Are We Slowing Global Warming? (nymag.com) 137
This week New York Magazine featured a new article by journalist David Wallace-Wells about the state of the fight against global warming.
He warns that "Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..." But there's also some good news: Just a half-decade ago, it was widely believed that a "business as usual" emissions path would bring the planet four or five degrees of warming — enough to make large parts of Earth effectively uninhabitable. Now, thanks to the rapid death of coal, the revolution in the price of renewable energy, and a global climate politics forged by a generational awakening, the expectation is for about three degrees. Recent pledges could bring us closer to two. All of these projections sketch a hazardous and unequal future, and all are clouded with uncertainties — about the climate system, about technology, about the dexterity and intensity of human response, about how inequitably the most punishing impacts will be distributed. Yet if each half-degree of warming marks an entirely different level of suffering, we appear to have shaved a few of them off our likeliest end stage in not much time at all.
The next half-degrees will be harder to shave off, and the most crucial increment — getting from two degrees to 1.5 — perhaps impossible, dashing the dream of avoiding what was long described as "catastrophic" change. But for a climate alarmist like me, seeing clearly the state of the planet's future now requires a conspicuous kind of double vision, in which a guarded optimism seems perhaps as reasonable as panic. Given how long we've waited to move, what counts now as a best-case outcome remains grim. It also appears, miraculously, within reach....
The price of solar energy has fallen ninefold over the past decade, as has the price of lithium batteries, critical to the growth of electric cars. The costs of utility-scale batteries, which could solve the "intermittency" (i.e., cloudy day) problem of renewables and help power whole cities in relatively short order, have fallen 70 percent since just 2015. Wind power is 40 percent cheaper than it was a decade ago, with offshore wind experiencing an even steeper decline. Overall, renewable energy is less expensive than dirty energy almost everywhere on the planet, and in many places it is simply cheaper to build new renewable capacity than to continue running the old fossil-fuel infrastructure. Oil demand and carbon emissions may both have peaked this year. Eighty percent of coal plants planned in Asia's developing countries have been shelved... [I]n the fall, the U.K. pledged to ban nonelectrics by 2030 — a once-unthinkable law coming both too slow and much more quickly than seemed possible not very long ago. Similar plans are now in place in 16 other countries, plus Massachusetts and California. Canada recently raised its tax on carbon sixfold. Italy cut its power-sector emissions 65 percent between 2012 and 2019, and Denmark is now aiming to reduce its overall emissions 70 percent by 2030...
[F]or all their momentum, renewables still only make up 10 percent of global electricity production. But alarmists have to take the good news where they find it....
The author also spoke to Pulitzer Prize-winner environmentalist author Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book Under a White Sky: In her book, Kolbert sketches a spectrum of interventions, from electrifying rivers to using CRISPR to save endangered species to solar geoengineering, often called "solar-radiation management," by which aerosol particles are suspended in the stratosphere to deflect some sunlight back into outer space and artificially cool the planet. "There is a slippery slope here, you know?" she says. "And where does that end?
"But there are not a lot of great choices. We're not returning to a preindustrial climate — not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime."
He warns that "Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..." But there's also some good news: Just a half-decade ago, it was widely believed that a "business as usual" emissions path would bring the planet four or five degrees of warming — enough to make large parts of Earth effectively uninhabitable. Now, thanks to the rapid death of coal, the revolution in the price of renewable energy, and a global climate politics forged by a generational awakening, the expectation is for about three degrees. Recent pledges could bring us closer to two. All of these projections sketch a hazardous and unequal future, and all are clouded with uncertainties — about the climate system, about technology, about the dexterity and intensity of human response, about how inequitably the most punishing impacts will be distributed. Yet if each half-degree of warming marks an entirely different level of suffering, we appear to have shaved a few of them off our likeliest end stage in not much time at all.
The next half-degrees will be harder to shave off, and the most crucial increment — getting from two degrees to 1.5 — perhaps impossible, dashing the dream of avoiding what was long described as "catastrophic" change. But for a climate alarmist like me, seeing clearly the state of the planet's future now requires a conspicuous kind of double vision, in which a guarded optimism seems perhaps as reasonable as panic. Given how long we've waited to move, what counts now as a best-case outcome remains grim. It also appears, miraculously, within reach....
