Extreme CO2 Levels Could Trigger Clouds 'Tipping Point' and 8C of Global Warming (carbonbrief.org) 254
If atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 1,200 parts per million (ppm), it could push the Earth's climate over a "tipping point", finds a new study. This would see clouds that shade large part of the oceans start to break up. From a report: According to the new paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this could trigger a massive 8C rise in global average temperatures -- in addition to the warming from increased CO2. The only similar example of rapid warming at this magnitude in the Earth's recent history is the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55m years ago, when global temperatures increased by 5-8C and drove widespread extinction of species on both the oceans and land.
However, scientists not involved in the research caution that the results are still speculative and that other complicating factors could influence if or when a tipping point is reached. The threshold identified by the researchers -- a 1,200ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2 -- is three times current CO2 concentrations. If fossil fuel use continues to rapidly expand over the remainder of the century, it is possible levels could get that high. The Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario (RCP8.5), a very high emissions scenario examined by climate scientists, has the Earth's atmosphere reaching around 1,100ppm by the year 2100. But this would require the world to massively expand coal use and eschew any climate mitigation over the rest of this century. Further reading: A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth's climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.
However, scientists not involved in the research caution that the results are still speculative and that other complicating factors could influence if or when a tipping point is reached. The threshold identified by the researchers -- a 1,200ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2 -- is three times current CO2 concentrations. If fossil fuel use continues to rapidly expand over the remainder of the century, it is possible levels could get that high. The Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario (RCP8.5), a very high emissions scenario examined by climate scientists, has the Earth's atmosphere reaching around 1,100ppm by the year 2100. But this would require the world to massively expand coal use and eschew any climate mitigation over the rest of this century. Further reading: A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth's climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.
Can't stop China or India (Score:2, Informative)
USA could be 100% clean and it won't matter if China and India keep polluting. So this is all fucking pointless.
Re:Can't stop China or India (Score:4, Interesting)
USA could be 100% clean and it won't matter if China and India keep polluting. So this is all fucking pointless.
China will, of course, be the country producing those cheap solar panels that will make the U.S. 100% clean, because they manufacture all our cheap stuff.
Why do you think that they wouldn't themselves use the cheap solar panels they're exporting to us?
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Why do you think that they wouldn't themselves use the cheap solar panels they're exporting to us?
Actually, they do. Because of the size of their population, China's approach to increasing their supply of energy is "all the above."
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Not mutually exclusive [Re:Can't stop China...] (Score:2)
If they can sell them to people in the United States for more than consumers in China would pay, why wouldn't they export them?
Because they could make more and sell them to both consumers in the United States and in China.
That's the beauty of economy of scale.
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Just because we're outsourcing both our pollution and slavery it doesn't make us immune from their effects.
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But China is actually already investing heavily in long-term fossil-carbon reduction strategies - they're installing renewable energy generating capacity as fast as the rest of the world combined. They've just decided that they're better off continuing to also use fossil energy in the mid-term to fuel their industrial revolution, and then bear the cost of some modest climate change.
And of course, their position is that as we're the ones that did most of the existing damage, and we continue to do by far the
How Some Good Reporting On This? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Names (Score:2)
I think scientists should get credit for their work. Whether it's right or wrong.
They do, however, link to the actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1 [nature.com]
(Which is actually worth reading, since it is much more restrained than the doomsday headline. It's mostly about modelling past climate, not future climate.)
They name two scientist, both of whose
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The reason forest fire frequency and severity is increasing is because people like you moved to the "Wet Coast". Humans cause most forest fires and when you move into a forested area that is going to cause problems. Drought is partially caused by people taking all the water in the "Wet Coast". So basically YOU are part of the problem.
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That's not clear. But probably.
OTOH, we are evolved tropical apes, so we'd likely find the climate tolerable in Antarctica and northern Canada and Siberia. The reason we'd likely go extinct would be fighting over access to the remaining habitable turf.
Here's the full paper (Score:4, Informative)
The publisher made it freely available [nature.com] -- a pleasant rarity.
Note that the focus of the paper appears to be a possible explanation for extreme temperature changes in the past, not that there's a credible chance of this happening any time in the near future.
