|
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738 Just go out and enjoy life. Don't have children, and if you do, please let them know that if their life becomes too painful then it's their right to end it. As is the right of all of us. AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Sep 28, 2016 |
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 20:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 20:41 |
|
|
AceOfFlames posted:http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738 The fact we passed 400ppm has nothing to do with these misguided childfree/pro-suicide ideas. Claiming you won't have a kid because of climate isn't actually helping. It doesn't reduce your current emissions footprint by one iota. Pretending that claiming you won't have a kid is as sensible as if Alpha claimed they weren't going to open 10 new coal mines, look how pro-climate this coal company is!
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 20:30
|
|
|
I wonder when we will get to the 'throw poo poo in the air and see if it helps' stage, because we're obviously going to blow by all our targets. Not for nothing but I also wonder about how confident scientists are with that 2C goal, given things we're seeing like permafrost melt.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 20:34
|
|
|
Mozi posted:I wonder when we will get to the 'throw poo poo in the air and see if it helps' stage, because we're obviously going to blow by all our targets. I'm pretty confident we've heard from actual scientists in this thread telling us 2C is a loving unfunny joke at this point and that we have no chance of avoiding that regardless of what we do. At this point we're looking at avoiding 3-4-5C as a best case scenario.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 23:07
|
|
|
I was thinking more of the predicted consequences of even staying at 2C, not to mention anything higher than that, and whether they are overly optimistic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 23:30
|
|
|
BattleMoose posted:Why aren't we doing anything? Because it's a monumentally complicated problem that requires governments around the world to work together and make long term plans. That's literally never happened in the history of the loving world. People who act shocked that we aren't going anywhere on this issue must not understand it very well. You just don't flip a lightswitch and boom no more carbon. Even the leading scientists and experts are completely divided on the question of how exactly to solve the problem. When Obama asks 10 different experts what they would do and he gets 10 different answers, what exactly is he supposed to do? Never mind that there's not a chance in hell places like china are actually going to hold up their end of the bargain since cheap polluting energy is pretty much the only way they get their people out of poverty. Trabisnikof posted:The fact we passed 400ppm has nothing to do with these misguided childfree/pro-suicide ideas. If you live in the first world you are preventing the massive amount of carbon that would be released over their life actually. You'd have to be an idiot to argue otherwise, regardless of the merit of the total argument. You have a choice to buy a fuel efficient car, turn off the lights when you aren't in the room, avoid unnecessary travel, blah blah blah. And those things would reduce the amount of carbon being released. You have the choice whether or not to have a kid. That would increase the amount of carbon being released. This isn't rocket dentistry here.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2016 23:41
|
|
|
tsa posted:Because it's a monumentally complicated problem that requires governments around the world to work together and make long term plans. That's literally never happened in the history of the loving world. People who act shocked that we aren't going anywhere on this issue must not understand it very well. You just don't flip a lightswitch and boom no more carbon. Even the leading scientists and experts are completely divided on the question of how exactly to solve the problem. When Obama asks 10 different experts what they would do and he gets 10 different answers, what exactly is he supposed to do? Never mind that there's not a chance in hell places like china are actually going to hold up their end of the bargain since cheap polluting energy is pretty much the only way they get their people out of poverty. Except that only works if the only reason you aren't having kids is climate. If you are single, too poor, too young, too old, etc then there is absolutely no future emissions avoided. However, if we get to count all future emissions avoided for any reason, then Exxon is probably doing the most for the climate by not exploiting all their proven reserves. Hell, at least the oil Exxon keeps in the ground can't be undone by some horny teenager having an extra kid. On the other hand, actions that reduce the per-capita emissions will reduce emissions now and in the future. Declining birth rates will never address climate change while moving towards a zero carbon-emissions equiv. economy is the long term solution.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 01:07
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Except that only works if the only reason you aren't having kids is climate. If you are single, too poor, too young, too old, etc then there is absolutely no future emissions avoided. Maybe Exxon can't be undone by a horny teenager but it definitely can by a Benz obsessed Chinese businessman building yet another concrete city with no occupants.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 01:13
|
|
|
