alt Hacker NewsWe won't stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere (Germany, India and China actually increased coal burning in 2026, in all 3 cases despite all the good news about solar installations). Also we can't prevent fossil fuel producers from digging up fossil fuels.
And, because of entropy, reducing CO2 already in the atmosphere is a non-starter. For one thing, one can reasonably assume that would at minimum require doubling human energy output (because unmixing costs a lot more energy than mixing)
I mean if you put the belief behind the whole CO2 reduction in words, it's like this: if we slightly reduce CO2 output (not stop, reduce by single digit percent), we won't have to adapt. And if you put it like that it becomes easy to see: "no way in hell that's going to be true".
So there's not much of a choice: geoengineering it is. Next question: which method?
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Germany's output is almost irrelevant in this context: it amounts to a mere 1.4% of the global output.
To add to that: there are no good alternatives to coal as the stabilizer in a renewables-fed grid, for Germany. They don't have hydro and don't have nuclear. Even Spain now runs some coal despite having near-100% renewable grid for a year. That big blackout was a big lesson for all grid operators. Please don't shame countries for running a small percentage of their grids on coal.
I don't think it's as dire as you're supposing. I hadn't expected the rollout of renewables and the growth of EVs to be as swift as we've seen.
If we can cut emissions entirely then that's the first step. Next devote 5% of energy generation to CO2 removal and we'll take out a year of 100% emissions in less than 20 years. We don't need to go back down to 280 ppm, something like 320 would be fine. It's a long term project but it can work.
Need step one first though.
Well... the holy grail is something that traps CO2, slows down hurricanes-typhoons, slows down desertification, makes urban heat sinks more bearable. What that could be, I have no idea.
I think we should pump so much sulfur into the upper atmosphere it reduces the average temperature to -20 degrees. And when countries tell us to stop, we offer to stop if they stop emitting CO2.