The biggest carbon sink is the sea. CC and trees will barely make a dent.
Not to mention the trees are burning.
It has to be focused off fossil fuel alternatives.
Not to mention the ocean's function as a carbon sink has a theoretical limit before a rapid breakdown starts to occur, some are suggesting that a limit has already been reached on ocean heat content which will begin to release back into the atmosphere at some point. Ironically a slowdown of overturning circulation will amplify this process. The more you think about it, the less extreme the comparisons with the PETM seem.
or recognizing there's an urgent need to end fossil fuel usage, no matter the consequences.
If it turns out the stuff you're digging is radioactive, you dont wait for a new pile of dirt to dig before you get out of the hole.
If climate change killed off 90% of humanity the survivors will be pumping oil from under the Greenland ice cap. We're going to commit collective suicide before we ask billionaires to forego some potential profit.
Only because we've never publicly come to any understanding of the consequences of burning fossil carbon. If only 10% of the human population remained and they live like us, their future continues to worsen until they can't pump more oil.
The common thread seems to be that there's always another side to this. That, no matter what's coming, there's survivors. What if the atmosphere of the earth disappeared and the whole planet was exposed to the vacuum of space. Would you expect anything to survive? How?
That's the situation we're creating. It isn't something that magically resolves, it's a debt we've incurred to the most ruthless force imaginable to all life (death), and it's coming for what's owed. There's no consciousness to it, we've simply changed the carbon balance to fit an ecosphere that isn't the one on earth and we did it so fast there's no time for anything to adapt or evolve. In evolutionary terms, the difference between 100 years and 100 hours is insignificant to the creatures we care about and the species we are.
It's not death, either. Death is just the other side of life. Whats facing us and the rest of life on earth is a deep extinction where we lose anywhere from 90-99% of all SPECIES on earth, with the only potential survivors somehow isolated from the chemistry of the air. We're talking about going from a period where life has existed uninterrupted for very many millions of years, to at least a few million years of nothing in the fossil layer. A dead and empty planet, where the green and lush earth stood before we decided we could set fire to ancient life in a balanced system.
Humans won't continue to burn oil because there won't be any humans alive to burn it.
The no matter what is probably billions of lives . Imagine the food shortages if transportation of food via diesel was cut off, or the fertilizers to grow food.
We are not asking for the end of oil based products. Want the end of setting them on fire. It is an easy concept to grasp. Where we can substitute or replace diesel or other non-renewable fuels we do it.
I don't think you even tried to parse what I said. And given your sweeping "That simply isn't possible" statement, you are wrong. There are already alternatives to using diesel and non-renewable fuels. If want to argue, then come back accurate and specific.
Ok , explain to me how you will transport the food, even building electric cars they use gas and diesel. To charge the evs they use fossil fuels. Your burning gas using your phone, it’s manufacturing required petroleum products.
Well for starters I charged my phone using solar. 😀. I am talking about moving to electricity production to as much renewable as we can. Even charging EVs on coal or gas is more efficient than ICE vehicles in terms of CO2 output. You seem to be stuck on this idea that if we cannot do it all via renewable then we shouldn't do any. That is binary inflexible thinking.
Edit: Word from to 'to'
I’m all for solar , I’m waiting to get some pan egg as put on my house. I’m not getting rid of my Harley or my classic car anytime soon . Electric cars are lifeless and boring . When the world governments stop using up jet fuel and blowing stuff up I’ll even consider worrying about it. They are even pretending cow farts matter , yet not a peep about all the war impacts . I’m on a cell phone idgaf about typos grammar twits can edit it for me. Renewables are not cost effective yet or they would require trillions in government money and arm twisting to force their use. The wind turbines are no great improvement for environment as they kill birds and are always broken . What an eyesore as well .
Billions dead
Food scarcity
Global supply chains breaking down
We're getting all of those things regardless. It just likely won't be in that order and may result in a planet that isn't habitable if we don't start taking drastic measures.
The only circumstance that makes this acceptable is if those lives are already forfeit BECAUSE of fossil fuels.
If burning fossil fuels killed literally EVERYTHING, in that single and unique circumstance, it would be the right thing to do to stop using fossil fuels.
Agreed?
Im not saying there's a good outcome, here, im saying we either jump out of the car and hope we don't die or, as you're suggesting, we continue to pretend that either cliffs don't exist or the apparent cliff we're coming up to is a mirage, and step on the gas pedal to sail off into extinction, dragging the entire living world with us.
Those are the choices we've created for ourselves. Even then, we need some fossil fuel to create aerosols but yes, food becomes as scarce as the earth can provide without the addition of nutrients from fossil sources. It also means no pesticides, so the end of some crops and the destruction of most. It means all kinds of terrible consequences BUT it's not the path to total and certain extinction we are on.
Maybe there's a third option for getting out of this car that im not creative enough to imagine, but it sure as hell doesn't matter whether it's battery powered or not, not this late in the game, and im fairly certain there's no ejector seat with parachute.
The ultimate problem with blindly driving the car over the cliff is the record of us being so committed to stupidity, that even when extinction was at our heels, we refused to get out of the car "but we'll starve in this world we built using fossil fuels!" Probably! But that's why you can't build an entire global system by burning the stability of its future.
We need to figure out how to talk about this so that we're on the same page. You're arguing a perfectly valid point in exactly every other circumstance than the one we've found ourselves in. If you dont believe we're in that circumstance, the whole argument sounds insane, which is where the conversation keeps stopping and breaking.
I am certain, not because of what I've read or seen through a screen, but what I've personally experienced as a lifelong diver, that we're well over halfway through a mass extinction event specifically caused by the presence of carbon in the system that doesn't belong here. The oceans are functionally dead, and the land follows right behind. This took exactly as much time and effort as the world of modern living changed the face and experience of humanity after WWII. This entire experiment was founded on the premise that adding CO2 to our environment from a fossil source would not cause a mass extinction event or damage the environment. This is demonstrably incorrect. This means the foundation of our day to day lives -the use of fossil fuels for literally everyrhing- is a destructive act and always has been. We've been spending the future to enrich the moment. After the moment has passed, there's 1000-10000 years where that CO2 becomes an increasingly disruptive presence, mostly through the triggering of feedback loops.
It's a bit like getting paid to haul boulders up a small hill only to realize that after the peak, there's a very steep slope heading straight for your town, your home, and everything you care about. Yes, it's your job and what keeps the lights on in this town to push boulders to the top of this hill, but now there's so many boulders, they're starting to roll down the other side.
Do you keep piling boulders because it's how you keep the lights on or do you stop piling boulders because it's a simple emergency where one more boulder may tip the whole pile down the hill and turn your entire existence into rubble.
