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Venezuela is poo poo because 95% of their exports are oil. So you know, even if the world transitioned to 100% renewables overnight they'd still be hosed.
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# ? May 22, 2016 18:47 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 02:52 |
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Blorange posted:Isn't saying 'new' natural gas capacity extremely dishonest? I'm assuming that qualifier lets them ignore all of the coal->natural gas conversions currently taking place. No, building a gas plant to replace a coal plant would count as a new gas plant. Also this: Facehammer posted:That's at least a step in the right direction, though? As far as I understand, coal is so incredibly dirty to burn and destructive to mine that almost anything else is better. Plus the other factor is coal plant lifetimes are longer than natural gas. So when we replace a coal plant with natural gas we are locking in a reduced emissions fuel for a shorter amount of time than otherwise.
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# ? May 22, 2016 19:06 |
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its just a matter of what numbers you consider in-scope. if you count the methane that leaks in gas production no not really. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/methane-regulations/
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# ? May 22, 2016 21:52 |
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I don't think I have gone more than a week in the past few years without seeing some news article along the lines of "was this bad event caused by climate change?!" With the vast majority having zero evidence of any real connection.
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# ? May 22, 2016 22:03 |
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crabcakes66 posted:I don't think I have gone more than a week in the past few years without seeing some news article along the lines of "was this bad event caused by climate change?!" Well, we aren't even one fifth of the way through this century yet. At this point there are certainly some weather / climate related catastrophes that wouldn't have happened without climate change, but they don't come with a label that says "this storm brought to you by global warming". The current draughts and heat waves can serve as a model of what's to come, but the phenomenon you're seeing probably has more to do with journalists trying to tie a current events topic into a larger-scale issue. There would certainly still be draughts and heat waves and some cities disappearing into the ocean (due to plate tectonics or other factors) without climate change, so even two hundred years from now there will never be any "evidence" that any single event was "caused by climate change". But they will be.
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# ? May 23, 2016 06:06 |
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Unfortunately the media only gives fuel to skeptics with that kind of logic. By associating everything that happens with climate change you desensitize people to its seriousness.
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# ? May 23, 2016 11:35 |
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yea lets makes sure we're all proper skeptics that show our homework for another decade or two, that'll help http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/may/22/africans-face-famine-after-crops-fail
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# ? May 23, 2016 12:55 |
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Yeah crops have definitely never failed before.
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# ? May 23, 2016 13:14 |
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crabcakes66 posted:Yeah crops have definitely never failed before. crabcakes66 posted:Unfortunately the media only gives fuel to skeptics with that kind of logic. By associating everything that happens with climate change you desensitize people to its seriousness. So, you don't care about climate change and want the media to stop talking about it. Got it. gently caress off now.
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# ? May 23, 2016 13:50 |
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Nevvy Z posted:So, you don't care about climate change and want the media to stop talking about it. Got it. gently caress off now. No. He actually has a point (though he probably doesn't quite grasp that he made it). Low quality media coverage doesn't necessarily lead to climate change being perceived as a serious issue.
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# ? May 23, 2016 13:55 |
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Nevvy Z posted:So, you don't care about climate change and want the media to stop talking about it. Got it. gently caress off now. That's not what I said at all. Maybe tone it down a notch.
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# ? May 23, 2016 14:06 |
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If what used to be a 100-year weather event becomes a 10- or 5-year event, you don't have to pick and choose which one would have happened without climate change and which ones wouldn't.
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# ? May 23, 2016 14:20 |
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crabcakes66 posted:That's not what I said at all. Maybe tone it down a notch. You hand waved away a bunch of people starving to death with some lovely sarcastic bullshit, what kind of response were you looking for?
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# ? May 23, 2016 14:22 |
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Mozi posted:If what used to be a 100-year weather event becomes a 10- or 5-year event, you don't have to pick and choose which one would have happened without climate change and which ones wouldn't. I agree. Those are the kinds of trends that should be paid attention to rather than individual events. But again, when so many things are associated with climate change. Which at times are tangentially related to weather or climate, it undermines the seriousness of the issue among the general public. Salt Fish posted:You hand waved away a bunch of people starving to death with some lovely sarcastic bullshit, what kind of response were you looking for? I don't think I said anything about starving people. I simply implied that crops failed before climate change was ever a concern and replied in a manner equally snarky to the comment I was responding to. Sorry if my perceived insensitivity upsets you friend. Starving is bad. crabcakes66 fucked around with this message at 14:54 on May 23, 2016 |
# ? May 23, 2016 14:33 |
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crabcakes66 posted:I don't think I said anything about starving people. I simply implied that crops failed before climate change was ever a concern and replied in a manner equally snarky to the comment I was responding to. Sorry if my perceived insensitivity upsets you friend. Starving is bad. Ironically, many crop failures can be tied to climate changes. Maybe you should stop while you are ahead, it's pathetic how you are attempting to strawman individual effects of climate change because you can't actually disprove climate change as a whole.
