Can We Really Stop Climate Change By 'Capturing' Carbon? (vox.com) 275
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The recently-ratified Paris Climate Accord calls on countries to keep the rise in average global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius (a threshold which would bring extreme weather, water shortages and reduced agricultural production). But a recent article on Vox warns that "the world has to zero out net carbon emissions...for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065. After that, emissions have to go negative... We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."
That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."
Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."
Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
You would think science could help (Score:5, Funny)
I just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless. You think with all our knowledge, someone could figure out how to make something like that.
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That could work, except you'd have to convince the energy industry not to kill the motherfucking plant so it can drill and frack.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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Yes, because everyone know, you have to mow down thousands of acres of trees to build a platform and processing area that is smaller than one acre in size...
Oh that's right, you basically don't destroy any trees to frack. Very empty headed logic, or you just don't understand the science behind drilling.
Re:You would think science could help (Score:5, Funny)
Dream on. Next you'll be wanting us to make it solar powered and turn the excess carbon into building material.
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No, let's not over-engineer it. We need to start with baby steps.
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Right? I'll bet he even wants to be able to burn it and have the resulting energy be, at worst, carbon neutral.
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Absolutely useless. Where do you think that all the carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere by burning coal came from? Plants.
Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - the Fort McMurray fire earlier this year represents 10% of all Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Burying it won't work either - it will just rot and produce methane - more than an order of magnitude worse as a greenhouse gas.
The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff.
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Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - [...] The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff
If you plant trees, cut them down, and make stuff out of them, you are sequestering carbon. I would actually advocate for bamboo, because it grows much faster.
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Has anyone marketed one of these biochar machines as an ultra efficient cooking stove?
The problem with BBQs is not burying the coals in the backyard but the smoke that wafts up the chimney into the atmosphere. Solve that problem and you've got an off-grid heating and cooking mechanism.
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Any biochar produced is net carbon taken out of the atmosphere, irrespective of how much smoke goes up the chimney.
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Good luck. Genetic Engineering is the other boogy man.
You have the conservatives denying global warming. And the liberals fear mongering genetic engineering.
I remember a decade ago they came up with a biodegradable plastic made from genetically engineered corn. The environmentalist protested against it because it was GMO.
True environmentalism is understanding the consequences of the choices and choosing the best option to solve the biggest problem.
There is no magical solution. Just picking the best trade
Not a plant (Score:2)
Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.
There's still the problem of how to permanently fix the captured carbon though, ideally without turning it into more carbonic acid.
Yes a plant (Score:2)
Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.
Algae is a small plant, it's not an animal or a vegetable or a mushroom.
Why stop there (Score:2)
Why not genetically modify the plants to combine the C02 with some H20 and produce hydro-carbon fuel, why we are at it.
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Exactly. There's only so much carbon plants can fix. The idea that photosynthesizing organisms just magically fix unlimited amounts of CO2 emissions is absurd, but it's the sort of mindless Heartland Institute-created meme that the pseudo-skeptics throw around, because it saves them from having to ever actually understand the science.
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They can fix plenty of carbon, atmospheric carbon levels are going down almost half the year (the northern hemisphere having more land). There is no way to stop them from releasing it again when decomposing.
Cellulose to fuel might eventually work, it just takes a breakthrough. Fixes everything. If you have cheap cellulose to fuel, you can sequester carbon by pumping hydrocarbons/alcohols down disposal wells and we can all drive turbocharged V-10 roadsters.
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Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.
Cellulose ag waste is INXS (and always will be). It currently releases it's CO2, just not in a very useful way.
If you have cheap Cellulose based fuel, you can pump the excess into disposal wells.
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Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.
It was more than a million years - more like 300 million or more. It's called the carboniferous period for a reason.
So "duh" right back at you. Didn't you learn this in grade school?
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So "duh" right back at you. Didn't you learn this in grade school?
Be honest though, you just googled this right?
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The thing about plants... is they're cheap. They're the only self-replicating nanotech factories we've got at present, and hey, they just happen to use atmospheric carbon as one of their raw materials.
There are people who think seeding algal blooms in the ocean will help. As long as they don't decay and make methane, that is.
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Exactly. There's only so much carbon plants can fix. The idea that photosynthesizing organisms just magically fix unlimited amounts of CO2 emissions is absurd, but it's the sort of mindless Heartland Institute-created meme that the pseudo-skeptics throw around, because it saves them from having to ever actually understand the science.
