Trees and Land Absorbed Almost No CO2 Last Year 184
The Earth's natural carbon sinks -- oceans, forests, and soils -- are increasingly struggling to absorb human carbon emissions as global temperatures rise, raising concerns that achieving net-zero targets may become impossible. "In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed," reports The Guardian. "The final result was that forest, plants and soil -- as a net category -- absorbed almost no carbon." The Guardian reports: The 2023 breakdown of the land carbon sink could be temporary: without the pressures of drought or wildfires, land would return to absorbing carbon again. But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems, with massive implications for the climate crisis. Reaching net zero is impossible without nature. In the absence of technology that can remove atmospheric carbon on a large scale, the Earth's vast forests, grasslands, peat bogs and oceans are the only option for absorbing human carbon pollution, which reached a record 37.4bn tonnes in 2023.
At least 118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets. But rising temperatures, increased extreme weather and droughts are pushing the ecosystems into uncharted territory. The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted. "We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land -- terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability," Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
"Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end."
At least 118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets. But rising temperatures, increased extreme weather and droughts are pushing the ecosystems into uncharted territory. The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted. "We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land -- terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability," Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
"Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end."
Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Insightful)
Exxon predicted this in 1970. Others did too. Nobody did the right thing.
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Interesting)
More than that, they actively discouraged of doing the right thing. ... Until they created political roadblocks to force us into this path.
There was political will in 1988
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:4, Insightful)
They didn't, Conservatives did. When they realized Democrats were advocating for changes to fix the problem, they thought it would be a good idea to politicize it. They could easily sell it to their yokels as, "see, with us, you won't have to change your lifestyle." 'twas but a short step from that to "they do not understand 'America', real Americans do not believe in anthropocentric global warming."
Now we have a certain political class that wants to return to the beliefs of 60 years ago, when everyone they knew was fat and happy under the feeling that if they believe something, then it is true. It prevents the real world from intruding on their lives.
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Informative)
Not really true. Conservatives did help, but the original campaign of lies and denial are from Big Oil.
Re: Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:2)
Re: Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Insightful)
The GOP are not the only "conservatives" on the planet and this happens to be a global problem.
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Interesting how the censor trolls are proving your point? But discussing "concepts of plans" for how to fix the moderation on Slashdot is obviously moot.
I personally don't think Reagan gets sufficient discredit for the damage he did to public education. Well, not so much Reagan as that super-hypocrite William Bennett. Apparently still alive and last I heard from him was his praises of the fat orange albatross. But now you have me wondering about the years you picked. Were you referring to someone in particu
Re: Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Interesting)
US President Carter in the late 70s tried to get things started to mitigate the issue. But Regan took over in 1981 and undid what little Carter did. Plus he doubled down on fossil fuels. So blame the people who voted GOP the 1980 and in the future for this.
Granted the Democrats gave up on fixing this when Clinton took over in 1992. Gore did get religion on Climate Change, but SOTUS installed Bush in 2000. So here we are.
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There's no sense blaming people for being dumb enough to vote for politicians who hide the truth from them. I think it's more important to fix our problems. But if you really want the ultimate scapegoat it's individuals who manipulate public perception for their own personal gain. That group ranges from uber-powerful media moguls to people who create misleading memes for reddit points.
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Yep. Bill Clinton was a corporatist trash bag and oh yeah, a fucking sexual criminal, and we are STILL being subjected to appearances from him by the "Democratic" party.
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He was not a sexual criminal, he had consensual sex with an adult working at the white house. I am sure there are plenty of people who have a sexual relationship with coworkers and they are not the same level in the company hierarchy. What he did really should be between him, Monica and his wife its really shouldn't anybody else's business. I see little or no relevance to how good he is at running a country.
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:4, Insightful)
He was not a sexual criminal, he had consensual sex with an adult working at the white house.
I'm not even talking about Monica, but since you bring her up, it's not possible for an intern to have an equitable relationship with the POTUS.
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Interesting)
If we really want to date our fuckery as a species, scientists first started predicting climate instability from carbon in the 1870s when spectography first revealed what CO2 does to IR light alarming industrial chemists that coal and steam industry might have unpleasant effects on the climate. We knew at least the outlines of the problem 150 years ago.
