[endisneigh]

I have no doubt that if humanity wanted to, it could sequester all the carbon necessary to reverse climate change, and more. The question isn't really whether humanity is capable of doing it (we are), but rather whether we will do it.

In particular, for those who have the majority of "ability" to make change, would it be easier for them to take more and more clean resources in a zero-sum battle or have a short to medium term hit in allying themselves with the rest of the world to fix climate change in the long term?

If COVID has shown us anything, the answer to the last question is unequivocally no. COVID has been a very obvious salient problem and most nations failed the test. If we can't beat COVID, we will not beat climate change. No technology can change human nature.

[Kydlaw]

> I have no doubt that if humanity wanted to, it could sequester all the carbon necessary to reverse climate change

While this solution is appealing, it always leads to more questions than answers. Let's assume the How is solved. Where do you store it? Can it scale and if yes with which scenario? - Infinite growth? No way, it's physically impossible. - With a reduction? Maybe, but what will be the cost then? Will it be cost effective?

I think at that point we are back at the OP question.

[qchris]

If only there were existing storage mechanisms that existed in remote areas like forests or swamps. We could probably protect those areas, maybe even put new storage devices in. Ideally, of course, they'd run off a renewable source of energy like solar and be self-cooling. Of course, we wouldn't want the upfront cost to be prohibitive, so something self-replicating would be great. And to diagnose the health of these systems, maybe something humans have had centuries of experience managing? It'd be even cooler if we could locate a bunch of them dispersed throughout the ocean too.

Plants. The answer is, and always has been, to stop emitting additional carbon from fossil fuels, restoring ecosystems, and letting plants and algae and natural carbon sequestration mechanisms do their thing. It also feels pretty inarguable that making that change would be possible if literally everyone on Earth went "yeah, let's do that."

[TeMPOraL]

And of course the counterpoint is, plants don't sequester carbon, they only buffer it. Plants are carbon-netural - they release what they stored as they decompose. Being self-replicating and something we have lots of experience with are good features, but to turn this into a carbon sequestration mechanism we need to have a program of continuously cutting these plants down and storing them in places the air can't reach.

[qchris]

Those mechanisms do already exist--marine snow, compacted biomass in wetlands, heck, even things like whale falls store carbon for enormously long periods of time.

The buffer duration/cycle period matters significantly. I agree, turning every bit of carbon released into sticks n wildfire zones won't solve the problem, but in the current situation a) buffering will make a difference in the short term, and b) there are natural mechanisms that do sequester carbon on a functionally permanent basis and keeping those functioning or adding to their capacity through ecological restoration is extremely important and doesn't require new technology.

[notabee]

We are burning the equivalent carbon of millions and millions of years of plant growth, trapped in fossil. Our current available plant mass, even if we cover every square inch of the earth with vegetation, cannot absorb millions of years of carbon. As another poster has replied, plants also release that carbon back when they decompose, unless they are buried. The only answer to digging up millions of years of dead organic matter and burning it is to suck it back into the ground, or fire it into space, or anything else that actually removes it from being recycled in the biosphere.

[Retric]

There is only really one option to store it, underground.

Now you might ask if that’s in pure carbon, CO2, or dead organisms but that is just an economic question. While multiple options exist picking one is far less difficult than funding it’s implementation.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Where do you store it?

Someone creates some magical building material that is high in carbon, non-reactive (or at least doesn't leach carbon into the air), economically viable and is mostly recyclable.

Imagine something along the lines of synthetic high carbon asphalt or masonry products.

[Retric]

A lot of CO2 has been released.

10 Trillion metric tons / 7.8 billion people ~= 1,300 tons per person which is well beyond the amount of building materials used.

[TeMPOraL]

Yup, but the point is that with such magic building material, we could not only build buildings and facilities with it, we could just pile heaps of it above ground for the purpose of only sequestering carbon.

[bryanlarsen]

That's about 130 trees or 13 houses. Yes, that's well beyond the amount of building materials used, but not unimaginatively so.

[lostapathy]

How much pavement exists per-capita? I'm sure that would lower the multiplier a lot too.

[bryanlarsen]

In case anybody missed the subtlety here, I assume that throwaway0a5e is talking about wood and similar products such as bamboo.

