This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Most problems would simply not be a problem if we drastically reduce the human population. Which would not only avoid the issues caused by climate change but also would prevent further increases in pollution and CO2 emissions.
I don't know why the best solution is often the less talked about. Just stop having so many children. We don't have 70% infant mortality rate like we used to, there's no need to have 4 kids to preserve your legacy.
One difficulty with that is that the way we organize economies currently depends on having a working-age population that is large enough to support the non-working population. When you have far fewer workers than retired people you start having problems. I don't know what the answer to that is, but it's another instance of how any plan to seriously address climate change tends to require deep changes to how we run society. The current systems can't simply be tweaked to make the problem go away.
There is a lot of things wrong on how we organize the economy.
If we are going to change that we may as well change it good.
Yeah. Thanos should simply have made half of all living beings gay. Much less violent and this would probably also make future generations more likely to be gay too. So it‘ll probably have a much more longlasting effect than killing 50% once.
if we drastically reduce the human population. Which would not only avoid the issues caused by climate change but also would prevent further increases in pollution and CO2 emissions.
Ignoring the genocide-apologist trend, the pandemic did wonders to reduce global warming.., perhaps start taxing more the companies that force back-to-office when they could clearly keep most of their work force at home?
You hear that? It's too late now! Welp ggs guys
Two types of people reading this:
"Oh no! We should do everything we can to mitigate the damage."
and
"Fuck it, might as well keep doing what I'm doing."
And it's the latter that got us here in the first place.
It doesn’t make any difference what got us here in the first place. What matters now is what options are the best from now moving forward.
These scientists seem to say that trying to reverse climate change isn’t the right path forward. I wonder why.
edit: I wonder what makes them think that reversing climate change won’t work.
Someone was so offended by their misreading of my comment that they went through and downvote-bombed every comment in my history.
What they're saying is that trying to reverse climate change won't be enough. It doesn't mean it isn't the right path, just that it won't go far enough.
“Fuck it, might as well keep doing what I’m doing.”
And that last group is going to be angry when they can't keep doing their stuff when insurance rates go insane so they can't buy houses or cars, or when food prices keep going up even faster than they are now.
It's the parable of office pizza: some people take 1 slice because there are many people to feed.
some people take 3 slices, because there are many people to feed.
And industrialists!
Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.
Tipping point has tipped?
The one I remember scaring the hell out of everyone is the permafrost melt.
Thaw out enough permafrost and it releases enough greenhouse gasses to self perpetuate. No human interaction required.
https://www.space.com/methane-beneath-arctic-permafrost-climate-feedback-loop
Startups are developing a whole suite of technologies to try to help
Do not think that they are seriously trying to save the planet.
(If they had wanted that, they should have done it 30-40 years ago)
They just want to make money, like everybody else.
I mean, the whole “startups are doing x” is really code for “venture dollars have been made available for entrepreneurs to explore x”. Startups these days are chasing fields which have investment dollars, so this means the rich are starting to invest in the tech a little more earnestly
If the people won't rise up for the sake of their own children then the only solution is to out spend climate change. Capitalism won't save itself, it will monetize the downfall. So in a way these tech companies are doing exactly what their suppose to but not really what they should.
People won't even rise up for their own sake. gestures in every general direction
Can't argue with that. At the end of the day we are another mammalian creature that runs around killing, fucking, and shitting then we die. The ecosystem of today dying is of no consequences to the dinosaur, the wooly mammoth, or what ever critter that roamed these same lands. I say build the buildings big enough and strong enough for the sentience of tomorrow to unearth them and wonder. Wonder hard enough and we are reborn.
The problem is people are only going to change their behaviour once the consequences hit them, and with global warming, the consequences won't really hit them until a long time later.
The second problem is the consequences are dramatic. And very hard if not impossible to turn around.
To really get people and companies to change their behaviour, we would need an immediate consequence to behaviour that is bad for the environment.
Bottom line is, some people try, some people don't give a shit, and in the end we will have to deal with it.
I hope governments are watching carefully, we will need to keep a lot of water away from us in the future, and we'll have to deal with the changing climate too.