Do I u derstand that correctly... (Score:2)
They are scared of clouds over oceans vanishing? If I u derstood that correctly, doesn't the also mean more water evaporates? And if more evaporates, doesn't that cool thi gs too?
Not to mention that the water has to go somewhere. Seems to me the climate in Europe is getting dryer. Perhaps that would be impacted as well?
The whole thing seems a tad too simplified. We're talking about global climate here.
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The whole thing seems a tad too simplified. We're talking about global climate here.
Did you read the whole paper before complaining it's a tad too simplified ?
Moving the goalposts (Score:3)
If all of you will think way back to where we first were supposed to be alarmed about global warming, it was exactly because too much CO2 was supposed to lead to runaway warming.
Well obviously that never happened, and this new paper is admission that fundamental concern was misplaced In fact now we see we need to get to a very high CO2 level we probably cannot even reach, to MAYBE risk a CO2 rise because of cloud interaction (the idea is only theoretical). It's quite apparent at this point that interaction of CO2 with a real world atmosphere is quite a lot more complex than any climate scientist is willing to admit.
Further proof that what we were told to worry about, should never have been a concern to start with. We seriously need to stop our focus on CO2 and start re-examining real sources of pollution again and focus on those.
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Well obviously that never happened
We're not finished yet. CO2 is still being added to atmosphere at increasing rate. First CO2 levels need to stabilize, and then you need to wait a few more decades before you can start claiming that some things will not happen.
Who says we'll ever reach that level - no-one (Score:2)
CO2 is also being taken from the atmosphere by the Earth's ecosystem. It's still a net gain but the trend of overall CO2 emission reduction is very clear, there's no way we will reach the level described even if we did nothing but carried on with existing adoption of solar/nuclear power, and electric vehicles.
Can you point out any models that show CO2 levels even close to 1200ppm? Even the worst case I can find is 1000ppm by 2100 [www.co2.earth] (still a long, long ways off and more than enough time to fully integrate re
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Can you point out any models that show CO2 levels even close to 1200ppm?
No, I was just commenting on the part that I quoted.
Whether atmosphere will go to 1200 ppm, I have no idea. I can't predict human behavior. Maybe we'll get another world war, crippling economy and energy infrastructure, leading to dramatic drop in output.
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Whether atmosphere will go to 1200 ppm, I have no idea. I can't predict human behavior.
You can't? Humans are the most eminently predictable of species, in aggregate.
Maybe we'll get another world war, crippling economy and energy infrastructure, leading to dramatic drop in output.
Nope, too much to lose now.
What I'm saying is that you do not NEED anything like that, even with a great economy in most countries CO2 output is inevitable, precisely BECAUSE of human behavior.
Electric cars are 100% preferable for
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Whether atmosphere will go to 1200 ppm, I have no idea. I can't predict human behavior.
You can't? Humans are the most eminently predictable of species, in aggregate.
Maybe we'll get another world war, crippling economy and energy infrastructure, leading to dramatic drop in output.
Nope, too much to lose now.
That was an argument which was being made before the first world war: there wouldn't be a war, because everybody had too much to lose.
Turned out to be wrong.
Wars happen even when both sides lose by having a war.
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Well bully then, we'll all have a giant war and the resulting millions dead will be much better than the horrors of a slightly warmer Earth with better agricultural production.
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If all of you will think way back to where we first were supposed to be alarmed about global warming, it was exactly because too much CO2 was supposed to lead to runaway warming.
I know a lot of atmospheric scientists, and I don't believe I've ever heard one suggest that the current increases in CO2 levels were going to lead to "runaway warming". I've heard quite a few, on the other hand, make the specific point that we are not close to a runaway greenhouse effect, at least, not for the next few hundred million years.
So: show a citation if you're going to claim this.
Google much? (Score:2)
I know a lot of atmospheric scientists, and I don't believe I've ever heard one suggest that the current increases in CO2 levels were going to lead to "runaway warming"
Maybe check Google before you post? [google.com]
Results include such notables as Steven Hawkins:
""We are close to the tipping point, where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus," - SH
MIT Technology review chimes in with another climatologist saying it could happen.
How dare you try to
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I looked at that google link. It gave a whole page of links saying that we won't experience a runaway greenhouse effect.
Good to know.