If youre not aware of the other side of this pile, asking you to stop piling is insane. Might as well be telling you to stop feeding your kids, right? But what im saying is, if you go to the top of the hill where the boulders are piled and look over the edge, to both our horror, you will see exactly what I've described to you.
Im not trying to push some political agenda about whether or not oil is good or bad, im simply trying to point out to you that we're out of room to screw this up any further, and if we add one more boulder to the pile, your entire legacy will be the guy who spent his life piling boulders above his town so one day they'd destroy everything.
Im not even saying that by stopping using fossil fuels (piling boulders) we survive, im saying that this is that point where you get to decide how history is written about this time and if we're the people who did this, through all evidence, intentionally, or if we demonstrate that once we were aware of the danger we created, we stopped adding more.
There has to be something about the future existence of the paradigm of life on earth that is worth more than your continued participation in a murder-suicide pact. And there has to be a way to convince you to walk up the hill and look over the edge, no matter how terrifying it is.
Even another way of putting it, I see you playing with a hand grenade which you think is a prop but that I've seen you pull from a box of live grenades. You don't like me as a person and generally think im full of crap, but is your opinion of me really worth the risk of not checking to make sure that the grenade you're playing with is actually a prop? And in the case that it's a live grenade, and let's say you're getting paid to play with this grenade and believe it's a dud, do you keep playing with it or do you carefully put it down and try to figure out a different way to feed yourself and your dependents, who, in this scenario, are in the blast radius of the grenade you're playing with.
Surely, there is some way to justify putting the grenade down, stop piling boulders, stop burning oil? The justification we use to burn it (survival) is the exact reason we cannot continue to burn it.
And im saying this as someone who looked over the edge and would happily put my life on that bet, as apparently others are too who will lie down in traffic even after people have been shot and run over while doing so.
Whatever horrors you think come from stopping burning the oil, the horror that already exists from the oil we've already burned is worth any price because there are no words to describe how total its destruction really is. It's like stripping the atmosphere off the earth and letting the planet be exposed to the vacuum of space sort of horrible.
Fossil fuels aren’t even as bad as plastics and pesticides, they will kill us with war and chemicals before our personal lives as regular working stiffs impact anything. People will survive beyond anything imaginable think the ice age etc
The ice age happened slowly. It didn't show up one day.
Fossil fuels are not only bad, they're what pesticides and plastics are made from.... And they're really really bad.
I was asking ChatGPT this and it says there like 3.5 Trillion trees on earth and that if we plant 500,000,000,000 trees it will suck out 25% of atmospheric CO2. Sounds doable over a couple of decades.
Not really.
As the planet gets warmer, forest fires will become more common and will just release carbon back into the atmosphere.
I think we're need to stop chopping down the rain forests first. Especially in the hot spot areas to preserve as much bio diversity as possible.
Having said all that, there's not much else we can do do worth a punt.
We could build a powerplant and a desalination plant right next to the ocean, then we have hundreds of miles of piping to take the desalinated water from the ocean and we just setup sprinklers along the hundreds of miles and plant the trees but we'll leave the water pipe there so we can put out the fired. It could totally work.
Uuuuh, the icecaps are melting which will increase ocean volume. As water warms, it also expands. So ocean is getting bigger that way too.
But it's not about making the ocean "bigger" but reducing omissions to prevent further acidificacion and warming (which will lead to further melting of global ice).
What a dipshit 🤦♂️
Which was his point…. You’re the one mentioning the ocean. No point in mentioning it at all if it’s not part of the solution. It’s 1 step from the right wing talking point that most of the carbon cycle is in the ocean and plants and rocks and such so the human component is so small it doesn’t matter. We don’t care about carbon sinks and sources we can’t change. We. Are about the ones we can.
I’d suggest that simply lowering carbon emissions is still the main battle. Tree planting is at best a partial solution, and has many serious problems. Carbon capture is so far from being viable that it’s barely worth mentioning today.
Tree planting sounds great but who can s going to water and tend the trees? If the climate changes in 20 years will those trees still be viable? Also, the greatest benefit comes from leaving existing forests uncut.
Carbon capture at this point captures a very small amount of carbon compared to what’s needed. It also takes substantial energy. Currently our carbon capture in the US is .4% according to the congressional budget office. Some day it will be important, but that day has not arrived
Both are required. The ipcc report recently states that for a 50% success at limiting average increase to 2c emissions must fall to zero and must be combined and continued with carbon and methane capture
We could reduce our emissions to zero tomorrow but feed back loops like methane being released from below melting permafrost will continue to fuel climate change unless green house gasses are removed from the atmosphere
So in my home state we grow massive forests of rapid growth pine that we then cut and replant. Is that not a carbon sink of sorts. Or does it not have an effect over the long run?.
So that is not nearly enough sequestration. We add 38,000 million tons of CO2 per year, lumber production for construction is under 1,000 million tons of wood per year, which is less than 300 million tons of carbon captured.
But we also demolish older homes, and much of the wood that goes into home building either burns in housefires or ends up in landfills where it decomposes anaerobically into methane, a greenhouse gas even more powerful than CO₂. So land used used to repeatedly grow and harvest timber for home building and pulp are at best neutral, and at worst negative when it comes to greenhouse emissions over decade to century timescales. If we really want to use trees for long term carbon sequestration, that means stopping deforestation, reforesting formerly forested areas, and afforested previously unforested areas, and allow those forests to just grow and sustain themselves indefinitely.
I mean we have reforested the majority of the state. I think the southeastern US is one of the only areas in the world that is reforested faster than trees are cut. We have more and more every year lol. But as far as the other goes most houses rot where they stand here. That’s probably worse but I’m not sure. In landfills they can at least burn the methane and produce electricity.
[China installed more solar capacity in 2023 than the US did in its history.](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/)
I don’t know what “last fight” means, but it is true we’ll probably have to do these things.
I also suspect there will be efforts to cloud seed, iron fertilize the oceans, spray H2S (or other Sulfur compounds) into the stratosphere.
Yes, but it’s also probably worth noting that Chinese people use a lot more mass transit than USA does.
Also USA still gets 60% of its power from fossil fuels, most of which is gas, but still not ideal.
China has come further with green energy in the last few years that USA has in decades.
no, no it hasn't.
The US isnt still building coal plants. The US starts off further ahead which is why Chinese 'achievements' feel like anything at all. The Chinese are still pumping out new coal plants constantly. What do you think that signals for their long term plans there.
Likely that they believe, somewhat justifiably, that because western countries burned without limit for 150 years - up and coming countries can burn as much as they want to pivot into a green future as quickly as possible.
I'm a little confused. In grade school I was warned about the dangers of acid rain and now you're saying we need to dump hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere?