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Sorry, but in the 1870's it wasn't clear whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. (Well, at least not to those living outside the tropics.)
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, Google, Apple, and Facebook most likely already have volumes of data on the negative effects that social media and routine smartphone usage have on children (and possibly adults).
Binding scientists studying the harmful effects of your products with NDAs should be illegal. In fact, scientists should have a "duty to warn" when they find such things.
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A lot of people did the right things, just not powerful enough people. Activists have been raising hell about CO2 and other emissions since at least the 1960s, long before Antarctic research revealed the hole in the ozone layer in 1985. Offset credits for lead started in the 70s, and were expanded to CO2 starting in 1988. Mark Trexler, one of the drivers behind carbon offsets, said they were largely a philanthropic effort at that time, to get that ball rolling until public policy caught up with reality - wh
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:2)
Well said. There seems to be a pretty big gap between acknowledging it and doing anything. CA has started to look at more mixed neighborhoods to prevent the endless traffic from commuting in LA and Bay Area, but it goes on, 10 lane traffic jams in the state that acknowledges it. It actually requires a Holy Phuk war level response yesterday, but debating about the reality of it makes such a nice distraction.
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No they are not, they are people and most people will protect their short term interests first. Give most people access to resources they will use them, liberals or conservatives will still travel the world take a car instead of walking or biking.
Finger pointing serves no purpose other than serving as a distraction to solving the real problem, we can do what needs to be done or we can argue about who's fault it is. People are going to suffer, I don't think there is any way around that and its going to be th
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So the thing you find wrong with the Holocaust is that the Nazis actually did some strategic planning to organize it? You are morally corrupt.
420 (Score:2)
Take Note (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider carefully and in the near future, hopefully your mob will make the right choice of who to tear limb from limb.
Re: Take Note (Score:2)
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If the mob could act intelligently, we wouldn't be in this situation, or at least not to this degree.
I asked Claude (Score:2)
I asked Claude. I'm guessing AI will be nuclear powered so discounting it for now.
Actually, it was the most serious chat I've had with an LLM and I'm impressed.
While a DOJ page suggested that transportation and industrial use were the biggest fossil fuel using sectors, if you just ask (Claude) about CO2 emissions it was much more enlightening. And Claude creates these little "artifact" documents which is quite useful.
For one thing, coal and gas power plants overshadow everything else. If you can switch coal
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> While a DOJ page suggested that transportation and industrial use were the biggest fossil fuel using sectors, if you just ask (Claude) about CO2 emissions it was much more enlightening. And Claude creates these little "artifact" documents which is quite useful.
For one thing, coal and gas power plants overshadow everything else.
So do the overshadowing coal/gas emissions also include electricity run industry? How big a consumer of electricity is it? How would time of use pricing affect those industries?
A
Get rid of food fertilizing with fossil fuel. (Score:2)
A big one is to get rid of food fertilizing with fossil fuel.
Will not be easy, but we have the means to do it.
Besides : Halving meat production will free up so much space for new forests it's unbelievable.
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Interesting, but the answers are fixated on what could cause CO2 reduction in a time scale of one or two years.
We need more reductions on a longer term scale.
(It also looked at electrical generation, which is part, but only part, of the total emissions.)
Hah ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hah ok (Score:5, Informative)
This indicates that trees didn't grow last year
It means there was no net growth.
Some trees grew. Others rotted or burned.
2023 was a record year for forest fires.
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I think the concern is that climate change has increased the amount of fires (record hot year) and therefore making it harder to use the forests as a sink.
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You can also only count on growing so many trees, and that each of those trees is going to have a limit on how much CO2 they can absorb and sequester. And then yes, when you count deforestation, either through human activity or wildfires, even where everything else is equal, you're going to start hitting those limits.
We keep looking for some sort of Get Out Of Jail free card, some magical solution, whether it's carbon sequestration, tree planting, iron filings in the sea, increasing cloud cover, space mirro
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Unfortunately, newly planted trees have a very high mortality. Most of them are dead within a year or two, because of unfavorable conditions. You'd have more luck turning the newly burned areas into burshland, establishing small groves (giving them sufficient care to get started), and then letting them spread. But that takes a lot of time. (Decades at least.)