The price of solar energy has fallen ninefold over the past decade, as has the price of lithium batteries, critical to the growth of electric cars. The costs of utility-scale batteries, which could solve the "intermittency" (i.e., cloudy day) problem of renewables and help power whole cities in relatively short order, have fallen 70 percent since just 2015. Wind power is 40 percent cheaper than it was a decade ago, with offshore wind experiencing an even steeper decline. Overall, renewable energy is less expensive than dirty energy almost everywhere on the planet, and in many places it is simply cheaper to build new renewable capacity than to continue running the old fossil-fuel infrastructure. Oil demand and carbon emissions may both have peaked this year. Eighty percent of coal plants planned in Asia's developing countries have been shelved... [I]n the fall, the U.K. pledged to ban nonelectrics by 2030 — a once-unthinkable law coming both too slow and much more quickly than seemed possible not very long ago. Similar plans are now in place in 16 other countries, plus Massachusetts and California. Canada recently raised its tax on carbon sixfold. Italy cut its power-sector emissions 65 percent between 2012 and 2019, and Denmark is now aiming to reduce its overall emissions 70 percent by 2030...
[F]or all their momentum, renewables still only make up 10 percent of global electricity production. But alarmists have to take the good news where they find it....
The author also spoke to Pulitzer Prize-winner environmentalist author Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book Under a White Sky: In her book, Kolbert sketches a spectrum of interventions, from electrifying rivers to using CRISPR to save endangered species to solar geoengineering, often called "solar-radiation management," by which aerosol particles are suspended in the stratosphere to deflect some sunlight back into outer space and artificially cool the planet. "There is a slippery slope here, you know?" she says. "And where does that end?
"But there are not a lot of great choices. We're not returning to a preindustrial climate — not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime."
No, we're not (Score:4, Informative)
Next question.
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"Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..."
But on wikipedia...
A "greenhouse Earth" is a period in which there are no continental glaciers whatsoever on the planet, the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (such as water vapor and methane) are high, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) range from 28 C (82.4 F) in the tropics to 0 C (32 F) in the polar regions.[2] The Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.
The hottest time in the last 100 million years was during the Eocene [wikipedia.org].
Pretty sure this will be modded down, because... well... these facts disagree with certain world views. Facts be damned?
Re: No, we're not (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. Earth was hotter 100M years ago. How hospitable will that Earth be to mammalian life is the question that needs to be answered.
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Also the sun is getting hotter over time, it will get harder and harder to avoid the Earth becoming like Venus, we'll have to pray now that we don't cause a feed-back loop to start. With permafrosts now melting we could be in big trouble.
Re: No, we're not (Score:5, Insightful)
Permafrost in its current amount is an artifact of Ice Age. It's not something that exists in current amount on our planet in its median thermal state. It has been retreating for tens of thousands of years after latest Ice Age ended.
Just like the current glaciers are an artifact of the same Ice Age and also not something that exists in current amount on our planet in its median thermal state. And they have also been retreating ever since it ended.
Our problem is not the cycles, nor is it the feedback loops. Those have existed on our planet for hundreds of millions of years, and we're past at least two thermal peaks when planetary surface was far hotter than it will be in next few thousand years even in the worst possible predictions. Our problem is the speed of warming, which has been accelerated from its historic median by several times because of human activity of extracting hydrocarbons that got sequestered into the planetary surface in the last cooling phase of the planet too quickly.
Which is why the actually scientific (as opposed to political Green misanthropic) goal of fighting AGW is to slow warming process down to levels close(r) to natural warming rate. That way normal planetary mechanisms and normal adaptation mechanisms like evolution are once against fast enough to keep the overall abundance of systems on this planet in relative balance that has existed long before humanity emerged, and will exist long after humanity become extinct, be it due to emergence of more competitive member of homo family, or something else.
Re: No, we're not (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and hundreds of millions of years is a timescale over which the sun has increased the energy it emits significantly. One day the sun will be too hot for life on earth to survive, if we turn the planet into a greenhouse then that will happen sooner rather than later.
Crazy things can happen during snap events on earth like the time it completely froze over. The chance of the shit hitting the fan way beyond a 5ÂC increase is pretty high especially given that we're likely crippling natures ability to flatten the temperature curve by killing half of it. Right now we've killed a large percentage of ocean life, cut down most of the trees on the planet and killed off a big percentage of insects. Most animals (by mass) on the planet bigger than a rat are the food we raise to eat now. And some people think we're a small part of Earth's current ecosystem, that is extreme ignorance.