The thing is, it seems pretty clear that Planet Earth used to support much more lush plant and animal life than it does today.
If you look at the evidence of growth rate of hadrosaurs, for example, they grew extremely fast and went on very long migrations after a season of growth after hatching. They put on huge amounts of bulk very fast, way faster than anything alive today. They were herbivores. There must have been a LOT of very fast growing vegetation to support these huge herds of fast growing herbivore
Re:You would think science could help (Score:4, Funny)
This is simultaneously one of the most stupid and the most insidious arguments for burning more fossil fuels I've ever read. Sheesh, dude, who pays you ? Tar Sands of Alberta, Inc. ?
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Except much of what is going on right now has to do with the amount of CO2 released over the last three hundred years. Trying to talk about global climate over hundreds of millions of years and referring to certain periods as if they represented the norm is absurd. It's almost as if you're cherry picking epochs of higher global temperatures, and because it suits your underlying argument that we should just merely adapt, to declare those are normal.
You understand, I hope, that what we call civilization, with
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The thing is that as climate changes the precipitation belts shift as well. Thats possibly what happened to the Sahara. There was a much later and similar shift in the Cape Verde islands which is near the Sahara where, in living memory, the rain just stopped.
Being adaptable means shifting production (and population) around as the climate changes, something which is sadly thwarted by the modern concept of the nation. So if the precipitation that produces the grain harvests of the USA shift north to Canada, t
Re:You would think science could help (Score:5, Interesting)
Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.
You're basically saying that brick buildings should be 'adaptable' to the motion of an earthquake. The current ecosystems are the buildings and our carbon emissions are the quake. They aren't going to 'adapt' at the rate required for the inputs because the simply aren't designed for it.
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"Survival is going to mean discarding a lot of our short term and fairly new concepts."
everything you've ever known is included in this statement.
Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.
I'm pretty sure climate can change faster than you are giving it credit for. Its not geological time. A few hundred or thousand years.
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Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.
I think this is just the direct result of smoothing/filtering past data. There is not evidence that past climate changed slowly and steadily, on the contrary there are studies that shows that climate can change swiftly. I remember to have seen in the '90s, so before all the mainstream fuss about climate change, a study about beetles found in peat bogs, that suggested that different beetles species alternate with other beetle species (that dwell in different climates) in short spans of times, a few decades.
Re: You would think science could help (Score:2)
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I'm talking about adapting to whats going on and not sticking our heads in the sand.
The world changes, deal with it or die off. Thats the message we get clear and strong from the fossil record.
Great! Lets start with figuring out how to deal with mass human migrations including the 40% or so (that's 3 Billion if you're counting) that live within a hundred miles of a coastline. Whats the latest word on immigration these days. I hear its a hot topic in all manner of elections and referendums and such. Everyone must be presenting their well reasoned plans on how to handle a shitload of immigrants right?
The world changes, deal with it or die off.
I agree that that will happen. Looking around it appears humans are not prone to "deal with it"
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The world changes, deal with it or die off.
I agree that that will happen. Looking around it appears humans are not prone to "deal with it"
That is the real problem. Part of it is that people want things to stay as they are. Yet things cannot stay as they are. People tend to ignore inconvenient facts like that.
Re:You would think science could help (Score:4, Insightful)
And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth. For the biosphere in general it's probably great. Hell, it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction. The danger of global warming is to human civilisation as it exists right now - it will cause coastal metropolises to flood and will mess with agriculture in many places. Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here but that doesn't mean the consequences cannot be truly catastrophic.
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And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth. For the biosphere in general it's probably great. Hell, it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction. The danger of global warming is to human civilisation as it exists right now - it will cause coastal metropolises to flood and will mess with agriculture in many places. Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here but that doesn't mean the consequences cannot be truly catastrophic.
My emphasis. Things change, its one of the great constants.
Theres the old story of the emperor who wanted his wise men to come up with something which, if he's happy and looks at it will make him sad and if he's sad and looks at it will make him happy. The solution was a ring inscribed "This, too, shall pass."
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You must be deaf to the shrill tones of every environmental activist. I envy you.
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The problem is that Sapiens won't be able to adapt to the climate changes in store. Cockroaches, maybe.