Uncle Jam posted:Maybe Exxon can't be undone by a horny teenager but it definitely can by a Benz obsessed Chinese businessman building yet another concrete city with no occupants. If our economy is set up right, an empty concrete city isn't the worst way to sink carbon 
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 01:53
|
|
|
Mozi posted:I was thinking more of the predicted consequences of even staying at 2C, not to mention anything higher than that, and whether they are overly optimistic. Literally every prediction has missed some forcing or knock-on or feedback effect, so the answer is always yes, it's going to be worse, no matter what you first thought, when it comes to climate change. And likewise, the answer is alway yes, the suicidally optimistic response by people tasked with imagining fixes for it will always be worse, too. The only thing more dangerous to humanity than climate change is how it creates a bipolar society of purposefully ignorant morons and dumbly optimistic magical thinkers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 02:12
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:If our economy is set up right, an empty concrete city isn't the worst way to sink carbon Actually... Concrete accounts for 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. Well technically cement does. Making cement requires some of (if not the) hottest furnaces found in industry and the actual chemical reactions of the cement in forming concrete releases more CO2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 02:41
|
|
|
BattleMoose posted:Actually... Concrete accounts for 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. Well technically cement does. Making cement requires some of (if not the) hottest furnaces found in industry and the actual chemical reactions of the cement in forming concrete releases more CO2. That's very true. I was flippantly referring to ideas where cement can be used to sequester. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cement-from-carbon-dioxide/
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 02:45
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Except that only works if the only reason you aren't having kids is climate. If you are single, too poor, too young, too old, etc then there is absolutely no future emissions avoided. Your argument is not logical -- if you can't have children because you are "single, too poor, too young, too old, etc", then the choice to not have children for the sake of the climate does not exist. If someone decides not have children and climate is one of the reasons, then that choice prevents half of the emissions that the child would have made during the lifetime of the would-be-parent (there are two parents [an assumption that was safe to make until two days ago...] so each has responsibility for half of the child's emissions.) And I know that you know as well as anyone else contributing to this thread that children born today are strongly liable to live in a world that is much less pleasant/more unpleasant than the world we live in today; why would you deliberately bring a child into a world where you would bet on them being afflicted by climate catastrophes? If you want to have children, you should adopt. Don't anybody tell me that this will cause single mothers to have more babies to give away, because this is supposed to be a serious thread. Trabisnikof posted:However, if we get to count all future emissions avoided for any reason, then Exxon is probably doing the most for the climate by not exploiting all their proven reserves. Hell, at least the oil Exxon keeps in the ground can't be undone by some horny teenager having an extra kid. Exxon provides goods to hundreds of millions or billions of people, each of whom has the choice to use or not use those goods -- it is the actions of Exxon's customers that determine the contribution of Exxon to climate change. If Exxon does not exploit all their proven reserves, it's because there is not the demand for them to do so or because they foresee the increase in the value of their reserves in the future; if a horny teenager has an extra kid, then Exxon will extract more oil. Exxon is an evil company not because they extract oil from the ground, but because they have and have had policies designed to benefit themselves at greater cost to the environment than is necessary to simply extract and refine resources; their customers could choose not to do business with them if they wished. Trabisnikof posted:On the other hand, actions that reduce the per-capita emissions will reduce emissions now and in the future. Declining birth rates will never address climate change while moving towards a zero carbon-emissions equiv. economy is the long term solution. Declining birth rates are not the whole solution to climate change, but they eliminate a fraction of emissions. Given that a zero-emissions economy is not going to happen in the next century, the choice of declining birth rates or otherwise will affect climate outcomes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 02:55
|
|
|
Here's a better point of discussion: I argue that we will have a net zero carbon equivalent emissions global economy by 2100. And we will probably have a net negative one within 100 years. And for the sake of the global poor, hopefully these are conservative numbers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:01
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Here's a better point of discussion: I argue that we will have a net zero carbon equivalent emissions global economy by 2100. And we will probably have a net negative one within 100 years. Can I also have a rainbow coloured unicorn?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:07
|
|
|
BattleMoose posted:Can I also have a rainbow coloured unicorn? You can be dismissive, but that's both feasible and requisite. When do you think we will reach those milestones? Never?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:09