Here's Scientific American (from the google links you gave) https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
[a runaway greenhouse effect would require]: "about 10 times more carbon dioxide than most experts estimate could be released from burning all available fossil fuels."
Here's that Technology Review article you mention: "almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that it is u
Experiment Already Done and..NO (Score:5, Informative)
Triassic: 1750 ppm CO2. Temp 3 C above modern level.
Jurassic: 1950 ppm CO2. Temp 3 C above modern level.
Cretaceous: 1700 ppm CO2. Temp 4 C above modern level.
Paleogene: 500 ppm CO2. Temp 4 C above modern level.
Neogene: 280 ppm CO2. Temp 0 C above modern level.
Quaternary Period: 250 ppm CO2. Temp 0 C above modern level.
Then you get to the Modern Period. Frankly we are still living in an Ice Age.
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You ignore the fact that the Sun was about 30% dimmer at the beginning of Earth's history, and has slowly increased to current power.
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Bullshit responses like that are why people become climate skeptics. Solar output was not 30% lower in any of the periods that OP showed. Solar output was much lower when the earth formed but was constant through all of those periods. So are you telling half truths through ignorance? Or are you deliberately trying to obscure the truth?
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True, but not really relevant [wikipedia.org] when discussing a couple of hundred million years.
Venus? (Score:2)
But wait! If higher CO2 eliminates clouds, why does Venus (which has an extremely CO2-rich atmosphere) also have about 100 percent cloud cover?!?
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The clouds on Venus are not water but sulfuric acid.
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The thick cloud deck on Venus is much lower than equivalent altitudes to the stratosphere.
(and, in any case, they are H2SO4 clouds, not water ice clouds. Different properties.)
I would like there to be serious consequences (Score:2)
I would like there to be serious consequences for these prediction not panning out. So far very, very few models have shown any predictive power, and they're all on the "less dramatic", non-doomsday side of the spectrum. So I'd like to see real consequences for alarmism. I.e. we record the prediction, and then 20 years later if it's within less than, say 20% accurate, and it was used to influence public policy, you get to pay 1% of the cost of the measures taken or something like that. I'm open to suggestio
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I would like there to be serious consequences for these prediction not panning out.
Does that include the null predictions that nothing is going to happen ?
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Sure, you can include that. But since no money is spent if "nothing is going to happen", the consequences are also null.
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since no money is spent if "nothing is going to happen", the consequences are also null.
Right, waiting and doing nothing is free. Dealing with the consequences is not. If you predict there will be no sea level rise, you will pay 1% of the cost associated with flooding due to higher sea levels, for example.
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I will believe in sea level rise when Al Gore sells his beachfront mansion: http://www.worldpropertyjourna... [worldpropertyjournal.com]
not enough (Score:2)
However, I doubt anything serious will be done until it becomes a *real* and *immediate* problem that's undeniable to *most* of the planet. In the past, humanity was able to do things proactively, like agree to limit fluorocarbons to fix the hole we punched in our ozone la
H2O, anyone? (Score:2)
Global avg surface temp is 15 deg C (14.9) that gives us a water vapor pressure of 12.8 torr
According to http://www.wiredchemist.com/ch... [wiredchemist.com] ..if we increase temps by 8C that raises that to 21 torr.
I rather expect that increasing the vapor pressure of water by 64% will increase cloud formation substantially?
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Low clouds act differently from high clouds. (Among other things, they tend to be liquid water droplets, not ice particles.)
Re:Yet Another Doomsday Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change is real, but you need to read any single study or model with a bit of a "let's see if this gets confirmed by other groups" before believing it.
This is the flip side of that "scientific consensus" thing that the deniers keep not understanding. Science is about replication, and the real science comes when other scientists look at a result and say "yes, that makes sense, we can confirm it with our own modeling and measurements."
This is one group, with one model. Too early to call it doomsday yet.
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This is one group, with one model.
The worst part is they don't have any estimate for how accurate or inaccurate their model might be.
Re: Yet Another Doomsday Prediction (Score:2)
All models are wrong. Some are useful. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem here is that studies like this are based on *simulations* not observations of repeatable experiments.
True. It's a math model and should be treated as such. Simulations can be very useful but it's important to know the limits and assumptions that go into the model.
What we have here is a set of theories, which really cannot be proven beyond doubt.