We could try to be like cockroaches.
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The problem is that Sapiens won't be able to adapt to the climate changes in store. Cockroaches, maybe.
We could try to be like cockroaches.
I'd be very surprised if we couldn't adapt if we tried to adapt instead of trying to hide from the reality that the world changes.
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There may be value in the idea that the planet doesn't have to be worse off for being warmer, in a stable long term situation, but if you change things quickly that's going to have dramatic consequences which you're completely disregarding.
To take the simplest example, there's 80m of water stocked in ice. How fast it melts makes a very large difference. Or biotopes. If they change very slowly, species adapt. If they change too fast all you've got is extinction.
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There may be value in the idea that the planet doesn't have to be worse off for being warmer, in a stable long term situation, but if you change things quickly that's going to have dramatic consequences which you're completely disregarding.
To take the simplest example, there's 80m of water stocked in ice. How fast it melts makes a very large difference. Or biotopes. If they change very slowly, species adapt. If they change too fast all you've got is extinction.
I'm not going to dig out the links but, if you are interested, look at the CO2 ppm in the pliocene and look at the age of the Great Barrier Reef, the sea level changes and (presumably) ocean acidity changes its dealt with.
But yes, if things shift to much warmer and then quickly back to cooler its very hard for the ecosystem to adapt. That may be another reason to, instead of trying to reverse whats going on, to roll with it!
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As reasons go, that's not enough reason. It is true that the 'green' approach to climate warming is what you can call the lowmetabolic approach: slow everything down. But that tends to weaken your ability to respond to the changes. If the economies are good, you can build dikes and adapt to climate. If economies are slow you don't adapt well. so to some extent humanity may be better off by increasing their metabolism. Especially the poor countries. Nature doesn't have that option though.
My main point was t
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You may think that, got very little to do with what has happened though.
http://www.xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
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Putting all of your eggs into one basket is an unwise strategy. In addition to trying to become more adaptable as a species, why not also try to limit the damage?
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Putting all of your eggs into one basket is an unwise strategy. In addition to trying to become more adaptable as a species, why not also try to limit the damage?
You mean like by colonizing mars and the moon?
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That won't make a difference. Every human you remove from the planet makes room for another human, and then you're right back where you started.
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The same was said by Luddites like you about powered flight, sending men to the Moon, and just about every other major human accomplishment.
Nice to see someone keeping up traditions and all I suppose, though I'd question your choice of the particular tradition you've apparently chosen to keep up.
Hell, we went to the Moon almost a half-century ago with on-board computers less powerful than a toaster at Walmart, ffs! It's not a lack of technical ability it's lack
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I get the feeling that the Earth that the human race has 'grown up with', the Earth that we think is 'normal' is carbon-starved relative to its state in the past.
If only scientists would have studied exactly that [wikipedia.org].
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It's a pity we still don't have hadrosaurs today. To find mammals that grow that.fast and that big, you have to put in banks of slot machines.
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The thing is, it seems pretty clear that Planet Earth used to support much more lush plant and animal life than it does today.
It also used to not support humans.
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Sorry, but this opinion is misinformed.
Rainforests are carbon-neutral. They're a festering sea of life and they emit as much carbon as they absorb.
Of course, that's no reason to ignore them or burn them all down. They play a very important role in climate regulation, and are a literal hothouse of interesting lifeforms with lots of interesting molecules in them. But carbon sinks, they are not.
Wind and natural gas (Score:5, Interesting)
But what is going to change everything is when the rest of the US follows Texas which now gets at least 10% of the power from renewables, mostly wind. This is where the climate change problem will begin to decline.
Which is not to say the carbon capture technology is dead. In other developing countries it may be useful,and the US could be the supplier for those systems.
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40% is not zero by a very long shot. We should get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Having said that, it pains me that my country (the Netherlands), which was the forerunner in nature-friendly technology in the 1990s is now way behind even the US in implementing the necessary steps to reduce CO2 emissions. We're gearing up to elections for a new parliament in March, but none of the parties that matter has even mentioned the environment in their party propaganda yet. We're a small country but one of
Re: Wind and natural gas (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I hate all of these "arguments through incredulity" that you encounter whenever it comes from energy, trying to argue that we can't expand fossil fuels fast enoigh, alternative fuels, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, you name it based on your ideology, fast enough to meet demand. It's always along the lines of "We'd have to build X units every Y days, and doesn't that numver sound impossibly large?"
