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Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Would low CO2 be enough of a problem that any sequestration technology capable of reversing would double as a potential doomsday weapon?

I really want the answer to be yes.

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Star Man
Jun 1, 2008

There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

Accretionist posted:

Would low CO2 be enough of a problem that any sequestration technology capable of reversing would double as a potential doomsday weapon?

I really want the answer to be yes.

Dude, just come out and say that you want to kill as many people as possible.

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
It's an amusing wrinkle in any sequestration-based hopes and dreams.

We'd need to approach it like we do nuclear weapons technology.

brakeless
Apr 11, 2011

Paradoxish posted:

Honestly not trying to be negative here, but this paragraph is a really good summary of why CCS is so difficult on scales that matter:


250,000 similar plants to filter 1% of global CO2 emissions, even though right now this single system can't produce carbon at anywhere near market prices. CCS has to operate on absolutely massive scales.

Also as far as I can tell that system isn't sequestering a single gram of carbon. It's just concentrating it so it can be used to grow bigger salads.

StabbinHobo
Oct 18, 2002

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
using gdp opportunity cost as concern troll for climate change is the epitome of not getting it

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES

StabbinHobo posted:

using gdp opportunity cost as concern troll for climate change is the epitome of not getting it

It's super practical, though. For those at the top, progress often requires getting bad people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. For the general public, it's immediately graspable as GDP growth/decline is a familiar image.

Inglonias
Mar 7, 2013

I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

Accretionist posted:

It's an amusing wrinkle in any sequestration-based hopes and dreams.

We'd need to approach it like we do nuclear weapons technology.

You mean build as many as possible regardless of expense in the fears that some other country is also doing it? Yes, I agree.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



Nice piece of fish posted:

Heheeeeey, let's have some more great news

But wait there's more!

https://twitter.com/emorwee/status/869941131030790144

We had a good run.

StabbinHobo
Oct 18, 2002

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Accretionist posted:

It's super practical, though. For those at the top, progress often requires getting bad people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. For the general public, it's immediately graspable as GDP growth/decline is a familiar image.

practical centrism is so pre-trump thinking (pre-obama even... pre-bush... has it *ever* worked?)

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb
Think how easy things would be if we had governments that controlled capitalism instead of the other way around.

call to action
Jun 10, 2016

by FactsAreUseless
You hear that? It's the beautiful sound of silence coming from the "GOD i hate all these NIHILISTS in here that don't just want to BUILD COMMUNITY and write their SENATORS" crew. It's the one silver lining of Trump - the silencing of the lanyards and wannabe lanyards who think respecting the process will make positive progress

call to action fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 31, 2017

Carlosologist
Oct 13, 2013

Revelry in the Dark

so, do other nations pull out of the Paris Agreement because we did? or are we just the big stupid idiot in the room now?

I do think that the next President will re-enter the agreement ASAP because there's quite possibly no one dumber than Trump

TACD
Oct 27, 2000

Carlosologist posted:

so, do other nations pull out of the Paris Agreement because we did?
Probably not:
https://twitter.com/AP/status/869924987779637254

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Carlosologist posted:

so, do other nations pull out of the Paris Agreement because we did? or are we just the big stupid idiot in the room now?

You'll be the big idiot in the room. China would be stupid to not seize this opportunity to foster international cooperation that is not centered around the US. The same applies for the EU in which France especially has always been dreaming of this opportunity.

NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax
spoiler alert the paris "agreement" has no enforcement mechanism and is a glorified "we pretend to care" piece of paper that does nothing

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
https://www.booksandpublishing.com....-flannery-text/

New book from Tim Flannery: he argues that we could use sea-going kelp farms to clean the ocean and feed the world.

Carlosologist posted:

so, do other nations pull out of the Paris Agreement because we did? or are we just the big stupid idiot in the room now?

We're the big stupid idiot in the room. Most of the signatories are at least making baby steps towards meeting what it lays out.

I read something on Reddit earlier this morning and double-checked it; the only nations that rejected the Agreement outright before now are Syria and Nicaragua. One's in the middle of a civil war, and the other didn't think the Agreement went far enough.