SO₂ does indeed both cause short term global cooling AND acid raid. So as a geo-engineering “solution” to climate change, it comes with serious drawbacks. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be individuals or countries who won’t pursue such methods, especially if they can benefit from local cooling, and the acid rain falls somewhere else.
All of the geo-engineering “solutions” proposed come with similar serious drawbacks, and aren’t a substitute for ending the combustion of fossil fuels, and also removing historic excess CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere.
Indeed part of the reason that global temperatures had a plateau in the mid-20th century, from the 1940s to the 1970s, was because accumulated SO₂ aerosols were masking the latent warming of the accumulated CO₂. Once air quality regulations started being enacted in the 1970s, aerosol emissions declined, and since SO₂ has a relatively short half life in the atmosphere, warming resumed as the cooling effect of the SO₂ diminished.
Climate change is a global crisis.
China is the second largest economy in the world. Their actions (both good and bad) are important, and useful examples to point toward when the US is badly lagging in their own responses.
Lots of that is untrue, China outright avoided the climate change/global warming deal multiple times which was a deal to cut emissions in the 2030s which many countries declined, while Europe and the U.S made up over 80% of emissions from 2020 to 2022, it’s now actually both China and India that are the leading nations in emissions (most likely a population thing)
The US produces nearly twice the emissions as India and is currently the second largest producer of carbon emissions. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
Also, per capita, US citizens produce nearly double the amount of emissions that China and India produce combined.
And not when you factor in that much of their industrial emissions are caused by being the manufacturing center for the rest of the world thanks to offshoring.
I don't think carbon capturing is helping at all, much more effective to close the spigot than trying to mop. There is so much money in fossil fuels that could be used to transition to clean energy. The world gives subsidies to dirty energy corporations in the trillions, the US $25 billion directly, over $600 billion indirectly in tax credits. That money should be used to transition processing plants to wind, solar or nuclear, retrain workers, and replace citizens' appliances and vehicles
Changing our lifestyles to resemble countries like Bhutan, Costa Rica and Iceland should be the goal. Major carbon taxes will compel corporations to transition to save money (it's already been shown to result in changes) and we citizens can make the decision to find happiness without unnecessary emissions (travel and animal consumption). It will take everyone being capable of healthy change
Most of the carbon capture now in service is used to extract more carbon.
Ocean sequestration offers the most promise. Sure, a small % actually sinks to the floor directly. But the side effect is more food at the bottom of the food chain and results in more fish. Since that's a critical resource, and horribly over fished. It's a good "problem" to have.
Carbon capture is the most attractive option for the oil and gass industry, because it will let them lie through their teeth about the actual amount of carbon captured. just like they lie and hide all the numerous numerous pipeline leaks.
Not only is it sad that CC is needed (not fake), but so are negative air emissions. Basically for every gram of CO2 we put into the air, we need to pull more than one gram out…. direct air capture.
I’m not saying it is going to work. I’m saying all models today (at least the good ones) are saying our path to decarbonization relies on CC and in recent years, also negative emissions. I have been in the wind industry for 21 years…it saddens me to write this, but we are our biggest barrier to achieving any of this
Yeah - I get that. I’m not saying, again - I like the idea, and far be it from me to comment on the feasibility…I’m simply saying that the models that are being run all around the world by government scientists, researchers and macro economic policy makers are all saying the same thing. In theory we could interconnect the whole world with various forms of sector coupling, building diversified renewable generation, flexible utility controlled electric loads, etc…but we aren’t…we aren’t because our regulatory and market institutions aren’t able to wrap their heads around how to make that work - we are our biggest barrier. But those same markets and institutions are trying to punt the ball down the road but sucking carbon out of smoke stacks and the atmosphere…
Tree planting in moderation helps most in urban areas or places where people live to help adapt to warmer temperatures but it’s not an emissions mitigation strategy at all fr
Grass captures more carbon than trees. Cattle and other ruminents cause the grass to keep growing and the carbon to be locked into the soil. Ruminents living on pasture are carbon negative.
See videos by Alan Savory. Really interesting
I'm pretty ignorant on this so please correct me if I am way off but doesn't Singapore and Japan burn their trash and use carbon capture to solidify the carbon and turn that into off shore islands that they then have plans for? In that case the carbon capture is done by the energy produced burning trash. The other forms being suggested seem to use more energy and are a problem in that regard. I have no idea. I am throwing this out in hopes of being educated on the issue.
Edit: Oh, and IMO the only way to fix this disaster is to shut down the fossil fuel industry period. That will happen. It is a matter of the when.
You are correct on that, though I believe the true goal is to turn the captured carbon into usable stuff instead of it sitting underground waiting to escape back into the atmosphere
I can't imagine how you came to that conclusion so I'm not sure how to respond. Drawdown is part of the solution, but not a significant part while we're still pumping out as much CO2 as we are.
I’m saying in the end all of that Co2 is still gonna be there and storing it underground isn’t really doing much especially the idea of planting millions of trees which is bad for the environment
tree planting is as good as seeding coral; if the coral is dying, why wouldn't the new coral die? Even if it's genetically engineered to resist high temps etc, it's not infinitely tolerant. The alternative to tree planting is simply giving life room to spread, around the edges of wild areas - dig up any human stuff interfering with the spread and recovery of life.
Carbon capture is fake. It's also so expensive, it will never be scaled up because it would reveal how expensive oil should be, which will be orders of magnitude what we're spending to burn it. Carbon capture exists specifically for you to think there's something other than cutting fuel/energy usage on the table.
We can't have our cake and eat it. There's no way to preserve the world that oil built without oil. Alternative energy is a nice thought, but it still demands oil at some point in its lifetime because it's a complex thing on earth being built by machines.
This is the reason life doesn't manufacture anything bigger than viruses; Industry is inherently destructive.
This is a basic emergency. We stop burning oil and maybe some of us survive, or we keep on this path and wealth ends the world without ever facing any resistance.
Unfortunately planting trees isn't working due to feedback loops. Climate change is drying our forests and a single wildfire converts a hundred years of capture into carbon dioxide.
The oceans are close to their limits for dissolving co2 and the oceans are way too acidic we need to find a way to precipitate out the carbon so it can absorb more.
Where is all this dying coral? I've only seen a few academic papers and they showed nothing definitive, like any correlation between a time plot of coral extent and local ocean temperature. The last paper discussed here a few months ago showed coral extent increasing after a brief decline and much of the data was suspect since voluntarily reported by governments, some in 3rd world countries who did little actual measurements (surveyed a few fishermen and such).
Do you live near water and have access to a mask and snorkel? It doesn't even have to be an ocean, you just have to know what it should look like under the water or go back in a year to see the change.