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You can only reduce forest fires in the long term by moderating tree density and hauling out dead wood.
We can reduce forest fires by reducing CO2 emissions.
Global warming reduces rainfall in many forests and causes heat that dries out trees, so they burn more easily.
2023 was the hottest year on record and had the most forest fires. That was not a coincidence.
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Thank you for clarifying what the summary should have. I work in sustainability and my first thought was "This summary is trash because this is not possible". So I did what any Slashdotter would do: I opened the article in another tab, but when to the Slashdot comments first.
You saved me an article read.
Misleading headline here and on source (Score:3)
Tree continued to grow and forests continued to absorb billions of tonnes of CO2.
But the natural output of CO2 by said forests has increased so that forests are no longer large net CO2 reducers.
Forests used to be considered to take up about 2x more CO2 than they emitted: "Forests emitted on average 8.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorbed 16 billion between 2001 and 2019." but that dynamic is what is being highlighted here.
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I think forests being carbon sinks is only a short term artifact of the fact that we have so many young forests due to reforestation after the deforestation of the last 500 years. A mature forest is going to have as almost as much gradual CO2 release due to decay as there is capture due to growth, with an occasional rapid release due to fires. The only exception is if there is some mechanism that sequesters organic material before it can rot or burn, like a peat bog, or rivers carrying fallen trees out to
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So......cut old trees and plant fresh ones is the answer ? I know people in other countries, regular people have started taking matters in their own hands and many plant trees themselves (when the governments do not do it) in spaces previously occupied by trees that have burned down.
Yes, if those old trees are used/stored in a way that doesn't release the carbon stored in them back in to the atmosphere. There was a recent suggestion to bury that wood: https://sciencemediacentre.es/... [sciencemediacentre.es]
Re:Misleading headline here and on source (Score:4, Interesting)
Every bucket has a top, every system has a maximum carrying capacity. This idea that somehow because fossil fuels are relatively cheap and high density energy storage mediums, that thermodynamics somehow is magically suspended is the very core of the magical thinking of defenders of such energy sources. The physical laws of our universe don't care about our economic systems or are short term interests, or hell even our long term interests. Increase the thermal equilibrium of any system, whether a pot of water or the atmosphere and oceans of our planet, and things will heat up (in other words, more energy in the system). To deny it is to basically deny bedrock physical laws we've known about since the 19th century.
magical thinking? (Score:3)
IMO, except for some core "deniers" with financial interests involved? Nobody thinks this is a situation where you can burn fossil fuels and not increase the thermal equilibrium of the system as a whole.
The *real* thinking most people have is that the system is massive enough so it can't really be pushed to a "breaking point" just by this one activity.
And to be fair.... your average person would reason this is so based on simple observation. Volcanic eruptions happen on a regular basis, for example -- and y
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This is EXACTLY what I came here for clarification about! It makes NO sense to claim that suddenly, for one year, our vegetation collectively stopped absorbing any CO2. It should have all died if that was the case!
It amazes me how some people are SO desperate to write an article that furthers their agenda or view, that they'll spin it to be this misleading and confusing.
I'm already "sold" on the idea that we have a climate that's continually warming and that human actions led to an increase in speed of thi
How come there's no effect on the Keeling curve? (Score:2)
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First of all, I am a firm believer in the effects of climate change, to the point that I'm very familiar with the
Keeling curve [ucsd.edu]. A shift in 8 Gigatons per year should be noticeable,
Should it? 8 gigatons is a little over one part per million of the atmosphere. The winter to summer variation is about 6 ppm.
Looking at the Keeling curve https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/tren... [noaa.gov] the slope is definitely increasing.
The curve itself doesn't say whether the increase in slope is a decrease in absorption or an increase in emission, but sites I see tend to say emissions aren't increasing (e.g., https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org] . The headline here is misleading; the text says "emissions “are appro
Bad News: Temperature is a lagging indicator (Score:3)
If we held our greenhouse gasses at today's levels, the indicated equilibrium temperature we would reach in a hundred years or so is a couple of degrees C warmer than right now. But we keep making that number bigger and he keep pushing to get there sooner, because the hotter the atmosphere and the bigger the difference between the sink temperatures and the atmospheric temperatures, the faster we heat the sinks and melt the ice.