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I encourage you to stop using your rich imagination and instead look up actually documented numbers. The opposite of you claim has happened so far - latest peaks have been less hot rather than more hot than those longer in the past.
Anti-scientific catastrophism needs to stop. Especially of your kind, which just mindlessly jumps topic to topic with absurdly wide sweeping claims.
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Anti-science - is the sun getting hotter or not? How is Venus looking these days? Our sun has 5 billion years to go, do you know what it's dying heat output curve curve looks like? Life has already been on earth for around 4 billion years. Life is not going to last forever on this planet, that's nothing to with imagination or catastrophism, it's 100% fact. There's nothing absurd about understanding massive changes can happen especially when we have made massive changes on this planet in the last 100 years.
T
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"I will ignore the fact that you noted that relevance of difference in historic variations in the heat of the Sun to Earth's temperature appears to be low, and continue to argue from position where this relevance is absolute".
Ok.
>To think nothing catastrophic ever happens on a planet that has already had several mass extinction events and is in the middle of a mass extinction event right now - that is not absurd, that is completely burying your head in the sand and ignoring current reality.
There are coun
Re: No, we're not (Score:1)
If a positive feedback loop were possible, it would already have happened and the output would be stuck to the positive rail. Quid non.
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If everything else stayed the same then you'd be correct but things have changed such as the shape of the continents, the heat output of the sun, and a species killing all the other species. These changing variables are the reason that feedback loops could pass a threshold that they couldn't pass in the past.
The Earth freezing over only happened once, your statement
Could hav
Re: No, we're not (Score:5, Interesting)
You're probably thinking runaway positive feedback loops that carry things to an extreme state like Venus. There's *lots* of recognized positive feedback loops involved in "toggling" the Earth back and forth between "icehouse" and "hothouse" states, as well as between the glacial and interglacial periods within an icehouse state. We've been in an icehouse state for 2.6 million years, since the clever ape Australopithecus represented the pinnacle of human evolution. And the the birth of civilization coincides with the beginning of the current interglacial period. But those are both historical anomlaies on geologic timescales - interglacial periods are only brief reprieves from the long-lasting periods of extreme glaciation during an icehouse state, and the icehouse state itself are relatively brief aberrations from the normal hothouse state.
However, there's also compelling evidence that the Earth was in fact on the path of runaway global warming fueled by an immense amount of global volcanic activity adding CO2 to the atmosphere, which would have eventually turned us into a second Venus-like planet, until about 360 million years ago. However, that's when woody plants evolved lignin, a molecule that none of the microbes of the time could digest, and for the next 80 million years CO2 was stripped from the atmosphere and the carbon piled up as rot-proof fallen tree trunks, which eventually became coal deposits. Returning all that CO2 to the atmosphere could in fact return us to a path towards Venus-like runaway warming. We've got a long way to go before that's a threat, but the distance gets shorter as the sun gets perpetually hotter.
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Likely far more than today, because primary limiting factor on life on this planet is abundance of energy. Energy is extracted from Sun's radiation by chlorophyll-based life forms, the flora. Their cells are optimized for much higher than current CO2 contents of the air, and peak around 1500ppm (current is around 400ppm). That's what we do in greenhouses - pump more CO2 into the air mix to increase air CO2 content to more optimal levels. This results in significantly better yields.
And with more energy in th
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For someone so much smarter than me, you strangely fail to realize that caloric intake of mammals originates from plant life.
Re:No, we're not (Score:5, Informative)
"Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..."
But on wikipedia... (it was hotter 50 million years ago)
Pretty sure this will be modded down, because... well... these facts disagree with certain world views. Facts be damned?
I think it's because you ignored the ellipses. The full quote was: "Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been in the long stretch of human civilization, with everything we have ever known as a species — our histories, our agricultures, our cultures, our politics, our geopolitics — the result of climate conditions we have already left behind.
Re: No, we're not (Score:5, Insightful)
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The 1st derivative of temp wrt time is positive. Temperatures are increasing.
The 2nd derivative, which is roughly proportional to excess CO2 in the atmosphere, is also increasing.
The 3rd derivative, which is the rate that CO2 is being added, is positive. CO2 emissions are still increasing year-over-year, mostly because of growing emissions in developing countries.
However, the 4th derivative is negative. The rate of increase in CO2 emissions is falling fast.
