I will repeat something I’ve said before, because many people don’t realize this: since the start of the industrial revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has DOUBLED.
I think that it’s perfectly fine to speculate as to whether or not that will be a problem, but I find that fact alone to be remarkable. I can’t imagine a way, with systems as complex as climate and biology, that wouldn’t have some very complex downstream effects.
The percent change is relatively small: 0.028% (280ppm) of the atmosphere to 0.0425% (425 ppm). Even if atmospheric CO2 doubles from today's level, it won't even be 0.1% of the atmosphere. (Edit: "For the majority of greenhouse crops, increasing CO2 levels to 1000 ppm (parts per million) results in an increase in photosynthesis by 50% over ambient CO2 levels." [0])
~25% of CO2 emissions are captured by the oceans. The increased productivity of terrestrial plants captures more of the emissions. I don't think the inertia provided by CO2 captured by the ocean is taken into account. This is presumably why the COVID lockdowns didn't make much difference for atmospheric CO2 levels: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55018581
The most important of the "complex downstream effects" of increased atmospheric CO2 is increased agricultural productivity.
Not sure that is the most important downstream effect. Harvard School of Public Health measured a 15% lower cognitive ability score at 950 ppm and a further 50% decline at 1400 ppm. (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/healthybuildings/2021/09/09/imp...) So at 1000ppm everyone in the world is just 15% dumber than their baseline ability should be, and 1000ppm atmospheric CO2 will make it much more likely that indoor levels will go up to 1400ppm or even higher unless we start utilizing carbon scrubbing technology for indoor spaces. It's pretty scary to think that modern society could be basically mentally stunted by high CO2, even if crops enjoy it.
The absolute percentage of the atmosphere being what you consider to be a small number is not actually relevant to what the impact of that would be. If I were to give you a pill of cyanide, I don’t know how comforted you’d be by me assuring you that the pill was less than 0.1% of your body mass.
I’m not calling CO2 cyanide, I’m saying “because this sounds like a small absolute percentage to me” is not a salient argument.
This atmospheric gas which makes up a fraction of our atmosphere is responsible for virtually all the organic mass in plant life on the planet, and consequently all animal life. If we agree that [the existence of all biomass on the planet] is not insignificant, then we agree that the small absolute percentage that CO2 represents in the total atmosphere is clearly already sufficient to be highly consequential.
> The most important of the "complex downstream effects" of increased atmospheric CO2 is increased agricultural productivity.
You don’t get to decide edgar the most important downstream effect is, not do you make it simple by adding quotes around “complex.” What you’ve referenced here is simply one of the many effects of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
“Climate-industrial complex”? Really? Can’t we take in a perfectly good climate research paper without jumping to conspiracy conclusions? At this point the evidence is well and truly in, there is no doubt the climate is changing because of us.
The most amusing thing about such a concept is that many "climate-positive" industries (for want of a better descriptor for renewables, mostly) are killing fossil fuels based on their superior investment case now :)
I was briefly tempted to create a globalised version of David MacKay's classic "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" under the title "How to save the world and get rich trying", but (a) there's no point because all the business people already noticed, and (b) someone else thought of that name before I got around to it and used it for a series of videos.
Yeah, that's a very weird phrase. What "industry" is even alleged to be involved in such a conspiracy? At least with "military-industrial" I'm pretty sure it's referring to weapons system manufacturers, etc. But "climate-industrial"? Is the claim that the makers of wind turbines and solar panels are conspiring to drive climate change narratives that wouldn't otherwise exist?
Fuel ethanol. Big investor driven industry which managed to get mandates for production in more or less all fuel for personal transport. Production of which is at best energy neutral while at the same time diverting a significant portion of the best land towards nonsense non-energy-production. They know full well that the energy budget for inputs vs outputs is awful, but it's a profitable venture, particularly with high and rising oil prices.
There are plenty of other examples of "greenwashing", but ethanol is perhaps the worst offender in the US.
That's because they have the backing of the agricultural industrial complex. They need to do something with all that corn. Same thing with high fructose corn syrup
Boiling corn in an alkaline solution breaks down the fiber and allows the niacin contained to be used by humans. Native Americans knew to boil their corn in wood ash, but Christopher Columbus didn't realize this was important.
There's a vast array of such conspiracy theories, loosely interconnected. They are immune to evidence or reason, asking if it makes sense is like making remarks about plot incoherence of a porno movie.
Yesterday I saw 'Wind turbines excrete chemtrails in order to change the weather' on facebook. Hundreds of comments were all in furious agreement. The more I block such posts, the more facebook seems to understand that it enrages me.
The central concepts of this web of theories are:
- an evil elite is trying to control us and/or profit from us
- the elite is leftwing / deepstate / woke / bill gates / george soros / lizard people
- they try to coerce our children to change their gender
- its basically all about renewable energies, which don't work (every week there's a new reason)
- or about immigrants, such as nazi theories like 'they are trying to replace us with brown people' or 'immigrates cause wildfires, not climate change'
- they (the evil elite) try to scare us, just like with covid
- they are trying to take money away from us and exploit us
- they are changing the weather in order to control us or some other vage nefarious purpose (not clear to me why the elite would change the weather)
- something something with chemtrails (this one is also really unclear for me, but it is related to changing the weather)
Basically if somebody believes any one of the above, its very likely they believe some or all of the other things too. The connections are very loose and incoherent. Doesn't matter for creating a narrative.
If you look carefully these concepts together are just a twisted, childish nightmare version of all that right wing conservatives hate. These are devices to incite hatred and distrust towards any of the solutions for today's problems that they want to undermine. Its like someone from a far-right think-tank took drugs and came up with all these in a bad trip, then put them on social media.
Facebook? Make it as weird as possible with some spiritual air to it, you'll get the older, gullible crowd. Make it a bit more 'discovery sciency' like with some hipster music? Thats tiktok for the teenage angst. Add some Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson to it and you'll get the enraged tech bros that also come to hacker news.
And its weird because rich elites are exploiting workers but these bizarrely stupid conspiracies distract from the reality of profit extraction from workers
You mean "deliberately ignored" and not just "underappreciated". Unfortunately it's a politicised topic, and thus considering any alternative becomes a taboo.
Where, what? This doesn't make sense. Please point me to one single instance where is this ignored / underappreciated.
Making claims such as these without any proof amount to nothing more than a conspiracy theory, at best.
Planting more trees is a universally accepted action to combat climate change. The greening effect is also universally acknowledged as a negative feedback. Climate models are refined constantly. Where is the problem?
I think that it’s perfectly fine to speculate as to whether or not that will be a problem, but I find that fact alone to be remarkable. I can’t imagine a way, with systems as complex as climate and biology, that wouldn’t have some very complex downstream effects.