Scientists Resort To Once-Unthinkable Solutions To Cool the Planet 205
Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing. From a report: These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors. The shift reflects growing concern that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren't moving fast enough to prevent the destructive effects of heat waves, storms and floods made worse by climate change. Geoengineering isn't a substitute for reducing emissions, according to scientists and business leaders involved in the projects. Rather, it is a way to slow climate warming in the next few years while buying time to switch to a carbon-free economy in the longer term.
Three field experiments are under way in the U.S. and overseas. This month, researchers aboard a ship off the northeastern coast of Australia near the Whitsunday Islands are spraying a briny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. Scientists hope bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, where warming ocean temperatures have contributed to massive coral die-offs. The research project, known as marine cloud brightening, is led by Southern Cross University as part of the $64.55 million, or 100 million Australian dollars, Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. The program is funded by the partnership between the Australian government's Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and includes conservation organizations and several academic institutions.
Three field experiments are under way in the U.S. and overseas. This month, researchers aboard a ship off the northeastern coast of Australia near the Whitsunday Islands are spraying a briny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. Scientists hope bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, where warming ocean temperatures have contributed to massive coral die-offs. The research project, known as marine cloud brightening, is led by Southern Cross University as part of the $64.55 million, or 100 million Australian dollars, Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. The program is funded by the partnership between the Australian government's Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and includes conservation organizations and several academic institutions.
LIARS (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote: "because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing."
That's false. There was NO "global efforts" AT ALL. Why? Because the "contamination quota" unused by a country were sold to other so they were only spending public money in free travels and expensive dinner at 5 stars hotels.
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"The shift reflects growing concern that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren't moving fast enough to spend all the taxpayer funds and private investments that are available to prevent the destructive effects of heat waves, storms and floods made worse by climate change." /s
Even if it isn't true, it feels true, and that's good enough these days.
Technical Liars (Score:3)
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Hmmmm....what...? (Score:3)
Re:Hmmmm....what...? (Score:5, Informative)
So...what could possibly go wrong here?
Glad you asked!
Acid rain. Various solutions will cause either Sulfuric or hydrochloric components into the rainfall creating health hazards killing riverine life and eventually sea life. It will create extinctions, and will have to be done globally until the present day levels of greenhouse gases decline to some level deemed correct. Remember, the greenhouse gas levels have always been changing. As soon as stopped, temperatures will rise again.
Ironing the oceans to create algae blooms, presumably to sequester carbon and sink to the bottom of the oceans. Will create HAB's Harmful Algal Blooms. Ever see the aftermath of a red tide? The fishies - they ded. And that isn't too good for people either. I choke when around red tides. So we're going to do this to the oceans? Lots of death and extinctions.
One of the fears of the rapid rise of CO2/Methane, and the energy retention is that some species will become extinct. So of course, the best move is to create more extinctions?
Yes, we done went and screwed up, and yes, there will be some negative results. But we can and will make things much worse if we think we can add layers of chemical interventions on a global scale. CO2 is a critical element in the atmosphere. Without it the average temperature of the earth will be below the freezing point of water. We've screwed with it enough already, and we're betting the lives of almost everything on earth that there will be no unintended consequences of purposefully eliminating levels of it from the atmosphere.
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Did you see that article last year on science.org that talked about how removing sulfur from the fuels used to run ships has caused an upward shift in temperatures? Oops. Sometimes air pollution can be our friend.
Yup, and that's where some people got the idea that we can cool the planet that way. The issue of sulfur aerosols is pretty nasty. Here in Pennsylvania, Power stations in Ohio with their nice tall smokestaks were injecting a lot of sulfur aerosols, and Pittsburgh, long after the steel mills were gone, had problems from the acid rain.
We need to stay focused on CO2 and methane and worry about the rest of this stuff after temperatures have been stabilized. We're globally going through a phase where we're learning how to terraform the earth as far as its climate is concerned. Solving this near term problem may very well help with our continued existence and the lessons learned can be used on other rocky planets and moons to make them habitable.
It is very unlikely we'll end our existence over AGW. Our problems are with that rapid rise. A lot of weather instability and will be for a while.
