Ending Greenhouse Gas Emissions May Not Stop Global Warming, Study Says (phys.org) 303
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org : Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by meters, according to a controversial modeling study published Thursday. Natural drivers of global warming -- more heat-trapping clouds, thawing permafrost, and shrinking sea ice -- already set in motion by carbon pollution will take on their own momentum, researchers from Norway reported in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Using a stripped-down climate model, [lead author Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School] and colleague Ulrich Goluke projected changes out to the year 2500 under two scenarios: the instant cessation of emissions, and the gradual reduction of planet warming gases to zero by 2100.
In an imaginary world where carbon pollution stops with a flip of the switch, the planet warms over the next 50 years to about 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- roughly half-a-degree above the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement -- and cools slightly after that. Earth's surface today is 1.2C hotter than it was in the mid-19th century, when temperatures began to rise. But starting in 2150, the model has the planet beginning to gradually warm again, with average temperatures climbing another degree over the following 350 years, and sea levels going up by at least three meters. Under the second scenario, Earth heats up to levels that would tear at the fabric of civilization far more quickly, but ends up at roughly the same point by 2500.
The core finding -- contested by leading climate scientists -- is that several thresholds, or "tipping points", in Earth's climate system have already been crossed, triggering a self-perpetuating process of warming, as has happened millions of years in the past. One of these drivers is the rapid retreat of sea ice in the Arctic. [...] Another source is the thawing of permafrost, which holds twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. The third is increasing amounts of water vapor, which also has a warming effect. Reactions from half-a-dozen leading climate scientists to the study -- which the authors acknowledge is schematic -- varied sharply, with some saying the findings merit follow-up research, and others rejecting it out of hand. There is a way to stop the melting process, but it involves sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it underground, which isn't yet possible at the scale required. The authors also suggest making Earth's surface brighter and planting billions of trees to slow or halt the planet warming gases.
In an imaginary world where carbon pollution stops with a flip of the switch, the planet warms over the next 50 years to about 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- roughly half-a-degree above the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement -- and cools slightly after that. Earth's surface today is 1.2C hotter than it was in the mid-19th century, when temperatures began to rise. But starting in 2150, the model has the planet beginning to gradually warm again, with average temperatures climbing another degree over the following 350 years, and sea levels going up by at least three meters. Under the second scenario, Earth heats up to levels that would tear at the fabric of civilization far more quickly, but ends up at roughly the same point by 2500.
The core finding -- contested by leading climate scientists -- is that several thresholds, or "tipping points", in Earth's climate system have already been crossed, triggering a self-perpetuating process of warming, as has happened millions of years in the past. One of these drivers is the rapid retreat of sea ice in the Arctic. [...] Another source is the thawing of permafrost, which holds twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. The third is increasing amounts of water vapor, which also has a warming effect. Reactions from half-a-dozen leading climate scientists to the study -- which the authors acknowledge is schematic -- varied sharply, with some saying the findings merit follow-up research, and others rejecting it out of hand. There is a way to stop the melting process, but it involves sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it underground, which isn't yet possible at the scale required. The authors also suggest making Earth's surface brighter and planting billions of trees to slow or halt the planet warming gases.
Have to remove CO2. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since apparently we've already created a positive feedback loop for releasing CO2, going "carbon neutral" is no longer an option. What we need to do now is actually start removing CO2 from the sky and oceans. It gets worse because the only way to shut down this feedback loop is to actually remove it faster than it's being released. This will require thousands if not millions of sites to accomplish this. The best way would be to proliferate nuclear energy and use every spare watt to capture and convert CO2 into carbon (which we've made huge progress on).
Frankly, this is a far larger threat than any military foe, so if the US actually gave a damn about defense they would be using their military budget for geoengineering.
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Well, they are taking it seriously [theguardian.com].
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Turning CO2 into limestone, which then can be broken into sand to replace the dwindling supply of sand used to make concrete, solves two problems with one process -- assuming a plethora of free energy to run it.
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I've seen a number of news articles, white papers, and so on about people working on using basalt in cement as a carbon sink.
Basalt is a common mineral consisting of oxides of calcium, magnesium, silicon, and other metals. It's the calcium oxide, or lime, that is of most interest. Most common cements use a mix of what is mostly lime and sand with enough water to turn it to a flowing liquid. As it cures and hardens the lime reacts with CO2 in the air to become limestone. The longer cement cures the harde
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No, the best way is to plant a fuck ton of trees and irrigate them.