We are currently basking in an average world global temperature of 15C, but have set our thermostat to over 17C, fortunately our central heating system sucks and it will take quite a while to get to the temperature we have chosen. But if we don't think we are going to like the temperature we have chosen, then we really should adjust the thermostat downwards. We started paying attention at 13.5C, but rather than immediately adjusting the thermostat, we have been turning it up every year as if we wish the planet were warmer.
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Another factor is that warmer oceans can hold less CO2. I'm not sure we're yet close to when the oceans start emitting the CO2 they've absorbed, but as they approach saturation (partially due to the rising temperature at the surface) they will slow down their rate of absorption.
That's probably a very big factor, but I've got no idea how big.
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Another humor-rich target (Score:2)
Without a single Funny so far.
Don't worry! (Score:2)
Eric Schmidt, who is not a scientist, says that since we won't meet the climate targets on time anyway, we should just fire up the coal plants so AI can solve the problem. Don't worry about AI not existing yet, it's just a matter of scale says another billionaire who has every one of his bets on the AI train, and is also not a scientist.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:5, Informative)
Then there is another fact: CO2 does absorb electromagnetic waves in the near Infrared, especially between wavelengths of 13 to 17 micrometers, which corresponds to a black body of a temperature between 170 K and 220 K. The actual average temperature of Earth's surface is about 290 K, but 170 K - 220 K is the temperature range of Earth's tropopause. Basically, CO2 blocks all temperature radiation from below the tropopause. Earth's atmospheric temperature in the troposphere follows an adiabatic law, which means that a higher tropopause means higher surface temperatures. Or to be more clear, the tropopause appears, because of the absorption properties of Earth's troposphere.
Those are facts you can check yourself too. Fill a balloon with hydrogen or helium, use a thermometer and an antenna as payload and record a temperature profile of Earth's atmosphere!
You can also check at what rate different type of plants absorb CO2 at which temperatures. You will notice that for instance monocots, which include most of our common crops like wheat, corn and rice, have their optimum at lower temperatures than eudicots. which means that at higher temperatures, we would have to shift our nutrition to new types of plants. Ever wondered why most ancient civilizations we know of started out in subtropic or moderate climate? Because monocots in general generate higher yields from farming - also a fact you can check for yourself.
No, this is still not fearmongering. It's a list of facts. The fear might arise if you are wondering what this means for our future.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Informative)
> It's at first a statement of fact. "Not much of CO2 absoption by forests, soil and oceans in 2023".
The article linked by the article to the article wasn't very helpful.
Some mish-mash about "preliminary emulation of data-driven models" by someone focused more on climate policy changes than data collection. I'm not sure what standard models you are using that report on and predict how much carbon dioxide a tree "breathe's" in a given year, but I have trouble with the idea that a tree can simply cease to fix any carbon for a whole year, especially based on flimsy reporting like this.
I'd stick to more basic reporting from organizations like the Arbor Day foundation:
https://www.usda.gov/media/blo... [usda.gov]
Trees do indeed fix carbon every year at a nearly constant rate. It doesn't simply disappear due to magic AI projected hokum. I'm not sure how much ambient temperature or other factors may affect that one tree's impact, but I don't think it will just disappear for no reason.
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If you don't understand the concept of a net change, you should withdraw from this conversation until you do.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Informative)
Carbon uptake by plant life is quantitative and follows mass law conservation. The basic statement that "not much" CO2 uptake happens couldn't be true unless the plant life is in dormant state which could happen in winter or trapped under sea ice but not in summer for just about every spot on the planet.
Science will only help your case if you use it properly.
Re: perhaps we can save co2 (Score:2)
If we're on a sinking ship, exactly how much panic is too much panic?
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Apparently any panic is too much panic.
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Blind panic interferes with being able to do anything useful during a crisis.
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What's your plan for China and India?
How much money should go into prevention vs. adaptation?
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Tax all imports to raise the price to be equivalent to local production, with all environment, social and climate costs accounted for. Or simply ban some imports.
You're not scared to do it on EVs when it threatens the sacred car industry, do it for a better reason. There being no world dictator, that's the best one country can do.