But if it was a normal slo
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I would suggest that anybody interested in solutions to global warming read Termination Shock be Neal Stephenson [wikipedia.org] I enjoyed the story, and Stephenson put his usual amount of research into the means to this end
The burning of coal globally has shown the long term effect of acid rain, and frankly, they are not nearly as impactful as global warming
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Acid rain. Various solutions will cause either Sulfuric or hydrochloric components into the rainfall creating health hazards killing riverine life and eventually sea life.
How will putting (more) seawater into the air cause acid rain? Lots of seawater already sprays into the air, and far more evaporates into it. How will more seawater in the air create acid rain? Where with the sulfur or chlorine come from?
Ironing the oceans to create algae blooms, presumably to sequester carbon and sink to the bottom of the oceans
Yeah, that could be bad. If we take that route we should be careful to keep it dispersed enough not to create dense blooms. But the same amount of additional algal growth spread over a large region seems like it might be okay. This is a good topic for study, especially sin
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Acid rain. Various solutions will cause either Sulfuric or hydrochloric components into the rainfall creating health hazards killing riverine life and eventually sea life.
How will putting (more) seawater into the air cause acid rain? Lots of seawater already sprays into the air, and far more evaporates into it. How will more seawater in the air create acid rain? Where with the sulfur or chlorine come from?
cite: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Chlorine is part of that salt environment, and the aerosols become acidic pretty quickly. Yes, there is salt spray already. It is worth noting that if we are going to try to cool the entire world, we'll be making a lot more than naturally occurring saltwater aerosols - as in huge pumps spraying saltwater as high as we can get it.
We're performing the exercise humans always do - looking for a "Theresaproblem! wegottafixit immediately!
IOW, we spent heading on t
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Let's just release these rabbits in Australia. It'll be good for food and hunting!
Let's pretend (Score:5, Insightful)
that by ignoring the real cause of the disease and treating some of the symptoms with whatever we have on hand we'll not kill the patient, but cure it.
shamanism at its finest.
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that by ignoring the real cause of the disease and treating some of the symptoms with whatever we have on hand we'll not kill the patient, but cure it.
shamanism at its finest.
Uh, no. Shamanism attempts to address underlying causes, but believes the underlying causes are mystical. It's modern medicine for the plebes that simply treats symptoms. The wealthy can afford the diagnostic time and cost to find out what's actually wrong.
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I don't know about you, but most modern medicine treatments I've received to date have been largely successful precisely because they treat the root problem. If that's not the case with you, maybe you should choose where you receive treatments more carefully.
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If that's not the case with you, maybe you should choose where you receive treatments more carefully.
I'd love to, but there's basically no medical care available outside of an ER where I live, I have to travel for hours to get any decent and timely care. And I'm on a HMO, they offered me a PPO plan but it is a lot more expensive unless you have massive bills. And it's also a lot more expensive for emergency care.
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Really sorry to hear that. I wish there were a way I could help fixing that.
Re:Let's pretend (Score:4, Funny)
Technically you could send the guy a check....
That would help.
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Or, and here's a novel idea, they could fund a few less corporate bailouts. Or cut all the subsidies for fossil fuels. and quit cutting taxes for billionaires.
Even just buying a few less bombers would fund a universal health scheme for years.
You've been brainwashed into thinking that "taxation is theft", that taxing a handful of billionaires will somehow harm you - Freedumb!!!1!.
None of that is true, taxes are essential - no country can function at all without taxes. The problem with tax is not that it ex
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No one ignores the real cause of the disease here, and no one is suggesting a replacement to decarbonization.
Problem is that the cure is a lengthy process. The idea is to make it less painful in the meantime.
It is not shamanism, it is palliative care.
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The real cause of the disease is human overpopulation. There are simple and swift solutions, which are unwelcome in civilized discourse.
Re:Let's pretend (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not overpopulation. It's the "modern lifestyle" that's built entirely around constant consumption.
Africa's emissions barely compare to China's, but you know whose emissions compare to China? North America, despite holding half of Africa's population. And you could argue that China's emissions are really just the result of manufacturing that the 1st world doesn't want to do at home.
The Earth can handle more people just fine, as long as not everyone gets an Iphone to endlessly scroll twitter and facebook on.
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Actually, compared to many activities sitting and scrolling on your phone isn't very carbon intensive, even accounting for its manufacture and delivery. We need to get used to the idea of just doing less, laziness may be our savior.