[rayiner]

> If COVID has shown us anything, the answer to the last question is unequivocally no. COVID has been a very obvious salient problem and most nations failed the test. If we can't beat COVID, we will not beat climate change. No technology can change human nature.

I think COVID actually teaches a different lesson. Our experience with COVID teaches that it has to be technology that addresses climate change, not political or sociological solutions. Lockdowns ultimately failed in even the most socially disciplined countries like Germany. But we got a vaccine developed in record time.

Similarly for climate change, solutions that require "everyone to cooperate and do their part" won't work. It just won't. Even if the USA and Europe went to zero emissions tomorrow, growing CO2 emissions in industrializing China, India, and Africa are going to keep increasing global CO2 emissions. It's rational for them. Bangladesh is going to be one of the hardest-hit countries from climate change--an estimated 30-50% hit to GDP by 2100. But investing in rapid growth and industrialization, even at the cost of climate, still makes sense for Bangladesh. One, because of game theory--Bangladesh cannot by itself avoid climate change, due to emissions by other countries. Two, because of math--a 30-50% hit to what Bangladesh's economy could be in 80 years with strong growth would still leave it better of on net than risking doing anything to compromise the 5-7% annual GDP growth it has now and stagnating for that time.

To mitigate climate change, the developed world needs moonshot technologies. We need to not only be investing in renewable energy--although that's necessary, going to zero emissions will still not be enough. We need to be investing massive amounts of money into carbon sequestration technology.

[telotortium]

And to those who point out "China, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were able to suppress COVID through lockdowns", it's important to note they were able to nip it in the bud, before community spread had become established. This does speak to the effectiveness of a drastic lockdown, combined with travel restrictions, in eliminating COVID if there are only a small number of infections, and we should commend those countries for being able to do so. However, if you don't lock down very early, lockdowns don't seem to be able to control spread enough to eliminate the disease, only to somewhat reduce the infection rate, and even a successful suppression of COVID spread in a country will fail in the long term if travel restrictions are not extremely strict (see the EU).

In other words, suppression achieved through lockdowns is an unstable equilibrium. Only herd immunity, ideally achieved via vaccination, produces a stable equilibrium for suppression.

Similarly with global warming, while we may be able to temporarily reduce emissions, at significant economic cost, via political and sociological solutions without new technology, this reduction is an unstable equilibrium. The only permanent solution - the only stable equilibrium - is via technological means (cheap renewable energy and carbon sequestration).

[ekianjo]

> If we can't beat COVID, we will not beat climate change. No technology can change human nature.

Erm, looks like we are doing pretty well to beat COVID with vaccines developed in record timing.

[wffurr]

500,000 dead in the US, largely due to failure to wear masks and observe distancing protocols, is a strange way to "beat" COVID.

[rayiner]

There is very little evidence that the death rate in the US is "largely due to failure to wear masks." Mask wearing in different countries is all over the map. The US is actually on the higher end in terms of mask wearing: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/08/face-off....

Meanwhile, countries like Denmark and Norway with very low rates of mask wearing have seen very low COVID death rates.

EDIT: More recent data from YouGov showing same pattern: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2.... Mask-wearing rates in Denmark and Norway picked up in 2H 2020, but were still on the low side.

[ben_w]

There are massive gaps between losing to COVID (which would’ve been 1-10% deaths depending on if they happened suddenly enough to overwhelm the healthcare system or not), versus what actually happened in any given nation (0.2% in Belgium to 0.00003% in Burundi, 0.155% in the USA), versus the best possible combination of decisions and actions in response to this virus (it being stopped in China before it ever spread outside Wuhan).

Same with climate change. Worst case is Venus, we’re heading for a few degrees Celsius change that persists for centuries, we could’ve prevented almost all of the problems we’re looking at now if we’d made the best choices even as late as the 60s and 70s.

[ekianjo]

and your point is? The fact that vaccines are here makes the COVID problem irrelevant a few years from now. That's called beating COVID.

[adrianb]

And I think a valuable COVID lesson is: once a natural process is started (the virus spreading worldwide) we don't have much power to stop it. But we can successfully mitigate it by developing vaccines in record time and manufacturing them in large scales.

