makerofspoons

Traffic seems noticeably faster and more aggressive than before.

I went to several of Professor Brian Toon's presentations when I was a student at CU Boulder. The article briefly mentions his current research but if anyone is interested in the effect a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would have on the world, this is a sobering read: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191002144251.h...

A guide on how deep learning and IoT could save civilization: https://hacktheplanet.substack.com/p/pulling-the-climate-swi...

Please don't let COVID-19 kill this thing. They're going to need a lot of money to build the full-size plane and it's going to be hard to get it if airlines are cancelling orders and not placing any new ones for planes: https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2020/05/19/a...

It will be difficult to tackle any of those problems if the climate causes civilization to collapse: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-ci...

It's more than a few foods disappearing or people modifying they're homes- it's entire breadbaskets of the world disappearing and entire cities needing to be abandoned.

We seem to be trending right along with the worst case emissions scenario: https://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/files/2018/11/4BDC35FE-...

Edit: There is also credible evidence we've been underestimating climate sensitivity for years: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01484-5

Would range have mattered as much to make the Concorde more palatable for airlines and travelers? I have always been under the impression the main reason the Concorde didn't see more commercial success was because the cabin was small. It seems like what was really needed was a design that could hold more passengers.

Metro Denver definitely has this through Xcel Energy. I'm enrolled in a program called Wind Source and I believe there is a similar program for solar.

I read it as "instead of doing anything people will just have their burger while they can"

Agreed- the false-color pictures are beautiful but I don't think the metaphor really helped me understand the process any better.

I believe the alternative to phasing out air travel isn't finding another mode of transport to replace it but instead asking whether or not in a world with teleconferencing and the internet if it's worth the damage to be physically moving people around.

The lifecycle impact of a 747 is much worse than a 737 or an Embraer 145: https://escholarship.org/content/qt6m5865v5/qt6m5865v5.pdf

Regardless of the plane size however, there's no getting around planes depositing pollution in the upper atmosphere is worse than we thought and cannot be thought of in the same way as emissions from a train or power plant: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207886-it-turns-out-pl...

Good riddance- with any luck the post COVID-19 world will be one with less reliance on air travel for the atmosphere's sake. Especially in the numbers that once made airplane designers believe the 747 and A380 could be economically viable.

Users on Pine64.org have reported their devices can run 14 hours on idle and my own experience is the battery will last all day with moderate usage. Getting it on the phone is as simple as getting Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi, you just flash the image onto an SD card.

Adding ubports to the list- I have it on my Pinephone and can place and receive calls, send and receive SMS, and utilize GPS. There are some features that don't yet work on Pinephone like MMS but it's on the threshold of being daily-driver worthy.

Adding to the "Ambition vs. Reality" section- COVID-19 has shown Americans have no tolerance for even minor inconveniences like wearing a mask. The minute something gets more expensive or a high-density housing project gets approved in someone's neighborhood the bellyaching about how the climate projections and expert opinions are wrong will begin. Any climate legislation must come with a cultural shift or enough barbs that it cannot be easily repealed.

Much cheaper to just spray sulfur dioxide from a plane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

If you're concerned about the environment, browse at your local library. The energy cost in printing and shipping books is shocking: https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/amazons-kindl...

Switch to renewables, then lobby for a carbon tax to crush competitors that haven't switched or can't afford the transition.

I'm a fan of Postum. Interested in trying this mushroom coffee though I'm concerned about the footprint of where they get all of their ingredients.

One could start by analyzing if the economic benefit of growing it and the healthcare savings of consuming it actually outweigh the long-term damage of its production. My hypothesis is once you strip away subsidies that allow farmers to clear forest for cultivation and fuel subsidies for shipping it across the ocean or by plane the hidden costs start to add up.

Has there been a study that weighs benefits from studies of coffee consumption against the societal health impacts of coffee production? I mean we have coffee farmers developing kidney disease (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24878647/) and the environmental impact of its cultivation and shipping (https://www.sustainablebusinesstoolkit.com/environmental-imp...). It's the second most tradeable commodity after oil but as it's largely unnecessary for society to function. I would doubt it would come ahead as a net positive for humanity.

This is particularly alarming: "A study conducted in 2009[12] said that food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years, and food production in the developing world will need to double.[13] This is a result of the increasing population (world population will increase to 9.1 billion in 2050, where there are just 7.8 billion people today). Another issue is that the effects of global warming (floods, droughts, extreme weather events, ...) will negatively affect food production, in such a degree even that food shortages are likely to occur in the coming decades.[14][15] As a result, we will need to use the scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapt to climate change.[16] Lastly, some things (such as the increase in agricultural production for 1st generation biofuels) has not been taken into account in FAO's forecast.[17]"

Unless there is a breakthrough in carbon-free fertilizer (something fertilizer manufacturer Yara is working on for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-06-19/pilbara-yara-en...) that 70% growth will likely come with considerable emissions on its own, exacerbating the problem.

Drawdown is one of the most comprehensive and well-sourced books about solving anthropocentric climate change. If this article alarms you, in their technical report they lay out how switching to a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways you can decrease your ecologial footprint: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/plant-rich-diets

The response to COVID-19 does not make me optimistic about the world addressing climate change at all. China reacted by covering up the problem, the US leadership called it a hoax and encouraged a vocal group of conspiracy theorists, and numerous countries are guilty of seizing each other's equipment and supplies. The author does not make a convincing argument that the response to COVID-19 by the global community was not an embarrassment. I think it demonstrated we don't have the tools to handle a global crisis.

Has anyone plugged Lutz's education variable into scenarios for climate change? It could be one of the silver linings is we have more runway than anticipated.

Edit: It doesn't appear that it would make a difference, the low-end emission scenarios already have population growth similar to what is described in the article: https://skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3

That's a classy webpage. It would have been too easy for them to plaster it with ads and make some passive income instead.

During April daily CO2 emissions dropped 17% compared to 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x. Even if that were doubled that's a far ways away from net zero and now a few weeks later people are already back to old habits. Long term voluntary austerity won't work, we need carrots and sticks.

The impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns is the strongest argument that personal lifestyle changes will not be enough to end anthropogenic climate change. We need massive investment in carbon capture, nuclear power, and grid-level storage as well as a carbon fee and dividend scheme to offset the impact on the poor.

This article doesn't address what impact this would have on crop yields if less light is reaching the surface. It also does nothing to address ocean acidification, which is realy the unaddressed elephant in the room in many climate discussions.

Olivine weathering addresses both: https://projectvesta.org/