Not true. Presuming the model is accurate it should be making testable predictions about what will happen as the climate chances in the coming years. If the model predictions fits the data we gather well then we have reasonable confidence that it is accurately modeling the real world. Problem is that because the consequences of letting climate change run unchecked are potentially so severe (presuming the model is accurate) we cannot risk actually testing it fully so at some point we'll have to extrapolate and take actions. But we're going to find out at least the early predictions whether we want to or not because some changes are already too late to stop.
If we are being honest here, climate change science is, at best, an educated guessing game, not a proven beyond a doubt set of scientific laws, and specifically I mean "man made climate change."
No it really is not just a guess unless you think every hypothesis is "just a guess". A lot of the science in the field is simply documenting changes that absolutely ARE occurring, many of which were predicted by those same models that you are calling guesswork. The model makes predictions which absolutely can be checked.
The critics of this science have some valid points. Past high profile predictions of our demise from climate change have been wildly over blown, there seems to be a bias towards "making news" in order to get research grants, and little attention is paid to the views of those who disagree with the consensus.
Most of the critics do not actually make or hold valid counter points. They mostly simply are seeking to reinforce their confirmation bias for various reasons. If they were serious about disputing the science the way to do that is present their own alternative testable hypothesis and back it up with data. The scientists are doing this and the critics by and large are not. Since the critics cannot be bothered to actually do the science their opinions (rightly) get ignored.
Simulations have serious limits.
Yes they do. That doesn't mean they are useless. I used to do simulations for a living in a previous job. There is a famous saying that "all models are wrong but some models are useful". If you insist on perfection in the climate models despite them giving you good and actionable data, you are completely missing the point. Newtonian physics isn't the most perfect model we have but it's still extremely useful and gives reasonably accurate testable predictions. A lot of the climate science is throwing off a lot of very useful data and we ignore it at our peril.
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I think you are gravely overestimating the accuracy of the simulation models as they move into the future. I think you also are making assumptions about what I actually think.
My personal opinion (and I'm not a climate scientist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so I make no claim to any authority) I think the climate IS changing, things are getting warmer. This is partially due to CO2 emissions, and party just the natural cycling of the planet's climate. We can argue the proportions of
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just the natural cycling of the planet's climate
How does that work ? What is actually causing the up- and downturns in these cycles ?
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How does that work ? What is actually causing the up- and downturns in these cycles ?
If it is an external force, it would have to be huge; something on the order of magnitude of the sun.
Yep. And we measure the output of the sun from satellites, and it's not changing . So we rule that out.
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I'm with you. I think resources would be better spent investing in technologies to allow us to adapt to climate change rather than dumping that money into CO2 reductions that may only be responsible for a fraction of actual warming. Efficiency improvements, insulation, transportation, and genetic modification of crops are better solutions to climate change than manufacturing endless solar and wind farms that aren't displacing base load generation. Natural gas from fracking has done more for CO2 reductions t
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What is such a problem?
No problem. I'm actually more optimistic than you. I firmly believe that as solar panel prices continue to drop, the retail installations will swamp what the power companies are doing. I WILL have a panel installation in my home and an electric car before I retire, because it will be retirement that stands against any stock market bust. Then my kids will use the same panels for many years after I'm gone.
Just let it happen. AOC is NOT the boss, no matter how many wacky ideas she comes up with. Sustaina
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FWIW, there are two (or more) important caveats.
1) The current climate models don't make accurate predictions. This is so true that what is used is an ensemble prediction, where several different models are run, and their points of agreement is what is used as the working prediction. This gives fairly good results, but clearly shows that the process isn't understood. Either that or it's so sensitive to initial conditions that only the attractors can be reasonably predicted.
2) This is a prediction of a si
Re:Yet Another Doomsday Prediction (Score:4, Informative)
The problem here is that studies like this are based on *simulations* not observations of repeatable experiments.
You are talking about two different things here, and I think it's worth clearly disentangling the two.
One is the specific paper being discussed here [nature.com], which proposes a new feedback mechanism that operates only at high carbon dioxide concentrations, much higher than those in the present era. This one is indeed a simulation, and the authors themselves emphasize that it is speculative and needs to be studied further. In particular, this feedback mechanism may have applicability to understanding paleoclimate events.
but you seem to go on to be to take a pot-shot at climate science, and climate models in general.
