Laura Helmuth: We! fixed! acid! rain! And we can fix climate change 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

We! fixed! acid! rain! And we can fix climate change 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

The World Solved Acid Rain. We Can Also Solve Climate Changewww.scientificamerican.com Lessons from how we tackled acid rain can be applied to our world today

I remember seeing someone argue that climate change was just another fad like acid rain and ozone depletion because: "You don't hear about those things anymore." 🙃

Damn. I guess Polio and smallpox was a fad too cuz I don’t hear about them either. 😐🤔

I remember somebody saying we didn't need bottle-deposit fees because glass bottles dumped by the road really weren't something you see these days (in a state which had a bottle-deposit law.) (As a kid we could get 2c/bottle, back when 2c added up to useful money pretty quickly.)

We don't promote this enough! There was a problem and we were actually able to do something about it- we can do it again.

Remember the hole in the ozone layer? We managed to fix that too - technically it fixed itself after we stopped fuckin’ it but same idea

Actually it is still open, but it's shrinking fast, thank goodness. There was still massive venting of CFCs from China just a couple years ago, but it slowed or stopped after somebody blew the whistle.

I think about this a lot because a common conservative refrain to why we cant have climate regulations is because china will “cheat” and outcompete us. In reality, when they found out about this happening they acted swiftly to stop it

Acid rain and the ozone layer depletion were the two big environmental issues when I was in high school. Both fixed. Maybe we need to bring back Jimmy Carter?

The main difference, I think, which makes “fixing” climate change less likely, is that the main substance we would need to use much less of, fossil hydrocarbons, is a substance our industrial consumer society, is addicted to. Nate Hagen’s podcast“ The Great Simplification” offers great insights.

The thing is, those fuels are a finite resource. Better to find ways to gradually wean ourselves off them than have to go cold turkey in an overheated climate where lack of energy for stuff like AC and water purification will kill us.

Yes. It would also be better if we could wean ourselves off the energy and material wastefulness of our industrial consumer society. The rematerialisation / mining of raw materials (incl. use of fresh water!), required to build the rebuildable energy infrastructure is enormous. I’m not sure we can.

We don’t have the option not to try.

Yeah, fixing acid rain was a relatively concentrated problem, mostly with Canadian coal-using industries that could be adapted to different coal.

IMO, let’s start with the enormous and near impossible task of trying to keep to 1.5C before we talk about fixing it. Can’t possibly bring carbon levels down until we get to zero first.

We can and should do both. Having a larger, long-term goal will keep us moving after the immediate ones are met.

I disagree. I think the more we talk positively about “solving” it now people misunderstand the scale of the task in reference to just getting down to zero. The best we can work for right now is less bad. Talk about solving it distorts how big of a task that will be and helps oil/ccs companies.

“Less bad” is also vulnerable to distortion. We’ve been using that approach for decades, and each trimmed down goal gets whittled down even further. Start big so we have room to maneuver b

What I mean is keeping to 1.5 is less bad and requires rapid civilizational transformation that’s nearly impossible, but even then the outcome is still horrible. We need to know that it’s going to be horrible and it’s a matter of fighting for less bad, that every increment of less bad is worth it.

Gotcha

"before we finish this task, we should start this task" i agree! we also must loudly counter decades of corporate propaganda about how "nothing can be done" before we can get to a collective "we can do it" mentality

Rapid decarbonization is what we need to focus on or the centuries long process of possibly bringing carbon down to preindustrial levels on non-geological timescales is going to be way harder and even less likely.

Timely share, thanks. My teen son was sharing his concerns for the future with me this weekend. I used ozone layer and acid rain as examples that humans can actually fix things sometimes. I'll show him this

thinkin about this here. its one thing to mandate an expense on an companies to solve an environmental problem their process is creating. Its a much taller order to basically get rid of those companies, because its product is itself the problem

The carbon companies could still diversify into renewables. Heck, half their greenwashing says they are. It's their fault they're too slow and being replaced.

@austinyorski.bsky.social @rollot.bsky.social @wittywiggywitchy.bsky.social

OK but fixing acid rain ruined one of my favorite songs. :( (Black Planet by The Sisters of Mercy. "Run around in the radiation, run around in the acid rain...")

There's money to be made in being optimistic about climate change.

There's money to be made in climate doomerism, no need to stop polluting if its already too late, just adapt.

And we fixed acid rain for basically the cost that environmentalist said it would take, which is a small fraction of what the asshole polluters said it would cost. Which is what happens almost every time with environmental regs: they work as planned.

Not everywhere, we didn’t. Woodside Energy’s gas facilities at Murujuga, Western Australia, threaten local rock engravings through acid rain, and the world’s climate through CO2 emissions But we can fix both! amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/...

Race and power collide in a fight over sacred rock art in remote Australiaamp.cnn.com Near a dry, red rock peninsula on Australia's far western coast, a dusty highway separates two communities with contrasting fortunes tied to an ancient land.

That’s amazing… it’s almost rare nowadays to see an actually uplifting news statement. I remember how depressing it was to see the Adirondack streams without any fish in them because of acid rain.

wait so does this mean i can go feel the rain on my face again... dont lie to me

Unfortunately in the UK our wonderful government just pushed back all the green deadline they had 😤😤😤

There are so many differences here that the analogy is not germane

Well, let's be clear, and I do appreciate your enthusiasm, Acid Rain was a result of burning high sulfur coal and had a relatively eddy fix: Remove the raw sulfur from the waste smoke in the stack and it doesn't react with oxygen and form sulphuric acid.

acid rain is still really bad in my hometown of hsinchu, taiwan. wondering what the cause of that is when it’s not a problem elsewhere….

But will we

We have no choice now.

lol

bsky.app/profile/tyle...

we fixed acid rain! we fixed the ozone layer! we beat polio! we’ve rescued scores of species from the brink of extinction! the despair many of us feel about climate change isn’t that it’s too big to fix. it’s that we know it is fixable but we’re being thwarted by greedy ghouls at every turn.

we need to start pumping mass amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere 🙏

Didn't the first half of 2020 see a significant reduction in temperature because so many people were staying home?

Though ironically fixing acid rain has likely accelerated climate change—the reduction in SO2 emissions, particularly from the recent limits on sulfur in marine fuel, has reduced atmospheric reflectivity, which increases total energy absorbed from the sun.

Post