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The real cause of the disease is human overpopulation. There are simple and swift solutions, which are unwelcome in civilized discourse.
Well, well, a person openly calling for committing genocide as a solution to a problem with no evidence to support the bogus claims gets upvoted?
It reminds me the slogan "from the river to the sea" and many others from the history, to which a mindless crowd shouts "yeee".
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Right! Because what have the white men done for us?
You mean besides germ theory and antibiotics?
Well, yes there is that.
What of steel and iron? They did that for us, before that we defended ourselves with sharpened sticks.
Of course we know of steel swords, but what have they really done?
There were some white men that figured out genetics, evolution, and the big bang theory.
There was that.
Then came hybrid crops, selective breeding of cattle, dogs, horses, and falcons.
Yes, I know about that.
Then was beer, f
Re: Let's pretend (Score:2)
Not really. You just donâ(TM)t know any better.
Ignoramus.
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If you are looking closely at how the world is evolving, we expect the world population to increase to about 10 billion in the next 50 years, then decline. And it doesn't involve genocide or any catastrophic event. Just people making less babies. Which, by the way, is a problem, because also means an aging population.
The late exponential increase is due to the world going through a demographic transition. Europe and America have already completed it and their native population is shrinking, Asia has just co
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Re: Let's pretend (Score:2)
I know. It's not like in modern medicine we would use medication to bring a fever down or advice to lower body temperature, right?
That would be ignoring the underlying condition and just mitigating the symptoms... clearly we can eliminate the viral infection faster if we stop worrying about keeping the host alive.
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Ah, but this has upgraded Shamanism to Catholicism: now you can buy climate indulgences.
Re: Let's pretend (Score:2)
Integral always beats differential in the long run (Score:5, Insightful)
The heating is due to the cumulative carbon dioxide, so if we keep emitting carbon dioxide, the amount of "geoengineering" correction we have to apply will keep increasing.
The geoengineering solutions only last for a short period, and if we don't keep adding more, it stops working. The carbon dioxide lasts for hundreds of years.
Not a good option.
It buys us time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Methods like these could buy us time though. With the developing world still increasing their emissions we're still a million miles from net zero not to mention the fact that all the first world has done is go after the low hanging fruit so far. The hard parts of reaching net zero in the first world are still ahead of us.
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The first world has done more to reduce greenhouse emissions than the rest of the world.
That's because the first world has more greenhouse emissions to reduce.
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I don't know. Geoengineering is what got us into this mess, why can't it get us out of it?
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The heating is due to the cumulative carbon dioxide, so if we keep emitting carbon dioxide, the amount of "geoengineering" correction we have to apply will keep increasing.
The geoengineering solutions only last for a short period, and if we don't keep adding more, it stops working. The carbon dioxide lasts for hundreds of years.
Not a good option.
You've got it backwards. The fact that the geoengineering solutions only last for a short period of time is what makes them potentially useful. If they were permanent, they would be way too risky. Spraying seawater into the air to make denser clouds for example, seems pretty harmless, while also being useful. But it might have some detrimental effects we can't predict, which is why it's good that if we stop spraying, the clouds will soon return to normal. That clouds don't stay permanently increased becau
Alternative to reducing emissions? (Score:2, Interesting)
If your room is too hot, you turn the AC on. Could shifting focus to cooling down the planet be a visble alternative solution to our problem without having to scale back emissions? Trying to do X, Y and Z to reduce the upward temperature trend is clearly not working, for numerous reasons. Perhaps it's the time to try a different approach and try to manage the symptoms rather than continue searching for a miracle cure, hoping that reluctant population would get on board with it?
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Our emissions cause other problems as well though such as ocean acidification which leaves giant dead zones in it thus crushing a major food supply for humans.
Re: Alternative to reducing emissions? (Score:2)
You realize Air Conditioning only heats up the atmosphere further, right?
Re: Alternative to reducing emissions? (Score:2)
You're missing the point.
What about (Score:5, Funny)
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Project Plowshare v2.0? We'll set off a few atomic bombs, to produce a "Nuclear Winter" that will cool down the planet. It's a win-win for everybody!
Or we could, you know, achieve the same effect by spraying some seawater into the air.