Trees are carbon neutral. You need to learn about the life-cycle of trees.
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They use CO2 when growing though. So, cut down all old trees, bury them or make paper or whatever (other than burning) and plant young trees. Once they slow down growing, cut them down and replace them. And so on.
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Doing so requires significantly more energy, time and effort than carbon capture. It will also deplete the soil if you repeat the process often enough.
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Environmentalists don't want nuclear either.
Re:Have to remove CO2. (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmentalists don't want nuclear either.
This is changing.
We spent something like 40 years with few to no new nuclear power reactors in the USA. This has left us with a fleet of nuclear power plants that will be reaching the end of their operational life in rather rapid succession. A nuclear power plant near me just shutdown for the last time, they don't plan to refuel and restart it.
What is going to replace these low CO2 emission power sources on the grid? Windmills? Solar? They can't even keep up with growth in demand as it is. If there's going to be potentially dozens of nuclear power reactors shutting down every year, each producing nearly a gigawatt of electricity, then that leaves a gaping hole in our electrical generation capacity.
We will be replacing these old nuclear fission reactors with new nuclear fission reactors or natural gas. That's because the third option is the lights going out.
Environmentalist might like the idea of no more nuclear power but they like the idea of being able to recharge their iPhones more.
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Re:Have to remove CO2. (Score:4, Informative)
Frankly, this is a far larger threat than any military foe, so if the US actually gave a damn about defense they would be using their military budget for geoengineering.
Use the military budget for geoengineering? That's going to go well. (That's sarcasm by the way.) There are nations in this world that would conceivably see global warming as beneficial. Russia for example has been waging wars to get a warm water port, a port that doesn't freeze over every winter. They've been looking to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Circle for as long as there has been a Russia, but the ice slows them down. Large regions of Russia could be turned to arable land if the world was a bit warmer.
That's just one nation with enough firepower to give the USA a very bad day if they thought we were waging a geoengineering war on them. China, North Korea, and likely a few other nations might join in on that fight. Perhaps not because they see geoengineering as a threat but because they don't like the idea of a democratic nation making their socialism look bad.
That said, we do see the military putting considerable funds in lowering their reliance on fossil fuels. There's certainly a part of the military that sees global warming as a threat to national security. There's also a part of the military that sees any reliance on foreign sourced fuel needed for tanks, jets, and ships as a national security threat. This has lead the various military branches to search for alternatives to petroleum.
The USAF has been experimenting with biomass fuels for their jets. There's been successful tests with a mix of petroleum and soybean oil in tankers and transports. I read that they planned to test this fuel on fighter jets, I don't know if that happened or what the results of that was.
The US Navy has been developing a method to synthesize jet fuel at sea using energy from nuclear power on a ship and raw material out of the ocean. This is a well known chemistry of "cooking up" hydrocarbons but it has to be shown viable for placement on a ship. This means small enough, light enough, efficient enough, low enough in cost, high enough in reliability, and can take at least a moderate beating from being out at sea on a warship.
The US Army has been working on solar panels that can roll up like a tent, and perhaps be integrated into the tent. Windmills that can be erected on remote outposts. As well as the potential for small nuclear reactors that are small and light enough to move by a train or large truck.
The US Coast Guard has been begging for nuclear powered icebreakers, and they might just get them soon. The US Navy has asked for nuclear powered surface ships besides carriers for a very long time, but Democrats in Congress have prevented that from happening since the last nuclear powered cruisers were retired in the 1990s. If the ships aren't powered by low CO2 nuclear fission reactors then they will most likely burn petroleum. If it's not petroleum then it could be synthesized hydrocarbons, biomass fuel, or some mix of them, but that means there needs to be a reliable energy source to produce and process these fuels. Something that can be secured from a bombing run, not left out in the sun, wind, and rain. What might that be?
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Since apparently we've already created a positive feedback loop for releasing CO2, going "carbon neutral" is no longer an option. What we need to do now is actually start removing CO2 from the sky and oceans.
This is the hypothesis supported by the current study.
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Indeed. But it is seriously doubtful that the human race can do this on the scale required, even if global peace and understanding breaks out tomorrow and everybody contributes the max they can.
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"Frankly, this is a far larger threat than any military foe, so if the US actually gave a damn about defense they would be using their military budget for geoengineering."
