this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
2907 points (98.4% liked)
World News
39127 readers
2914 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We aren't locked in for the next twenty years, only the next ten years.
We could build a thousand RBMK like nuclear reactors in a decade and then suck out 50 ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere in another decade.
Would cost $500B to $1T or so.
We just don't really think global warming is serious enough to warrant an action plan at the scale of the Manhattan project, Apollo program or Messmer plan.
We're not locked in for the next 20 years. Not for the next 10.
The carbon in the atmosphere is going to be there for the next millenium and the temperature won't level out till the 2100s if we stopped all carbon emission right this second.
Furthermore, if we did stop all emissions right now, the planet would get 0.5-1.5 °C hotter within a year or two due to the end of the aerosol pollution cooling effect that's been cutting the effects of carbon induced climate change in half this whole time.
This year is so hot because they put limitations on sulfur emissions from shipping boats in the Pacific. Those emissions were cooling the atmosphere, but the aerosol emissions (which that sulfur is one of) only last in the atmosphere for about 2 weeks before they're rained out of the air.
We're fucked.
So can't we reintroduce the sulfur?
It was taken out because the pollution was directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths per year. If we need to geoengineer an aerosol to cool the planet, we can do better.
Deaths from increasing temperatures are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands a year already, how many of those could the aerosols have prevented? Was that more or less than tens of thousands?
I'm not saying it can't be done or it shouldn't necessarily, I'm just trying to express why this decision happened at a political level. Politics only occasionally leads humanity to the logical course of action.
So which is the lesser evil?
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a speculative technology at the moment.
Like, yes, we "can" do it, if you ignore all the materials and energy needed to perform that process. And that's just in theory, in practice its bound to be far more difficult.
No matter how you put it, it's easier to just... Not release the pollution in the first place. If it's too difficult to stop polluting, it will certainly be too difficult to remove that pollution that has been already released. Entropy and all that.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is something we should only really start thinking about when the world already runs nearly entirely cleanly.
You ignore political realities.
An Apollo scale program to extract carbon emissions from the atmosphere could be financed by the OECD countries without heavily impacting their economies.
Building a thousand nuclear plants with reduced safety requirements in a remote place would not run into NIMBY problems.
Stopping emissions globally would require Chinese political will, since they emit more than all of the OECD combined.
China has stalled their CO2 emissions since roughly 2012; they mostly pollute so much because there's immense demand of manufactured goods in richer countries; they've been putting far more effort into transitioning to renewables than some Western countries; and they're still below emissions per capita than Canada, the US, Russia, South Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Iran, Israel, Germany and Japan.
If you want China to emit even less, support protectionist policies in Western countries and/or tariff reductions for products that may prove they've been produced with renewables.
That graph badly needs updating. They stalled between 2012 and 2016, but skyrocketed from 10 gigatons 2016 to 11 in 2021.
So no, your premise is wrong.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
Isn't it possible to reduce CO2 on the long run by planned forestry management, if we reduce our own emissions enough?