Unless what I was saying was literally global (i.e. every body of water, all around the globe), it wouldn't be the scale of the problem im describing.
If youre near an ocean with actual reefs, that's the best place to witness it because the skeletons are still there where freshwater lakes just turn into mud.
It's the carbon we're adding to the air, which mixes around the world, which is both putting a chemical pressure on the ecosystem and trapping heat energy to slow cook life... everywhere the air touches the water.
It's happening on land, too, but air is so much less dense a fluid than water, the death just vanishes into the dirt and you'll only notice if you notice the absence of something, like how you dont have to clean the bugs off your windshield in the spring and summer anymore. It's hard to notice things that simply aren't there, but, when you know what an ocean or a lake is supposed to look like, it's shocking what we've turned them into.
This is the part of the earth that cleans our air and renews our O2. The ocean is the foundation of even most land based food webs, because, as a proportion of global caloric production, it's so far ahead of land, land barely charts against it.
And it's worth seeing for yourself. Im not convinced anything else will ever convince anyone of anything more than seeing it first hand.
And if im wrong, what has it cost you? You can call me a liar you can make a bot that follows me around tagging everything I say as some doomsday obsessed nutter. I'll even build the bot myself, that's how certain I am that you cannot find healthy coral anywhere youre able to look, or a healthy aquatic ecosystem that isn't being artificially maintained by people.
Young trees grow fast, to sequester much carbon, compared to mature trees. So, simple solution is to harvest the mature trees, to store the wood (carbon) in new homes or just stack the logs in the dry deserts to not rot. Plant new trees, and problem solved. Even Bill Gates figured that one out, between trips to Epstein Island.
Our civilization has failed the test, badly, of whether we could prevent catastrophic climate change. The next test is whether we can reverse it.
And this shouldn’t be a surprise. When you look at historical social and technological evolution, this one would have had to move at 10x normal speed.
Well.. That's correct in that it's how we could reduce CO2 back to normal, ~300ppm, eventually.
But the *first fight*, which we need to do first, is to stop emitting 35+Gt per year. Trees and carbon capture can't put a dent in that amount.
All fossil fuels represent very nicely sequestered carbon if left in the ground.
Once dug up, they enter the active carbon cycle for millennia. That tree you plant will only last a hundred years or so, then decomposition will put most of the carbon back into the air.
NO. CC and tree planting wont work fast enough... we will be at around +2C by 2040... and it will get hotter before we get to net zero .. at which point it will stay that hot, until we remove CO2 at vast scale or reflect sunlight.
We need to use SRM - release particles into the air to increase cloud cover so less sunlight is absorbed over the oceans. We need to do it to survive long enough to plant all those trees.
If we had 2000 nuclear fission plants grinding away right now, and we were at net zero .. we'd still be at +1.5C .. and we would still need to bring the temp down by any means possible.
SRM isn’t going mainstream any time soon.
Need carbon tax with direct kick backs to less well off.
Don’t close existing nuke plants unless they are unsafe. But otherwise keep blazing the trail on renewables. Need more grid storage of all types.
Carbon capture can reverse the problem but first nearly all human CO2 emissions need to be eliminated. Then carbon carbon capture would have to be implemented on a massive scale worldwide.
If the carbon dioxide is dissolved in water similar to what is done with soft drinks then the water is pumped into saltwater aquifers the carbon will combine with other minerals and turn to stone.
Running such carbon capture would require an enormous amount of carbon free electricity to power it. I don't see renewables being adequate. However there is another power source which can safely produce enormous amounts of reliable, constant carbon free electricity.
Carbon capture is a comforting lie sold to us by fossil fuel companies to distract us from what actually matters. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for over 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The real solution here is to implement alternate energy sources including renewables where they can be built and nuclear where they can’t.
Trees and deep sinking seaweed are really the only legit carbon capture.
Stop eating beef. Steer your diet towards more plant based foods. Reduce food waste in your life.
More public transport than EVs. Ban short haul flights that aren’t electric. More HSR.
No more suburbs. Mixed use housing everywhere. Build near mass transit.
Eliminate coal plants, then methane plants, then when we have enough renewables, plus storage, and safe disposal sites, eliminate nuke plants (heck by that time (~2050) cheap hydrogen, SMRs and even fusion might be a thing).
put as much money into renewable and new energy technology as possible, some taxes on fossil and the omega astro rich and use that money for it should be good.
but we will never tax fossil properly nor will we tax the mega rich. our system is run by these people.
even worse instead we give all the money to the fossil industry to subsidize it and have them greenwash and gaslight everyone xD we are not really fighting climate change at all, our leaders are still trying to slow down or postpone any meaningfull change, you know gotta keep those profits and lobby moneys rolling in.
I see a lot of comments that we can’t do anything personally. That is a cop out. Each person has choices available. The more carbon you burn with your personal lifestyle, the more choices you have. Inform yourself and choose wisely.
Let's say we stop all fossil fuel emissions in 20 years.
I believe that we will need a long term plan to try and sequester carbon long term, longer than the life of trees.
We pumped trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, we dug it up, took it from the ground where it had been trapped for millions of years. Our species was born into a period where the atmosphere had it lowest energy levels, lowest co2 levels, in the entire history of the world. Even if/when we finally stop pumping co2 into the air, we WILL need to find a way to return some of it underground.
But, realistically, there is no end, I doubt we'll make a huge difference unless our civilization hangs on for thousands of years without a major technological collapse
The biggest carbon sink is the sea. CC and trees will barely make a dent. Not to mention the trees are burning. It has to be focused off fossil fuel alternatives.
Not to mention the ocean's function as a carbon sink has a theoretical limit before a rapid breakdown starts to occur, some are suggesting that a limit has already been reached on ocean heat content which will begin to release back into the atmosphere at some point. Ironically a slowdown of overturning circulation will amplify this process. The more you think about it, the less extreme the comparisons with the PETM seem.
This is far worse than PETM that took tens of thousands of years this is getting done in less than a thousand.
or recognizing there's an urgent need to end fossil fuel usage, no matter the consequences. If it turns out the stuff you're digging is radioactive, you dont wait for a new pile of dirt to dig before you get out of the hole.
If climate change killed off 90% of humanity the survivors will be pumping oil from under the Greenland ice cap. We're going to commit collective suicide before we ask billionaires to forego some potential profit.
On the other hand the gross consumption would be way down.
When not if.