Our entire military budget is about $0.7T. Social Security and Medicare are around $1.0T and $1.2T. Why not nuke both those programs and use that money. It would kill a lot of folks that depend on those things, but using the defense budget would kill the country when Andorra invades. (No, wait, 450 million guns in civilian hands would
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I don't care if Trump calls those people "losers", they're not.
I was thinking more about the part of the budget that goes on F35s and stuff like that.
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Are we at war??
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Do you not get it? EVERY rich powerful nation in human history automatically acquires enemies. You can't stop it from happening. So you HAVE to have a military to defend your country and your countrys' interests in the world. Otherwise your enemies will take what they want, and eventually take YOU. There is no alternative.
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"They'd roll right over us like we're not even here."
And then what?
A corrupt government would tax you?
Would you even notice the difference?
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Paranoid much?
f35s are a boondoggle. If they ever do go into action against a major power they'll be up against swarms of unpiloted drones which will take them out with no effort at all.
EVERY rich powerful nation in human history automatically acquires enemies. You can't stop it from happening.
Sure you can. You can:
a) Make it impossibly expensive for them to invade you (see Switzerland)
b) Use MAD politics (try anything and we'll nuke you)
c) Grab them by the balls economically so they won't dare
d) Grab them by the balls technologically so they won't dare (go read Asimov's Foundation).
e) A combination of all of the
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What kind of reduction in funding do you think 'defund the military' would mean? You simply sound like one of the many 'full scale dominance or death' fanatics to me. Just now there was a new article about how this dichotomy came about , promoting empire as the only acceptable security policy: https://www.theamericanconserv... [theamerica...vative.com]
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(and our interests in the world)
You should not have any interests in the world.
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So, what do you think the US has than anybody else would go to war to get? Crumbling infrastructure? A pretty stupid and uneducated population? Failing agricultural infrastructure?
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It's cold and snowing where I am, 'global warming' is a hoax!
Re:Have to remove CO2. (Score:5, Informative)
Also, seeing as you're in the "Earth's temperature changes naturally" camp, here's a nice picture for you which shows you how idiotic that position is.
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
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But it's not just planting trees. Old trees (that grow slower) use less CO2 than young trees. So, the trees need to be cut and replanted every so often, with the old trees buried, turned into paper or houses (anything other than burning them, which would release the CO2).
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Everything is easy if you believe pipe-dreams. In actual reality, engineering on that scale is somewhere between extremely challenging and infeasible.
Primitive Agriculture (Score:3)
An often forgotten cause of global warming isn't merely emissions but the fact that we continue to use land-heavy agriculture to produce our food.
We need to invest in systems that reduce the amount of land needed to cultivate our food and give back land to giant nature reserves full of trees.
The main cause of environmental destruction is agriculture. We need it to change so that deforestation and habitat destruction is no longer a thing.
The carbon sequestration comes naturally with millions and millions of giant trees all over the world.
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Re:Primitive Agriculture (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of lecturing Brazil and Indonesia about not using land for farming, US should set an example. A rich country does not need to grow food; it can import from poorer countries.
That's a great idea, except not really.
The USA should not hand over it's ability to feed itself to volatile third world nations. As it is now many nations of the world rely on American exports to feed themselves.
If these poorer countries want to export food to the USA then they first need to be able to feed themselves. To do that will take a stable government, modern farming techniques, and generally replicating what the USA is doing. If they do that then they won't be "poorer countries" any more. Then what? Are they supposed to hand over their ability to feed themselves to some other nation poorer than them? Much of the wealth in the USA comes from not having to export this wealth for food. Our agricultural abundance keeps the world from starving.
The USA relied on imports for vital resources before, and it was used against us. Why set ourselves up to be threatened with starvation like the oil crises of the 1970s?
We are seeing European nations set themselves up for failure by relying on Russian natural gas. This will be used against them once Russia is convinced that Europe is sufficiently addicted to their energy. After that it will be one natural gas shortage after another until Europe collapses or learns to break this addiction.
The USA isn't going to hand over it's independence, and wealth, in an attempt to prop up nations that can't keep their act together.
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3rd world countries do not exist anymore since the early 1980s.
Only countries with defunct government, like Somalia, or South Sudan, can not feed themselves.
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Instead of lecturing Brazil and Indonesia about not using land for farming, US should set an example. A rich country does not need to grow food; it can import from poorer countries. Flyover country states should be abolished and amalgamated into one large territory (Puerto Rico status) and used for afforestation. The population can be shifted to the coasts or work as forest guards. Bonus points for having a permanent Democrat majority in the Senate.