Similarly, for global warming it would be a waste of time and effort to try to stop the natural process (limit human activity to revert the temperature increase) and instead focus our innovation and resources into mitigation (carbon capture, green energy, fortifying coast lines...)

[gmuslera]

There are reaction time after which the problem becomes something different and harder to solve.

With COVID letting it become so widespread with not enough protection before the vaccines, means that more people got the disease, the virus got more opportunities to mutate, and new strains are coming out, some of which could be more fatal or maybe resistent to vaccines. Getting late may makes it harder to solve, if possible at all.

With global warming is worse. Is not just stopping emissions, but what we already emitted is already driving the change. And positive feedback is already being triggered, with less albedo because less ice in the north pole, methane emissions in northern places like Siberia and Canada, and each time more frequent/bigger forest fires. So to slow it down you don't just have to capture the equivalent of what we emit (100k barrels/day makes a lot of greenhouse gases, think in 0.5-1 ton of greenhouse gases per barrel, and you have coal and others to take into account too), but also the amount we already emitted, and what comes from positive feedback (that eventually could become orders above of what we emit).

And I'm talking about greenhouse gases, not heat in particular, you are not dealign directly with warming addressing the gases, so that is something that should be taken into account regarding mitigation.

[dools]

Some nations stopped it. I live in Australia and aside from a handful of days long lockdowns life has basically been normal. China stopped it and they have heaps of people. The US failed spectacularly because it was being run by a bunch of anarcho capitalists

[ekianjo]

> Australia

It's fairly easy to prevent stuff from entering the country when you are an island. Singapore also had no problem in doing it. Notice some kind of pattern?

> China stopped it and they have heaps of people

Do you trust any data coming from China? Because North Korea also claimed they had zero death from COVID.

Also, it's fairly clear by now that there is some genetic component with COVID: there are less death in asian ethnic groups compared to others, so having less deaths in China/Japan/Korea is consistent in that regard anyway.

> The US failed spectacularly

Comparing to death rates across Europe, not that much different actually. Media brainwashing much?

[dools]

Yes you are clearly the victim of media brainwashing.

[rayiner]

The same anarcho capitalists running France, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc?

[dools]

Well ... in a sense, the UK is worst hit and were slow to act because of their right wing governments. In Australia our right wing federal government mishandled things but the states were the ones who kept it under control. The rest of continental Europe has been nowhere near as bad as the US, you guys are a total shit show right now

[rayiner]

France, Italy, and Spain are in the same ballpark as the US. The US is basically tied with Italy and Spain in deaths per capita. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

[js8]

Not only that. The countries that are capable of rejecting the ideology of individualism, like China, have actually much better track record in beating it.

For the record, I am not advocating completely ditching liberalism, but we should understand that it became (in the form of neoliberalism) too ideological in the Western world. That prevents us seeing alternative social solutions that can be very effective in beating the pandemic.

(And I am writing this from Prague, Czechia. Strangely enough, our government managed to beat the 1st wave by doing lots of early restrictions, but then we were massively hit by 2nd wave in the reluctance to do restrictions again. This cannot be explained away by human nature, it was purely a matter of cultural perspective.)

[bserge]

Of course they are. People in the west couldn't even be arsed to wear a mask, the simplest thing one could do to at least show some social solidarity.

The kind of shit individualism has evolved into is ridiculous.

[dools]

It’s not an evolution it’s engineering. This whole movement is a deliberate libertarian project.

[ekianjo]

> Not only that. The countries that are capable of rejecting the ideology of individualism, like China, have actually much better track record in beating it.

Oh we all know that data coming from China is super reliable, right? After all, they never lied about the Wuhan fatalities in the first place.

[bserge]

You assume the wealthy and powerful want to save everyone. I'm quite sure they don't. Just being upper class seems to turn most people into assholes who would rather let the poor die. "Why can't they make it, I did" is a common theme.

The wealthy and powerful will be fine even as millions die off in newly unlivable areas. That's the brutal reality.

[TeMPOraL]

> Just being upper class seems to turn most people into assholes who would rather let the poor die. "Why can't they make it, I did" is a common theme.

That's dumb upper class. Smart upper class realizes their wealth and lifestyle are entirely dependent on keeping the rest of the world working, and satisfied enough they don't try to tear everything apart.