Two key quotes:

“It’s time to start accepting reality and that we’re not going to be able to do this fast enough, the ship is too big, it’s too hard to steer,”

and

“It takes a while for the planet to cool down,”

As well as a reference to a quote from former Obama science advisor and Harvard professor, John Holdren:

“We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering.”

I have been writing on HN about this for years, only to be met with violent reaction (in digital terms) and almost an absolute lack of interest in attempting to understand what I call reality. I have often said things like "thankfully your <insert reaction here> does not alter reality, which will eventually surface".

Necessary disclaimers (because people are just too quick to make assumptions):

Climate change is real
Humanity contributed greatly
We did this by burning fossil fuels,
which increased atmospheric CO2 and other GHG's

So, what's the point then?

We have allowed climate change to become a cult. One that is mostly devoid of good science. A religion too, where people just believe what is pounded into their brains day-after-day by those who seek to benefit financially and politically from the narrative. They believe because they believe. They never question any of it. And they sure don't invest one bit of effort attempting to understand reality and evaluate what they are being told.

I have also repeatedly said that the truth would eventually have to take the front of the stage. Scientific realities, like Galileo's heliocentric claims, can't be suppressed forever. At some point enough people do the math. It might take time, yet reality always wins over fantasy.

The truth?

Brutally simple:

We cannot do a thing about climate change on anything resembling a human time scale.

It is nothing less than hubris to presume we can affect planetary-scale effects in just a few decades. Actually, no, it's demented.

Wait a minute! We added a massive amount of CO2 to the atmosphere in a relatively short period of time! Why can't we remove it just as fast?

OK. I'll play that game. Using Mauna Loa data [0] we can see that the current average is 420 ppm. Let's assume our goal is to drop that by 100 ppm, to 320.

How long did it take to go from 320 to 420?

The Mauna Loa Observatory data shows it took 60 years.

How do we do it then?

First: Absolute zero additional CO2 contribution by all of humanity for the next 60 years.

Second: A magical new technology that can extract/capture/whatever atmospheric CO2 at a planetary scale without generating one molecule of new CO2

Both of these are fantasies. Impossible.

Why is it impossible!!!!

Well, Physics, for one thing. It is easy to burn stuff and make a mess. It takes a massive amount more effort, resources and energy to clean-up the mess. This should be common sense. Consider the mental model of burning one cubic meter of wood in the middle of a Walmart building completely sealed from the outside world. Then imagine this task: You have to retrieve every particle and gas you emitted. The difference in energy in resources required to reverse the process is almost unmeasurable. No, you can't open the windows and ventilate the place with fresh air. It's a sealed environment.

Diving further into the common sense domain. It is helpful to get a sense of proportion on this at a global scale.

One of the preconditions for being able to drop atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm in 60 years (the time it took to contribute this much) is that the entire world must stop contributing additional CO2. Anything less than that extends the timeline, likely exponentially. Again, common sense.

...continues on next comment
links at the end of second section