Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring Badenoch's comments for a second - all of the plans for things to happen "by 2050" are essentially plans to not do anyting for many years. Still,

Q: Is "Net Zero" emissions by 2050 possible?

A: That doesn't matter at all! Suppose only "net 2%" is possible by 2050, or even "net 5%", or whatever. Fine, let's do that, and stave off most of the effects of global warming.

Warming is evident now already, both in average temperatures and in extreme weather event increasing in frequency and severity. So, action needs to be taken now, and never mind what's the exact percentage in 2050. That does not mean everything needs to be fixed in a day, and there will surely be changes along the way; but human society, and world states in particular, need to make short-term plans for significant reductions in emissions. And those plans need to be put into practice almost-immediately.

Instead, we have the modified version of climate denialism: From "it's not a problem" to "it's not a serious problem" to "we can no longer do anything about it, it's too late" - with their conclusion always being not to change government policy, not to tax, not to invest public funds in alternatives to what they sell right now, and in short to keep their donors rich and getting richer.

Right now there are massive efforts to roll out Wind, Solar, batteries and electric vehicles to get a giant amount of the usage replaced. We are still on the early increasing investment phase but once that goal looks like its going to be hit then a lot of attention is going to be turned towards Airplanes and carbon capture. High density fuel scenarios and food production are going to be sticky and hard to solve but with most of the rest solved we have a lot more time to deal with it.

I suspect some amount of carbon capture is inevitable, its not the right answer for basic power usage but we are going to overshoot we need a way to capture and store even if its expensive. We need to get to net negative CO2 production to restore 270 ppm. Its just not the priority right now.

Why does it sound like I've been signed up to something that makes no sense, anyway to opt out?

At this point its market forces not really any sense of desire for clean energy that doesn't emit CO2. Green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels and getting cheaper every year, burning old dinosaur juice and trees just doesn't make any economic sense any more for producers.

If you want to be exposed to that declining production and increasing price market of fossil fuels then off grid with a generator is the opt out answer along with what will become a antique car you'll be maintaining yourself because your grid power is already coming increasingly from the Sun and Wind and everyone is building EVs because they are cheaper. $'s win every time.

> Right now there are massive efforts to roll out Wind, Solar, batteries ... to get a giant amount of the usage replaced

That, in itself, doesn't reduce emissions. When Wind, Solar and Batteries (or other less-carbon/methane-emitting technologies) are deployed _instead_ of other power generation tech, that reduces emissions.

But assuming that's what you meant - then great, but - the effort is not massive, relative to the necessary extent of replacement. And in some places, and by some governments, there's almost no effort.

> We are still on the early increasing investment phase

That is the problem. We are several decades too late, considering the warming effects. We need to be in another phase, now.

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