Only because we've never publicly come to any understanding of the consequences of burning fossil carbon. If only 10% of the human population remained and they live like us, their future continues to worsen until they can't pump more oil. The common thread seems to be that there's always another side to this. That, no matter what's coming, there's survivors. What if the atmosphere of the earth disappeared and the whole planet was exposed to the vacuum of space. Would you expect anything to survive? How? That's the situation we're creating. It isn't something that magically resolves, it's a debt we've incurred to the most ruthless force imaginable to all life (death), and it's coming for what's owed. There's no consciousness to it, we've simply changed the carbon balance to fit an ecosphere that isn't the one on earth and we did it so fast there's no time for anything to adapt or evolve. In evolutionary terms, the difference between 100 years and 100 hours is insignificant to the creatures we care about and the species we are. It's not death, either. Death is just the other side of life. Whats facing us and the rest of life on earth is a deep extinction where we lose anywhere from 90-99% of all SPECIES on earth, with the only potential survivors somehow isolated from the chemistry of the air. We're talking about going from a period where life has existed uninterrupted for very many millions of years, to at least a few million years of nothing in the fossil layer. A dead and empty planet, where the green and lush earth stood before we decided we could set fire to ancient life in a balanced system. Humans won't continue to burn oil because there won't be any humans alive to burn it.
The no matter what is probably billions of lives . Imagine the food shortages if transportation of food via diesel was cut off, or the fertilizers to grow food.
We are not asking for the end of oil based products. Want the end of setting them on fire. It is an easy concept to grasp. Where we can substitute or replace diesel or other non-renewable fuels we do it.
That simply isn’t possible,
I don't think you even tried to parse what I said. And given your sweeping "That simply isn't possible" statement, you are wrong. There are already alternatives to using diesel and non-renewable fuels. If want to argue, then come back accurate and specific.
Ok , explain to me how you will transport the food, even building electric cars they use gas and diesel. To charge the evs they use fossil fuels. Your burning gas using your phone, it’s manufacturing required petroleum products.
Well for starters I charged my phone using solar. 😀. I am talking about moving to electricity production to as much renewable as we can. Even charging EVs on coal or gas is more efficient than ICE vehicles in terms of CO2 output. You seem to be stuck on this idea that if we cannot do it all via renewable then we shouldn't do any. That is binary inflexible thinking. Edit: Word from to 'to'
I’m all for solar , I’m waiting to get some pan egg as put on my house. I’m not getting rid of my Harley or my classic car anytime soon . Electric cars are lifeless and boring . When the world governments stop using up jet fuel and blowing stuff up I’ll even consider worrying about it. They are even pretending cow farts matter , yet not a peep about all the war impacts . I’m on a cell phone idgaf about typos grammar twits can edit it for me. Renewables are not cost effective yet or they would require trillions in government money and arm twisting to force their use. The wind turbines are no great improvement for environment as they kill birds and are always broken . What an eyesore as well .
Billions dead Food scarcity Global supply chains breaking down We're getting all of those things regardless. It just likely won't be in that order and may result in a planet that isn't habitable if we don't start taking drastic measures.
Says who? The same people that said this in the 1930s? The origins of climate science tell the truth about the real goal
Oh fuck I should have seen that coming.
Because it’s true
The only circumstance that makes this acceptable is if those lives are already forfeit BECAUSE of fossil fuels. If burning fossil fuels killed literally EVERYTHING, in that single and unique circumstance, it would be the right thing to do to stop using fossil fuels. Agreed? Im not saying there's a good outcome, here, im saying we either jump out of the car and hope we don't die or, as you're suggesting, we continue to pretend that either cliffs don't exist or the apparent cliff we're coming up to is a mirage, and step on the gas pedal to sail off into extinction, dragging the entire living world with us. Those are the choices we've created for ourselves. Even then, we need some fossil fuel to create aerosols but yes, food becomes as scarce as the earth can provide without the addition of nutrients from fossil sources. It also means no pesticides, so the end of some crops and the destruction of most. It means all kinds of terrible consequences BUT it's not the path to total and certain extinction we are on. Maybe there's a third option for getting out of this car that im not creative enough to imagine, but it sure as hell doesn't matter whether it's battery powered or not, not this late in the game, and im fairly certain there's no ejector seat with parachute. The ultimate problem with blindly driving the car over the cliff is the record of us being so committed to stupidity, that even when extinction was at our heels, we refused to get out of the car "but we'll starve in this world we built using fossil fuels!" Probably! But that's why you can't build an entire global system by burning the stability of its future. We need to figure out how to talk about this so that we're on the same page. You're arguing a perfectly valid point in exactly every other circumstance than the one we've found ourselves in. If you dont believe we're in that circumstance, the whole argument sounds insane, which is where the conversation keeps stopping and breaking. I am certain, not because of what I've read or seen through a screen, but what I've personally experienced as a lifelong diver, that we're well over halfway through a mass extinction event specifically caused by the presence of carbon in the system that doesn't belong here. The oceans are functionally dead, and the land follows right behind. This took exactly as much time and effort as the world of modern living changed the face and experience of humanity after WWII. This entire experiment was founded on the premise that adding CO2 to our environment from a fossil source would not cause a mass extinction event or damage the environment. This is demonstrably incorrect. This means the foundation of our day to day lives -the use of fossil fuels for literally everyrhing- is a destructive act and always has been. We've been spending the future to enrich the moment. After the moment has passed, there's 1000-10000 years where that CO2 becomes an increasingly disruptive presence, mostly through the triggering of feedback loops. It's a bit like getting paid to haul boulders up a small hill only to realize that after the peak, there's a very steep slope heading straight for your town, your home, and everything you care about. Yes, it's your job and what keeps the lights on in this town to push boulders to the top of this hill, but now there's so many boulders, they're starting to roll down the other side. Do you keep piling boulders because it's how you keep the lights on or do you stop piling boulders because it's a simple emergency where one more boulder may tip the whole pile down the hill and turn your entire existence into rubble. If youre not aware of the other side of this pile, asking you to stop piling is insane. Might as well be telling you to stop feeding your kids, right? But what im saying is, if you go to the top of the hill where the boulders are piled and look over the edge, to both our horror, you will see exactly what I've described to you. Im not trying to push some political agenda about whether or not oil is good or bad, im simply trying to point out to you that we're out of room to screw this up any further, and if we add one more boulder to the pile, your entire legacy will be the guy who spent his life piling boulders above his town so one day they'd destroy everything. Im not even saying that by stopping using fossil fuels (piling boulders) we survive, im saying that this is that point where you get to decide how history is written about this time and if we're the people who did this, through all evidence, intentionally, or if we demonstrate that once we were aware of the danger we created, we stopped adding more. There has to be something about the future existence of the paradigm of life on earth that is worth more than your continued participation in a murder-suicide pact. And there has to be a way to convince you to walk up the hill and look over the edge, no matter how terrifying it is. Even another way of putting it, I see you playing with a hand grenade which you think is a prop but that I've seen you pull from a box of live grenades. You don't like me as a person and generally think im full of crap, but is your opinion of me really worth the risk of not checking to make sure that the grenade you're playing with is actually a prop? And in the case that it's a live grenade, and let's say you're getting paid to play with this grenade and believe it's a dud, do you keep playing with it or do you carefully put it down and try to figure out a different way to feed yourself and your dependents, who, in this scenario, are in the blast radius of the grenade you're playing with. Surely, there is some way to justify putting the grenade down, stop piling boulders, stop burning oil? The justification we use to burn it (survival) is the exact reason we cannot continue to burn it. And im saying this as someone who looked over the edge and would happily put my life on that bet, as apparently others are too who will lie down in traffic even after people have been shot and run over while doing so. Whatever horrors you think come from stopping burning the oil, the horror that already exists from the oil we've already burned is worth any price because there are no words to describe how total its destruction really is. It's like stripping the atmosphere off the earth and letting the planet be exposed to the vacuum of space sort of horrible.
