Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

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Lemming: Apr 21, 2008

I feel like the chances are very high that we're going to end up trying to do some geoengineering band aid patch that ends up with bad unintended consequences

# ? Oct 19, 2016 00:05

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# ? May 14, 2024 17:13

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Actually, Pew'a research into global opinions about climate change is pretty interesting http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/18/what-the-world-thinks-about-climate-change-in-7-charts/

# ? Oct 19, 2016 00:59

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Lemming posted:

I feel like the chances are very high that we're going to end up trying to do some geoengineering band aid patch that ends up with bad unintended consequences

Pretty much inevitable, imo. As a measure to buy time if nothing else.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 01:11

Captain Fargle: Feb 16, 2011

Lemming posted:

I feel like the chances are very high that we're going to end up trying to do some geoengineering band aid patch that ends up with bad unintended consequences

The Great Green Wall at least is unlikely to cause any serious gently caress ups.

Which reminds me. How well do we understand the impact of major bodies of water on the weather patterns and so forth? For example: What would be the likely impact of rebuilding the Aral Sea?

# ? Oct 19, 2016 01:41

MinionOfCthulhu: Oct 28, 2005; I got this title for free due to my proximity to an idiot who wanted to save $5 on an avatar by having someone else spend $9.95 instead.

So I've just gotten into my first global warming Facebook slapfight. Accidentally. They triumphantly posted this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/#65f51c2e32da

I guess global warming isn't doing too much, they smugly say. I'm not very good at this.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 02:38

Banana Man: Oct 2, 2015; mm time 2 gargle piss and shit

You should avoid arguing about climate change on facebook, you must resist the urge, because it always ends up even more stupid than it does here. Not to say the viewpoints here are dumb (most are pretty informed) but much like climate change, nothing will happen. Eat your kids!!

# ? Oct 19, 2016 03:03

Paradoxish: Dec 19, 2003; Will you stop going crazy in there?

Trabisnikof posted:

Actually, Pew'a research into global opinions about climate change is pretty interesting http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/18/what-the-world-thinks-about-climate-change-in-7-charts/

China really kind of stands out here as a country that's going to be turbofucked and doesn't care. South America knows what's up, at least.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 03:12

BattleMoose: Jun 16, 2010

MinionOfCthulhu posted:

So I've just gotten into my first global warming Facebook slapfight. Accidentally. They triumphantly posted this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/#65f51c2e32da

I guess global warming isn't doing too much, they smugly say. I'm not very good at this.

We shouldn't have to be good at this. Its a game to them. They distort the data and wrangle it in ways so that it can weakly used to apparently support their positions when it absolutely doesn't. The game is, as always, to figure out how they are misrepresenting the data, such that lay people can be persuaded by it.

Step 1. Google "the title" article, the results will typically include an *abundance of rebuttals* of why its horribly wrong. Climate scientists are generally super good about writing rebuttals to this bullshit. Sadly they aren't read by those who need to read them.

Here's one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.68cb51cb8931

Here is one from the people who actually produced the data.
https://www.atmos.illinois.edu/~wlchapma/Forbes.article.response.pdf (It's pretty bland and weak in my opinion but gets the job done)

The major data distortion is this:
He is combining the data from the Arctic and the Antarctic together. Arctic sea ice reduction is pretty drat dramatic. But Antarctic sea ice in many instances has actually expanded in some areas for reasons that can be explained elsewhere. He is also only talking about *sea ice* and doesn't include all ice. So if the reduction in Arctic ice is added together with the slight increase in Antarctic ice, the numbers really do flatten out. Even including the mass of Antarctic ice just dilutes the changes hugely.

*What is actually happening to sea ice extent in the Arctic*

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

If you want to get glib with them, you could try asking how oceans can rise without the oceans warming and ice melting. It won't work but might help you feel better.

BattleMoose fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Oct 19, 2016

# ? Oct 19, 2016 03:41

eNeMeE: Nov 26, 2012

This is a thing now so clearly nothing is going on.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 04:03

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

I hope the bears eat them.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 04:07

BattleMoose: Jun 16, 2010

Nocturtle posted:

I hope the bears eat them.

I would actually be super keen to do that, not at that price though. Its a cruise like any other, air travel is more harmful.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 04:08

eNeMeE: Nov 26, 2012

Nocturtle posted:

I hope the bears eat them.

They've got nothing else to swim to so ... maybe?

# ? Oct 19, 2016 10:15

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Potato Salad posted:

I can do best practice. Ahem:

rear end in a top hat.

