We know that the continued exponential growth of solar means that fossil fuels won’t be absolutely necessary for the economy in 10-15 years. For instance, if we replaced all the corn-for-ethanol fields with solar, we’d produce something like 15x the total electricity as we do now.
But we also know it won’t happen soon enough.
We also know that it only costs about 5-10 billion dollars a year to provide global heat balance through solar radiation management (eg by lofting sulfur or calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere). We have plenty of volcanoes as natural experiments to provide the efficacy of the approach.
We also know that there is massive “green” opposition to anything involving geoengineering.
But, geoengineering seems to be the only plausible mechanism for preventing global warming at this point. Even stopping all fossil fuels won’t use tomorrow won’t do it — and that won’t be possible for decades — not without riots in the streets.
> We know that the continued exponential growth of solar means that fossil fuels won’t be absolutely necessary for the economy in 10-15 years.
Where did you get that from ?
Renewable are stacked on top of fossil, we use as much (more even) fossil fuel than ever before, it never went down: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
If you accept that PV will continue to grow exponentially, the historical trend is ~1000x growth over the last 21 years, or 10x every 7 years.
PV is about 10% of global electricity demand and about 1% of all-forms global energy demand today; 7 years (even without wind) and its going to be dominant over electrical generation, 14 and there's enough electricity to electrify everything else we do, too.
If you accept that the exponential growth will continue. It's not guaranteed.
France is 70% nuclear and the average co2 per capita still is ~10 tonnes per year... to get it to a sustainable level I think the target is under 3 tonnes according to the Paris agreement.
I think a lot of posters in the thread run a very simplified version of the world in their mind
3 tons per capita per year, globally, is 24 gigatons — that would only be a 30% or so reduction from the status quo.
We need a 99.9% reduction to be long-term sustainable; that's 4375 grams of CO2 per person per year. If there was no carbon capture, it would be at the level of "everything everywhere except for North Korea" or "everything in every country except for land-use changes to grasslands"
Thinking of simplification, France is ~70% nuclear electricity, which I emphasise because I'd already noted a roughly 10x gap between worldwide electrical and worldwide all-forms power.
Here’s an S-curve model I made based on two maximum carrying capacities for solar; the lower bound is the current amount of farmland devoted to ethanol while the upper bound is 1% of the earth’s surface. Data models based on historical growth in solar [1].
I show the current total electricity usage and the total energy usage. These are growing slowly worldwide, around 2%.
The funniest part is probably that this rapid recent rise is partially due to attempts to switch to cleaner fuels in maritime transport. Ships burning sulfur rich bunker fuel have been helping quite a lot by already doing lite geoengineering and we've abruptly cut that stopgap like absolute idiots.
Fuel additives for ships to increase clouds and fuel additives for planes to reduce clouds could reduce their warming impact by roughly 30%. (High clouds trap heat and low clouds reflect it)
The problem with geo-engineering is that it only treats the symptoms, not the root cause. Treating the symptoms has a side-effect: it lowers the incentive to treat the cause by making it less pressing.
What we want to avoid is not a 1.5 degrees warming, it's a 3 or 4 degrees one. By doing geo-engineering, you could fix the issue in the short time but you would also increase the probability of a bigger problem in the longer term.
Does sequestering what has been emitted count as geoengineering? If not, that too; if so, then surely the status quo of emitting it is already geoengineering?
But, as I noted in another comment, it's misleading since China has absorbed so much manufacturing for other countries, a lot of those products end up in your hands after you get it from Amazon Prime.
Yes, China's 1.4 billion citizens divided by their number 1 status as a carbon emitter, means that they produce less co2 than the USAs 345 million divided by it's (relatively) lower total emissions.
But as I pointed out, there is likely misleading: the US (and other nations) buy lots of goods from China effectively shifting coal emissions from the US to China by having them made there.
If the US were purchasing 100% US made goods, per capita co2 in the US might be much much higher
China is essentially importing ~1 GT of emissions, and the USA is essentially exporting 0.56 GT of emissions.
The USA would emit about 10% more and China about 10% less if all manufacturing was local; but that would mean the USA per capita emissions would go up to 16.5 tons per capita from 14.9, while the Chinese per capita emissions would go down to about 7.2 from about 8 tons per capita. (Assuming I read the charts correctly).
I aver that none of this matters either, because all of us need to get down to "approximately none" and this kind of thing is just playing a nationalist version of the "no you" game.
