[pretendgeneer]

Being against Carbon Capture and geo-engineering is just following the science.

Carbon capture has constantly been shown to just not work at any scale. and geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.

[legitster]

> geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.

This doesn't sound like a terribly scientific assessment.

Climate change is either an environmental disaster and geoengineering would be a huge risk - or climate change is an existential threat to humanity in which case we have nothing to lose. Which is it?

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

>existential threat to humanity in which case we have nothing to lose

Being under threat doesn't justify making things worst. I know I'll die some day but that's not a reason to be suicidal.

[brutusborn]

Existential threat means things can’t get worse (you just stop existing).

Ignoring the potential of geoengineering implies you are sure that we have a better solution which will work. I hope we don’t have to use geoengineering but I am certain the status quo of hoping renewables and batteries in the 1st world will save us is not going to work.

[IlliOnato]

Threat is not certainty. If somebody is out there to kill you, you are under an existential threat, until they are caught. It's not a reason to start playing Russian roulette, saying "I'm already in danger, cannot get worse than that!"

[brutusborn]

The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas production: if we are not certain, then why risk the downsides?

I’m not saying this is a good way to think, just that it shows the fault in your logic.

[InSteady]

>The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas production: if we are not certain, then why risk the downsides?

You are conflating the cost of not extracting a fraction of a fraction of current production capacity with the risk ending human existence through changing systems we do not have anything close to a full understanding of nor precise control over.

Degrees of risk matter, in fact they are the whole point of GPs logic.

[IlliOnato]

I was not commenting on any measures intended to stop/reverse the climate change. (I don't have enough knowledge to various probabilities).

I was just exposing a flaw in _your_ logic :-) You said:

> Existential threat means things can’t get worse

And I disagree, things can get a lot worse. You know, like replacing a threat with certainty...

[pretendgeneer]

Climate change can be an existential threat to humanity and Geo-Engineering can make it worse at the same time.

[legitster]

How can something be worse than an existential threat?

If you knew you were going to die next week, what's to stop you from picking up smoking right now?

The truth is we don't need geoengineering because the truth is that it's not an existential threat for humanity, it's just the future is going to suck really hard for a lot of people if we don't get off our our collective asses.

Going around moaning "we're all doomed and there's no use trying" is exactly the opposite of what we need right now.

[supertimor]

There can be multiple existential threats at a time. And on top of that, there can be actions that also increase the chances of succumbing to said existential threat.

Look at it this way. Someone who is bitten by a rattlesnake is at risk of dying (an existential threat). Certain medical care, like giving the patient Advil or any other form of blood thinning pain killers could actually end up making matters worse which in turn could increase the chances of the patient dying.

No one here is saying we’re all doomed and there’s no use in trying. What they are doing is pointing out that carbon capture and geo-engineering may not be the most fitting solutions to this existential threat, and that these solutions could even potentially make matters worse.

>“How can something be worse than an existential threat?”

If something you do makes your chances of surviving an existential threat worse, the consequences of your actions could make the initial existential threat harder to manage and in turn make it more likely to succumb to said threat.

[brutusborn]

Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the world. It’s in its infancy, but so were solar panels decades ago, and we didn’t give up on them.

We don’t have enough data on geoengineering to judge yet, there is no real science to follow.

Also I don’t understand this attitude of rejecting potential solutions outright. Science doesn’t “prove” things, we can’t ‘follow’ it due to the problem of induction. So we should stay open minded and support all potential solutions, not just those we like best.

[stubish]

The closest we have are emissions reductions on power generation and other highly polluting facilities. Carbon capture of CO2 from the atmosphere is not being used successfully, anywhere. There are plenty of feel good articles about trials and test sites and experimental facilities, none of which are within multiple orders of magnitude of being capable of scaled out to the amounts needed. They all require such vast amounts of electricity that it would be better using that electricity to not emit the carbon in the first place. There are no technologies on the horizon that could even put a dent in our current yearly emissions, let alone clean up past excess. Yet it is used time and time again to sell carbon neutral plans and policies to the public, which will never reach their targets.

[brutusborn]

Saying CCS isn’t currently successful is like saying utility grade solar wasn’t successful in the 70s. We’re on the start of an exponential curve and the tech will only get better.

I don’t understand why people think this is “used” to sell carbon neutral plans: why wouldn’t you count carbon sequestered using CCS? It’s no different to assuming batteries will get a lot cheaper: it’s not a certainty but it’s heading in the right direction.

Let’s put it this way: if we could use CCS to produce carbon neutral power from natural gas, would you reflexively oppose it? Or would you be thankful that we now have another carbon neutral power source?

[stubish]

I separate emissions reductions tech, such as fitted to power stations, from atmospheric carbon capture. Filtering emissions at source makes sense, and is nothing new. Lets do more of that and better, and I will have no problem with carbon neutral natural gas power if someone can get that to work. Trying to suck carbon out of the atmosphere though is a fools errand, and I do reflexively oppose that, because it has always been lies and propaganda. Large chunks of climate policy assume magic will happen, because technology will save us. But math and physics disagree.