Well, *everything* we do with energy is on unthinkably large scales. We spend a huge chun
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Re: Wind and natural gas (Score:3)
I'm sick of people citing in despair the overwhelming amount of work it would take to slow climate change. Yes, it will take a lot of wind turbines and carbon capture and solar cells. But we are really good at producing things - literally better than anyone can imagine. We make 165,000 new cars every single day. We need about 500,000 wind turbines to replace coal. If we made wind turbines at the same rate as cars, it would take us one week to get rid of coal.
Leaks? (Score:2)
How long before the CO2 captured by this generation plant and injected into oil wells leaks out again?
What was the point again?
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That's not the only problem. We haven't yet experienced all the effects of the CO2 already emitted even if you don't include the knock-on effects like melting of permafrost causing emission of methane. So whatever we do, unless we actually decrease the atmospheric CO2 level, we're going to continue to get increased global warming, though some areas are predicted to experience the exact opposite. E.g. the gulf stream has been slowing, which may lead to Europe, especially Ireland and Britain, experiencing
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One of the major points is to make it look as if we're doing something to allow the fossil fuel companies to continue to rake in the cash.
The real problem: (Score:2)
2nd- and 3rd-world countries say:
But we want to join the 1st-world countries on the world stage! LOL we'll do what we want, and we've got nice cheap coal to burn to slingshot us up with the Big Boys! Saving the planet can wait, LOL, it's not going to really be a problem for a few hundred years, why should we care? We're more interested in next week!
It's hard to get people to care about something that's even decades away when they're more concerned about next week.
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Oh well that's terrible that that happened to those people, good thing that those things don't happen here.
And the further away it is, the less real it is to them, and the less they actually are emotionally impacted by it.
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Nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?
And no, pointing to decades old plants that were in at least one case made by people with zero safety standards does not count as evidence of danger. The true danger is destroying our world; we will certainly do better if we limit that danger to the best nucleair plants we can build.
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Hear, hear. The people telling you that "It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables" are completely out of touch with reality. While the first world is busy sprinkling their landscapes with renewables and prematurely shutting down nuclear plants, the global share of clean energy is actually declining, [ted.com] and the reason is quite simple: growth. Before advocating unrealistic solutions based on ideology, please educate yourself. [withouthotair.com]
There are already billions doing without,
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Nuclear has long been skewed positively to support weapon making with it. You may build a more or less safe nuclear plant in theory, but usually that's not happening for economic reasons. Also in the case of a major nuclear incident, the company running the reactors simply declares bankruptcy and lets the taxpayer pay for the damage. Look at Japan for how its done. That is yet another subvention of the technology.
Also, nuclear is not a clean energy. Its dirty like coal. The only difference is that coal make
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It's not "dirty like coal". Coal gives you _guaranteed_ dirt, plus the additional _guarantee_ of killing the planet. Nuclear does neither. That means nuclear is by far the preferable option.
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So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?
Your logical fallacy is: false dichotomy.
Do you want to try again, without logical fallacies? Or would you just like to retire in disgrace?
hyperbole (Score:3)
"We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."
Seriously? What do 97% of climate scientists agree on? I'll tell you, it's not that.
This kind of hyperbole is what turns people into climate change deniers. Very few scientists think AGW will cause the destruction of the human race.
Carbon capture technology is not required (Score:4, Insightful)
First, we have to phase out CO2 by 2050 or 2040 (1.5 deg C). Second, we do not need fancy carbon capture tech. We can rely on plant growth and reforestation programs which actually work. We had a few of those. Also we have to help countries to protect their forests. Also helpful would be to reduce meat production.
Oh no! Work. (Score:3)
So we're talking about 250 new installations per year. I'm assuming that's for the whole industrial world. That's something like 2 new plants per year per industrialised country. That is not a lot if you compare it with what the industrial world built built back in the 1950's and 1960's after WW2. Sounds reasonable in terms of volume of work.
I mean it sounds reasonable when you first think about it. But I don't know...
I mean it would take work. It would take actual investment in actual projects, and actual political decisions about actual things. You know, those old-fashioned secondary sector of the economy things that we're not suppose to have to bother with in the modern world. We'd even have to hire actual workers to do actual work. Like, physically do work. Like, non-office work.