Nicaragua in particular is having a hell of a time with environmental crises, like illegal logging, and it's trying to clean up its act. I've seen a couple of claims I can't source, that Nicaragua's actually pretty close to the curve right now as far as CO2 draw-down, so if it was a signatory to the Paris Agreement it'd actually be on track to meet the obligation.

call to action posted:

You hear that? It's the beautiful sound of silence coming from the "GOD i hate all these NIHILISTS in here that don't just want to BUILD COMMUNITY and write their SENATORS" crew. It's the one silver lining of Trump - the silencing of the lanyards and wannabe lanyards who think respecting the process will make positive progress

Organization and involvement on the local level is still the best path forward for the individual citizen. Maybe that's writing to or calling your senators; maybe that's widespread grassroots effort. Tailor your response to your community and its needs.

I know it's not sitting around tugging on your accelerationist eschaton boner, so the usual suspects are going to mock it, but it's the most constructive answer to the question of "What do I, just one dude, do about this?" It also has the benefit of getting reality-based people as participants in local/state government, so assuming we still have a functioning civilization in a few years, it's win-win.

Accretionist posted:

Would low CO2 be enough of a problem that any sequestration technology capable of reversing would double as a potential doomsday weapon?

I really want the answer to be yes.

I don't think it would work fast enough. The "diamonds in the sky" dude, Stuart Licht, said once that if they gave him the budget to do it and roughly 10% of the Sahara Desert, he could return Earth's atmosphere to pre-industrial CO2 levels, but it would take a few years.

brakeless posted:

Also as far as I can tell that system isn't sequestering a single gram of carbon. It's just concentrating it so it can be used to grow bigger salads.

Yeah, that's the plan: getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere so it can be used for something else. Like I said, it's baby steps; they're operating on the assumption that market forces will turn the captured CO2 into a commodity ("blue crude"), or at least that federal subsidies will kick in. It's capitalist as gently caress, but it's a pilot program and it could lead to something more useful down the road.

call to action
Jun 10, 2016

by FactsAreUseless
Tugging on one's boner, "widespread grassroots effort" [insert detail here], six of one half dozen of the other

Also, why would anyone trust the Chinese government about literally anything

Blitz of 404 Error
Sep 19, 2007

Joe Biden is a top 15 president
Carbon sequestration is a fools errand. Remember when they thought they could throw the world's iron into the iron limited southern ocean to create a large enough algal bloom to get us back to carbon neutral? Good times

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

call to action posted:

Tugging on one's boner, "widespread grassroots effort" [insert detail here], six of one half dozen of the other

Modern Americans live in a nation that only exists because of grassroots effort. Because of organization, demonstration, and civil disobedience, I got to go to school instead of spending my adolescence in a coal mine. It's got a pretty good track record overall, although it's fallen behind some in recent years.

Still, it's what the political/cultural opposition does, and it works. Grover Norquist got a wild hair up his rear end when he was twelve about how all taxes are bad, and he grew up to turbo-gently caress the nation's economy. Never doubt that one person can make a difference.

Notorious R.I.M.
Jan 27, 2004

up to my ass in alligators
Ice? Pshh I have your albedo right here *unfurls 15,000,000 km^2 canvas of white paint*

brakeless
Apr 11, 2011

Wanderer posted:

Yeah, that's the plan: getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere so it can be used for something else. Like I said, it's baby steps; they're operating on the assumption that market forces will turn the captured CO2 into a commodity ("blue crude"), or at least that federal subsidies will kick in. It's capitalist as gently caress, but it's a pilot program and it could lead to something more useful down the road.

Right, but in that case the best they can do is reducing emissions by substituting carbon from the atmosphere for "frozen" carbon. I can't help but feel like there are lots of better ways to reduce current emissions by one percent than building 250000 of these plants, so if they have to be subsidized with political action and public money, they're kind of a waste.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

brakeless posted:

Right, but in that case the best they can do is reducing emissions by substituting carbon from the atmosphere for "frozen" carbon. I can't help but feel like there are lots of better ways to reduce current emissions by one percent than building 250000 of these plants, so if they have to be subsidized with political action and public money, they're kind of a waste.

That assumes the technology never improves and that we never find any more uses for the CO2. Off the top of my head, one of the big industrialized processes people were talking about was using calcium carbonate to make cement, which would cut emissions and sequester the CO2. Right now, the pilot project is using the CO2 to fuel greenhouses, but it's a pilot project, and part of the point is to find more and better uses for the CO2 they're capturing.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

NewForumSoftware posted:

spoiler alert the paris "agreement" has no enforcement mechanism

The same could be said of all international treaties, doesn't mean they don't impact nations decision-making.