[Sets Ignore]

It's not often people scream "you've gotten under my skin" so boldly, I respect that

# ? Oct 19, 2016 16:17

Forever_Peace: May 7, 2007; Shoe do do do do do do do Shoe do do do do do do yeah Shoe do do do do do do do Shoe do do do do do do yeah

Always love some good longform: "Donald Trump Is the First Demagogue of the Anthropocene"

About the ways in which climate change could plausibly contribute to authoritarianism and racial resentment, the implications that holds, and how to handle it.

quote:

I want to propose a new way of understanding Donald Trump. He not only represents a white racial backlash, and he has not only opened the way for an American extension of the European far right. Insofar as his supporters are drawn to him by a sense of global calamity, and insofar as his rhetoric singles out the refugee as yet another black and brown intruder trying to violate the nation�s cherished borders, Trump is the first demagogue of the Anthropocene.

...

This xenophobia is grounded in real-life trends. I will focus on two in particular: moribund economic growth and the mass migration of non-white people. Both will likely intensify as the planet warms. (A third vital trend�the political and cultural upheaval of the U.S. racial hierarchy�will not vary with climate change.)

First, climate change could easily worsen the inequality that has already hollowed out the Western middle class. A recent analysis in Nature projected that the effects of climate change will reduce the average person�s income by 23 percent by the end of the century. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts that unmitigated global warming could cost the American economy $200 billion this century. (Some climate researchers think the EPA undercounts these estimates.)

Future consumers will not register these costs so cleanly, though�there will not be a single climate-change debit exacted on everyone�s budgets at year�s end. Instead, the costs will seep in through many sources: storm damage, higher power rates, real-estate depreciation, unreliable and expensive food. Climate change could get laundered, in other words, becoming just one more symptom of a stagnant and unequal economy. As quality of life declines, and insurance premiums rise, people could feel that they�re being robbed by an aloof elite.

They won�t even be wrong. It�s just that due to the chemistry of climate change, many members of that elite will have died 30 or 50 years prior.

Yet the second trend�the combination of mass migration and racist backlash�could push even more polities toward authoritarianism. Migration is also harder to predict than inequality: Wars and exoduses are not as easy to model as flood damage and agricultural yields.

But academics are trying. J�rgen Scheffran, a professor of geography at the University of Hamburg, has been investigating whether climate change makes armed conflict more likely for more than a decade. In 2012, he worked on a team that analyzed all 27 empirical studies investigating the link between war and climate change.

�Sixteen found a significant link between climate and conflict, six did not find a link, and five found an ambiguous relationship,� he told me. He described these numbers as inconclusive. Trying to prove that climate change is linked to war, he said, would be like trying to prove that smoking causes cancer with only one available case study.

�That alone was complicated to prove over time,� he said. �There were millions of cases of individuals who were smoking, and millions who got cancer, and you can develop a correlation between these two phenomena.�

�But there is only one world, and not a million worlds, in which the temperature is rising, and you cannot associate a single event�like a single hurricane or a single conflict�to climate change. It�s a statistical problem, and we don�t have enough data yet,� he said.

...

[Carl-Friedrich Schleussner] and his colleagues suspected that most people can adjust over time to slower changes in their local environment. What they wanted to know what whether conflict could be stirred by a flood, drought, or wildfire�a sudden act of god that destroys deep wealth with little warning.

Heatwaves, droughts, and other climate-related exogenous shocks do correlate to conflict outbreak�but only in countries primed for conflict by ethnic division. In the 30-year period, nearly a quarter of all ethnic-fueled armed conflict coincided with a climate-related calamity. By contrast, in the set of all countries, war only correlated to climatic disaster about 9 percent of the time.

�We cannot find any evidence for a generalizable trigger relationship, but we do find evidence for some risk enhancement,� Schleussner told me. In other words, climate disaster will not cause a war, but it can influence whether one begins.

...

Climate change could push Western politics toward demagoguery and authoritarianism in two ways, then. First, it could devastate agricultural yields and raise food prices; destroy coastal real estate and destroy family wealth; transform old commodities into luxury goods. Second, it could create a wave of migration�likely from conflict, but possibly from environmental ruination�that stresses international reception systems and risks fomenting regional resource disputes.

In effect, it could erode people�s sense of security, pushing them toward authoritarianism.

...

Trump is, in essence, a double case�a preview of what�s to come and a way to practice dealing with it. He represents a test that the leaders of a major American political party is failing, and that the electorate may only narrowly pass. He is showing us how ill-prepared the United States is for post-climate demagoguery, and he gives us an opportunity to improve our societal immune response.