And you'd have to train people to do it too! I you think about it, you'd have to train unemployed people so that they could take these construction and planning jobs.
Seriously? There ought to be a way to solve global climate change in some reasonable way. Like by inventing a new financial scheme, or by making a new smartphone app. Or at least by having drones or self-driving cars do all the work. I'm sure someone will think of something.
Get off your asses. (Score:3)
It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.
Lead by example and lay down the groundwork for others to follow in your footsteps.
Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.
Seriously. The only reason this shit is perpetuating is because of the choices that you're making right now.
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It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.
Oh, my sweet summer child. By spending more of your time and energy on transportation to show how hard you're sticking it to the man, you're just wasting time you could be using actually sticking it to the man. Meanwhile, if you use less energy, that just leaves more for war. If you don't burn up that fuel they'll put it into a bomber and use it to bomb some brown people.
Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.
If you mean we should be building fuel-air bombs, then there may be something to what you say. But it's bullshit to think that you can cha
Of course (Score:2)
Something not mentioned (Score:2)
It was a poor article. Yes CCS can grab the Carbon coming out of the exhaust stacks but what is missed is the fact that the process requires a lot of energy. The article doesn't mention anything about it but other plants have systems that require 30% to 40% of the electricity generated by the plant. So the plant has to produce a lot more electricity just to get production back to what it was. And then there are the emissions and waste generated from the additional mining and transportation of the extra c
Ian Malcolm was right (Score:2)
"The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me."
No. You cannot "stop" climate change. (Score:2, Troll)
Because "climate change" is too broad and nebulous a term.
And the people looking for grant money LIKE it that way. You can basically wrangle ANY sort of phenomenon in Earth's atmosphere into some definition of "climate change". Basically there is no bottom to this well.
Also, climate change is a NATURAL process. Earth's climate has been changing since basically FOREVER.
Now, can we stop "man made climate change/global warming"?
Maybe. If we sequester enough carbon out of the atmosphere. It may make a diff
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I'm sick of wankers looking for excuses to use the atmosphere as their private dumpster. Bye now.
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Bye Felicia.
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Good riddance.
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The most popular topics on slashdot are about politics. If you don't like politics then slashdot is not for you. Try a technology forum instead.
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No more anonymous coward posts? Oh... you was the most prolific poster.
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Natural gas... is a fossil fuel? It might be a little less... grubby.. than coal and oil, but it's still chock-full o' carbon.
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It's not pointless, but it's not reasonable allocation of effort, either.
P.S.: Natural gas is not Carbon neutral unless it's sources from bio-fermentation, and often not then. Solar, hydro, wind, and even nuclear are better choices if that's your goal. It's better than coal, but that's faint praise indeed.
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Yes, radical. These guys want to harm the human race with extreme measures that still won't make a bit of difference, but they don't care, they have "the environment" to worship.
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So let's get this straight:
Conserving living species biodiversity and habitat,
Preventing a wholesale shift of climate into a new regime 10 degrees F warmer
Slowing down the massive rates of fresh-water pollution and over-use
Preventing the oceans from acidifying due to warming and killing off all shellfish and many other ocean lifeforms
All of these things would be radical?
As opposed to continuing on our present accelerating course to a profoundly messed up life-support system on this planet and the attendant
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How is your cherry-picked example of a few individuals' behavior in any way relevant to the essential problems at hand and substantial solutions needed?
To me how you responded sounds like an ad hominem attack with an agenda of stopping the changes needed. You must be out of valid logical arguments.
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The thing to stop is the diminishment of the prosperity we actually need to have in order to research the solutions to the problem. Research costs money, and if the country is pauperized by ill-conceieved and ineffective half-measures to attack the problem that don't actually have a hope of making a significant difference, the real solution will be delayed instead of hastened.
What we need first and foremost is a much improved battery. I call it the "magic battery" which needs to be cheap and small and che
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The geoengineering that needs to be worked is one that extracts the CO2 from the air and turns it into carbon and oxygen. Make it something that runs on solar energy and generates electricity at the same time and it'll be a winner. The STEP process:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10... [acs.org]
would be something that would fix things forever, but apparently no one has actually gotten this thing to work. Somebody should. We could run it, have more and more pure carbon than you could get out of coal mines, and then
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Those people are automatically against any solution. They oppose even trying out solutions, out of fear that one will work. Search on 'Haida experiment' for an example.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"and there's more now that when that prediction was made." Very wrong
"Global temps haven't increased in sixteen plus years." WTF? Very wrong.
