>this seems like it's going to be the hardest thing humanity has had to deal with in recorded history, and make the misery of extreme poverty in China seem nice in comparison.
I don't see how. There aren't going to be major effects for most people for a very long time. This gives us plenty of time to try various things like carbon capture, putting a shade into space etc.
At $600 per ton of CO2 it's not insurmountable. We emit about 36 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Napkin math:
36 billion * $600 = $21.6 trillion
Global GDP is at around $84 trillion, which means that this carbon capture technology is within our reach. Obviously an enormous amount of work would need to be done, but it's at least in the right ballpark.
The US emits about 4.8 billion tons of CO2. That would cost $2.88 trillion. Considering the US GDP is $21 trillion that's even more reasonable.
Technological advancement is likely going to cut this cost further. However, I'm also sure that there are some emissions that haven't been factored in here, but we would still be at numbers where society can work.
Also, "extreme poverty" is subsistence farming. About $2-3 worth of goods per day of work.
I’m actually in the middle of studying carbon capture right now (via AirMiners Bootup, free, worth checking out the next batch if you’re interested). Direct air capture like Climeworks requires a lot of energy to free the CO2 from the sorbent, and it needs to be near a geological formation that can accept the CO2. We’d need a massive build-out of excess power generation, you can’t just extrapolate out from current numbers. And good luck convincing the people of the world that this is worth spending 1/4 of GDP (not existing government budgets, but all GDP) on this before we’re well past the scenarios we’re looking at and playing serious catch-up. If fusion comes along and energy becomes a fraction of the cost, then this becomes cheaper/easier, but the scale would still need to be extreme.
The foremost experts in DAC are emphatic that it’s not a silver bullet that will magically save us, and that the heavy lifting needs to be done by reducing new emissions.
And at this point, going eventually carbon neutral isn’t enough to avoid the 2 degree C scenario, we need to be going negative eventually.
The major effects seem likely to be deadly heatwaves, crop failure in hotter areas, mass migration, and political strain from all of that.
>this seems like it's going to be the hardest thing humanity has had to deal with in recorded history, and make the misery of extreme poverty in China seem nice in comparison.
I don't see how. There aren't going to be major effects for most people for a very long time. This gives us plenty of time to try various things like carbon capture, putting a shade into space etc.
On carbon capture that we can do today: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-08/inside-th...
At $600 per ton of CO2 it's not insurmountable. We emit about 36 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Napkin math:
36 billion * $600 = $21.6 trillion
Global GDP is at around $84 trillion, which means that this carbon capture technology is within our reach. Obviously an enormous amount of work would need to be done, but it's at least in the right ballpark.
The US emits about 4.8 billion tons of CO2. That would cost $2.88 trillion. Considering the US GDP is $21 trillion that's even more reasonable.
Technological advancement is likely going to cut this cost further. However, I'm also sure that there are some emissions that haven't been factored in here, but we would still be at numbers where society can work.
Also, "extreme poverty" is subsistence farming. About $2-3 worth of goods per day of work.