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by reizorc 2183 days ago
"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,... CO2 will need to be reduced ...to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that - Hansen et al.(2008)" [1]

Neutral is not enough. So I hope they will be plowing large amounts of the fund into negative-emissions technologies. Either that or make large swathes of the planet into a disco ball.

[1] Young People's Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1609/1609.05878.pdf

1 comments

Proactively attempting to change the planet to fit our presumed desires seems even more irresponsible than trying to simply negate our effect on the planet. And realistically, the planet was more like an iceball than it is today for a vast majority of the timeline of homo sapiens.
Pre-industrial revolution levels were 280ppm, so a target of 350ppm is still well within "roll back the damage we've done", rather than "mold the planet to our whims"
We've already started geo-engineering, just not intentionally.
Yes, and I said that intentional geoengineering may be worse than intentional. Especially when it is geoengineering beyond the scope of "make it seem like we don't exist"