|
|
|
That's a lot nuclear power plants
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:12
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:That's very true. I was flippantly referring to ideas where cement can be used to sequester. A couple of years ago (like a decade +), there was an experiment wherein a group of people isolated themselves inside a 'mini-Earth' simulator. . The experiments both times ended up being miserable failures, the first time because the concrete sucked tons of oxygen into it, causing the crew to experience altitude sickness and symptoms of oxygen deprivation for weeks on end. Even though the experiments were terrible representations of the Earth as it actually is, it always invoked a sense irony that both times the crews managed to make their environments uninhabitable.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:21
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:You can be dismissive, but that's both feasible and requisite. In order to achieve these goals would require a complete overhaul of our economic and global political systems. Things that need to happen: 1. The external costs for fossil fuel burning are obscene and "somehow" have to be enforced to the emitter or end user of the fossil fuel burning. As in, person who pays for the electricity. 2. Countries have to be able to truly commit to reducing their GHG emissions with confidence that their peers will do so likewise. 3. Lastly, developing and third world countries will somehow have to be "persuaded" to avoid burning fossil fuels even though they are suffering the existential consequences of the economic development of the first world. The first I think is easiest. The second I would describe as impossible. And the third as harder. To date there has been no meaningful decrease in GHG emissions. The efforts to address the issues have been token at best. While some countries have made meaningful investments (Denmark, Germany) its dwarfed by contributions of other countries. There are no indications that any of these things are actually going to change. There's also the very real possibility that at some point greenhouse gas emissions from the natural environment might actually dwarf our own, from positive feed back loops. Melting permafrost, methane clathrates or emissions from the oceans. There is also the very very very awkward fact that about a quarter of our emitted CO2 is going, well, we honestly don't know. Natural environments might collapse and release large quantities of CO2 from rotting vegetation and soils. :/
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 03:39
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:You can be dismissive, but that's both feasible and requisite. Sure we will. I think what's left of us scuffling in Thunderdome will be carbon neutral.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 04:14
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:You can be dismissive, but that's both feasible and requisite. Whether or not we achieve net zero carbon emissions in a century is actually drastically less important than what we're able to achieve in the next couple of decades, at least for anyone who's concerned about themselves or their children. The one consistent trend in climate research is that our estimates are too conservative, and even then we're already being forced to admit that climate change is having real effects on the world right now. I remember that people in the USPol thread were quick to point out that the flooding in Louisiana was happening in a region that was prone to flooding anyway, but oops, turns out that floods of that magnitude in that area are more likely now than they were in the past. It's good to be optimistic, but not when it gets in the way of acknowledging reality. The reality is that the climate is changing faster than we anticipated, that our actions are accelerating that change faster than we thought they would, and that the real effects of that change are being felt right now. We're not going to get anywhere until the people making policy are willing to admit that things are actually pretty bad already. It's good that politicians are talking about it at all, but it's bad that the conversation is still about climate change as a future problem to be averted rather than an ongoing crisis.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 04:41
|
|
|
Just saw a private screening of Before The Flood, Leo DiCaprios new climate film. I'd urge all of you to check it out once it is out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
Mozi posted:I wonder when we will get to the 'throw poo poo in the air and see if it helps' stage, because we're obviously going to blow by all our targets. I've been wondering about this myself. I've uncritically assumed geoengineering will be tried at some point in the future in an attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change given that we're almost certainly not going to mett. On further thought I don't know how this could come about. The most plausible scenario I can think of is that a large-ish nation vulnerable to the effects of climate change unilaterally tries to disperse sulfate aerosols (or something similar) in the atmosphere in an attempt to placate a restive population. However given the large costs involved and uncertain outcome at best, I don't see any rogue nation attempting this. Countries with well-developed scientific institutions probably won't even consider trying. Maybe a crazy Musk-esque billionaire? To be clear I don't think climate change mitigation via geoengineering is a good idea at all, it will almost certainly have serious unintended consequences (if it even works).