If you paid attention in your high school calcul
Onshore wind, goethermal, hydro and another thing (Score:2)
Solar, Wind, and EVs are all tech with tiny market shares, but their year-over-year growth is very strong, so they won't say minuscule for long.
The growth in solar PV and EV cannot be sustained for much longer. Use your math skills to tell me how much mining for silicon, lithium, cobalt, and other minerals we will need to maintain this growth and compare that to the growth seen in these mining efforts, and how fast they must grow to meet this demand to reach beyond "minuscule" market share.
Solar power and EVs will be a fad that will see an end once it is shown the markets cannot keep up with demand. The prices of EVs will spike as supply fails to
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Probably factored in but other things besides just transitioning from fossil fuels to green energy, ex as the developing nations develop the birth rate tends to slow and they transition from quite literally burning shit in their hut to at least a natural gas power plant or something. Still bad but less bad.
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Actually, burning shit is carbon neutral. Still bad as it is better to return the shit to the soil as fertilizer, which can lead to sequestering CO2, an improvement.
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"If you paid attention in your high school calculus class, you should know that higher derivatives will soon dominate the curve."
ShanghaiBill with the gratuitous non-sequitur. Also, judging by his definitions of 3rd and 4th derivatives of "temp wrt time" it's clear he didn't pay attention in his calculus class, nor does he seem to realize that temp and CO2 are not calculus subjects.
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But at least the sea level is a bit lower, because all those Scottish and British Fishing boats are now in the dry-dock, because they ruined their livelihood by voting for Brexit.
Obviously not read the memo (Score:1)
We have passed the tipping point a few times already, so we get to melt.
Fun question to ask, what do the climate models predict if our carbon output is halved, quartered, dropped to zero?
Re:Obviously not read the memo (Score:5, Informative)
what do the climate models predict if our carbon output is halved, quartered, dropped to zero?
If human CO2 emissions dropped to zero tomorrow, the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere would cause continued warming. To avoid a 2C rise, we would need to pull gigatonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequester it.
Obviously, we are not going to do that. So we are going to blow right through the 2C threshold. It is too late to stop that.
But can we collectively stay below 3C or even 4C? That may require a level of collective human intelligence and cooperation that we haven't seen before.
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To avoid a 2C rise, we would need to pull gigatonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequester it.
Trees pull CO2 out of the air and sequester it quite rapidly and efficiently. But we would need to try to stop the forrest from burning for a bit, it creates a 2 way swing.
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Trees pull CO2 out of the air and sequester it quite rapidly and efficiently
No.
It took millions of years for 'trees' to take the carbon out of the air that we put back in in a single lifetime.
We don't have that long to wait. Life has evolved to decompose the dead trees since then anyway. So it won't work again even if it were possible to grow enough trees.
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Why can't we cut down a bunch of trees, dump them into a giant hole so they can't decompose, grow a bunch more trees and repeat?
Re:Obviously not read the memo (Score:4, Informative)
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That's a good point, we would need to do crop rotation for it to be sustainable. Alfalfa makes a good biofuel!
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You can degas the wood, burn the gas and store the charcoal. It's supposedly stable enough to be used as soil improvement.
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You can degas the wood, burn the gas and store the charcoal. It's supposedly stable enough to be used as soil improvement.
How is it improving the soil if it's stable...
Making the soil more porous, so more oxygen is available to the roots of plants, is one improvement.
Holding water might be another improvement.
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You're also burying the other nutrients that trees need to grow. Like any kind of farming, you can only remove nutrients so long before the soil becomes barren dirt.
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Trees pull CO2 out of the air and sequester it quite rapidly and efficiently
No.
It took millions of years for 'trees' to take the carbon out of the air that we put back in in a single lifetime.
We don't have that long to wait. Life has evolved to decompose the dead trees since then anyway. So it won't work again even if it were possible to grow enough trees.
Bamboo?
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You're still going to be removing other nutrients that the bamboo needs to grow.
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Trees pull CO2 out of the air and sequester it quite rapidly and efficiently.
They do. But you would need a forest the size of Eurasia to make a significant difference.
Trees are not going to solve the problem.
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Trees are not going to solve the problem.
True. But no one thing is going to solve the problem, and planting trees is a good idea.
Re: Obviously not read the memo (Score:1)
I was being facetious.
I have in fact had the chance to ask a few leading climate warm bodies that question, and after getting past their pre-emptive bugger off face, it turns out the models do not really do that well under those conditions. So... not sure what the models are modelling is my position at the moment.