It's too late for major prevention, adaptation is where we're at now. Unfortunately all the prevention stuff still has to be done, otherwise the ecosystem is toast. Basically every
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What kind of argument is that? China and India have lax environmental laws so that means everyone else can too?
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It's the utter madness of the late state denialism; the advocating of the Tragedy of the Commons as an economic policy.
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Why are you always making "perfect" the enemy of "better"?
The US reducing their atmospheric carbon output is not dependent in any way on other countries reducing their output. Yet, other countries are more likely to get started if the more developed countries lead by example instead of making excuses and happily burying their heads in their asses.
Also: economies of scale tend to accelerate needed changes. If the EU and the US get serious, then the price comes down which makes the solution more available i
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We are already reducing our own CO2 while the Chinese who do everyone's manufacturing get a free pass.
don't credit Canada [Re: perhaps we can save co2] (Score:2)
Why does the US emit 10x the CO2 as Canada?
Because the US ha ten times higher population than Canada does.
In terms of CO2 emissions per person, Canada and the US are about the same.
(Canada is actually slightly higher in per capita emissions, but the difference is in the noise).
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Why are you pretending that the population of Canada is equal to the population of the United States?
Canada has roughly the same population as California (39m). The United States has about 350m million people, so I guess I would expect the carbon output to also be 10x for the same quality of life.
Seems like you have no idea what you are talking about.
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If we're on a sinking ship, exactly how much panic is too much panic?
The problem is that it is a very slowly sinking ship.
We're not good at fixing problems that will only get critical far in the future.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean everyday reveals new evidence that there is a major problem and we should get off our asses to deal with it.
Neighbor: there's someone trying to break into your house when you aren't home.
You: Sheesh, you told me that yesterday and the day before and the day before. Wait until they succeed and then I'll worry about it.
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without the daily fearmongering posted online, which uses my electricity to download...
not saying this isn't a thing....but fuck me - every day with the fearmongering.
Maybe if many scientists are constantly trying to warn us of something we should pay attention? Or how about we could ban the term because it makes people feel uncomfortable? https://www.miamiherald.com/ne... [miamiherald.com]
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Which is kind of like the equivalent of a guy bitching about the tsunami sirens...
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It's not fearmongering if there's actually something to be feared. That's called "informing the public of great danger and risk".
Stop burying your head in your ass.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that the hole in the ozone layer was cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It's not fearmongering to point out facts.
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You do know that the hole in the ozone layer is being cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It's not fearmongering to point out facts.
FTFY. We have another 40 years or so to go.
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You do know that the hole in the ozone layer was cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It's not fearmongering to point out facts.
It was just switching the chemicals around in products. It didn't impact the "way of life". It was a minor disruption and probably a quick method to capture even more market.
This is different.
Ozone hole [Re:perhaps we can save co2] (Score:2)
You do know that the hole in the ozone layer was cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It was just switching the chemicals around in products. It didn't impact the "way of life". It was a minor disruption and probably a quick method to capture even more market.
It was a technological fix. The technology we were using caused problems, we switched to different technologies.
This is different.
Nope, same principle applies. The technologies we are using cause problems, we need to switch to different technologies.
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Sure. Just a technological fix. Whatever keeps you happy and content, and not facing reality.
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Sure. Just a technological fix. Whatever keeps you happy and content, and not facing reality.
Well, a technology fix, but also a real-world demonstration that yes, when we acknowledge a problem, sometimes we can solve it.
(But not if we refuse to acknowledge it.)
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It is a technological fix, once the problem is actually recognized and affirmed.
That's the first problem - the profiteers and willingly ignorant who refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem that needs fixing.
We already have solutions. Technology delivered those quite some time ago. What we need is agreement on the problem so we can get to work on implementing the solutions.
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It didn't impact the "way of life".
Reducing CO2 emissions doesn't impact "way of life", at least not if you ask anyone other than Fox News or your local republican rep. Yes it's a technological change and change costs money, but it's not a way of life change.
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It didn't impact the "way of life".
Reducing CO2 emissions doesn't impact "way of life", at least not if you ask anyone other than Fox News or your local republican rep. Yes it's a technological change and change costs money, but it's not a way of life change.