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Yes, but nuclear winter comes free with the crazy humans.
"Free" isn't the word I would use. Nuclear war is pretty damned expensive.
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Says the troll writing on a US based website.
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I thought Slashdot was hosted in the California oblast.
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The point is that's it's fairly amusing seeing someone brainlessly bash America on a website hosted here. The fact that it could be hosted elsewhere is irrelevant to my amusement.
Never mind the fact that the vast majority of the user base is American so good luck without them.
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You're "right" because it's a "win" (your words) to have the place that you live nuked? That's one hell of a claim you're making there.
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I didn't say that I personally would win
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*rolls eyes*. Fine, you're "right". I've stopped caring.
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Doesn't really matter, though. There are only a few countries with a big enough stockpile of nukes to do the job and they are partially allied with each other.
Global warming isnt going to go away (Score:2)
Global warming isnt going away any time soon and is only going to get worse for some time. The developing world is still ramping up their emissions and show no signs of slowing and as long as they are we'll never hit net zero.
Given this exploring solutions now that might be useful for when things get bad is not a bad idea.
Junkie (Score:5, Interesting)
It will happen (Score:2)
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because geoengineering is surprisingly inexpensive,
A fascinating point there, but with precious little evidence to support it. May we have some?
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The amount it will cost to spray a bunch of crap into the atmosphere in quantities that many or even most people who have an educated opinion think will be effective is much less than the amount made by the ultra-wealthy by selling us fossil fuels, etc etc. All measurements of cheapness are relative, and you have to measure what you are doing by what is actually happening and who is actually making the rules, and that's what and who matters as long as we're too divided to go after 'em.
Not inexpensive [Re:It will happen] (Score:2)
The reason it's going to happen is because geoengineering is surprisingly inexpensive.
No.
Advocates doing simplistic back-of-the-envelope WAG estimates claim it will be. None of these are really verified.
It's not inexpensive because, while carbon dioxide is something where you put it in the atmosphere and it keeps on heating for hundreds of years, spraying stuff into the atmosphere is something where you do it now, and you have to do it again every single year... and more every year.
Fix this headline (Score:2)
Scientists Resort to Once Unthinkable Solutions INSTEAD of Directly Addressing CO2 Emissions.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the only way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
These batshit "solutions" don't address the major effects of CO2 in the atmosphere, which include global climate change as well as ocean acidification, weather events, ocean level rise, flooding and drought, etc.
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...and these schemes are B-A-T-S-H-I-T. For example, the experiment to add sodium hypochlorite to ocean water to enhance CO2 collection? Well, the industrial manufacture of sodium hypochlorite is by electrolysis of sea water, obviously requiring electricity input (producing CO2), and producing chlorine gas, which if emitted directly (or indirectly as when it's released from swimming pools), destroys the ozone layer, or used industrially, such as combining with hydrocarbons to produce, for example polyvinyl
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Oceanic acidification is literally the only one of those things directly driven by atmospheric CO2. The rest are caused by the heating resulting from increasing it. If we take measures that reduce the heating then they address all of those other problems.
Obviously you risk creating new problems, and still have the acidification problem to address.
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I objected to the headline because these aren't "once unthinkable" solutions. People have bandied them about for 20+ years already. Some have even been seriously thinking about them: coming up with pilot-scale study designs, even doing some experimentation.
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The solutions would purportedly offset the warming effect of excess CO2 in the atmosphere, nothing wrong with that.
Attempts to remove CO2 are under way, but most of them are expensive and inefficient. The most promising effort I've seen is spreading rock dust on farms.
https://www.wired.com/story/ro... [wired.com]
The easiest solution would be to clamp down on fossil fuel emissions and quickly move to renewables and electricity. Also under way but not happening fast enough.
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Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the only way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Not putting it there in the first place would be an even better approach. But that isn't going to happen. Because the economic activities of the first world are too important to be curtailed. And the "climate equity" movement is too focused on transferring wealth to the third world as reparations for damage we shouldn't be causing in the first place. Sorry to say this, but paying the Maldives for rising sea levels isn't going to do anyone other than the Maldivians a bit of good. Figuring out how to make ste
WTF headline? (Score:3)
None of this is unthinkable. All of them have been looked at and modelled by scientists for decades. Shit some people have long passed the experimentation stage and are actually doing (though on a completely tiny and irrelevant scale).