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what do the climate models predict if our carbon output is halved, quartered, dropped to zero?
If human CO2 emissions dropped to zero tomorrow, the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere would cause continued warming. To avoid a 2C rise, we would need to pull gigatonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequester it.
Obviously, we are not going to do that. So we are going to blow right through the 2C threshold. It is too late to stop that.
But can we collectively stay below 3C or even 4C? That may require a level of collective human intelligence and cooperation that we haven't seen before.
When the environmental movement started, world population was 3.6 billion, and now we are around 7.8 billion.
And The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 by an industrialist, in other words, already highly connected people, and big business.
In all that time, it has tended to be driven by the interests of big business to create new markets and new technologies. These days it is about promoting bioengineering and patents to replace ordinary foods.
If this was really an ethical question, we would have been collecti
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So what you're saying is that the higher order derivatives won't soon dominate the curve? Didn't you just post:
"Solar, Wind, and EVs are all tech with tiny market shares, but their year-over-year growth is very strong, so they won't say minuscule for long.
Don't worry. Be happy. The world is getting better."
What an asshole you are.
Butterfly cause and effect (Score:2)
I fancy myself as something of a news release impact whisperer, and to claim even a Pyrrhic victory in the news that the Earth isn't warming as fast as the worst case prediction suggested possible, well, that's simply cannon fodder for non-anthropogenic climate change crowd.
There are worldly citizens amongst us that believe incredibly poorly-woven conspiracy theories, and in magical theory and beings, and that a butterfly's wings on this side of the earth can create a typhoon in SE Asia... yet, the likelih
Isn't uncertainty a proven concept. (Score:2)
''hazardous and unequal future, and all are clouded with uncertainties''
Naysayers and bears provide a necessary part of any exchange. They provide liquidity in uncertain markets and motivation for those that want to prove them wrong. The ability for use to not only capture naturally occurring energy, more importantly the ability for use to store it densely is significantly more positive than it is negative.
It is creating the necessity for us to create devices able to use stored energy that isn't harmful an
We were hoping ... (Score:2)
Looks like we failed.
China is crushing it (Score:1)
There has been a short reprieve, due to the China virus, but it won't last long. China is literally burning every fuel they can get - low grade coal, gas, heavy oil, etc. Even if you deleted the US and Europe, China's carbon emissions would still be enough to continue accelerating global warming.
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Are you an idiot or something? The science has proved that burning coal in China and India does not affect the climate. That's why these two "developing" countries don't have any obligations under global climate doctrine.
Get a brain, moran.
Re: China is crushing it (Score:2)
Sarcasm or idiocy? I go for both.
Think of the children! (Score:2)
Ha-ha! You might only be 90% as screwed as you thought you'd be.
Elizabeth Kolbert is a hypocrite (Score:1)
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Problem is, she can't support them. She's not omnipotent, can't send them to Mars. They still have to live on Earth, and in all likelihood will at some point have to claw land, food, and gasps of fresh air from someone else. But I guess it's more important that she gets to live out her fantasy of birthday parties and soccer practice before she sets them up for all that?
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And why exactly should any westerner not be able to support 3 kids? Seriously? You have a big mental problem ...
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Why shouldn't 1 billion "westerners" be able to support 3 billion kids? Or 6 billion which would be the real number.
Not one of use can support only ourselves, much less kids, using only our own efforts. We all rely on society and need to consider societal good. Your comment is, frankly, sociopathic.
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Ignore the 6 children part, misread a post. The point remains the same, the planet doesn't need human population growth, it takes an asshole to think that doesn't apply to them because they are sufficiently wealthy. I thought something like the tragedy of the commons was some the intellectual elite here at /. would already understand.
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For every woman that has 3 kids is one that has only 1 or none ...
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For some definition of "right" and "support", no doubt chosen to support your point of view. The last thing the world needs is human population growth and the only reason people feel otherwise comes from outdated religious teachings pushed on subjects to grow power.
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I think 3 kids is remarkable for her considering how ugly she is. ... I forgot, what was your problem again?
Terminology: Opposite of an "alarmist" (Score:5, Insightful)
Damaging levels of global heating due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions trends and history is not in serious question, so criticizing those who would raise the alarm about this serious problem amounts to saying go to hell while I party on.
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must be a "die in the fire"ist.