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Wanderer posted:

Modern Americans live in a nation that only exists because of grassroots effort. Because of organization, demonstration, and civil disobedience, I got to go to school instead of spending my adolescence in a coal mine. It's got a pretty good track record overall, although it's fallen behind some in recent years.

Still, it's what the political/cultural opposition does, and it works. Grover Norquist got a wild hair up his rear end when he was twelve about how all taxes are bad, and he grew up to turbo-gently caress the nation's economy. Never doubt that one person can make a difference.

You're so hopelessly naive. It's super easy to be an individual who makes a difference when the cause you support makes rich people wealthier. Not so easy when it doesn't.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

TildeATH posted:

You're so hopelessly naive. It's super easy to be an individual who makes a difference when the cause you support makes rich people wealthier. Not so easy when it doesn't.

If you're looking for a more recent example, there's always gay marriage. A lot of people put a lot of work into making that happen.

Plumps
Apr 21, 2010

Paradoxish posted:

Honestly not trying to be negative here, but this paragraph is a really good summary of why CCS is so difficult on scales that matter:


250,000 similar plants to filter 1% of global CO2 emissions, even though right now this single system can't produce carbon at anywhere near market prices. CCS has to operate on absolutely massive scales.

Scale is one of the main reasons why CCS will never work meaningfully-

If we could instantly create magical duplicate versions of every greenhouse gas emitting power plant, machine, car, industrial/agricultural/all other processes
- which absorb rather than emit GHGs - that is literally duplicate the entire earth's economy with magical negative emission versions of itself, then we would be at zero net emissions.

We need to be in negative net emissions to counteract climate change. So if we then doubled that magical negative emission economy's size we would be at negative 100% emissions.
(Normal economy running alongside 2 negative GHG economies) Then if we ran in that state for 50 years we'd be back to 1970's era CO2 equivalent concentrations.

So we just need to triple the size of the earth's economy without expending any extra resources or energy and have all of the growth be out of magical GHG absorbing,
non-energy or resource using technology, then hang around for a fair few decades till we're out of the immediate danger zone.

Also as I'm sure has been mentioned here before, it is much harder to capture and store gasses than release them.

call to action
Jun 10, 2016

by FactsAreUseless

Wanderer posted:

Modern Americans live in a nation that only exists because of grassroots effort. Because of organization, demonstration, and civil disobedience, I got to go to school instead of spending my adolescence in a coal mine. It's got a pretty good track record overall, although it's fallen behind some in recent years.

Still, it's what the political/cultural opposition does, and it works. Grover Norquist got a wild hair up his rear end when he was twelve about how all taxes are bad, and he grew up to turbo-gently caress the nation's economy. Never doubt that one person can make a difference.

That's all national in scope. We didn't do poo poo about restricting child labor elsewhere, in fact there are probably more children working wage labor today than at any point in history. Maybe your post would make more sense if climate change were a national-level problem.

Wanderer posted:

If you're looking for a more recent example, there's always gay marriage. A lot of people put a lot of work into making that happen.

Gay marriage doesn't threaten anyone in power or their money.

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Wanderer posted:

If you're looking for a more recent example, there's always gay marriage. A lot of people put a lot of work into making that happen.
The wedding industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, which would see a major bump from opening it up to a whole new demographic which on average has a lot more disposable income.

Plumps posted:

If we could instantly create magical duplicate versions of every greenhouse gas emitting power plant, machine, car, industrial/agricultural/all other processes
- which absorb rather than emit GHGs - that is literally duplicate the entire earth's economy with magical negative emission versions of itself, then we would be at zero net emissions.

We need to be in negative net emissions to counteract climate change. So if we then doubled that magical negative emission economy's size we would be at negative 100% emissions.
(Normal economy running alongside 2 negative GHG economies) Then if we ran in that state for 50 years we'd be back to 1970's era CO2 equivalent concentrations.
I think it'd actually put us back around 1900 levels, since we output way more CO2 today than in the preceding 50 years - and the first half of the 20th century even less.

Ferdinand Bardamu
Apr 30, 2013

call to action posted:

Gay marriage doesn't threaten anyone in power or their money.

Also, embracing cultural issues help to rationalize major issues that effect most everyone, like income inequality, by never or shying away from addressing it.

Ferdinand Bardamu fucked around with this message at 19:43 on May 31, 2017

NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax

MiddleOne posted:

The same could be said of all international treaties, doesn't mean they don't impact nations decision-making.