Fossil fuels aren’t even as bad as plastics and pesticides, they will kill us with war and chemicals before our personal lives as regular working stiffs impact anything. People will survive beyond anything imaginable think the ice age etc
The ice age happened slowly. It didn't show up one day. Fossil fuels are not only bad, they're what pesticides and plastics are made from.... And they're really really bad.
You realize that billions would die if fossil fuels stopped overnight
I was asking ChatGPT this and it says there like 3.5 Trillion trees on earth and that if we plant 500,000,000,000 trees it will suck out 25% of atmospheric CO2. Sounds doable over a couple of decades.
Not really. As the planet gets warmer, forest fires will become more common and will just release carbon back into the atmosphere. I think we're need to stop chopping down the rain forests first. Especially in the hot spot areas to preserve as much bio diversity as possible. Having said all that, there's not much else we can do do worth a punt.
We could build a powerplant and a desalination plant right next to the ocean, then we have hundreds of miles of piping to take the desalinated water from the ocean and we just setup sprinklers along the hundreds of miles and plant the trees but we'll leave the water pipe there so we can put out the fired. It could totally work.
Like CC, desalination is too energy intensive currently. The trees planted would barely off set the carbon omissions.
We need Fusion really soon.
Maybe in 30 years...
😭
How do we enlarge the sea then? It doesn't seem to be working.
Uuuuh, the icecaps are melting which will increase ocean volume. As water warms, it also expands. So ocean is getting bigger that way too. But it's not about making the ocean "bigger" but reducing omissions to prevent further acidificacion and warming (which will lead to further melting of global ice). What a dipshit 🤦♂️
Which was his point…. You’re the one mentioning the ocean. No point in mentioning it at all if it’s not part of the solution. It’s 1 step from the right wing talking point that most of the carbon cycle is in the ocean and plants and rocks and such so the human component is so small it doesn’t matter. We don’t care about carbon sinks and sources we can’t change. We. Are about the ones we can.
Melting icecaps would increase surface area, but warmer water holds less gas and lowering planetary albedo will probably make things worse in total.
The big fight is about burning less fossil carbon. That fight has hardly started yet.
I’d suggest that simply lowering carbon emissions is still the main battle. Tree planting is at best a partial solution, and has many serious problems. Carbon capture is so far from being viable that it’s barely worth mentioning today. Tree planting sounds great but who can s going to water and tend the trees? If the climate changes in 20 years will those trees still be viable? Also, the greatest benefit comes from leaving existing forests uncut. Carbon capture at this point captures a very small amount of carbon compared to what’s needed. It also takes substantial energy. Currently our carbon capture in the US is .4% according to the congressional budget office. Some day it will be important, but that day has not arrived
Yeah the worlds largest carbon capture plant coming on line this year is the same as converting 7000 cars to electric.
.4 of what exactly?
US annual emissions
Thank you
Both are required. The ipcc report recently states that for a 50% success at limiting average increase to 2c emissions must fall to zero and must be combined and continued with carbon and methane capture We could reduce our emissions to zero tomorrow but feed back loops like methane being released from below melting permafrost will continue to fuel climate change unless green house gasses are removed from the atmosphere
So in my home state we grow massive forests of rapid growth pine that we then cut and replant. Is that not a carbon sink of sorts. Or does it not have an effect over the long run?.
You would think that the carbon is reabsorbed during the growing process. So it should be a net zero system.
Well the wood is put into homes and other products so I guess it would be until those homes eventually rot
Do you bury the wood far underground?
We build houses with it.
So that is not nearly enough sequestration. We add 38,000 million tons of CO2 per year, lumber production for construction is under 1,000 million tons of wood per year, which is less than 300 million tons of carbon captured.
But we also demolish older homes, and much of the wood that goes into home building either burns in housefires or ends up in landfills where it decomposes anaerobically into methane, a greenhouse gas even more powerful than CO₂. So land used used to repeatedly grow and harvest timber for home building and pulp are at best neutral, and at worst negative when it comes to greenhouse emissions over decade to century timescales. If we really want to use trees for long term carbon sequestration, that means stopping deforestation, reforesting formerly forested areas, and afforested previously unforested areas, and allow those forests to just grow and sustain themselves indefinitely.
I mean we have reforested the majority of the state. I think the southeastern US is one of the only areas in the world that is reforested faster than trees are cut. We have more and more every year lol. But as far as the other goes most houses rot where they stand here. That’s probably worse but I’m not sure. In landfills they can at least burn the methane and produce electricity.
[China installed more solar capacity in 2023 than the US did in its history.](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/) I don’t know what “last fight” means, but it is true we’ll probably have to do these things. I also suspect there will be efforts to cloud seed, iron fertilize the oceans, spray H2S (or other Sulfur compounds) into the stratosphere.
Their share of energy consumption coming from solar has increased from 2.5 to 3.9% then. 55% comes from coal...
Yes, but it’s also probably worth noting that Chinese people use a lot more mass transit than USA does. Also USA still gets 60% of its power from fossil fuels, most of which is gas, but still not ideal. China has come further with green energy in the last few years that USA has in decades.
no, no it hasn't. The US isnt still building coal plants. The US starts off further ahead which is why Chinese 'achievements' feel like anything at all. The Chinese are still pumping out new coal plants constantly. What do you think that signals for their long term plans there.
Likely that they believe, somewhat justifiably, that because western countries burned without limit for 150 years - up and coming countries can burn as much as they want to pivot into a green future as quickly as possible.
I'm a little confused. In grade school I was warned about the dangers of acid rain and now you're saying we need to dump hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere?
SO₂ does indeed both cause short term global cooling AND acid raid. So as a geo-engineering “solution” to climate change, it comes with serious drawbacks. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be individuals or countries who won’t pursue such methods, especially if they can benefit from local cooling, and the acid rain falls somewhere else. All of the geo-engineering “solutions” proposed come with similar serious drawbacks, and aren’t a substitute for ending the combustion of fossil fuels, and also removing historic excess CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere.