Damaging levels of global heating due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions trends and history is not in serious question, so criticizing those who would raise the alarm about this serious problem amounts to saying go to hell while I party on.
Bingo
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Re: heat islands. I'm sure the thousands of climate scientists working on measuring and understanding this issue will thank you for your novel peer-reviewed insight into how urban heat islands have distorted their models. It is amazing that they never thought o
Only one way to return to a pre industrial climate (Score:3)
Therefore, we must immediately boycott industry in the "developing world". Western countries must slap trillions of dollars in climate tarriffs on any product that is not produced in a zero carbon emissions manner TODAY. Africa, SE Asia, and South America cannot industrialize. You will have to pay more for products manufactured in a country with strict environmental/emissions controls. Scrap 100% of the gasoline powered cars RIGHT NOW. Ban every oil, coal, and gas powdered process RIGHT NOW. Immediate ban/buyback on 100% of all gasoline burning vehicles RIGHT NOW. That will slow the problem, reversing it will be even harder.
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That might work.
Right up to the point where people start starving. Which they will, pretty much as soon as you ban all the farm machinery used to grow the food, and all the transport used to move the food from farm to city....
Yeah, good luck with that.
Also, it should be noted that the temps now are NOT 1.5C higher than they've ever been. Higher than they've been since the last glaciation, yes. Higher than ever? No, we're not even up to the "normal" temp for the planet during an interglacial, much les
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That might work.
Right up to the point where people start starving. Which they will, pretty much as soon as you ban all the farm machinery used to grow the food, and all the transport used to move the food from farm to city....
Yeah, good luck with that.
Also, it should be noted that the temps now are NOT 1.5C higher than they've ever been. Higher than they've been since the last glaciation, yes. Higher than ever? No, we're not even up to the "normal" temp for the planet during an interglacial, much less the norm before the Ice Age that we're still in....
Oh,and you're going to have a hard time convincing people that the best thing they can do for "civilization" is die in job-lots....
Oh, just curious - did you include yourself as one of the expendables? Or was that just Those Other People?
Co2 levels over the last 800,000 years are more than double the highest peak at any time in that period. There were several "ice ages" in between.
Read more.
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Co2 levels over the last 800,000 years are more than double the highest peak at any time in that period. There were several "ice ages" in between.
Read more.
Err that is to say today Co2 levels are more than double any point in the last 800,000 years.
Also, the sharp rise begins with the industrial revolution , so it's all happened in an extraordinarily brief period of time.
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No, there were several glaciations in that period. The Ice Age has been going on for megayears, and will continue till continental drift rearranges things a bit more. Till then, it'll be glaciation followed by interglacial followed by glaciation....
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No, there were several glaciations in that period. The Ice Age has been going on for megayears, and will continue till continental drift rearranges things a bit more. Till then, it'll be glaciation followed by interglacial followed by glaciation....
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abru... [noaa.gov].
"We call times with large ice sheets “glacial periods” (or ice ages) and times without large ice sheets “interglacial periods.” The most recent glacial period occurred between about 120,000 and 11,500 years ago. Since then, Earth has been in an interglacial period called the Holocene."
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That sounds like a good thing for developing countries. So what's the problem?
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No, that's not the current thinking.
If you look at agreements like Paris the assumption is that every country is on an emissions curve, which peaks and then starts to decline. Western countries are already over the peak, or should be. We reached a high(ish) standard of living by emitting vast amounts of CO2 and if the rest of the world comes up to that level then everyone is screwed. Therefore we need to keep reducing our emissions and developing a sustainable way of life, demonstrating an end goal for deve
Considering the span this has been looked at.. (Score:3)
Climate science really became quite visible in the 60s, and even before that, voices were raised in alert.
The 60s though was where it really started to enter the political and commercial mind. There have been pushes for greater efficiency and "doing more with less". Combustion engines are far cleaner now than they were just decades ago, and far more efficient (anyone else remember lead additives to fuel to help the car engine last?). Electronics have made vast leaps ahead in efficiency and power reduction. Home consumption (lighting and entertainment especially) are far more efficient.
The research into renewables started way back then simply because of the warnings and the probability that we couldn't perpetually rely on fossil fuels and carbon emitters.
So, yes, we've already slowed down global warming, quite considerably from where it would have been if we hadn't been researching deeply decades ago.