People like you are why Republicans win there so easily. Its a grand idea which sounds good but is poorly thought out, probably won't work and the brunt of the negative consequences will be felt by the poor (them). You truly live up to your name.
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True - and animal agriculture is several factors higher than plants. Over 40% the land used in the US is for animal agriculture. Global breakdown can be found here: https://ourworldindata.org/agr... [ourworldindata.org]
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It isn't just that a lot of land is being used for agriculture, the methods used for agriculture also matter.
Traditional ploughing releases greenhouse gases from the fertiliser in the soil.
Animal dung has to be processed to capture the emissions from it.
And of course, we need to stop eating so much meat. We should not omit it entirely from our diet, just stop eating more meat than humans have ever done before. This meat consumption is also giving more people heart disease.
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Mankind is throwing away 50% - 50% of all food produced.
I doubt the size of agricultural areas has a significant impact on CO2.
geoengineering inevitable (Score:2, Insightful)
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So be it. in 400 years most of humanity will probably be living in the arctic, which will be a balmy 80 degrees. /. is just beyond my comprehension.
Seriously, the stupidity on
In winter both arctics will be as cold as always. Polar night, you know ...
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Well, it will be far too late when the catastrophes become obvious. Geoengineering on this scale is a > 100 year project and it requires global peace and collaboration. There is no chance of that happening with the collection of fuckups that populate this dirtball.
Re:geoengineering inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally do-able but, again, humanity is currently covering it's ears and going "lalalalalala". We'll only take action when we lose a few large cities and people can't ignore it any more. That's when they'll turn to the scientists and engineers and demand a solution. We need to be ready with them. While it might be justice to tell a bunch of morons to just go cook to death in the stew the've created, SOME FRACTION of the species needs to be intelligent and responsible. That'll fall to, wait for it, us scientists and engineers.
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We'll only take action when we lose a few large cities and people can't ignore it any more.
Why? They'll just move.
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Look at how upset people get about migration already. Now imagine it's not just people in other countries, it's half of California looking for somewhere else to live. Suddenly you have a huge influx of people, many of them highly skilled and after the same jobs as you, and you can't do anything about it because they are citizens of your country. They have money too, big insurance payouts.
All the time it was only happening far away to other people it could be ignored, but that's already changing with those f
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Until it actually costs less to fix than to ignore we won't do it. So the focus should be on making it cost more to ignore, e.g. taxing emissions at a rate that makes $50/tonne seem cheap.
This is not news! (Score:2)
Anyone following climate science knows that once the mass public is worried it's already too late! At that point we will be launching reflectors in space. I;ve expected this all along! We will literally need mirrors to have earth be hospitable to humans in 2100.
You would need people to be proactive instead of reactive but sorry .... human beings ... I mean homo sapiens are litterally geared to be reactive.
So when you have smart homo spaiens saying who cares to the dumb ones (99% of the population it seem
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Fermi's conjecture is not a paradox.
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No shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
I pretty much arrived at this conclusion at least two years ago. Even then we were hearing about the Arctic melt releasing methane and the rapid acceleration of deglaciation. At that point it seemed pretty obvious we had passed the point of no return.
Even if we could "suck CO2 out of the atmosphere" and sequester it, I think we'd have to do it really soon and really fast - otherwise warming caused by already-rising methane emissions might outstrip the effects of CO2 removal. And that doesn't even account for the rapid loss of the rainforests and whatever unmodeled / unforeseen negative effects that will have.
Yes, we still need to mitigate AGW as best we can. But we also need to start preparing now for the massive waves of environmental refugees that have already begun in response to the effects of AGW. And it's time to get more serious about protecting, re-shaping, or outright moving coastal communities both large and small. Shifting hunks of major cities farther away from the ocean is a pretty big undertaking.
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Regarding the environmental refugees, you also have the exponential population growth in places like Africa for example (it wil
Global Warming == Covid19 (Score:2, Troll)
Only one solution (Score:2)
"Plant billions of trees"
That's the least we can do -- We cut down 15 billion trees/year. We already cut down half our trees. We have 3 trillion trees left.
"We can't breathe"
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"We can't breathe"
You should have swept the leg, Johnny.
Stopping emissions sooner rather than later...... (Score:2)
Even if we don't really notice a difference in our own lifetime.