I guess it's time for the US to kick it's Chinese import addiction, in which it shifts it's addiction to cheap foreign (Chinese) labor fueled by 'clean' coal, and then works to whittle it's own emissions problems down to zero by whatever means necessary.
Solar might help with carbon emissions even at apex deployment, but there's a lot of carbon emissions otherwise.
The objection to geoengineering is because those either involve large scale impacts to an already threatened biosphere (I do not accept than even 1% of biosphere threat due to solar energy reflection is understood), it often is pushed by the petroleum industry and they are the living embodiment of not caring about environmental impacts, and the cost of geoengineering is usually so high it begs the question why we don't invest in practical sustainablity.
Ultimately, geoengineering is a delay. And what the petroleum industry in general economic powers that be due is delay cost as long as possible, while imposing costs upon other people. It is the essence of externality economics, which is to say industrial economics, which is to say economics.
We are an economic world built on the religion of economics. That religion has no conception on a practical basis of environmentalism and sustainability.
The fundamental problem externality economics, is that we cannot price the externalities on a practical basis. If you cannot price things, they do not exist to economics.
The problem with geo engineering is that in the proposed shape it doesn't solve two major problems: ocean acidification and impact of CO2 levels on animals (including humans).
Even if we get back to lofting sulphur, it won't stop aquatic life from dying. And our cognitive function won't be better if it's 1000ppm CO2 at 1.5°C degree increase rather than 1000ppm CO2 at 3°C degree increase.
Cognitive impairment isn’t an issue. High temp already impairs cognition—air conditioning can fix excess co2 and excess heat — indoors.
The ocean ph is currently 8.08. At 1000ppm (worst case scenario) the ph drops to 8.03. Disruptive to ecosystems, but not as bad as people think. Changes in heat will be worse.
The other piece— we can do geoengineering with calcium carbonate! That is alkaline.
1) You can't stop, ever, if that's all you do. Worse, if we're still emitting, cost rise, because the cost depends on how much CO2 is in the air, not much was emitted last year.
2) CO2 has many environmental effects, not just temperature.
Carbon capture is fine for the last 10% or so, IMO.
That kind of thinking is how we got into this mess in the first place.
The long-term impact of climate change was evident 20 years ago, well before we reached this point; back then we didn't have cheap renewables, but there was enough time to have done a big nuclear roll-out.
I think the opposite; I have so much empathy for them that I never created any in the first place. I can't imagine the despair of being young today. I'm not quite old yet myself and am terrified of what we will do to this planet.
> You can stop once you’ve stabilized co2. It buys time for building out a solar power base and develop carbon removal tech.
That presupposes that we're going to build out the PV and develop carbon removal.
I hope we will, but it does presuppose it: if this were false, then the costs go up each year because the CO2 only gets stabilised when all the fossil fuels get burned.
1. SRM will reduce efficiency of equatorial solar but minimally effect solar in northern climes. Like, less than 5% reduction. Pretty good trade off for stabilizing temperatures.
SRM from lofting sulfur or calcium only lasts about a year. It has to be done yearly. So, no long term effects, for better or worse.
2: We will fry the planet long before running out of fossil fuels. There is a lot left.
3: we absolutely can and must try geoengineering at small scales before scaling up. It isn’t a binary phenomenon. Every time there is a volcanic event, we get a natural experiment.
> Besides, global warming might not be so bad, if we consider that we are currently in one of the coldest periods in human history.
I don't know where you got this idea from, it's not supported by your link.
We were already in an interglacial warm period, and the warming since the preindustrial average is of the same scale as the difference between the preindustrial average and when the ice sheets withdrew from Chicago.
maybe check out the book "termination shock"? getting humanity into sulfur-addiction is running hard towards danger don't you think? Also who decides, and who gets the blame and anger when anything climate related has a big visible impact?
But we also know it won’t happen soon enough.
We also know that it only costs about 5-10 billion dollars a year to provide global heat balance through solar radiation management (eg by lofting sulfur or calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere). We have plenty of volcanoes as natural experiments to provide the efficacy of the approach.
We also know that there is massive “green” opposition to anything involving geoengineering.
But, geoengineering seems to be the only plausible mechanism for preventing global warming at this point. Even stopping all fossil fuels won’t use tomorrow won’t do it — and that won’t be possible for decades — not without riots in the streets.