Increase phytoplankton on the South pacific... (Score:2)
One of the best ways to sequester Carbon is to increase phytoplankton in the South seas (both atlantic and pacific). For reasons unknown (but suspected to be extra iron in the water carried by dust from the bigger nothern landmasses) the north seas are much more rich in Phytoplankton (and, evidently in zooplankton and other species). Meanwhile, the south seas are comparatively a barren dessert, except where currents meet and/or bring sediments from the bottom to the top water...
There are two ways to go abou
"Timescape" by Gregory Benford... (Score:3)
I wish our situation stopped reminding me of the obok "Timescape" by Gregory Benford, published in 1980. "Timescape" is a science fiction novel that deals with the concept of tachyon particles being used for communication between the future and the past. In the novel, the world is facing ecological disaster, and scientists from the future attempt to send messages back in time to warn of the impending catastrophe, hoping to prevent it from happening. The environmental disaster involves widespread pollution and ecological collapse (the ocean suddenly becomes toxic).
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unthinkable? right. (Score:2)
chemtrails, baby. Even the CIA director recently made a speech about them. Geo-engineering. If he's even talking about it, it's been going on for years.
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chemtrails, baby. Even the CIA director recently made a speech about them. Geo-engineering. If he's even talking about it, it's been going on for years.
There have been numerous government efforts to figure out what might reasonably be called chemtrail technology, so it's certainly been going on for years, but the question [that chemtrail conspiracy theorists want to promote] is to what extent. The patents I've read have had to do with obscuring satellite vision. Not being heavily into that culture, though, I don't have links handy. And there are no useful estimates of the activity that I'm aware of, you have to wade through sloughs of worthless speculation
Journalists have lost their ability to write (Score:2)
"Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet"
Scientists aren't resorting to once unthinkable solutions. That's written as present tense. They haven't done this. They're currently (present tense) PROPOSING "once unthinkable solutions".
We really should stop believing stupid headlines.
Screw things up even mÃge? (Score:2)
The climate is complex, and we have little understanding of its complexities. The models are, honestly, crap - they can't even predict the past. Look back to the predictions from 20 years ago, compare to what happened - the predictions were flat out wrong (generally running way too hot - yes, we still have arctic ice).
So, based on this lack of understanding, some people want to implement large scale tampering? Seriously? Idiots...
And yet it's still unthinkable (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it honestly even more unthinkable to talk about that, than geoengineering?
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Snowball Earth has always been the goal (Score:2)
That will cut down on the plebes by considerable amount.
Stop burning stuff! (Score:2)
We'll do anything to avoid having to disturb the profits of fossil fuel corporations.
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People want renewables... but...
Fossil corporations have purchased politicians to keep their profits flowing. Fossil fuel subsidies are $5 trillion a year.
Because the thinkable solutions are too hard (Score:2)
Things like taxing large gas-guzzlers, improving transit and biking infrastructure to make it more convenient to use transit than to drive... those impact our LIFESTYLES, dagnabbit! That sounds COMMUNIST!
Chemtrails (Score:2)
Supervolcanoes (Score:2)
Cheaper & quicker (Score:2)
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I'll give that idea a 10.
Some suggestions (Score:3)
* Tearing up the huge number of parking lots that we have in our cities
* Plant more shade trees in more parts of cities
* More trains, fewer cars
* Leave some methane and tar sands in the ground
Those are the only kinds of geoengineering I want to talk about. Let's modify the earth so that it's less covered in concrete and the concrete-reliant conveyances that we needlessly base our lives around.
more clouds more heat! (Score:2)
I live in Italy, and it is well known, that the coldest days are when in the night before the sky had no clouds.
Clouds not only reflect part of sunlight during the day, but also reflect thermal radiation from the soil day AND night!
So seeding more clouds will actually lead to higher temperatures on earth. This is a fact that can already be observed.
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> No idea why so few people seem to grasp that when you realize something you do is killing you that you should perhaps stop doing that thing?
You ever met an addict? At some point it's out of their willpower...