One of the biggest misses was greater adoption of nuclear in the intervening time (research has really suffered, as the environmental movement practically shut it down as a mass product), and it's only now starting to pick up again.
And even more stuff is phasing over to renewables as greater capacity comes online, with more renewable sources becoming practical all the time.
The projections, as they are, are given the state of our tech and infrastructure today. It's not factoring in how it'll progress as we bring in less emission heavy items. So we're pretty likely not at the bad end of the scale, and as long as we don't get lax, this'll be uncomfortable, and hopefully part of the species learning that we're playing with the big toys now, and it's about time we grew up.
Then progress should push us even further down the efficiency route that gets us progressively cleaner and less intrusive energy.
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One of the biggest misses was greater adoption of nuclear in the intervening time (research has really suffered, as the environmental movement practically shut it down as a mass product), and it's only now starting to pick up again.
That train is never late. Is this an alt account blindseer or is this your protege?
Do something with all the spend fuel rods sitting in cooling pools right on site at the very reactors that spent them. They are ALL still sitting there, ALL of them , at every site. I'm not insinuating that nothing can be done. Just that it hasn't.
Solve this problem then we can talk
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Solve this problem then we can talk
The Democrats that have been holding back the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for the past 40+ years are slowly dying off or going senile, meaning they are leaving office on a walker or on a gurney. We have just a handful of them to go. After that we can get our nuclear waste processing started and no body has to listen to this bullshit any more.
It's been the Democrats for 50 years that complain about the nuclear waste and then when bills some to them on funding these projects they get voted down,
Re: Considering the span this has been looked at.. (Score:3)
Nuclear waste should not be store in a mountain and especially should not be transported in bulk across the country. We can't even manage to keep train cars filled with human waste from being neglected and contaminating local communities. Once there is no money in doing something, you can expect it to be done half-assed.
Technology to process used materials from earlier generations of reactors and used in newer generations of reactors must be done at or near the original site. This is expensive and even with
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Nuclear waste should not be store in a mountain and especially should not be transported in bulk across the country. We can't even manage to keep train cars filled with human waste from being neglected and contaminating local communities. Once there is no money in doing something, you can expect it to be done half-assed.
Technology to process used materials from earlier generations of reactors and used in newer generations of reactors must be done at or near the original site. This is expensive and even with grants requires a substantial private sector investment. Yucca mountain on the otherhand is a grifter's dream. Multiple areas of exploitation with little to no oversight. Lots of greasy, fat pork.
I think MacMann might be perfectly happy to dump in in the ocean or grind it up and add it to baby formula. Just deal with it already right? fuck responsibility. Yeah it's the "senile" democrats that are the problem ...
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There was a lot of research into nuclear and the environmental movement for a really long time did not influence politics much. But the research did not really pan out for nuclear and caused some of the most costly failed research projects ever while still not bringing down the high cost of nuclear. Instead it became even more expensive and in de-regularized energy markets nuclear does not have change anymore. At the same time the cost of renewables continuously dropped and with economy of scale got reall
Didn't leave stone age because of lack of rocks... (Score:2)
Snicker - Slowing Warming? Get serious! (Score:2)
Human activities have a very limited impact on global temperature, which is driven almost totally by the Sun.
However, to the LIMITED extent that atmospheric carbon MIGHT be related, the United States can congratulate ourselves as being the ONLY nation to actually REDUCE carbon releases in the past several years. Mostly, it's been the retirement of coal power plants and their replacement with natural gas. China, on the other hand, is building dozens of new coal plants, making American efforts entirely worth
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Human activities have a very limited impact on global temperature, which is driven almost totally by the Sun.
In the sense that our heat and light comes from the sun, yes.
In the sense that CO2 is not the major reason for having it warn here, nope.
However, to the LIMITED extent that atmospheric carbon MIGHT be related, the ... idiot.
Neither limited nor might
United States can congratulate ourselves as being the ONLY
Wrong.You should read some news sometimes.
nation to actually REDUCE carbon releases in the pas
We need to reverse global warming... (Score:2)
... not slow it. So this is a totally pointless question to ask.
flatten the curve (Score:2)
Collectively, we're far too stupid to grasp how to flatten jack shit. Math is too hard and the truth too inconvenient. And basic intuition like cause and effect isn't possible except for the most obvious and immediate cases. If the signal to noise ratio is poor, we won't be able to tell there is something wrong. It'll be like slowly boiling a frog.
