Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

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As to whether those hybrids have a 'huge effect' on 'global warming' depends on many factors but assuming the narrative around climate change - the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise - in relation to the CO₂ hypothesis holds truth the main factor of importance is the source of the carbon used in the fuel. Fossil fuels add carbon to the atmosphere while synthetic fuels made from 'renewable' sources - biomass and direct carbon capture being the most likely ones - do not. Especially the latter - captured atmospheric carbon in combination with hydrogen from ocean-based wind and solar sources - would be a clearly carbon-neutral synthetic fuel source. If such a process could be made economically viable it could also solve the problem with storing hydrogen produced by those ocean-based sources:

   CO₂ -> C + O₂
   2 H₂O -> 2 H₂ + O₂
   C + 2 H₂ -> CH₄ (methane)

Theoretically it is simple. Building an economically viable installation, not so. With the amount of attention the 'climate crisis' gets this should not be a barrier given that untold billions of euros are being spent. Take some of that money which currently goes to nonsensical political vanity projects and redirect it into a Manhattan-project style research and development project with the aim of not just finding some theoretical process but actually creating working systems which can be installed and used. The advantage of creating methane is clear since it enables existing infrastructure to be used for transport and power production - including ICE-equipped vehicles. Either create heavier liquid hydrocarbons using the Fisher-Tropsch [1] process or convert diesel engines to use methane.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

> the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise

You're just going to throw that out there? You'll cite the Fischer-Tropsch process, but not "actually global temperatures are declining"?

Here[1]. The temperature hasn't gone down. The narrative hasn't changed from global warming because of this (the term was in fact dropped because people are idiots and trying to explain what global temperature is measuring in terms of energy dynamics in the climate system doesn't work...). 2022 was the 6th warmest year on record, and based on all data the overall trend is up.

[1] https://www.noaa.gov/news/2022-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-o...

You are pointing at a single year, I am pointing at a trend [1,2]. The trend had been for the average global temperature to rise up to 2012 to 2016 - depending on which measurements you look at. After that period the average global temperature has declined by 0.06°C per year up to 2022. This change in the trend made the "global warming" moniker easily attacked "because the temperature are clearly going down". This is why "climate change" became the more common term [3].

May I suggest a less belligerent/dogmatic attitude when discussing this subject? If the narrative holds it won't change the conclusion. If new data shows the narrative to be false or misleading - e.g. ice core records show the atmospheric CO₂ concentration to lag behind temperature changes, not lead them, climate sensitivity wrt. CO₂ concentration is low, feedback mechanisms are unclear, there are far too many fudge factors in the climate models to make them reliable sources - it will be much easier to adapt to the new situation. We're not talking religious dogma after all but scientific theory, that which can and should be discussed lest it turns into the former.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...

[2] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/why-did-ear...

[3] https://climate.nasa.gov/global-warming-vs-climate-change/

Wow didn't even wait before busting out "what if CO2 doesn't cause global warming" and very obviously didn't read your own links.

Running the denialist playbook as usual: slip in a insinuation that the issue has stopped without evidence, then drop a bunch of articles which don't support it while continuing to say "what if all the data supported me?" And then started alluding to a conspiracy with language choices like "dogma". Throw in some upfront tone policing because heaven forbid you have to defend your position vigorously and the recipe is complete.

Go on: hit me with "climate cycles are natural" and then lean into how the media just don't talk about the controversy.

Climate cycles are natural [1].

Please refrain from using terms like denialist, it does nothing to help the discourse. Also, that 'bunch of articles' I sent does support what I said, this being a break in the rising temperature trend. You seem to want to hear much more in what was said, why is that?

As to the 'conspiracy with language choices' I think you realise that this is no conspiracy but a simple fact - what used to be called 'global warming' is now called 'climate change'.

As to 'tone policing' I'd suggest reading your posts I replied to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:Holocene_...

> denialist, it does nothing to help the discourse

When one party wins by default, they benefit from stalemate-seeking tactics. "Just Asking Questions" unfortunately works very well for this purpose. Dogma poisons the discourse, yes, but so does accidentally extending good faith to a bottomless well of bad faith questions, which has been the conservative playbook on climate change since forever. The counter-strategy is dogma.

In order to have a scientific discussion rather than a political discussion, we need to know your intentions, and that's extremely difficult on a pseudoanonymous internet forum. It sucks, but this is probably how it has to be.

> In order to have a scientific discussion rather than a political discussion, we need to know your intentions

The truth, freed from ideology. This will be hard to achieve given the enormous amounts of money involved on all sides - from "green new deals" via trillions of € in subsidies to even larger amounts of money on the fossil-fuel-status-quo side. With politicians who have made their careers on either portraying themselves as apostles of Gaia or ensuring the continuous flow of oil, gas and coal - and thus the continuation of an industry which more or less defined whole US states and several countries.