What we have here is a set of theories, which really cannot be proven beyond doubt.
Science doesn't, and can't, "prove things beyond doubt."
What science really does is make models (what the general populace calls "theories"), and then test the models against measurements. The models that explain the measurements better are kept, and the ones that don't are discarded. A scientific theory is never "proven beyond doubt"; in real science, every model is subject to being discarded when a better model comes along, or when new measurements are made that the old model can't explain.
Science is really a process of progressive iteration: the models get better and better as we understand more.
If we are being honest here, climate change science is, at best, an educated guessing game, not a proven beyond a doubt set of scientific laws, and specifically I mean "man made climate change."
Here is where you switch from discussing the paper in question, and go on to take pot shots at climate science.
Unless you mean "all science is at best an educated guessing game", no. The basic points of climate science, and specifically "man made climate change," are well understood, and well supported by evidence. The basic physics has been known for over a century, the basic model [carbonbrief.org] is over fifty years old now and well supported by evidence. The detailed models are working at accounting for details at progressively finer scales, but the basics are well understood.
The critics of this science have some valid points.
The main (or at least the loudest) "critics" of the science in the past have consisted almost entirely of people whose "science" is driven by ideology and funded by fossil-fuel companies, and they have proven to be wrong so many times over and over that their main problem is nobody takes them seriously. If they have "some valid points", those points have been so overwhelmed by the tidal wave of ideologically-driven garbage that they are entirely invisible.
Past high profile predictions of our demise from climate change have been wildly over blown,
When you talk about "high profile" predictions, I think you're now moving into yet a different rant, which is a critique of media coverage of the science. Ignoring what the media considers "high profile", the actual predictions done by real science have, so far, mostly been accurate.
there seems to be a bias towards "making news" in order to get research grants,
You are confusing the science with the media attention. The paper in question is a good case in point. Notice how the headline on the article is "Extreme CO2 levels could trigger clouds ‘tipping point’ and 8C of global warming"-- that's "making news". And then read the actual paper [nature.com], which has a single sentence talking about the possibility of this happeni
It is one study (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually several dozens of groups coming up with similar modeling and conclusions over the last few years, though yes they differ a small bit they are all saying the same thing. It's not one single study saying this. False characterization.
Not merely dozens of groups, there are hundreds of groups running climate models (possibly thousands: the main models are open source.).
They are all saying the same thing, if by that you mean "human generated greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide, are increasing the Earth's greenhouse effect, and having a warming effect on the climate."
Yes, that part is a clear scientific consensus, well understood, and replicated by many groups.
It is this new result (this paper [nature.com]), suggesting a new feedback mechanism only operating at much higher carbon dioxide levels, of which I am saying "a single study".
And not merely one study: it is one study of which the authors of the study themselves emphasize how preliminary the results are.
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Computer models are not replication.
They all use the same set of assumptions, same set of starting data, same set of modeled interactions and all reach the same conclusion, give or take.
Many groups and approaches [Re:It is one study] (Score:3)
No, that's the good thing about hundreds of independent research groups on six continents making measurements and running models: they don't all use the same set of assumptions and the same data.
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They do suffer from confirmation bias, however. If my model says there will be no warming, and everyone else's model says there is warming, I "fix" my model until it agrees with everyone else.
See this issue in action while Millikan et al calculates the electron's charge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
Lack of Scientific method (Score:3)
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Where is the control Earth without humans against which to verify these models?
Atmospheric models (known as "global circulation models" in the actual community) have to be able to model the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, and Titan, not just Earth.
The fundamental physics-- absorption, scattering, convection, radiation-- is the same.
(Also the gas giant planets, although the data set for these is a little more sparse.)
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If you want to say global warming is essentially a consensus, I'll agree. But this study is still an outlier. 8C warming is considerably higher than most projections. They say that it's because they included a factor that other models didn't include, but that's going to need considerable confirmation.
That said, don't trust the models when the warming projected gets over 2C warming, as they are then operating beyond the range within which they have been validated. And expect that there are feedback loops
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If you want to say global warming is essentially a consensus, I'll agree. But this study is still an outlier. 8C warming is considerably higher than most projections.
