this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
450 points (96.5% liked)

World News

38500 readers
2651 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 61 points 3 weeks ago (53 children)

Scientist piping in with my two cents. Granted my speciality is geophysics and planetary science, and not specifically climate.

In geoscience we tend to talk about things on very long timescales. Like: at what point with the sun's output cause the earth to turn into Venus (250 million years as a lower bound, ish, then all life is doomed on Earth). The rate of change we've applied to our atmosphere is faster than any natural process other than a meteor strike or similar event. There are climate change scenarios where all life on the planet dies (why wait 250 million years!?), but they're mostly improbable unless we have some sort of runaway feedback mechanism we've not accounted for. 2/3 of humans dying is also unlikely. Coastline and ecosystem disruption are almost certain though.

The thing about humans are: we are frighteningly clever. We can build spacecraft that can survive the harsh environment in space and people survive there. As long as climate change doesn't happen "too fast" (values of "too fast" may vary), we will engineer our way around it. On the small scale: air conditioning; and on the larger scale, geo-engineering (after accumulating sufficient political will). We're so clever that, if we (or our descendants or similar) can probably even save the earth in 250 million years when the sun's output passes the threshold where it wants to fry us -- assuming we survive that long.

That doesn't detract from her statement. But it is the Mirror, and the headlight is trying to be incendiary.

[–] AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Are you actually a scientist?

Air Conditioning to mitigate climate change? That's like dowsing a fire with lighter fluid.

And you think we'll be able to out engineer the sun? In 250million years we will not be here guaranteed, and if somehow we make it it won't be in any form we know as human.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, I even once got a B+ in thermodynamics, decades ago. I was proud of that B+ -- one of the hardest courses I've ever taken.

Yes, AC. It uses energy, adds heat into the total system, and you cannot fight entropy. However, you can mitigate heat gain in other places. You trade local effects for net zero global effects.

Simple example: AC running off of solar. It increases heat by decreasing albedo (solar panels are dark), but if you paint another area white, you can have a neutral effect in terms of total energy captured by the earth. But you can have a net zero heat gain and still have AC.

Obviously you'll have a harder time balancing this equation if you're using non-renewable energy sources.

[–] TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

But the fun thing is that all solar currently has a carbon cost associated with it. So as we're trying to work our way out of this we're also continuing to increase the carbon load. It's a vicious cycle.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But the fun thing is that once we reach a critical point, it will go from having a positive carbon impact to a negative carbon impact. But we can never get there if we never start

It's all about scale and infrastructure.

[–] Cataphract@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, but if it takes a thousand years and we're all long gone from all the positive carbon impact? I agree with you but think the narrative is dangerous. We can't think "well in the long run", we need to actively counter the positive carbon right now (as in this year) and increase other negative carbon policies like mass transit and reducing subsidies. "It'll work out in the end" is what got us here.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't see your point.

Building fossil fuel power infrastructure does nothing to move the needle, but building renewables does.

What are you actually proposing? Because it reads as "we shouldn't try because any benefits or impacts are long-term"

[–] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I was wondering what the controversy was with my comment lol. I was just saying that relying solely on renewable energy and current technology to be widely developed and implemented to reach net-zero carbon will be a slow-meticulous crawl while we continue to pollute the earth with our current infrastructure (fossil fuels). We need to also continue to push for policies like more use of public transportation and stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry so people actually feel the cost associated more. People see things like bike lanes and busses/rails as a more viable option when it actually effects them. You'll see more people walking to nearby locations or doing "greener" activity when the actual price of 8$ or more a gallon becomes a reality.

If you start telling people, "oh, well just get more panels and use AC." They'll take it as nothing needs to change in their habits and all the other industries are fine as they are. Much like the "recycling" program in the 80's and 90's was used to manipulate the public that they are responsible for all the garbage and toxins being produced.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 3 weeks ago

But we're not just piling more and more on the grid. It's replacing something worse, and those things wouldn't last forever anyway.

The last coal power station in the UK is due to shut down in a month or so. Within a year or two it will be demolished. Would we be doing that without solar and wind? No.

Just existing has a carbon cost. It's our duty to keep it low.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (50 replies)