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We're definitely will make things worse and more quickly before we even try to slow it down. Putting the brakes on this is possible, but there is a certain stopping distance that can't be negotiated any more.
Been saying this for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
Pilot tests of pumping CO2 underground [slashdot.org] has show that it mineralizes [usgs.gov] far faster than anyone expected - within 2 years in the test, rather than a thousand years as expected. For reference, the world pumps about 40 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. So the 3000 gigatons the USGS estimates could be sequestered this way in the U.S. alone would account for 75 years of global CO2 production. And to address the points which have been brought up against this in the past:
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No planting trees doesn't sequester CO2. When the tree dies and decomposes, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere as CO2.
It does, though. When that tree dies, another one grows in its place. If we have X trees now, increase that to 2X and keep it there, we'll have twice the amount of CO2 sequestered in those trees, a significant amount.
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Overly optimistic - seriously, this isn't Minecraft, where everything works perfectly as expected. First, mineratlization:
Mineralization may happen quickly initially, but only in suitable minerals, and only as long as those minerals have not already absorbed as much CO2 as they are capable of. The amount any one location can absorb is strictly limited - these are not infinite sinks.
Th
We'll be fine. (Score:3, Funny)
With more CO2 in the air plants become more efficient in taking in CO2. This means areas of land not suitable for plant life with today's CO2 levels becomes suitable for plants with next year's CO2 levels.
With warmer temperatures there's, again, more arable land. This also brings longer growth seasons. All more opportunity for plants to convert CO2 into plant matter, removing it from the atmosphere.
Then there is the largest CO2 sink of them all, the sea. At the bottom of the sea are deposits of basalt and other minerals capable of reacting with CO2. In the water are plants capable of turning CO2 into plant matter. Plant matter that if eaten becomes animal matter, if not eaten then eventually sinks to the sea floor where it is effectively removed from the ecosystem.
The planet has seen far more CO2, far less CO2, far higher and lower temperatures. This includes times humans have existed on this planet. All this time life continued.
Don't worry too much, we'll be fine.
Re:We'll be fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy shit this is manifestly stupid. First and foremost, when the Earth was warmer in the past it didn't have eight billion humans depending on agriculture and industry. The warming and cooling trends also occurred over thousands of years so floral and faunal responses were gradual.
We're seeing climate changes now on the scale of decades. Besides humans and animals not having a lot of time to adapt there's a number of ecological problems tied to temperature. We're already seeing rapid thawing of permafrost in the northern hemisphere. These permafrost melts are turning into methane spewing bogs, methane that's a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Greenland's ice sheet's melting is also accelerating. It will end up disrupting the Atlantic Conveyor which will drastically alter the climate of Europe and the US not to mention effects on already depleted or damaged fisheries. Increased atmospheric CO2 also increases CO2 in the ocean increasing its acidity. Increased acidity is already affecting marine food chains.
While humans as a species and plants will "survive" increased atmospheric CO2 levels, current industrial civilization was built with 1850s climate and ecology in mind. The next century will see hundreds of trillions of dollars spent trying to adapt to the environment we fucked up. Hundreds of millions to billions of people are going to displaced because where they used to live flooded or dried out or is just uninhabitable. We'll be able to do some geoengineering to put a band aid on things but for every success we'll likely also end up with more Aral Sea disasters.
Humans as a species surviving global warming isn't a question, it's human civilization surviving that's the real problem. Lots of agriculture and industry is sited for climates and ecologies that no longer or will cease to exist in those locations. It doesn't matter if plants can use CO2 if there's no water or it's too hot for them to grow.
Either way, we need to stop burning fossil fuels (Score:3)
Imagine what running out of oil would do to the economy?
Yes, this is only proven oil reserves. But we can't rely on actually finding more, and even if we do find more, that's just delaying the inevitable - fossil fuels are going to run out.
So, we need to transition off of fossil fuels, and the sooner we start that transition, the easier it'll be on the economy.
sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
https://www.eia.gov/
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:2)
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blow up the world with nuclear weapons.
Has your family kept abreast of the world's nuclear arsenal levels?
They are nowhere near what they were back at the height of the cold war, in either numbers or yields.
I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but I don't believe a nuclear war can save us.
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:3)
You don't need many if they detonate in the atmosphere. Scorched Earth is still a strategy...
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need many if they detonate in the atmosphere. Scorched Earth is still a strategy...