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 05:19
|
|
|
I'm going to build a giant mirror and make the sun pay for it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 06:50
|
|
|
Mozi posted:I wonder when we will get to the 'throw poo poo in the air and see if it helps' stage, because we're obviously going to blow by all our targets. Its been a serious topic of discussion and research for some time now, which makes me very sad. In 2012 at the, International conference on Cloud Condensation and Precipitation, there was a session that discussed this issue. It was pretty informal. But it is getting serious attention. General consensus is that it is a terrible terrible terrible idea, possibly better than the alternative. Throwing sulphates into the upper troposphere isn't particularly difficult or expensive, relatively. It will work, as in, decrease incoming radiation and cool the planet. Exactly the way volcanoes do. The problem is that we don't really have much of a clue as to how, alternating that side of the energy balance, will effect, well, everything. Including of course, photosynthesis and that will have effects and so on. Remember how some problems were solved by introducing a foreign species and nothing ever went wrong? Disclosure: I am a junior science person. I do have PhD in atmospheric science. My field is clouds and precipitation but mostly relating to the instruments that model and measure those things. Satellites, radiometers, computer models and global climate models.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 07:20
|
|
|
BattleMoose posted:Its been a serious topic of discussion and research for some time now, which makes me very sad. In 2012 at the, International conference on Cloud Condensation and Precipitation, there was a session that discussed this issue. It was pretty informal. But it is getting serious attention. General consensus is that it is a terrible terrible terrible idea, possibly better than the alternative. I am extremely sceptical towards the idea that we can or should try to geoengineer our way out of this mess. Even if we have the ability to - for instance - effectively put shades on the planet, from what we know of previous instances of that (catastrophic volcanic activity, meteorite impact) it might have some severe impacts on animal and plant life. Think crop failiure and abnormal weather patterns, very cold winters and such. And that would be the cost of just postponing the problem. It's an entirely different question whether or not we should even try. This kind of thing is scientifically new territory, we don't know the exact effects of any type of geoengineering (other than increasing CO2 emissions ) and the potential for catastrophic, unforeseen consequences is definitely there. It would also have to be an international, unilteral effort, because not a lot of nuke-having countries would look kindly upon any nation that decided to try to alter the climate of the planet to the possible detriment of large parts of the world. Frankly, it's a risk big enough that I think you would have a lot of trouble getting enough countries behind it to avoid a diplomatic crisis.No, this gets "solved" (more likely mitigated) by revolutionizing the way humanity lives and works, industry and transport, food production and personal luxuries. Solidarity is going to have to be the answer, and big SUVs, giant ego-extensions of a mansion and a Ferrari, fossile fuel power plants and consumerist society needs to be thought of as medieval and disgusting, if not downright illegal. We change the way we are, or we go down with the ship.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 08:31
|
|
|
BattleMoose posted:Its been a serious topic of discussion and research for some time now, which makes me very sad. In 2012 at the, International conference on Cloud Condensation and Precipitation, there was a session that discussed this issue. It was pretty informal. But it is getting serious attention. General consensus is that it is a terrible terrible terrible idea, possibly better than the alternative. Yeah, this is kind of why I'm skeptical of geoengineering. Simply dumping huge amounts of *insert albedo-increasing chemical here* is going to lead to unforeseen side-effects, environmentally and geographically. Plus, the proposals for geoengineering projects would require an incredible scale. For example, high-altitude dumping of sulfur dioxide - to even make a credible dent would require vast sums of equipment and money. Getting the political will to make something like that happen would be really, really hard. Now imagine getting together the political will for cleaning up super-charged acid rain, because holy fuckballs dumping sulphates in the upper atmosphere at tonnages capable of influencing the climate is going to introduce a lot of sulphur to the jet stream. Nice piece of fish posted:
This is how I feel about the environmental crisis. Humanity is not going to simply technology! its way out of this one. This requires a substantive transformation in the predominant trade system. Unlimited growth in a world of finite resources (and extraordinarily expensive importation of extraterrestrial resources, to say nothing of the things we simply cannot get from foreign bodies in the Solar System) is fundamentally a problematic position. The world today can more than produce to fill the needs of humanity - but it cannot produce to fill the needs of humanity at the same level as America. Growth, I believe, is fundamentally the problem, and so long as humanity is unwilling to deal with growth, there will never be an end to the ecological crisis, except mass upheaval and death.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 08:44
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:I am extremely sceptical towards the idea that we can or should try to geoengineer our way out of this mess. Preaching to the choir.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 08:45