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This is just another effort to keep doing the crap the human race has done far too long
180 years or something
when you realize something you do is killing you
bit dramatic.
i know you dont want to hear it, but man-made climate change is natural
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180 years or something
Mankind has been altering global climate since we first figured out we could burn down forests to make more grazing and/or planting land, and also stepped it up a big notch when we figured out how to irrigate entire regions by redirecting waterways fully or partially. Humanity's influence on climate has certainly increased massively since the start of the industrial age, but we were working our way up to this point for much longer than a couple of centuries.
i know you dont want to hear it, but man-made climate change is natural
That does not and never has mattered because you c
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since we first figured out we could burn down forests
there were forest fire before we ever came along, baby
and also stepped it up a big notch when we figured out how to irrigate entire regions by redirecting waterways fully or partially
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
it would have been a drop in the ocean considering there were less than 70m people WORLDWIDE for most of civilized history.
Humanity's influence on climate has certainly increased massively since the start of the industrial age
id say it accounts for something like 98% of the problem
What we care about is what provides the best outcome for a feasible investment
i see youre careful not to mention saving the planet at least
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there were forest fire before we ever came along, baby
Yes. But we can set fires in ways that nature doesn't in order to create specific ends.
i see youre careful not to mention saving the planet at least
The planet is a lump of mass, it doesn't need us. But we need it to be in a condition of relative stasis if we are to continue to exist, especially in comfort.
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Up until humans started to mine for coal to burn everything they did was still part of the exiting carbon cycle
Repeatedly intentionally burning down forests interrupts and retards the cycle by preventing carbon from being fixed, and irrigation also perturbs carbon sequestration cycles [usda.gov]. So, no, not really. Humans were also burning oil and tar they found on the surface before they were mining coal, so no again. The difference in the industrial age was the massive increase in volume of emissions, which is obviously a real difference, and that's why I said what I said.
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i know you dont want to hear it, but man-made climate change is natural
Sure, it is natural. But it has reached a level where it becomes an existential threat because the changes are now happening wayyyy too fast.
Incidentally, any species exceeding its ecological niche dying off to a much smaller number or going extinct is also natural. That does not make it a valid goal for a species (sparsely) equipped with general intelligence.
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That does not make it a valid goal for a species (sparsely) equipped with general intelligence.
im just saying dont worry about it. its meant to be. its part of the cycle. mass extinctions end up bringing even greater intelligence, at least on earth.
Wicked hard problem [Re:Most of these things a...] (Score:2)
This is just another effort to keep doing the crap the human race has done far too long. No idea why so few people seem to grasp that when you realize something you do is killing you that you should perhaps stop doing that thing?
The problem is not that something you do is killing you, because your personal emissions are so tiny that nothing you personally do contributes enough to notice. The problem is the sum of what 8.1 billion people on the Earth are doing.
This is why it's a wicked hard problem: no one can solve it by themself.
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Obviously. And also obviously your comment was entirely redundant. Obviously, nobody in their right mind would think at this time that their individual contribution matters much.
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What we have also learned from Darwin is that adaptation takes very long time, and it is guaranteed to bring pain and suffering about, but does not guarantee success. The dinos did not adapt, neither did the Neanderthal people.
Do we really want that for ourselves or our children?
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The dinos did not adapt, neither did the Neanderthal people.
Dinosaurs are now represented by birds and reptiles. Neanderthals were outcompeted by other branches of hominids. Indeed those outcomes did take a long time, but are completely in keeping with Darwinism.
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Many species have discovered a simple and quite effective adaptation: not shitting where you eat.
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Extinction is also part of evolution. Humans have been demonstrating this by being the Holocene Extinction Event. We can choose to limit the event, but then the shareholders would lose value.
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*See the deal with the devil they Made in Washington State. $0.50/gallon carbon taxes on consumers
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A common misconception. Big oil couldn't care less about most of the big CO2 sources.
Big oil cares a lot about even very small decreases in oil and gas use. It is a trillion dollar industry. They have been downplaying climate change and suggesting that geoengineering will solve our problems (despite back-of-the-envelope analysis of feasibility at best!) to delay any decreases in oil use until the indefinite future.
Like cement production and steelmaking.
Cement production is about 8% [weforum.org]. Noticable, but not the main driver. Steelmaking is roughly similar, mostly because it's also fossil-fuel powered.
The fact that oil company "let's