Just because it is hard - and probably impossible - to get the actual truth does not mean I want or need to cave and just follow one of the narratives. Given enough people looking for the actual truth it may become possible to reach it and act upon it but it better be sooner rather than later.

What is your purpose in asking such leading questions by the way? Do you agree that an actual scientific discussion - as opposed to one directed by The Science™ - is the better course? Also, who are the we who would like to know? I speak for myself, not for others. Who do you speak for?

> The truth, freed from ideology.

The IPCC reports are one google away.

Yes, read them. The scientific reports that is, not the condensed version presented in the media. If you read them well you'll find they do not support the climate doomsday prophecies which are being bandied around. The only way to use those reports to support those is to use the long-discredited - by the IPCC itself, mind you - worst-case scenarios yet it is those which the media and politicians use to support their doom cries.

When you're done reading at least the abstracts in the IPCC reports - but it is worth the time to read the actual reports themselves - you can also read a few other sources, e.g. Schellenberger's Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Björn Lomborg's False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet and Steve Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. These give a far better view over what climate change entails and how it can be dealt with than the breathless fear-mongering as seen in the media and as spouted by politicians.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

It's a much longer trend than 2012-2016. I remember 2011, the last time conservatives were playing the "global warming has paused" game, but then oops! It returned to trend. No Ls were acknowledged, of course.

What do the radiative flux measurements say this time around? They measure the derivative directly and are upstream of the most chaotic mixing process. Last time they said "sorry, heat is still piling up, globe's still warming." They were correct. What do they say this time?

> It's a much longer trend than 2012-2016

2012-2016 is not the period of warming, it is the period from which the warming trend changed into a cooling trend. Seen over the last century the warming trend is far longer, the most recent one starting somewhere in the beginning of the 70's until the mentioned 2012-2016 frame. After that a slight cooling period followed, taking down the temperature by 0.06°C/yr until 2022. 2022 was another warm year so if 2023 will be warm as well the cooling trend is most likely broken. These sort-time variations are not significant when discussing 'climate' - roughly defined as 'the weather trends over at least a 30 yr stretch' - but they do control what makes the news.

One question: why do you state is is ´conservatives' who claim that the warming trend was broken? You don't know whether those people were conservatives nor do I. It does not make sense - and is extremely counterproductive - to equate a person's stance on single issues like 'climate change' with their political affiliation since these issues should not in any way be connected to political ideology. If they are connected they are by definition suspect since ideology trumps objective reasoning. Either the climate changes - and it does, no question there - or it does not, independent on whether you or I vote for whatever party we choose. Allowing ideology to taint the discussion just turns off a large part of the populace no matter which ideology it happens to be. It is just plain stupid for climate change to be a 'progressive' cause, crime reduction to be a 'conservative' cause, etc. These issues should be pulled out of the ideological realm so that they can be discussed by everyone without accusations of -isms by 'either' side.

Rather than doing chart astrology, do you mind digging up those radiative flux measurements?

When you ask a serious question you can expect a serious answer.

by the way, how did you do all those subscript formatting tricks?? It would be great to know how to post more advanced things in the comments here.

I use the compose key (which I mapped to Scroll Lock) for subscript:

  <compose> + _ + [0-9]

For superscript I use a dead key, ^:

  superscript: ^ + [0-9]

O₀ … O₉

O⁰… O⁹

You may like this:

https://jwilk.github.io/chemiscripts/

Assuming you are on desktop/laptop:

The long-winded way is to use your OS's character map tool: find the glyph you want there and copy+paste. Under Windows 10+ there is the emoji keyboard (hit [win]+;) which also gives access to much more including super-/sub- script characters, which is a little more convenient than character map. Presumably other OSs have similar available too.

Better is to have support for a compose key sequence. Usually build in to Linux & similar, you just might have to find the setting to turn it on and configure what your compose key is. Under Windows I use http://wincompose.info/ and there are a couple of similar tools out there. In any case it is useful for more than super- and sub-scripts: accented characters & similar (áàäæçﬀñ), some fractions (¼,½,¾), other symbols (°∞™®↑↓←→‽¡¿⸘♥⋘»‱), and configurable too so you can make what you use most easiest to access (and if you are really sad like me you can do something https://xkcd.com/2583/ to type hallelujah too!).

On mobile devices a fair few “special” characters are usually available (though it depends what keyboard you have installed) via long-press on the right keys of the virtual keyboard.

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