Well, it is higher than most projections because this is an effect that kicks in only at CO2 levels way beyond the CO2 levels that most predictive models look at.
Again: this headline is about one sentence in their paper, which was immediately followed by a statement of uncertainties.
But, if your comment is to the effect of "let's wait and see what other scientists think, and whether they,can confirm these results, before we take them seriously.... yes, exactly. Never credit a single study.
Re:Scott adams climate challenge (Score:4, Funny)
I, for one, am glad that we have a cartoonist to settle these debates once and for all.
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Cartoonists are good for putting things in perspective (which is exactly what Munroe's history of warming comic intended). They don't (usually) pretend to be the sole arbiter of complex sciences, but Adams has been making wild declarations far outside his field of expertise for some time now.
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I was curious as to the points brought up and the rationale presented for the findings in the image, so I tried listening to the podcast episode. Five minutes in he was still ranting about "That piece of shit racist Spike Lee" and the "Charlottesville Hoax" and I had to turn it off. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he might not be the impartial judge you assume him to be. You might want to look into better sources of information.
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While you may say "that was just satirizing science" or "he was just saying that to get a reaction" ... well, it was
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Last I read anything serious by Scott Adams, he was buying into "irreducible complexity", which translates into "Evolution didn't happen, because I have a bad imagination". I wouldn't trust him to evaluate anything.
Also, IIRC sea level has in general gone up, and I don't think a link to dilbert.com is worth following up.
What about... ? [Re:Yet Another Doomsday Predict] (Score:2)
Climate change is real
So is continental drift. Earthquakes kill thousands of people every decade. I propose a new tax to prevent continental drift and deal with all these earthquakes.
Wow, I think that's the silliest example of whataboutism I've ever seen.
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Massive system that dwarfs the scale of the organisms modifying it, mostly only changes dramatically on timescales longer than a single organism's lifespan. Shocking!
Meanwhile, we're pretty much seeing most of the relatively minor initial changes forecast 50 years ago.
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When did the world's glaciers START melting I wonder? Oh wait... 2.6 million years ago.
And the rate of melting has been constant over that time, or has it fluctuated ? And if it has fluctuated, what was the cause of these ? And when was the most recent fluctuation ? And the cause of that ?
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That could do it - except that our measurements show no sufficient long-term increases in solar output.
The measurements do show sufficient long-term increases in gases that trap more of that solar output, though
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And yet some of them that resisted that melting for hundreds of thousands of years completely disappeared in my lifetime. It's almost as if the process accelerated....
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But in this case he has a point, if not a good one. To claim that this would be the result (which they don't do, but which the headline suggests) is unreasonable. But what they claim is that this is analogous to what happened in a prior time. This appears true, but analogies are notoriously tricky, and it's not clear that this one would hold. Which is what they say in their paper.
The problem here is people reacting against headlines as if they were claims of solid evidence. And those who write the head
Not even a prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
From the abstract it looks like a doomsday prediction. Predicting an 8 K increase (+265c) in global temperature is an extraordinary claim and would require extraordinary evidence.
It's not even an extraordinary claim; it's an extraordinary hypothesis.
Past the doomsday headline, the story says :
"The paper emphasises that large uncertainties remain and the results they find are very much preliminary. Because they are using a high-resolution large-eddy simulation their model lacks many other factors contained in global climate models that operate over larger geographic scales.
"Specifically, climate models suggest that large-scale subsidence in the atmosphere – colder air becoming denser and moving towards the ground – weakens as the world warms. This has the effect of lifting up and cooling cloud tops, which counteracts possible stratocumulus breakup. While the paper tries to account for this, the weakening of subsidence that occurs is uncertain and varies across climate models."
Really, I'm not sure why this is even a story making the news. "Here's some scientists trying to figure out feedback loops in a greenhouse regime that is far from where we currently are, and here's an possible result that is interesting but has yet to be rigorously modelled, much less tested."
Re:Not even a prediction (Score:4, Informative)
Really, I'm not sure why this is even a story making the news.
Well, clicks obviously.
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They should have worked out Trump in the equation for extra clicks: "Trump Administration's policy could trigger extra 8C of global warming." No one could resist, as much as they would hate themselves for clicking.