Governments will fail. Wherever unpopular "Green" Measures are implemented, the right-wing cockroaches appear, destroying any discourse.
The consequence will be a global war by stupid populists who think that is one solution (which it kind of is,... Dead people won't emit CO2)
We’ll have a big environmental 9/11 moment where a major American city becomes permanently uninhabitable and then there will alot of handwringing about “What could we have done!?” Then we’ll start getting lukewarm serious about it for maybe a few years, but by that point it’s way too late.
well yeah, you can't just try, you need to actually do it.
Stupid title, grammatically at least.
This is a by-product of modern society (maybe late stage capitalism). We need to be sold a "solution" to a problem. Reducing consumption is not something that can easily be sold hence these carbon capture, recycling plastic "solutions".
Unless someone can make money off of it, reducing emissions is going to be difficult.
Things that reduce consumption are frequently successful in capitalism. Generally, using less, costs less. There are always those selling a thing who are trying to increase the consumption of that thing, but often at expensive of those selling a competing thing. One successful way of doing that is to be cheaper to buy or run or both, by doing more with less.
However, sometimes we want something to be made with more a bit more to last longer and be repairable.
Raw capitalist won't do all this on its own. The invisible hand isn't very good at planning long term. Governments need to structure markets for outcomes they want, and keep measuring and correcting.
Instead of UBI, we should give every citizen carbon credits that they can then either use themselves for cars over certain (adjusting) emission limits or more likely sell to companies. Every company has to pay for their CO2 (and downline for imports)
The interesting thing would be people not necessarily spending their carbon credits like they do money. As there is no real incentive to sell to one company or another, other then tiny rate differences.
Also... always peg the price to what it costs to clean the carbon out. That creates a greater incentive to not skirt, as it might get cheaper over time.
So, because I can afford an EV , to electrify, to add solar, I also get a carbon bonus to sell or bury.
While normally I like where you’re going, we’re already past the point of early adopters deciding to do the right thing in lot of ways and need to scale up for affordability.
Or if your goal is to influence more personal decisions, like how much meat you eat and what temperature you set your thermostat, I’m not sure it’s enough
Really?!
!
We shit on redditors for being arrogant and having grating personalities.
Yet it's ridiculously common to come into a thread here and see it flooded with low effort "well duh!" Comments.
Lemmings apparently know everything and everything is obvious to them.
Which doesn't even make sense here. A lot of smart people are dumping money into carbon capture as a way to offset what we've done. Yet here you are, so smart, that this is obviously wrong.
This is clearly a "why not both" situation.
Emissions must be cut and new technologies for reversing existing damage must be developed. There's a whole bunch of different things that needs doing, because there is simply no single solution, but using one approach to argue against another is certainly not helping anyone.
Exactly, which is why I don't get the point of this article.
Yeah, even after we get emissions under control there will still be problems, and we'll tackle those when we get there.
I think the point is that some capitalists, both in business and in politics, encourage us to put our faith in future carbon capture so they can keep profiting off their polluting activities for now without having to invest in carbon emissions reduction. This is unrealistic and just an excuse not to tackle the difficult task of reducing emissions. We can't afford to let the problem become that much worse before we attempt to mitigate it by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, if there's ever a technology that can do that effectively (which right now doesn't look likely). We need to focus most of our efforts on reducing emissions.
Do people seriously think we could "reverse" climate change?
That's not how the climate works.
Remember it used to be called global warming, because that's what's actually happening. But morons thought a cold winter day disproved global warming, so it was renamed climate change.
And yes we can reverse global warming, but obviously that won't recreate polar or mountain ice, or lower sea levels quickly, but we can get the temperature down to stop it first, which will also curb the increase in natural disasters, then the restoring of sea levels and ice will take at least decades and probably centuries.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Glaciers formed over millennia. If they melt, they’re gone, even if we drop CO2 to pre-industrial levels. The Antarctic ice sheet is millions of years of snow that fell at the rate of a few inches a year and just didn’t melt. If significant portions of that fall off and melt, it’ll be millions of years more for the water it adds to the oceans to cycle back to the ice sheet again. The changes we have made will not be reversed automatically or in many cases at all.
It's because I didn't go on a rant about capitalism.
