You seem to be saying the temperature change is mainly natural? But the expected natural change in the present era is slow and downward, I think.

I mean you have two separate points here, one is "adapt" and the other is "nothing can be done", which itself can be picked apart into different specific things that can't be done, such as on the one hand getting everybody to behave themselves conscientiously with one mind, and on the other hand unilateral geoengineering.

▲

anonym29 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I am saying that earth's average temperature has raised by 23° C before with zero human impact, and it will raise by as much as 23° C again, even if you cut all human carbon emissions to zero overnight (itself an effective impossibility for other reasons).

The average global temperature raising by even 2°C has catastrophic and devastating impacts to humanity, to say nothing of it raising by 20°.

We can't stop or prevent global average temperatures from rising, even if we do cut emissions to zero.

What we can prevent is the widespread loss of life (human, plants, and animals) and prosperity. Preventing loss of life and prosperity is good, and it's an achievable goal, so we should pursue that goal.

▲

w4der 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You are leaving out the rate at which the temperature has fallen and risen in the past and how that compares with the rising seen in recent decades.

▲

4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

card_zero 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's two reasons why temperature increases can't be stopped (without actually sending the heat away somewhere, such as into space): the first one is lag in the system if we cut emissions to zero, and the second is natural change in maybe 300 million years. Why bother mentioning the second of those?

▲

anonym29 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a strawman. The natural change happens orders of magnitude faster than 300 million years.

Also, is there a way to move heat into space that doesn't require adding more heat into the atmosphere than is removed from the expulsion? Or do you just mean this as a hypothetical example?

	▲	card_zero 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well yeah, I just took the time interlude since the carboniferous and projected it into the future. But what's the real answer to how soon it would naturally get troublesomely hot, when worked out properly, and why is it still not very soon at all? Heat into space: I was thinking of "PDRC": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cool... > If only 1%–2% of the Earth’s surface were instead made to radiate at [~100 W/m2] rather than its current average value, the total heat fluxes into and away from the entire Earth would be balanced and warming would cease. Which is, you know, a nice fantasy and theoretically works. Like a solar shield, but terrestrial. Edit for those thinking that even 1% is an unfeasibly large area: yes. It's about 5 million km², which is about one-fifth of North America. Maybe scatter the panels around the ocean?