Zero Carbon Britain

[extractorfan]

If they think it's not worth living, I'm ok with that, and would not dream of trying to force them to change their minds.They would after all, be so unhappy having to endure the changes.

I meant it in a more sinister way than that though, when people don't see the point they tend to do horrible things, rather than slope off quietly.

[emordnilap]

Not to mention impossible without major lifestyle changes.

'Major lifestyle changes' assumes one's current lifestyle is the norm, when the lifestyle of the hubristic, rapacious minority world is in fact a fossil-fuelled blip.

I understand what you mean though. Taking up animal eating, flying to Torremolinos, buying iPhones and dishwashers, getting a trophy house, sporting Nike, banking with Barclays, watching tv, eating pesticides etc, etc, et-frigging-cetera, would be major lifestyle changes for me which I will do everything in my power to resist.

[biffvernon]

major lifestyle changes.

Major changes that most people, like the majority of people, would see as catastrophic, what's the point in living type of thing.

Life-style changes can be dealt with, it's life-ending changes we want to avoid.

For that we need a zero carbon world. Actually we need a negative carbonn world, since there is too much carbon in the air already.

[Little John]

major lifestyle changes.

Major changes that most people, like the majority of people, would see as catastrophic, what's the point in living type of thing.

Life-style changes can be dealt with, it's life-ending changes we want to avoid.

For that we need a zero carbon world. Actually we need a negative carbonn world, since there is too much carbon in the air already.

That's the bit I see as being a contradiction in terms B (in bold).

You say we need a zero carbon world in order to avoid the bad stuff happening to us. However, we will only get a zero carbon world as a consequence of the bad stuff happening to us. With our current numbers, there is no way we can achieve a carbon zero world. That will only happen after a significant reduction in our numbers and that is only going to happen if it is forced on us. In other words, after some of the bad stuff has happened.

You are putting the cart before the horse.

[biffvernon]

If there's no way, we may as well just party. (I do that quite a lot of the time.) But if there's still some faint glimmer of hope, we may as well keep searching for ways to let the glimmer grow by discussing it on PowerSwitch.

[extractorfan]

If there's no way, we may as well just party. (I do that quite a lot of the time.) But if there's still some faint glimmer of hope, we may as well keep searching for ways to let the glimmer grow by discussing it on PowerSwitch.

Yes, well even if the bad stuff goes down, there will still be good people, some of whom will survive.

[Billhook]

Life-style changes can be dealt with, it's life-ending changes we want to avoid.

For that we need a zero carbon world. Actually we need a negative carbonn world, since there is too much carbon in the air already.

Biff - no doubt you know that reducing airborne CO2 with the intention of stabilizing climate is within the Royal Society definition of Geo-engineering.

I wonder how many here are willing to state that they too advocate Geo-E - under appropriate UN scientific supervision -
as a pre-requisite adjunct to rapid Emissions Control ?

Regards,

Lewis

[biffvernon]

If you want to label clearing up the pollution we've caused as geoengineering, then fine, I'm in favour of it. I'd look at reducing atmospheric CO2 to the pre-industrial level as akin to picking up the litter, only more important.

[woodburner]

While you have the plnet staffed by people who eat shark fin soup, use tigers for medicine, harvest krill to make krill oil as a dietary supplement, there's absolutely no chance of your fantasy coming true.

[Billhook]

If you want to label clearing up the pollution we've caused as geoengineering, then fine, I'm in favour of it. I'd look at reducing atmospheric CO2 to the pre-industrial level as akin to picking up the litter, only more important.

My preferences are not the point - what matters is how many people recognize and are willing to use the proper term - Geo-engineering - for the essential Carbon Recovery effort, and put down the widespread anti-Geo-E propaganda. At present the decision makers can't mention the term in public, which screws the negotiation even of its necessary governance.

Regards,

Lewis

[Pepperman]

Life-style changes can be dealt with, it's life-ending changes we want to avoid.