If technology effed the planet... (Score:2)
Who says that different technology won't make things worse? History is littered (no pun intended) with human creations that started out to be a good thing but in the end were a bad idea.
Read below for the suprising answer... (Score:1)
No.
Politics, not technology, is the barrier (Score:1)
People Need Some Hope (Score:2)
I'm glad to see an ounce of good news amongst this topic. Here are a few things big and small people can do on their own to chip in and influence the "neighbors":
- keep a basket of old paper to recycle yourself, and use it as scratch paper and as a crumb catcher/lunch plate when you eat at your desk
- next time you need a car, buy an electric like a Tesla (8 year battery warranty) and a dryer plug type charger converter
- grow and cook your own food sometimes. Pick easy stuff you don't have to fertilize or pa
Re:All climate stuff leads with a lie (Score:5, Informative)
Lol. You should read the article before you post. Your complaint is with the summary, although even the summary gave you an ellipsis that should have been a pretty big warning.
In one sense it's a cost question (Score:5, Interesting)
But in another sense it's a moral question, since while we might be able to adapt, most likely only wealthy people and nations would do so adequately. But that is the small potatoes of the moral question. Many other species (and ecosystems) of complex life would not be able to adapt fast enough, so we are giving them a death sentence.
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The cost of effective adaptation (e.g. to a 4 or 5 degree C global warming above current temperatures) is analysed to be many times greater than the cost of transforming our energy and transport system to non-emitting.
But in another sense it's a moral question, since while we might be able to adapt, most likely only wealthy people and nations would do so adequately. But that is the small potatoes of the moral question. Many other species (and ecosystems) of complex life would not be able to adapt fast enough, so we are giving them a death sentence.
Here is the part of the equation that makes it difficult. Those which are currently in a position of wealth due to their exploitation of fossil fuels know full well that they are not going to have to face any of the consequences. That likely realize future generations will. They do not care.
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You've gotta wonder, what else might you have wrong because you believed what some barely literate Internet pundit said. Scary thought, hey?
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The earth has been warmer than it is now for the vast majority of its history.
So? That doesn't make the coming effects of warning any less painful on us. People are often confused about this, so let me be clear: The goal is not to save the planet, the planet will be just fine regardless, the goal is to avoid massive pain for humanity.
Maybe the right question isn't "How can we alter our behavior to keep the earth as it is now forever.".
No, that's exactly the right question, unless at some point we decide that we'd be more comfortable with the climate altered a little. We're at the point where we can begin engineering the planet to be the way we want it, and we should do that. Cautiousl
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, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..."
No climate scientist says that.
This is what is known a straw man.
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No climate scientist says that.
Its a quote from one, and the summary begins with it, so by "no climate scientist" you mean "besides the ones that do"
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Ah, I see you error.
Pro tip: journalists aren't climate scientists.
Given that climate scientists know perfectly well that the climate was much warmer on paleological timescales, I believe the usual phrase is "I call bullshit".
The most any would say is "warmest since pre-industrial times" (and if you can't work out that this refers to human history, I can't help you.
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Pro tip: journalists aren't climate scientists.
Journalists that quote climate scientists are, apparently, according to you, not quoting climate scientists.
That poster is correct. The entire fucking lot of you is dishonest. Right here you are spinning the fuck out of this. Dishonesty.
So its not only the climate scientists lying, its you too.
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CO2 in 2019 was 409.8 parts per mllion, higher than any point in the last 800,000 years.
Um, uh, the plants are happy. That's a good thing, right?
Not the plants suffering from the drought, nor the plants that are having problems breeding from the lack of the usual insects.
Feeding plants lots of CO2 without increasing other nutrients is like feeding people sugar, sure they put on weight, but are fat people healthier?
Re: Warmer than it has EVER been? (Score:2)
We're talking maily about the holocene. Not the entire geological history and certainly not the first billion years; before life took over many chemical processes on Earth.
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I find your pedantry hysterical considering you don't understand what "emulate" means. I guess being an ignoramus is OK when its in defense of Apple propaganda, right?
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You're also wrong if you think your chart would show the entire history of the Earth. For all we know was the Earth a hot molten blob during it's formation. So how about we skip over the little mistakes and don't take every word said too serious?!
The point is, we need to be more careful about what we do and how we treat our environment, because we frankly don't have much of a clue what the consequences will be. The problem is massive and the causes are hard to get under control. So it's very reasonable want