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by WhompingWindows 1748 days ago
Are you assuming we'd only use SRM and not continue the MASSIVE efforts already underway to lower yearly GHG emissions? And once we go zero, we're already seeing dozens of plans and ideas to handle what we've already emitted. Really, our current playbook is in its infancy and climate change is WAY out in front of us already due to our political and economic foot-dragging. I don't think we should nay-say anything nascent until we've found the most scale-able, economically viable solutions.
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Our "MASSIVE efforts" don't seem to be doing much so far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

And that's just annual emissions, Atmospheric CO2 concentration is even worse: https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/1914

If we go into the 2030's and we are still doing business as usual with our near-exponentially increasing global CO2 emissions then I suspect a large amount of climate damage will already be 'locked in'.

The first chart you posted is global emissions. If you break out Europe and the US, you'll see our emissions-reductions efforts are in fact leveling off emissions, and in some countries reducing them. But globally speaking, China and India have energy impoverishment, they're still ramping up coal to provide lighting, A/C, refrigeration, and things we take for granted. This is expected and we can't fault them for providing basic utilities to their people.

Yeah, we're in pretty huge trouble. I'm definitely cynical in the short-term and medium-term, but I see potential for all these nascent technologies to work over the decades to save our bacon by 2100. Technology got us into this mess, but we're enslaved to our technology now, so we're going to just have to make better and better technology while being slightly more efficient and green-minded as well.