Nope. The solution is more societal than technological. If you rely on money and technology as the solution, you'll get a lot of con-men. There is no current replacement technology that we live the way we do now and the problem is solved.
I think it is more republican/fox-news to say we don't have to change anything at all and something in the future will just magically solve this problem.
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There is no current replacement technology that we live the way we do now and the problem is solved.
Horseshit.
There is a suite of solutions, which when combined, would halt the damage we are continuing to do.
First rule of getting out of a hole: stop digging.
Just what parts of our current quality-of-life are there not technological fixes that exist today that would dramatically reduce carbon emissions? Yes, there are some things that will continue to require petroleum products such as plastics and fertilizer production, but that's a drop in the ocean compared to coal-fired electricity and liquid petroleum
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Part of the reason this went so smoothly is that the big companies were behind it. The patents on Freon had long expired so this was a way to make more money. The actual chemicals they switched to are much more toxic, so they made it illegal to just vent the chemicals. I speculate that this was probably sufficient, and we could hav
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Is it fearmongering when the fearmongering doesn’t come true for a period of time?
You got it. The predictions of bad effects from global warming have always been that the effects get serious decades in the future. Things that we do now have effects decades down the line. We still haven't reached the time scale of the earliest predictions of the first IPCC report, 34 years ago, for example.
This is the real problem: the effects are very slow. Humans turn out to be not very good at dealing with things that cause problems in the future.
... Remember when it was all those Aqua Net junkies killing us with their ozone hole? I do.
And we solved that problem. It was a technological prob
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The wrong trees in the wrong place can make the problem worse, either by changing the reflectivity of the surface or by directly releasing CO2 from the soil.
WIthout people blocking roads, I think, big oil's influence would have kept us doing nothing for much longer, rather than just not doing enough as we are now.
Yes, it's a problem. No, it won't end human life (Score:3)
Saying it's a problem and is getting worse is delivering information about a problem.
Saying it "may well end human life and will most likely end human civilization" is fearmongering.
None of the predictions by actual scientists say it's likely to end human life. None. That really is fearmongering, and making such clearly absurd statements ends up tending to discredit the people trying to alert the population to the real problem. It may make the world a worse place to live in, but it's not ending human life
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Ending human civilization is not unlikely, though it certainly isn't guaranteed. It depends on how we react to the problem. But, yeah, it won't end human life.
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But, yeah, it won't end human life.
It may well do so. We already have lost 3 of 4 known homo-something.
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Accurate statements aren't fear mongering.
True statements, with missing or misleading context, can be as harmful as false statements.
The first mate on a ship decided to celebrate an occasion with a "little" stowed away rum.
Unfortunately he got drunk and was still drunk the next morning. The captain saw him drunk and when the first mate was sober, showed him the following entry in the ship's log: "The first mate was drunk today."
"Captain please don't let that stay in the log," the mate said. "This could add months or years to my becoming a capt
Try reading the article (Score:2)
I'll grant you it should have put the word "net" in the title to avoid confusion, but a cursory glance at the article makes it's obvious that:
It's clearly talking about forest, plants and soil CO2 absorbtion vs forest, plants and soil output.
As in we added more CO2 last year, and plant and forrest life produced as much CO2 as it absorbed (Due to forst, plants, and soil expelling CO2 due to drought/fire/deforestation) etc.
So we add it... nothing takes it away.
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IIUC, the ocean is still absorbing CO2 (and turning more acidic). That's a part of why the corals are dying. (It isn't just the temperature, though that sure doesn't help.)
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The text doesn't say that individual plants aren't absorbing CO2. It says that the natural sinks--forests, oceans, and soils--as a whole aren't absorbing CO2.
Individual trees in a forest can absorb CO2 and yet the forest as a whole not be absorbing CO2 (if the release of CO2 is equal or greater than the absorption).
Re: (Score:2)
Oh no! My unsustainable lifestyle might be curtailed! It's my Supply Side Jesus-given right to fuck the future for my own personal amusement!
Re: (Score:3)
LOL
Dirty peasants under the thumb of a socialist oligarchy can create and worsen CO2 emissions just as easily as free people. Unsustainable lifestyle my ass.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think the universe cares about any of that? Do you imagine the laws of physics can be circumvented by an appeal to Libertarian histrionics?