For that we need a zero carbon world. Actually we need a negative carbonn world, since there is too much carbon in the air already.

Biff - no doubt you know that reducing airborne CO2 with the intention of stabilizing climate is within the Royal Society definition of Geo-engineering.

I wonder how many here are willing to state that they too advocate Geo-E - under appropriate UN scientific supervision -
as a pre-requisite adjunct to rapid Emissions Control ?

Regards,

Lewis

I'm quite comfortable with CO2 scrubbing because there aren't likely to be unintended consequences. The rest we just don't know what the impacts will be.

[Little John]

Life-style changes can be dealt with, it's life-ending changes we want to avoid.

For that we need a zero carbon world. Actually we need a negative carbonn world, since there is too much carbon in the air already.

Biff - no doubt you know that reducing airborne CO2 with the intention of stabilizing climate is within the Royal Society definition of Geo-engineering.

I wonder how many here are willing to state that they too advocate Geo-E - under appropriate UN scientific supervision -
as a pre-requisite adjunct to rapid Emissions Control ?

Regards,

Lewis

I'm quite comfortable with CO2 scrubbing because there aren't likely to be unintended consequences. The rest we just don't know what the impacts will be.

I wouldn't be too sure of that. The eco system is like an elastic band. It gets pushed and it resists. It gets pushed some more and it resists some more. In other words, the eco system may have self regulatory mechanisms already in operation in response to the currently elevated CO2 levels. Reduce those levels suddenly and there may be unintended consequences.

A metaphor for the above might be the taking of certain substances in the human body like, say testosterone used by body builders. As a consequence of flooding their body with testosterone, their gonads stop producing it for themselves. If the external testosterone is stopped suddenly, the person basically seizes up because their body has not been given time to adapt back to having to produce it again for itself.

[Billhook]

Pepperman - I'd well agree that we need intensive research into Geo-E particularly on evaluating the best options for Albedo Restoration, which is now our only prospect of avoiding the start of intensifying global crop failures and geo-political destabilization by the 2020s, before there is any due consideration of deployment.

However, given the necessary global scale of the Carbon Recovery operation (2.1 billion tonnes of carbon per ppmv of airborne CO2), and given how badly it could be done:
for the wrong objective - of providing profitable offsets for continued fossil fuel use, rather than of providing a way for nation's to recover their historic emissions and so eventually cleanse the atmosphere;
via the wrong means - of financial seizure of IIIW farmlands and wildlands for the mechanized management of monocultured fertilizer-&-biocide dependent elephant grass and 'short-rotation forestry', rather than by using 1.6GHa.s of available non-farmland for traditional native coppice silviculture on a 7 to 25yr cycle;
on the wrong project scale - of maximizing process plant and plantation size and ignoring the massive carbon costs of the feedstock wood's transport, rather than aiming for millions of dispersed village-scale plants whose transport needs can be met by oxen, and whose harvesting can be by local labour with machetes, meaning that steep land with little or no agricultural value can be afforested;
- it seems clear that Carbon Recovery needs to be under the same UN scientific supervision as that for Albedo Restoration.

Regards,

Billhook

[biffvernon]

the eco system may have self regulatory mechanisms already in operation in response to the currently elevated CO2 levels.

What, you mean like melting of the icecaps, desertification in some regions, flooding in others, reducing the area inhabitable for humans and eventually wiping us and much of life off the planet and then, over a period of millions of years, restoring the planet's heat balance to equilibrium?

Carbon sequestration starting right now sounds a better plan from my grandchild's perspective.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Carbon sequestration starting right now sounds a better plan from my grandchild's perspective.

Hmmm......so what is the correct-and-proper-for-all-time CO2 level that we should seek to enforce on our planet?

How will a flat line CO2 level affect plant growth?

What will be the consequences be for the next Ice Age (assuming that the one we are in eventually ends in the normal fashion with ice-free poles)?

What are the effects of locking up all that oxygen along with the carbon?

Geo-engineering is such a long game.