this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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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.
My point is that slowing down the heating of the planet is doable (though you'd need the majority of the world contributing, which is highly unlikely to happen), but we can't reverse the damage that has already been done, which some people seem to think is possible.
We're not as powerful as we think we are.
There are gasses and particles that can be released into the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight and warmth away from earth. In theory that could be done very quickly.
We could cause a new ice age easily. Just fire off a few percent of the nukes, and we will revert to an ice age almost immediately.
Of course a side effect would be massive starvation.
there is debate on that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate
As far as I remember, that was tried with ships and it has some collateral effects that cause different damages to the oceans.
I think I recall the opposite. After having somewhat cleaner fuel, the ships cleaner exhaust caused more warming as the sulfur in the fuel was having a side effect of mitigating warming somewhat. It was raised as a point of maybe we should consider the approach of we are in dire straights.
I remember to have read that change caused some other problems, and these collateral problems were unexpected.
But I don't remember if the problem were about the ocean currents or that the ocean was warmer or a mix of the two plus something else.
How is that relevant to ships? It's released to high in the atmosphere.
My point was that this already tested on a smaller scale with ships: the fuel changed and that changed the exhaust fumes ability to reflect sunlight which cause some problems the proponents of the solution have not foresee.
Hm I always remember hearing this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/27/americans-climate-change-global-warming-yale-report
I'm pretty sure it wasn't renamed because people were morons about child weather, at least not completely. It's always been "climate change", because that's a better representation of what is happening.
The climate is changing, and one is the main side effects it's global warming... But there's extra fun side effects, like ocean acidification, that aren't because of the warning
Global warming is the driver of climate change.
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.
Are you trying to tell me that the spirit of capitalism won't return to us, dressed in the splendor of new technology, to absolve us of our past planetary transgressions, and take us to a new, perfect place amongst the stars where we will live in profit and harmony for ever?
Well, thats the second time I've fallen for that story......
Lol this is the same argument I've heard from climate change denialists for years: we can't possibly change the climate!
Now doomers are saying the same thing, but even more ridiculously because they almost certainly believe we have changed the climate already.
I think the issue people are arguing is you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You're not going to reform glaciers by choosing to drive an EV. You're not going to stop increasing rates and extremes of floods by turning off the basement lights when not in use.
This is not what the article is about at all. I'm not even sure how you would get that from reading the headline alone.
I'm talking about the comments, not the article.
How do you even get that from the comment I was responding to?
We just change it to something else.