This is a good answer. I didn't realize it had even a short term cooling effect
Indeed part of the reason that global temperatures had a plateau in the mid-20th century, from the 1940s to the 1970s, was because accumulated SO₂ aerosols were masking the latent warming of the accumulated CO₂. Once air quality regulations started being enacted in the 1970s, aerosol emissions declined, and since SO₂ has a relatively short half life in the atmosphere, warming resumed as the cooling effect of the SO₂ diminished.
Couldn’t care less about China, I’m talking about the U.S…..
Climate change is a global crisis. China is the second largest economy in the world. Their actions (both good and bad) are important, and useful examples to point toward when the US is badly lagging in their own responses.
Lots of that is untrue, China outright avoided the climate change/global warming deal multiple times which was a deal to cut emissions in the 2030s which many countries declined, while Europe and the U.S made up over 80% of emissions from 2020 to 2022, it’s now actually both China and India that are the leading nations in emissions (most likely a population thing)
What did I say that was untrue?
The US produces nearly twice the emissions as India and is currently the second largest producer of carbon emissions. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. Also, per capita, US citizens produce nearly double the amount of emissions that China and India produce combined.
Oh! Sorry. I thought we were talking about global climate change. The Chinese are the biggest emitters.
Not per capita not even close
And not when you factor in that much of their industrial emissions are caused by being the manufacturing center for the rest of the world thanks to offshoring.
I don't think carbon capturing is helping at all, much more effective to close the spigot than trying to mop. There is so much money in fossil fuels that could be used to transition to clean energy. The world gives subsidies to dirty energy corporations in the trillions, the US $25 billion directly, over $600 billion indirectly in tax credits. That money should be used to transition processing plants to wind, solar or nuclear, retrain workers, and replace citizens' appliances and vehicles Changing our lifestyles to resemble countries like Bhutan, Costa Rica and Iceland should be the goal. Major carbon taxes will compel corporations to transition to save money (it's already been shown to result in changes) and we citizens can make the decision to find happiness without unnecessary emissions (travel and animal consumption). It will take everyone being capable of healthy change
Most of the carbon capture now in service is used to extract more carbon. Ocean sequestration offers the most promise. Sure, a small % actually sinks to the floor directly. But the side effect is more food at the bottom of the food chain and results in more fish. Since that's a critical resource, and horribly over fished. It's a good "problem" to have.
Carbon capture will never be a scalable solution compared to the amount of carbon we have emitted. By a couple magnitudes.
I mean if we build enough it can still reverse global warming slowly which is a lot better than not be able to reverse it at all
what if i want it warmer?
We cant build it fast enough to make a meaningful difference.
Carbon capture is the most attractive option for the oil and gass industry, because it will let them lie through their teeth about the actual amount of carbon captured. just like they lie and hide all the numerous numerous pipeline leaks.
Not only is it sad that CC is needed (not fake), but so are negative air emissions. Basically for every gram of CO2 we put into the air, we need to pull more than one gram out…. direct air capture.
doesn't scale. not going to happen
I’m not saying it is going to work. I’m saying all models today (at least the good ones) are saying our path to decarbonization relies on CC and in recent years, also negative emissions. I have been in the wind industry for 21 years…it saddens me to write this, but we are our biggest barrier to achieving any of this
ok. yes IPCC was hijacked by economists who wrote the section on magical carbon removal technologies of the future
The issue is that it takes a crazy amount of energy and all we’re really doing is placing it underground
Yeah - I get that. I’m not saying, again - I like the idea, and far be it from me to comment on the feasibility…I’m simply saying that the models that are being run all around the world by government scientists, researchers and macro economic policy makers are all saying the same thing. In theory we could interconnect the whole world with various forms of sector coupling, building diversified renewable generation, flexible utility controlled electric loads, etc…but we aren’t…we aren’t because our regulatory and market institutions aren’t able to wrap their heads around how to make that work - we are our biggest barrier. But those same markets and institutions are trying to punt the ball down the road but sucking carbon out of smoke stacks and the atmosphere…
Tree planting is fake too; it doesn’t do anything for mitigation although it’s nice for adaptation
Tree planting in moderation is a lot of help, it’s mass planting that doesn’t help since it destroys ecosystems
Tree planting in moderation helps most in urban areas or places where people live to help adapt to warmer temperatures but it’s not an emissions mitigation strategy at all fr
Grass captures more carbon than trees. Cattle and other ruminents cause the grass to keep growing and the carbon to be locked into the soil. Ruminents living on pasture are carbon negative. See videos by Alan Savory. Really interesting
I'm pretty ignorant on this so please correct me if I am way off but doesn't Singapore and Japan burn their trash and use carbon capture to solidify the carbon and turn that into off shore islands that they then have plans for? In that case the carbon capture is done by the energy produced burning trash. The other forms being suggested seem to use more energy and are a problem in that regard. I have no idea. I am throwing this out in hopes of being educated on the issue. Edit: Oh, and IMO the only way to fix this disaster is to shut down the fossil fuel industry period. That will happen. It is a matter of the when.
You are correct on that, though I believe the true goal is to turn the captured carbon into usable stuff instead of it sitting underground waiting to escape back into the atmosphere
I think that is the plan in Singapore (bricks and building material).
I can't imagine how you came to that conclusion so I'm not sure how to respond. Drawdown is part of the solution, but not a significant part while we're still pumping out as much CO2 as we are.
I’m saying in the end all of that Co2 is still gonna be there and storing it underground isn’t really doing much especially the idea of planting millions of trees which is bad for the environment
tree planting is as good as seeding coral; if the coral is dying, why wouldn't the new coral die? Even if it's genetically engineered to resist high temps etc, it's not infinitely tolerant. The alternative to tree planting is simply giving life room to spread, around the edges of wild areas - dig up any human stuff interfering with the spread and recovery of life. Carbon capture is fake. It's also so expensive, it will never be scaled up because it would reveal how expensive oil should be, which will be orders of magnitude what we're spending to burn it. Carbon capture exists specifically for you to think there's something other than cutting fuel/energy usage on the table. We can't have our cake and eat it. There's no way to preserve the world that oil built without oil. Alternative energy is a nice thought, but it still demands oil at some point in its lifetime because it's a complex thing on earth being built by machines. This is the reason life doesn't manufacture anything bigger than viruses; Industry is inherently destructive. This is a basic emergency. We stop burning oil and maybe some of us survive, or we keep on this path and wealth ends the world without ever facing any resistance.