Re: Yet Another Doomsday Prediction (Score:2)
This is an argument for the climate change situation being difficult -- more so than many of us realize, in terms of how widespread the potential economic pain is -- but it's not an argument against it being true.
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You found that shit fest slightly entertaining. The only thing stupider than the "science" in that movie was the actors.
Hint: If you're stuck in a library and need a fire to keep warm, DON'T burn books, even if burning law books does make a leftist statement. Brake up one of the oak chairs from the row up on row of oak chairs. Books require constant turning to burn well, and the hardwoods burn much hotter.
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Well, entertaining in kind of a slipping on a banana sort of way. Entertaining to the observer, not so much for the one stepping on the banana.
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Volcanic CO2 is chump change compared to what a certain species of primate does.
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Yes, even though it's a post from an anonymous coward, turns out to be some insight here. Yes, pollution is bad, climate change is real and we are contributing to it, but it's not the end of the world, and these over-the-top scaremongering news stories aren't helping.
The news wants disaster stories; they sell. "Bad but not completely catastrophic things are slowly happening on a time scale of a hundred years" isn't grabbing eyeballs. It's gotta be "doomsday!"
However, a few quibbles:
CO2 levels over geologic time spans are usually much, much higher on Earth than the current 400 ppm. Levels in the thousands PPM are more normal.
True, but doing in a
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CO2 levels over geologic time spans are usually much, much higher on Earth than the current 400 ppm. Levels in the thousands PPM are more normal.
Measured over those same time spans, the Sun was also weaker.
In fact, CO2 adjusts itself to counteract the Sun's output, because rock weathering, absorbing CO2 and turning it into carbonate, is accelerated at higher temperatures.
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In fact, CO2 adjusts itself to counteract the Sun's output, because rock weathering, absorbing CO2 and turning it into carbonate, is accelerated at higher temperatures.
Most of the CO2 removed from the atmosphere goes into the oceans, and then into subaquatic limestone. Only now the ocean is too acidic to take more CO2, and the limestone can't take it fast enough to deacidify the oceans.
Re:FFS the scaremongering is getting ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Over geological timescales, yes. Not during an icehouse glacial/interglacial period like we've been in for the entire history of the human species though. Warm things up dramatically, and we'll likely toggle to the planets hothouse state where such CO2 levels *are* fairly normal.
Once we get there, it might not be that bad - though the climate seems to have been a lot less stable in that state, with CO2 levels varying wildly, ecosystems changing frequently, and vast continent-spanning deserts not exactly being super rare. And even if we luck into tropics extending into Canada - the tropics are generally not actually considered a lovely place to live full time. The diseases alone put a damper on things.
A more immediate problem is the transition period, which tends to be a really traumatic event, with 90+% global extinction rates. Consider that an old-growth forest can't migrate very quickly, and when the trees go, so do most of the species that live there. And moving further from the equator chasing your optimal average temperature, also subjects you to more dramatic seasons. The Amazon Rainforest evolved to deal with a few degrees of seasonal variation - even if it could migrate to North America chasing the right average temperature, the seasons would kill most of it.
For a whole lot of species it *will* be the end of the world, and that's going to be really rough for us, perched on top of a global ecosystem that's already quite shaky from human-caused pollution and extinctions.
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Yeah, only big instead of small little fragments.
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CO2 levels over geologic time spans are usually much, much higher on Earth than the current 400 ppm. Levels in the thousands PPM are more normal.
Nobody human cares what's been more normal for the planet any more than anyone thinks it will be the end of the planet if CO2 increases. The concern is that it will be the end of humanity, or at least our dominance. Levels in the thousands of PPM are harmful to humans, starting at 1,000 PPM and becoming acute around 5,000 PPM. What is normal or natural is irrelevant. It's this period of abnormally low CO2 that has permitted us to flourish, and if we want to continue to do so, we're going to have to keep it
Re:FFS the scaremongering is getting ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
No. But it will be expensive and disruptive.
Sooner or later we're going to need to pick out what places we'll try to save, and what places aren't worth saving. For the places we are going to try to save, we'll have to invest in infrastructure to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. For the places we aren't going to try to save, individuals can either try to survive with what they have, or move. If they survive, they'll have to invest and make changes in their lifestyle - such as limiting water usage and trucking in water if they are in an area where drought has caused water tables to fall, to raising their houses by the coast in order to survive hurricanes and king tides.