"Manmade global warming is bullshit." The science is very clear, again you are very wrong.
Personally I think the chances of mankind surviving a few hundred more years is less than 50/50, we've set the ball rolling to our own destruction and we'll be taking 95% of species with us. Mankind's biggest problem is over-population and unsustai
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Mankind's biggest problem is over-population and unsustainable resource depletion.
Bull. The planet is no where near over-population. Not even close. The only reason ANYONE starves on this earth is 100% political.
"Resource depletion" is bull also. How often have you heard "We're going to run out of oil" and other such poppycock.
Global warming deniers never can answer the following in any logical manner:
Is CO2 not a greenhouse gas? Is man not releasing very large amounts of CO2? What negates the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas?
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. "Very large amounts" is relative. If I pour a quart of piss into your water cooler, that's a large amount. If I pour the same amount into a state reservoir, it's doesn't matter. We live in a closed system. The environment chan
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The planet is no where near over-population. Not even close. The only reason ANYONE starves on this earth is 100% political.
As we live today, the planet is over population. Until human nature changes such that we are no longer willing to place ourselves above everyone and everything else by living extractively, that will continue to be true.
"Resource depletion" is bull also. How often have you heard "We're going to run out of oil" and other such poppycock.
We will run out of oil eventually, if we can work out a way to keep burning it safely. Barring that, our civilization won't last long enough to accomplish that "goal".
We are also depleting our natural capital rapidly. But I bet you still think that we have more useful forests (in terms of car
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Arctic ice was supposed to be completely gone by 2016
Who told you that?
and there's more now that when that prediction was made.
Who told you that?
Environmental doomsayers have been making these claims for decades.
And they were right. The only difference between the claims they've actually made and reality is that reality is much worse. The ice is actually melting much faster than projected.
Global temps haven't increased in sixteen plus years.
Who told you that?
Manmade global warming is bullshit.
Science says otherwise. Science made your whole lifestyle possible but you think it stops working when you don't like what it says.
Don't get me wrong.
Don't be wrong.
Reducing pollution is a good thing. But to constantly declare that it's the end of mankind unless we do something RIGHT NOW is exploitation.
It's necessary to keep pointing out that an emergency is occurring because some people apparently just want to watch the world burn.
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When was that prediction made? Did they predict an entirely ice free arctic, or just one that is ice free in summer? Did they predict the entire arctic would be ice free, or just the central basin? (If they predicted the central basin would be ice free by 2016 then that was a good prediction; it's not that far wrong; give it a couple of years.)
It was widely reported in the news at the time, and you can still find some of them up. Here are some details. [theguardian.com]. Apparently that scientist was still making predictions this year [telegraph.co.uk]. Note: other scientists disagreed with them.
Prediction: Ice free Arctic by 2050 (Score:3)
Maybe some scientist may have predicted ice free by 2016, but most predicted the date as much later.
"Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the Arctic will be "ice-free". They have noted that climate model predictions have tended to be overly conservative regarding sea ice decline.[2][13] A 2013 paper suggested that models commonly underestimate the solar radiation absorption characteristics of wildfire soot.[14] A 2006 paper predicted "near ice-free September conditions by 2040".[15] Overland
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That's the whole point. A competitive market will take care of the rest. And if there isn't a competitive market for some products yet, then the revenue from the carbon taxes can be used to help develop one, or offset some of the impact until there is.
That approach was proving quite effective in AU, until an incoming right-wing prime minister rolled it all back on behalf of his coal-magnate buddies.
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We had a carbon tax once, here in Australia.
That was the very effective argument used to repeal it, citing electricity prices. Never mind that we once had state government owned and regulated power monopolies - by the people, for the people. Until fraudsters in conservative parties decided to sell everything off to their mates heading 'megacorporations', who can now charge whatever they like.
Re: Maybe they should just look at corking (Score:3)
Human emissions of CO2 ~ 35 billion tons per year.
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Humans: 35,900 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2014 [www.co2.earth] from fossil fuel burning.