[brutusborn]

What’s the maths and physics that make it impossible? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m interested in the limits.

I still think reflexively opposing a potential solution is stupid. Skepticism is healthy, automatic rejection is a waste. I wholeheartedly agree politicians spout a lot of nonsense, and that the solutions are closer than we think, we just need to get the bad policy out of the way.

[bertil]

> Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the world.

[Citation needed]

[brutusborn]

If I must spoon feed you… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carbon_capture_and_s...

[defrost]

What is currently the largest carbon dioxide sequestration operation in the world is pretty much a running joke, not the least for being some years past the initial starting date, accounting for a tiny tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted by the larger gas project, and essentially being little more than a distraction from ongoing CO2 from oil and gas operations as usual.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Carbon_Dioxide_Inject...

Chevron are not "trying to help", they're actively engaged in smoke and mirrors.

[brutusborn]

I hate Gorgon too, they tarnished the name of CCS for commercial gain. Their system is throttled for economic reasons though, not technological. Even worse: the government funded it!

If the Australian Government held their feet to the fire they would have sequestered the promised amount. However they didn’t, and Chevron has no incentive to fix it properly.

[dghlsakjg]

You must.

That list is a bunch of pilot projects and commitments AFAICT. One of the projects is burning methane from oil production to produce hydrogen to recapture carbon. That’s not really gonna save the world.

I couldn’t find much evidence in there that carbon capture is being done at scale or in a way that isn’t using energy in ways that it would be more efficient to just not do it, since it is pulling from a grid that is partially carbon powered.

[brutusborn]

So your criteria for success is to ‘save the world.’

How about we aim for ‘reduce emissions’ or ‘develop solutions’? Or even better ‘stop opposing people who are trying to help’?

All tech starts at small scales. Yours is an absurd rebuttal.

[dghlsakjg]

Ok, take out the save the world comment.

Can you point to a promising project from the link you posted? Like I said, it lists a lot of funding, but not a lot of actual carbon sequestration.

Your rebuttal doesn’t actually provide evidence that carbon sequestration is a technology that is on its way to working on the small scale. All of those projects are sequestering carbon by consuming massive amounts of energy from sources that are partially or completely carbon powered.

[bertil]

If you actually did the work, you would not have shared a list of prototypes, failed projects, and disappointments.

Do you want me to complain that I had to spoon-feed you that?

[barbazoo]

Without a massive amount of renewable energy we won’t be able use CCS at scale.

[brutusborn]

Why not? If we burn gas using CCS and develop a lot of nuclear, we wouldn’t even need renewable energy. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it’s not essential (and may actually be a distraction in e.g. Germany where it has displaced nuclear development and resulted in coal plants being reopened).

[barbazoo]

I should have said "clean energy", you are obviously right about nuclear power.

[barbazoo]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/ren...

The rich love using future carbon capture to justify present day inaction.

[wahnfrieden]

Ideologues won’t accept it because they are waiting for a technology solution and these are the best they’ve seen offered so far. Their optimism is predicated on market driven technology solutions saving us quickly enough. Negativity toward their favorite technology solutions is interpreted as pessimism toward their ideology.

[downWidOutaFite]

Trying to capture carbon out of the air makes zero sense besides as anti climate change propaganda. Why wouldn't you capture the carbon at the source of the emission where it is much more concentrated? I'll tell you why, because then the cost is born by the emitter but they'd rather shift that cost onto society as a whole.

[madsbuch]

can you make a scientific argument that carbon capture and geo engineering will not work at scale.

if not, then you are just littering with words.

[stubish]

It takes orders of magnitude more power to capture the carbon from the atmosphere than was gained putting it there in the first place.

It requires sucking in and processing inconceivable quantities of air requiring inconceivable amounts of land for the facilities, because the carbon we need to capture has been released and distributed into the earths atmosphere.

The engineering required to scale out any existing or envisioned technology to put a meaningful dent just on our yearly emissions is more than simply replacing the worlds energy production with zero emissions generation and storage.

[madsbuch]

Whether you can conceive the amounts of air and energy it requires is not really scientific arguments.

A scientific argument transcends personal beliefs.

You might believe that such a feat is inconceivable, but lets agree not to pollute the language any more by using the word "scientific" when we mean "believe".

[hnbad]

Carbon capture technologies produce more carbon emissions than they can capture if you account for the resource use for production and construction. Even when they do slightly better than breaking even the margin is so low that scaling it up is not a meaningful contribution relative to the amount of emissions we would need to counteract. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Geo engineering to the degree necessary to revert climate change is bad sci-fi, not science, no matter what billionaires selling personal EVs are telling you.