That's not how a nuclear winter happens. It requires near ground level denotation as the dust they throw up into the upper atmosphere is what blocks the sun. If you blew up 1000s of bombs in the atmosphere while the fallout wouldn't be good, you wouldn't create a nuclear winter. You would make something more like Chernobyl. For every 20ktn of fission bomb you get about 1 grain of rice worth of fallout. The bigger fission-fusion (hydrogen) bombs make similar amounts of fallout because they get most of their power from the fusion part and the fission part is similar in size to the early fission bombs. But do go on scaring people especially since nuclear power and nuclear weapons have very little to do with each other. The technology and materials involved are quite different and after we switch to Thorium, even the raw fuel will be different.
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:5, Informative)
All nuclear detonations are above ground. Maximum damage occurs with the pressure wave of the detonation, ideal detonation is about 1000' above ground. The fireball created by the bomb displaces all air in about a 2000' diameter sphere. This creates an outfow of super heated air moving at several hundered mph. This destroys and vaporizes about a mile of city and ignights about another mile of city.
As the fireball collapses a few seconds after ignition a massive vacuum is formed and the outgoing air reverses direction and is sucked up through the detonation point creating the mushroom shape. This pulls all the vaporized city into the stratosphere. Combined with the smoke and ash from the rest burning you end up depositing 1000's of tons of particulate into the atmosphere. The bulk of this material falls out fairly quickly, but a portion can take up to a decade to fall out. You only need about a hundered bombs to put enough material into the atmosphere to see an immediate 20+ deg drop in surface temps for a few years that deposit enough snow to further lower temps and reflect more light back into space.
The end result is that in 5 years you got glaciers forming all over the planet and no perceptible growing season for 3 years.The resulting starvation would wipe out most of humanity if not all. Along with a planet wide extinction event.
All nuclear detonations if done to max damage are air burst.
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:5, Insightful)
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A few have been done underground.
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They are nowhere near what they were back at the height of the cold war, in either numbers or yields.
Yep. Instead of 1000x what was needed to glass the entire planet we now only have 10x.
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But they've become _far_ more common among third world nations, primarily due to Pakistan selling the technology and the tools to them.
Re: Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:3)
If the current trends hold your children will look like the humans from WallE.
The inverted food piramide currently claims 500 million people to diabetes alone....
The two largest scams of the 20th century - the crusade against nuclear energy and fat, which have already resulted in massive damage to human health and the environment are now cemented, since both crusades are supported by the church of green.
Oh, the irony!
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The problem isn't going to be figuring out *how* to sequester CO2. At least not "how" in a technical sense. It's the politics of who will pay, who will get paid, and how much that's hard.
We've known this problem is coming on us for decades, and averting it wouldn't really have been that hard. In fact the government or other centralized bodies wouldn't have needed to have chosen *a* method at all. We could have done cap and trade, and private sector solutions would have followed without government direct
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The problem isn't going to be figuring out *how* to sequester CO2. At least not "how" in a technical sense. It's the politics of who will pay, who will get paid, and how much that's hard.
My prediction: Nobody will pay a single cent and we'll end up geoengineering to try and fix it.
(ie. dumping crap into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight)
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My prediction: Nobody will pay a single cent and we'll end up geoengineering to try and fix it.
(ie. dumping crap into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight)
Geoengineering costs money too and it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. A more financially feasible option is putting up solar reflectors in space. By controlling the orientation of the reflectors, the sun can be partially blocked in strategic locations for countries that help pay for the project. The rest gets unmitigated natural disasters.
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The later something is being done, the more effort it is. At some point it exceeds the industrial capability of the human race. That point may or may not lie in the past, but it sure as hell does not lie a long time in the future.
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The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature.
Is it, though? Firstly, it's not really a work of literature - the chapters are basically ordered by length because no one knows what the right order is (the Bible does the same with the epistles), so it's more of an anthology than a single work. Secondly, it's not clear who chose the chapters to include. We do know that there were a lot of different versions knocking about and eventually Caliph Abu Bakr decided that a single version should be canon. In this he failed, and there are still seven versions bec
Re:Meh. I'm an optimist. (Score:5, Interesting)
Global warming is the biggest threat to life the world has ever seen.
Chicxulub was a bigger threat. The formation of the Siberian Traps was even bigger still.
Global warming is a serious problem, but let's not get hyperbolic about it. It isn't going to wipe out life on earth. Shrill alarmism and exaggeration are counter-productive. You are just giving ammunition to the denialists.