Age [Re:Here come the denialist shills] (Score:2)
What is the average age of /.'ers these days? 8???
About 65, I think.
Millennials and younger don't do computers, they're all about their phones. /. is a relic left over from the stone age.
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Yeah its seriously got to be 50+ given the greybeards and the fox news political opinions tossed around here.
Re:1200 ppm? (Score:4, Informative)
As someone who has a degree in botany and has worked in greenhouses that were maintained at 1500ppm. You should know that CO2 levels become dangerous at 5000 ppm, not 1200ppm.
It becomes dangerous to life and health at 40,000ppm.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/... [cdc.gov]
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As someone who has a degree in botany and has worked in greenhouses that were maintained at 1500ppm. You should know that CO2 levels become dangerous at 5000 ppm, not 1200ppm.
Your degree in botany may speak to your ability to determine what effect CO2 has on plants, but it has no bearing on your ability to determine its effects on humans [wisconsin.gov] and other mammals. CO2 has negative health repercussions beginning at about 1000 ppm, which vary between individuals. Working environments with 1500 ppm CO2 can definitely be harmful to health. (They may also reduce plants' ability to absorb nitrogen [science.gu.se], but that's a separate argument.)
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He's talking about his personal experience being inside greenhouses kept at 1500ppm, not how plants react to it.
Your source only suggests that action be taken in a domestic setting at 1000ppm to avoid higher levels, and that it causes slight drowsiness starting around 1000ppm. This hardly constitutes a serious danger to health.
That said, a world in which just going outside causes mild sick building syndrome is pretty messed up.
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As someone who has a degree in botany and has worked in greenhouses that were maintained at 1500ppm. You should know that CO2 levels become dangerous at 5000 ppm, not 1200ppm.
Your degree in botany may speak to your ability to determine what effect CO2 has on plants, but it has no bearing on your ability to determine its effects on humans and other mammals.
He's talking about his personal experience being inside greenhouses kept at 1500ppm, not how plants react to it.
He's the one who brought up a botany degree, my point was that it was irrelevant in the context of the conversation. You seem to agree, so it's unclear why you think the above sentence has any bearing on the conversation.
CO2 has negative health repercussions beginning at about 1000 ppm, which vary between individuals.
Your source only suggests that action be taken in a domestic setting at 1000ppm to avoid higher levels, and that it causes slight drowsiness starting around 1000ppm. This hardly constitutes a serious danger to health.
I don't see where I claimed it did. Perhaps you could point that out to me.
That said, a world in which just going outside causes mild sick building syndrome is pretty messed up.
Agreed. And also, a world in which you're expected to work in an environment which causes sick building syndrome is also messed up, but we're somehow meant to take an anecdote about doing so as meaningful. It isn't.
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LOL.. Anybody figuring out how this will affect the plants of the world when they have an easier time finding carbon to fix? I think your point is valid, CO2 isn't getting that high as there are way to many things which will compensate, long before we get there.
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Natural compensation methods happen on a geological timescale. If we were releasing this CO2 over a million-year period, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem. Releasing it over a century is a problem.
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Natural compensation methods happen on a geological timescale. If we were releasing this CO2 over a million-year period, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem. Releasing it over a century is a problem.
And we know this to be true how?
I have a feeling that the earth has a lot more capacity to adapt than many give it credit for. I'm not saying we pollute recklessly, but I'm also not for committing economic suicide to try and avoid something we don't unilaterally have the ability to avoid anyway. We'd be better off working to deal with the consequences at this point and focus on mitigating those risks as it's actually something we CAN actually do.
I say we prepare for the inevitable and forget trying to p
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No. Current CO2 levels are abnormally low compared to Earths Geologic History.
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Current CO2 levels are abnormally low compared to Earths Geologic History.
That is not an argument against the fact that at 1000+ ppm, some people start to feel uncomfortable. Modern humans are not used to the high CO2 concentrations that were present hundred millions of years ago.
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What other area of study determines the outcome beforehand and then conducts "science" to support it.
The "social sciences".
I'm sorry. Was that question rhetorical?