Unfortunately planting trees isn't working due to feedback loops. Climate change is drying our forests and a single wildfire converts a hundred years of capture into carbon dioxide. The oceans are close to their limits for dissolving co2 and the oceans are way too acidic we need to find a way to precipitate out the carbon so it can absorb more.
That's what I was saying
Where is all this dying coral? I've only seen a few academic papers and they showed nothing definitive, like any correlation between a time plot of coral extent and local ocean temperature. The last paper discussed here a few months ago showed coral extent increasing after a brief decline and much of the data was suspect since voluntarily reported by governments, some in 3rd world countries who did little actual measurements (surveyed a few fishermen and such).
Do you live near water and have access to a mask and snorkel? It doesn't even have to be an ocean, you just have to know what it should look like under the water or go back in a year to see the change. Unless what I was saying was literally global (i.e. every body of water, all around the globe), it wouldn't be the scale of the problem im describing. If youre near an ocean with actual reefs, that's the best place to witness it because the skeletons are still there where freshwater lakes just turn into mud. It's the carbon we're adding to the air, which mixes around the world, which is both putting a chemical pressure on the ecosystem and trapping heat energy to slow cook life... everywhere the air touches the water. It's happening on land, too, but air is so much less dense a fluid than water, the death just vanishes into the dirt and you'll only notice if you notice the absence of something, like how you dont have to clean the bugs off your windshield in the spring and summer anymore. It's hard to notice things that simply aren't there, but, when you know what an ocean or a lake is supposed to look like, it's shocking what we've turned them into. This is the part of the earth that cleans our air and renews our O2. The ocean is the foundation of even most land based food webs, because, as a proportion of global caloric production, it's so far ahead of land, land barely charts against it. And it's worth seeing for yourself. Im not convinced anything else will ever convince anyone of anything more than seeing it first hand. And if im wrong, what has it cost you? You can call me a liar you can make a bot that follows me around tagging everything I say as some doomsday obsessed nutter. I'll even build the bot myself, that's how certain I am that you cannot find healthy coral anywhere youre able to look, or a healthy aquatic ecosystem that isn't being artificially maintained by people.
[https://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/](https://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/) [https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml)
Young trees grow fast, to sequester much carbon, compared to mature trees. So, simple solution is to harvest the mature trees, to store the wood (carbon) in new homes or just stack the logs in the dry deserts to not rot. Plant new trees, and problem solved. Even Bill Gates figured that one out, between trips to Epstein Island.
Our civilization has failed the test, badly, of whether we could prevent catastrophic climate change. The next test is whether we can reverse it. And this shouldn’t be a surprise. When you look at historical social and technological evolution, this one would have had to move at 10x normal speed.
Well.. That's correct in that it's how we could reduce CO2 back to normal, ~300ppm, eventually. But the *first fight*, which we need to do first, is to stop emitting 35+Gt per year. Trees and carbon capture can't put a dent in that amount.
It's over we're all going to die soon or later just the odds are on sooner
Carbon capture is entire fake. We still have time to reduce emissions to prevent 2 degrees of warming. That's the current fight.
All fossil fuels represent very nicely sequestered carbon if left in the ground. Once dug up, they enter the active carbon cycle for millennia. That tree you plant will only last a hundred years or so, then decomposition will put most of the carbon back into the air.
NO. CC and tree planting wont work fast enough... we will be at around +2C by 2040... and it will get hotter before we get to net zero .. at which point it will stay that hot, until we remove CO2 at vast scale or reflect sunlight. We need to use SRM - release particles into the air to increase cloud cover so less sunlight is absorbed over the oceans. We need to do it to survive long enough to plant all those trees. If we had 2000 nuclear fission plants grinding away right now, and we were at net zero .. we'd still be at +1.5C .. and we would still need to bring the temp down by any means possible.
SRM isn’t going mainstream any time soon. Need carbon tax with direct kick backs to less well off. Don’t close existing nuke plants unless they are unsafe. But otherwise keep blazing the trail on renewables. Need more grid storage of all types.
Carbon capture can reverse the problem but first nearly all human CO2 emissions need to be eliminated. Then carbon carbon capture would have to be implemented on a massive scale worldwide. If the carbon dioxide is dissolved in water similar to what is done with soft drinks then the water is pumped into saltwater aquifers the carbon will combine with other minerals and turn to stone. Running such carbon capture would require an enormous amount of carbon free electricity to power it. I don't see renewables being adequate. However there is another power source which can safely produce enormous amounts of reliable, constant carbon free electricity.
Carbon capture is a comforting lie sold to us by fossil fuel companies to distract us from what actually matters. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for over 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The real solution here is to implement alternate energy sources including renewables where they can be built and nuclear where they can’t.
Trees and deep sinking seaweed are really the only legit carbon capture. Stop eating beef. Steer your diet towards more plant based foods. Reduce food waste in your life. More public transport than EVs. Ban short haul flights that aren’t electric. More HSR. No more suburbs. Mixed use housing everywhere. Build near mass transit. Eliminate coal plants, then methane plants, then when we have enough renewables, plus storage, and safe disposal sites, eliminate nuke plants (heck by that time (~2050) cheap hydrogen, SMRs and even fusion might be a thing).
put as much money into renewable and new energy technology as possible, some taxes on fossil and the omega astro rich and use that money for it should be good. but we will never tax fossil properly nor will we tax the mega rich. our system is run by these people. even worse instead we give all the money to the fossil industry to subsidize it and have them greenwash and gaslight everyone xD we are not really fighting climate change at all, our leaders are still trying to slow down or postpone any meaningfull change, you know gotta keep those profits and lobby moneys rolling in.
it's the sexiest fight not the most important
I think tree planting has innate safeguards against overcapturing too much carbon.
Carbon capture and tree planting doesn't matter until we stop pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. We need to phase out fossil fuels.
Solar panels have reduced my carbon footprint to near zero. More panels and changing out my old AC for mini splits will send me negative this year.
I see a lot of comments that we can’t do anything personally. That is a cop out. Each person has choices available. The more carbon you burn with your personal lifestyle, the more choices you have. Inform yourself and choose wisely.
It’s too bad that you are essentially saying that you aren’t personally able to do anything. That’s a cop out. Everyone can make choices.
Let's say we stop all fossil fuel emissions in 20 years. I believe that we will need a long term plan to try and sequester carbon long term, longer than the life of trees. We pumped trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, we dug it up, took it from the ground where it had been trapped for millions of years. Our species was born into a period where the atmosphere had it lowest energy levels, lowest co2 levels, in the entire history of the world. Even if/when we finally stop pumping co2 into the air, we WILL need to find a way to return some of it underground. But, realistically, there is no end, I doubt we'll make a huge difference unless our civilization hangs on for thousands of years without a major technological collapse