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# ? May 23, 2016 15:10 |
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Let's all just calm down and enjoy that quiet, growing feeling of dread.
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# ? May 23, 2016 15:19 |
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I get a sense that you are all talking past each other. Just because the globe is warming doesn't mean you can't chill.
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# ? May 23, 2016 15:22 |
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CommieGIR posted:Ironically, many crop failures can be tied to climate changes. It's not that shifts in weather and climate cannot cause crop failures. Obviously they can. A bad late winter storm can destroy crops. A cold night can hurt crops. It's much simpler to correlate a short term climate disruption from say a volcano and subsequent drop in temperature to crop failures and reduced yields for a few years, than it is to prove every drought or flood is the result of long term climate change. Once again a problem I have noticed in recent years is that the media is associating every rain storm or windy day with climate change with zero evidence, lessening the impact of climate news. I never said anywhere that I wanted to disprove anything. The science on climate change is conclusive and the earth is warming due to human factors. drat this thread is salty.
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# ? May 23, 2016 16:03 |
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Everybody has their preconceived ideas of where certain arguments are coming from. That the media can't resist asking if any specific event is directly caused by climate change is annoying and misses the forest for the trees, I don't think anybody really disagrees on that point. Just a hazard of arguing on the internet.
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# ? May 23, 2016 16:08 |
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crabcakes66 posted:Once again a problem I have noticed in recent years is that the media is associating every rain storm or windy day with climate change with zero evidence, lessening the impact of climate news. I never said anywhere that I wanted to disprove anything. The science on climate change is conclusive and the earth is warming due to human factors. drat this thread is salty. Oooooh, okay. My mistake, didn't mean to call you out on a non-issue.
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# ? May 23, 2016 17:04 |
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ex-nasa-man-to-plant-one-billion-trees-a-year-using-drones-10160588.htmlquote:With two operators manning multiple drones, he thinks it should be possible to plant up to 36,000 trees a day, and at around 15% of the cost of traditional methods.
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# ? May 24, 2016 00:10 |
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"How many will grow successfully compared to the hand planting" is my first question.
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# ? May 24, 2016 02:34 |
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Your first question should be "how many trees would we need to plant to offset our carbon use" and I recall the answer being something like 200 trillion.
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# ? May 24, 2016 02:38 |
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Salt Fish posted:You would have to plant, according to one calculation I found, 1,554,723,200,000 trees per year at 2010 emissions levels to absorb the co2 being released by man. Found it!
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# ? May 24, 2016 02:39 |
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What is the point of saying how much of one particular thing it would take to get rid of all the CO2 produced by humans on earth? That's like giving up.
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# ? May 24, 2016 03:09 |
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We just have to design something more efficient than trees. That can't get loose.
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# ? May 24, 2016 03:15 |
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SedanChair posted:What is the point of saying how much of one particular thing it would take to get rid of all the CO2 produced by humans on earth? That's like giving up. The point is that big numbers are big.
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# ? May 24, 2016 03:57 |
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We can solve this. We just have to think outside of the box. ... Does it still count if you rip the same tree out of the ground and re-plant it, over and over again?
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# ? May 24, 2016 03:58 |
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plushpuffin posted:We can solve this. We just have to think outside of the box. No joke, some have proposed massive underground bunkers that we fill with logged trees like we do nuclear waste, as a form of carbon sequestration.
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# ? May 24, 2016 04:59 |
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Salt Fish posted:Your first question should be "how many trees would we need to plant to offset our carbon use" and I recall the answer being something like 200 trillion. I believe the primary use of something like this isn't strictly CO2 sequestration, but instead, is meant to combat desertification and soil erosion. The long-term idea is to use this sort of thing to push back the boundaries of the Sahara, and as part of regenerative farming. That, in turn, involves permanent CO2 sequestration via biochar.
