pumping out
greenhouse gas just to re-unfreeze their sea ice in the future plan b
scenario.

------
5db8db
For all, who missed it: the deep adaption paper [1]. there is written, it's
not a crisis anymore, it is already a 'tragedy'.

[1]:
[https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)

------
russdill
For a slightly less doom and gloom point of view:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCF6JNW4oE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCF6JNW4oE)

Sean Carroll with "Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future"

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tzs
Tony Stark in the first "Avengers" movie had a pretty good plan B: "If we
can't protected the Earth, then you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it".

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zeofig
Saying there is no Plan B kind of implies we have a Plan A, which we don't.

~~~
AstralStorm
Plan A is stop pumping GHG immediately by force (including warfare and
economical pressure) or fiat and try to adapt to living on a somewhat hotter
Earth.

It's extremely hard to pull off.

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black_puppydog
So... flagged because... some people don't like it?

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adamiscool8
Are there any comparable crises in history that mankind eventually wriggled
its way out of against scientific consensus? Is history not littered with
once-valid and absolutist scientific conclusions that were never borne out?

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planetzero
This is exactly correct. The US only accounts for 12% of the total carbon
output into the atmosphere.

Countries like India and China have been polluting the earth for decades and
the Paris accords won't solve any of these issues because there is no
repercussions.

Why aren't we going after these countries and demanding answers instead of
going after the countries, like the US, that are actually doing something
about it?

~~~
the_monocle
The USA has double the carbon emission of china with only a fourth of the
population. So per capita an average US citizen contributes 8 times as much to
emission as an average Chinese citizen.

~~~
pnako
Per capita does not really matter in this particular case; it's an absolute
numbers thing. CO2 emissions go into one same atmosphere.

~~~
c0nducktr
Who's buying the products built in Chinese factories?

~~~
pnako
The entire world; you do make a good point here. So should we start taxing
Chinese products more, like Trump has started doing, and some people in the EU
have been suggesting for a long time, then? This would at least be coherent.
Yet the group of people warning the most about global warming tend to also be
people who are still promoting free trade and globalization (a good example is
French President Macron, who seems to holds both beliefs simultaneously).

~~~
c0nducktr
Yeah, that's exactly what I say we should be doing.

Set the standard, and then ensure other countries honor that standard by
penalizing offenders with tariffs.

Edit: Also, Donald Trump is well known as denier of climate change, so it's
dishonest to frame his tariffs against China as a positive action for those
who want to prevent climate change. China knows Trump doesn't give a shit
about pollution, so they will not correct for it, which means the additional
taxes have no effect on addressing climate change.

Macron deserves no defense. Please attack his hypocrisy as you please.