On the other hand we know that we are seeing an immense problem of overproduction which is incentivized by the economic system and impossible to tackle by blaming consumers for bad choices and asking the industry nicely to reduce waste or letting them get away with greenwashing by planting trees and raising honey bees. We could change that but it would require significant market intervention, which we (most Western nations at least) have been ideologically opposed to for decades.

[madsbuch]

> Carbon capture technologies produce more carbon emissions than they can capture

No, this statement only work under a certain set of assumptions (eg. source of energy).

As I wrote to the sibling comment: Let's not mix up beliefs and scientific reasoning.

[newsclues]

You understand “following the science” arguments are stupid right?

[was_a_dev]

It isn't if you aren't a scientist in that field. As you're not qualified to do otherwise.

As a physicist in quantum sensing. I follow the science (opinion) of climate scientists as they're the experts of that field. And that opinion is constantly evolving, but I follow that.

Anything else is just being an armchair scientist.

[ipaddr]

That's called gatekeeping. Wonderful opinions can come for anyone.

A scientist is someone who found someone to pay them. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ignoring ideas unless they came from a brand is the opposite of science. Then you drop your brand (physicist) and expect others to judge your opinion as more important. It didn't work. As a senior physicist in quantum sensing I'm invalidating your brand.

[was_a_dev]

Wonderful opinions can come from anyone.

Are these scientifically founded opinions. Not necessarily, hence why "following the science" is valid if you are following experts in their field.

If you're a software consultant, would you take on the opinions from a marketing client on the best algorithm to implement for their solution? Probably not.

If someone put in the effort and time to throughly research the topic and draw an opinion from that. Regardless of their title or their funding, then why would you discount it?

[ipaddr]

You would be silly not to take a better algorithm. It doesn't matter if it came from sales, a student or a homemaker.

If you can't judge something on it's merits and must rely on other signals then you end up judging the envelope and not the message.

[was_a_dev]

If it was a better algorithm - then of couse. You wouldn't be a very good software engineer (or scientist) if you couldn't recognise that.

This has veered off from my original point. In that saying "follow the science" is not a issue - there is nothing wrong with following the opinion of experts in their field.

[brutusborn]

Surely a physicist is best placed to ‘Nullius in Verba’ and to do his own research. Climate models are fundamentally physical simulations after all…

[was_a_dev]

Climate models are fundamentally physical, but I don't have the insight in the field to have the deep insight to make qualified opinions.

I could after significant research as suggested. But that is a significant endeavour, hence following the opinion of the field is typically sufficient.

It's like a fronted developer making comments on kernel development and vice versa. It's both fundamentally code, but different fields.

[brutusborn]

I think if you’ve looked at numerical models then you have enough knowledge to at least judge the underlying assumptions: boundary conditions, numerical stability, discretisation methods, validation methods and results.

In the same way that I can verify a SAT solution, I don’t need to know how to code a sat solver.

Unfortunately there are fundamental disagreements about most of the critical parts of climate science, so going by the opinion of the field isn’t foolproof (who to choose? How to choose?). Many fields have had false consensus beliefs before, and most of their problems weren’t 1000th the difficulty of climate modelling.

[graemep]

Biological systems play a huge role in the climate too so its not purely physical simulation.

[brutusborn]

This is true, but there are no biological simulations in the mainstream models, just various correction factors with their own uncertainty. I wish they had biological data because then we would have more domains in which to measure their accuracy.

[graemep]

What none!?

This has been a long standing criticism of climate change models and I had expected it to be a major focus of research.

[downWidOutaFite]

Everything is fundamentally physics.

[codetrotter]

No. Why?

[newsclues]

It’s a process not an end state.

“Follow science” and ‘follow “the” science’ are two different things, and we just need to go back in history to understand that humans did some horrible stuff because of “the” science.

[codetrotter]

Hm.. I don’t see that distinction in this case.

To me when they say they “follow the science” it does not imply an end state. To me it only implies “everything we know so far”.

I am sure that if scientific results showed the opposite of their current idea, they would once again update their view.

[brutusborn]

Your intuition of scientists updating views is wrong, see Kuhns scientific revolutions for more examples. Scientists generally stick to preconceived notions long after there is data to refute them.

E.g. heliocentrism, germ theory, cigarettes being unhealthy, lobotomies being optimal

[brutusborn]

Because science just updates our beliefs, it doesn’t produce ‘truths’ that we can follow. See the Problem of Induction or the Duhem–Quine thesis.

[hnbad]

What do you think truth is other than confident beliefs?

Nothing can produce "truths". If you want absolute truths, pick a holy text and decide for yourself what absolute truth you can pin on it.

[brutusborn]

You summarised my point nicely.

What we call ‘truth’ is just the beliefs we think are most accurate. ‘Just follow the science’ is silly because it essentially means following beliefs on faith without questioning whether they are the best theory. In many cases the better theory goes against the consensus.

E.g. mothers who ‘just followed the science’ and took Thalidomide caused their children untold suffering. They could have been skeptical but instead they had faith in science, which was unfortunately done badly.