Uhh no it couldn't there are enforcement mechanisms in all kinds of international treaties. NAFTA ring a bell?

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Wanderer posted:

Organization and involvement on the local level is still the best path forward for the individual citizen. Maybe that's writing to or calling your senators; maybe that's widespread grassroots effort. Tailor your response to your community and its needs.

I know it's not sitting around tugging on your accelerationist eschaton boner, so the usual suspects are going to mock it, but it's the most constructive answer to the question of "What do I, just one dude, do about this?" It also has the benefit of getting reality-based people as participants in local/state government, so assuming we still have a functioning civilization in a few years, it's win-win.

As I said before,

Rastor posted:

For those who want political solutions this thread is really lovely. Here are some non-lovely threads:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3800657

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3808020

Go to the other threads. Go make a difference.

Keep posting affirmations for the nihilists here in this thread.

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Wanderer posted:

If you're looking for a more recent example, there's always gay marriage. A lot of people put a lot of work into making that happen.

Yeah mostly companies that began advertising in gay magazines twenty years prior when they realized DINKs were an amazing segment with enormous amounts of disposable income.

Gay marriage is super profitable why do you think companies are so quick to boycott any homophobic politicians?

NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax
lol at comparing climate change to gay marriage

just holy poo poo liberalism owns itself so hard

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

call to action posted:

That's all national in scope. We didn't do poo poo about restricting child labor elsewhere, in fact there are probably more children working wage labor today than at any point in history. Maybe your post would make more sense if climate change were a national-level problem.

I think I've even said this specifically to you before: you're going way too macro on this, particularly when we're discussing the value of individual, local action. It's like you're trying to keep the problem as big as you can in order to stay as depressed as possible, the same way that politicians will act as if any solution that doesn't solve the entire problem at once isn't worth pursuing. "The problem's too big to solve" is as much of a climate denial tactic as denying there's a problem at all, because either way, you're still blocking off whatever solutions or mitigation strategies might exist.

Climate change is a world-spanning problem, but it's also highly modular. You can and should break it down by actionable spheres of influence: nations, districts, precincts, states, individual geographical features, etc. Addressing it in one place still contributes to the whole, and when you're talking about individual action, that's the only realistic way to approach it, especially right now when the Internet is still a perfectly viable force multiplier. Find a problem in your area, work to solve it, then move on; meet people along the way, keep your contacts active, document your progress in a video log or on Twitter or something, and see what you end up learning.

Maybe you end up with enough political connections that you can bully a congressman. Maybe you end up investing in regenerative businesses, or as part owner of a bamboo farm, or you meet a person who Kickstarts something that ends up being a perfectly viable carbon-negative/neutral technology. Maybe you just end up having planted a bunch of trees that didn't grow.

The point is that you've at least done something. Even if it means nothing on the world scale, it means plenty on the local scale... and at the end of the day, you exist on the local scale. Considering yourself a failure before you start because you weren't born with enough stroke to change the course of history is some A-level depression logic.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The wedding industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, which would see a major bump from opening it up to a whole new demographic which on average has a lot more disposable income.

Do you really think that gay marriage got legalized due to being financially subsidized by powerful wedding-industry lobbyists? Is that the argument you're going with here?

NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax

Wanderer posted:

Do you really think that gay marriage got legalized due to being financially subsidized by powerful wedding-industry lobbyists? Is that the argument you're going with here?

It's more that legalizing gay marriage didn't make the oligarchs who run the country take a gigantic financial haircut

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Wanderer posted:

Do you really think that gay marriage got legalized due to being financially subsidized by powerful wedding-industry lobbyists? Is that the argument you're going with here?

Seriously go read a history of the normalization of advertising in gay publications. It predates gay marriage by decades.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Rastor posted:

Go to the other threads. Go make a difference.

Keep posting affirmations for the nihilists here in this thread.

Yeah, you're probably right.

NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax
What's the deal with accusing anyone who thinks we can't stop climate change of being a nihilist? Do you know what nihilist means?

Like I mean I guess it sounds pretty cool to say "well, you believe in nothing!" but there's a big difference between not believing in anything and believing something can't be changed

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

NewForumSoftware posted:

What's the deal with accusing anyone who thinks we can't stop climate change of being a nihilist? Do you know what nihilist means?

Yes?

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NewForumSoftware
Oct 8, 2016

by Lowtax

Ok so now connect the dots and explain how people who believe we can't stop climate change "reject all religious and moral principle in the belief that life is meaningless"

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