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# ? May 24, 2016 05:28 |
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Yeah, and really, we aren't going to ever 'reverse' climate change, barring an intentional nuclear winter or sustained geo-engineering project. We are locked in for a lot already. What we do now determines when and if a new balance is reached. Tree planting technologies like this could be very valuable in managing the biosphere if scaled and applied in places where actual gains could be made - remember, trees do a lot more than just sequester carbon. They also provide shade and create microclimates conducive to other vegetation growth, which can in turn help soils to hold water. In sufficient quantities they can also mitigate continental rain shadow effects (like, huge forest quantities, that is). There is also the serious issue of managing forests being hit by threshold-passing pathogens like bark beetle. Using drones to hasten the decomposition of those trees in some way could actually be a huge megafire prevention approach, as logging by hand is extremely cost prohibitive and, in some places, physically impossible.
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# ? May 24, 2016 09:42 |
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sitchensis posted:No joke, some have proposed massive underground bunkers that we fill with logged trees like we do nuclear waste, as a form of carbon sequestration. Surely you'd achieve the same thing more efficiently with biofuel and plant oil? Both in terms of growing/harvesting faster and ending up with something easier to store.
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# ? May 24, 2016 10:49 |
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We must keep carbon in the ground.quote:Here, using simulations from four comprehensive Earth system models, we demonstrate that CO2-attributable warming continues to increase approximately linearly up to 5 EgC emissions. These models simulate, in response to 5 EgC of CO2 emissions, global mean warming of 6.4–9.5 °C, mean Arctic warming of 14.7–19.5 °C, and mean regional precipitation increases by more than a factor of four. These results indicate that the unregulated exploitation of the fossil fuel resource could ultimately result in considerably more profound climate changes than previously suggested.
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# ? May 24, 2016 16:36 |
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Of course we wouldn't ever consume all the fossil fuel resource in the world so that's good. (studies like this are valid and useful but not applicable to policy options since it starts from a what-if scenario)
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# ? May 24, 2016 17:18 |
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Is there anything wrong with climate change? Mountains and rivers move, populations and species come and go. We over-populated and over-consumed. Maybe the best way to save the Earth is to burn it all down and start again from bugs. Future earthlings might even find our mass graves turned into the hydrocarbons we loved.
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# ? May 24, 2016 17:55 |
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So, legitimately asking here, what is the aim of creating such intricate data studies, published in such esteemed places, based on such a wildly unlikely and speculative scenario? Just to demonstrate How Goddamn Bad it could be if we went to the ends of the earth to burn hydrocarbons? Now granted I'm just a humble master's holder from a state school but I wouldn't have been allowed to publish on, say, the return of Anime Jesus from the dead. Are they just to establish some comparative value in maybe exploring the reality of a world in which all the previously-sequestered carbon was put back into the atmosphere? I think I just answered my own question, but has anyone worked on papers similar to this?
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# ? May 24, 2016 18:07 |
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Triglav posted:Is there anything wrong with climate change? Anti-human perspectives aren't really relevant. You're also ignoring that we don't really know where the "tipping point" is for when warming trends become self-sustaining (for example, when permafrost melts) and Earth is locked in to becoming a second Venus without intervention via geoengineering.
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# ? May 24, 2016 18:08 |
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whitey delenda est posted:So, legitimately asking here, what is the aim of creating such intricate data studies, published in such esteemed places, based on such a wildly unlikely and speculative scenario? Just to demonstrate How Goddamn Bad it could be if we went to the ends of the earth to burn hydrocarbons? Now granted I'm just a humble master's holder from a state school but I wouldn't have been allowed to publish on, say, the return of Anime Jesus from the dead. Yeah its a rather common and honestly scientifically thing, but you're correct they're just hypotheticals. However, they still let us test and validate the modeling methods used and can provide bounds for meta analysis. That is, if we have an idea of how bad burning all the fossil fuels are we know that is an upper limit for the impacts of fossil fuels. It is like the studies on the renewables that look into how much land area would it take to power the US on solar alone. Never actually going to even be considered as a policy, but also gives us an upper limit on solar land use and lets us dive into the model of solar land use without having to nitpick over the starting variables. That last point is another reason these studies get published. Imagine you wanted to publish a paper on a worst case carbon scenario. Good luck at estimating total fossil fuel usage under the mythical "business as usual" so instead you pick a hard number that's obviously absurd but at least you can be more confident it is valid.
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# ? May 24, 2016 18:22 |
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I'm just amazed it gets space in Nature, but that's both A) my own value perception and B) also a political game that transcends my understanding. Would be fun to have a job based on speculative breaking of assumptions in various models.
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# ? May 24, 2016 18:28 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 02:52 |
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whitey delenda est posted:I'm just amazed it gets space in Nature, but that's both A) my own value perception and B) also a political game that transcends my understanding. It gets space in Nature Climate Change which isn't the same as Nature proper. 14.5 versus 45.5 impact factor.
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# ? May 24, 2016 18:34 |