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Global warming is a serious problem, but let's not get hyperbolic about it. It isn't going to wipe out life on earth.
Of course it isn't, but it could get a whole lot more expensive and difficult for the people who are causing it.
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it could get a whole lot more expensive and difficult for the people who are causing it.
Not really. I can move to higher ground and higher latitudes. You can probably do the same. The problem is the several hundred million people living in Bangladesh and other low-lying countries who can't afford to move.
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Yes. Lets not get hyperbolic about an existential threat to the whole race that has been known reliably for > 30 years and where nothing effective has been done all this time despite it clearly being very urgent.
No, it is not going to wipe out life on earth, that is true. But it is going to wipe out at the very least human civilization and may quite possible wipe out humanity. Have a look at the projections some time. This is the big one. Either we deal with it very soon (may already be too late though)
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Yes. Lets not get hyperbolic about an existential threat to the whole race that has been known reliably for > 30 years and where nothing effective has been done all this time despite it clearly being very urgent.
No, it is not going to wipe out life on earth, that is true. But it is going to wipe out at the very least human civilization and may quite possible wipe out humanity. Have a look at the projections some time. This is the big one. Either we deal with it very soon (may already be too late though) or that was it.
It's not an existential threat, on the level of a global nuclear war, large asteroids, mega volcanoes and the like.
It will probably cause a large increase in extreme weather (hurricanes, extreme rainfalls, heatwaves), rising sea levels, decreasing productivity of some areas (while increasing it in others - which doesn't help inhabitants in the affected areas), wildlife extinction of organisms that aren't able to adjust etc.
Sure, that is extremely serious and we should seek to minimise risks and consequen
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Don't forget wars. Lots of wars, as fertile regions are devastated by drought and famine, while formerly arid or chilly regions become attractive. Arguably, we've already had the first climate change-induced war: The Syrian civil war, provoked by a decade-long drought.
But, yeah, not existential, just really, really, really expensive in both blood and resources.
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It's not an existential threat, on the level of a global nuclear war, large asteroids, mega volcanoes and the like.
It will probably cause a large increase in extreme weather (hurricanes, extreme rainfalls, heatwaves), rising sea levels, decreasing productivity of some areas (while increasing it in others - which doesn't help inhabitants in the affected areas), wildlife extinction of organisms that aren't able to adjust etc.
I think the "etc." part to focus on here is that as food systems fail, local conflicts will escalate to wars at a large scale.
We can be pedantic about what "existential threat" means, or we can see that large scale wars will lead to a different but equivalent type of societal collapse.
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One great improvement (Score:3)
> Have a look at the projections some time.
Which projections? Mine? The UN report?
One great improvement is that some climate scientists are actually calling bullshit on this projection. For a long time, anyone who questioned any projection was a "denier". I guess now that's changed since 2020 is drawing to a close and San Francisco is not in fact underwater like the UN report said it would be by 2020. So obviously the "world's top climate scientists" were wrong. Incredibly wrong.
Now maybe we can star
not speaking of the world as ancient earth (Score:2)
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So was the development of chlorophyll, allowing plants to generate enough free oxygin to kill many species.
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and that the problem with global warming wasn't that "it's happening", but "our actions have accelerated natural process so much that normal adaptation cycle for life on the planet appears to be at least in part insufficient to keep up with it".
Global warming is happening, and CO2 released by humans is contributing to it.
The question that is still unanswered is, "how much are humans contributing to it?" We don't know.
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https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
Like any good CT nut, you skirt around the truth, but make sure and push your lie as part of it.
you also engage in the classic "lone wolf" scientist, rock star, whatever that is right but nobody will listen to them because of reasons" mythology. of course, nobody will listen to them because they are, well, because they're wrong. The consistent argument that contrarians are always heroes going against the establishment, is in fact, not actually an argument, but a desire.
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Remember how extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence ?
No, we do not remember. As evidence is evidence. Nothing special required regardless how extraordinary the claim is.
Re:The obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
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One point in favor of reincarnation would be the sheer hilarity how those responsible would get to suffer the results of their own egoism and nearsightedness. Of course, that does not remove the little problem that those not responsible would suffer as well. But they seem to be a minority anyways. Takes those that actively push the destruction of the biosphere and those that do not mind or are clueless and you end up at something like 80% of the world population. It is really not surprising that things go t
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https://twitter.com/Arnasamudr... [twitter.com]