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Do you have any baseless predictions for the future that you nonetheless expect to occur? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 16 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Geoengineering to combat climate change by mass carbon capture will be the solution that saves humanity but will arrive too late to prevent some harrowing effects.

Self-driving vehicles will become good enough to technically be safer for passengers than human drivers soon, but the stigma around them will continue for a long time after they are road legal and their uptake will be very slow.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Any idea if mass carbon capture could undo runaway venus-like greenhouse effects? I have no hope that humanity will put up with even minor inconveniences until lead starts melting at room temperature at the equator. It would give me hope if there was a way to undo runaway greenhouse processes.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    It seems kind of unlikely. It could be part of an array of solutions. Right now it captures something like 0.1%. That means it would take 1000 times the current infrastructure to support it, including carbon-neutral energy to cover the additional energy costs. All that is assuming 100% carbon capture is even viable. Even then, that doesn't solve the problem of the carbon that's already in the environment, which will continue to warm the earth for centuries.

    There's an interesting emergency option: Stratospheric aerosol injection.

    If we got to the point where the runaway effect was unavoidable, it might be possible to use this before civilization starts to collapse. It would probably have a lot of nasty side effects, but it might be able to buy enough time for CO2 levels to come back down. At least civilization could survive in some form.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    countries dont seem interested in combatting climate change at all. plus there is one country that solely funds anti-climate change as thier economy depends on it, combined with the rest of the oil-gas industry. trying to get funding for research about climate change is a little dicey too.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Couldn't disagree more with either of those takes. Self driving cars won't be safer even theoretically given unsolvable problems and will almost certainly lead to even worse pedestrian rights and make our cities so much worse. That solution to climate change isn't realistic of feasible at all we need if we are going to solve it massive systematic change and an end to capitalism.

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