|
|
|
Here's a pretty comprehensive, one-stop basic look into geoengineering for anyone interested. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18988/climate-intervention-reflecting-sunlight-to-cool-earth
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 10:13
|
|
|
brakeless posted:Here's a pretty comprehensive, one-stop basic look into geoengineering for anyone interested. This is actually a really interesting read, and I recommend it a lot. I noticed one thing of particular interest in the preface, regarding boosting or investing in increasing natural CO2 absorbtion, which apparently absorbs about half our emissions today. They seem to suggest that there are methods of improving on that which are at least somewhat cost effective and not a product of magic future technology, and they expand upon in in a companion report/volume I couldn't find a link to. Any idea of just what that might entail? Are they simply talking about reforestation efforts, or genetically modified algae supersequestering CO2 or something exotic like that?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 13:54
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:Any idea of just what that might entail? Are they simply talking about reforestation efforts, or genetically modified algae supersequestering CO2 or something exotic like that? I am going on complete memory here and my info might well be out of date. At least one of the ideas is to encourage plankton growth or some other sea algae, the idea being that their growth is currently limited by iron, so, add iron and get my algae growth and more photosynthesis and more carbon sequestration. If I recall correctly I think they tried and their results were disappointing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 14:12
|
|
|
i'm absolutely loving appalled that climate change is still not issue number one everywhere on earth anyone want to make a new ELF with me?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 18:41
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:I'm pretty confident we've heard from actual scientists in this thread telling us 2C is a loving unfunny joke at this point and that we have no chance of avoiding that regardless of what we do. At this point we're looking at avoiding 3-4-5C as a best case scenario. 3-5 C is an end of civilization scenario though, right?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 20:59
|
|
|
TheBlackVegetable posted:3-5 C is an end of civilization scenario though, right? No, definitely not. There's no realistic scenario that's going to take out human civilization. In the 3-5C range you're mostly talking about severe economic effects in rich, developed nations and starvation and mass migration elsewhere. It wouldn't be a great time to be alive compared to right now, but we'd make it through.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 21:55
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:No, definitely not. There's no realistic scenario that's going to take out human civilization. In the 3-5C range you're mostly talking about severe economic effects in rich, developed nations and starvation and mass migration elsewhere. It wouldn't be a great time to be alive compared to right now, but we'd make it through. That being said, the climate wouldn't kill us (well, most of us) itself, but when we are talking the sort of environmental changes 3-5C would bring, its not unfeasible (actually probably a certainty) that we will end up with resource wars. Depending on who gets involved in those we might have a good chance at killing all the humans again.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 21:59
|
|
|
TheBlackVegetable posted:3-5 C is an end of civilization scenario though, right? Less extinction, more "the end of globalized industrial civilization". If we manage to stabilize at 3-5 the pressure to avoid going up to 6+ is extreme, literally the difference between "everybody lives outside the tropics, but survivable" and "too hot for crops anywhere but the arctic"
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 22:17
|
|
|
I seem to recall that there is a point where ocean carbonization endangers the plankton supply that produces at least half of the oxygen in the atmosphere. At that point, things start getting real messy real fast.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 22:22
|
|
|
Earth has been much hotter than +6C supporting huge amounts of biodiversity.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 22:43
|
|
|
The Groper posted:Less extinction, more "the end of globalized industrial civilization". If we manage to stabilize at 3-5 the pressure to avoid going up to 6+ is extreme, literally the difference between "everybody lives outside the tropics, but survivable" and "too hot for crops anywhere but the arctic" Why would that end industrial civilization? Why would we turn away from electricity etc?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 22:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 20:41 |
|
|
TheNakedFantastic posted:Earth has been much hotter than +6C supporting huge amounts of biodiversity. Sure, and life will adapt to fill a +6 world again, but not at a pace that will allow our staple crops to adapt without intense genetic engineering. Trabisnikof posted:Why would that end industrial civilization? Why would we turn away from electricity etc? I'm not saying we'll end it, but it won't look anything like what we have today, with a global shipping network and a relentless push to boost consumption for everyone. As things get worse, less resources will be available to maintain far-flung infrastructure, and people/civilization will retreat to large cities in the wealthy & livable global north, where pressures will be high to produce commodities locally.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2016 23:12
|
|