How might we do that? His rise also suggests a number of defense mechanisms. Obviously, the first is that climate change must be mitigated with all deliberate speed. But he also suggests certain cultural mechanisms. Some Americans may favor more restrictive immigration policies, but�in order to withstand against future waves of mass migration (and humanely deal with the victims of climate change)�racist fears must be unhooked from immigration restrictionism. In other words, as a matter of survival against future authoritarians, white supremacy must be rejected and defeated.

And there is a third method of fighting back against Trump and his ilk. Carr told me that he doesn�t think it makes sense to plan for receiving countries; I am less convinced. After all, he also told me that reception to migrants in the U.S. depends greatly on regional cultures. Central Massachusetts, where he lives now, welcomed about 10,000 Ghanian refugees in the 1970s, and it never entered a period of mass white-nationalist revulsion. The United States still welcomes and integrates immigrants faster than European countries.

Those regional cultures can still be improved and strengthened. In April, a poll conducted by The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute found that the voters most likely to vote for Donald Trump were civically disengaged�they did not go to church, or volunteer at school or Girl Scouts, or join a book club. These Americans were also more likely to be financially insecure and less likely to be well educated.

...

Trump�s success in the primary among the civically disintegrated suggests another way forward. Improving the United States�s immune response to authoritarian leadership�a response that could be repeatedly tested in the century to come�can follow from weaving its civic fabric ever tighter. I don�t know what this will look like, exactly, for every person. But here are some places to start: Volunteer. Run for local or state office. Give to charity (whether due to religion or effective altruism). Organize at work. Join a church or a community choir or the local library staff. Make your hometown a better place for refugees to settle. Raise a child well.

These may seem inconsequential, tasks unrelated to the final goal of restricting how much carbon dioxide enters the environment. And, admittedly, they are. But climate realists have always split their work between mitigation�that is, trying to keep the climate from getting worse�and adaptation�trying to protect what we already have. As more warming gets baked into the biosphere, as seas rise and livelihoods fall, these prosaic steps will become vital forms of adaptation.

Climate mitigation is a worthy goal in itself. It is all the more important when understood as one more type of long-term anti-fascism.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 17:06

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-19/environmental-concerns-cows-eating-seaweed/7946630

tl;dr: There's a particular kind of seaweed that, when dried and fed to livestock, dramatically cuts their methane emissions.

# ? Oct 19, 2016 21:46

Captain Fargle: Feb 16, 2011

Wanderer posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-19/environmental-concerns-cows-eating-seaweed/7946630

tl;dr: There's a particular kind of seaweed that, when dried and fed to livestock, dramatically cuts their methane emissions.

Wait. That's a NINETY NINE PERCENT reduction. Jesus. You weren't kidding when you said "drastic".

This is excellent news!

# ? Oct 19, 2016 23:35

Banana Man: Oct 2, 2015; mm time 2 gargle piss and shit

It's not enough! We're gonna fuckin die!!! *blows brains out*

# ? Oct 20, 2016 01:51

eNeMeE: Nov 26, 2012

Banana Man posted:

It's not enough! We're gonna fuckin die!!! *blows brains out*

Less methane and one less consumer, nice!

# ? Oct 20, 2016 03:53

Paradoxish: Dec 19, 2003; Will you stop going crazy in there?

For what it's worth, this actually isn't strictly new information. I couldn't turn up any particularly good articles on a quick google search, but we already knew that a seaweed diet like this reduced methane emissions from sheep. The problem, obviously, is that the amount of seaweed you'd need to make any kind of impact on a global scale would be huge. You'd need to be farming this stuff like crazy and you'd need to either force livestock owners to use it or find a way to make it cheap enough that they do it anyway.

Not trying to throw cold water on good news or anything, it's just that there's a cost here like with every other mitigation strategy.

# ? Oct 20, 2016 04:35

meatpath: Feb 13, 2003

Literally nothing said in this goddamn debate

# ? Oct 20, 2016 05:28

its no big deal: Apr 19, 2015

68k posted:

Literally nothing said in this goddamn debate

Clinton had an aside...

"Something is better than nothing cause otherwise it would have been worse."

# ? Oct 20, 2016 05:34

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

68k posted:

Literally nothing said in this goddamn debate

Clinton said climate change was a bigly deal tyvm

# ? Oct 20, 2016 05:34

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

Paradoxish posted:

For what it's worth, this actually isn't strictly new information. I couldn't turn up any particularly good articles on a quick google search, but we already knew that a seaweed diet like this reduced methane emissions from sheep. The problem, obviously, is that the amount of seaweed you'd need to make any kind of impact on a global scale would be huge. You'd need to be farming this stuff like crazy and you'd need to either force livestock owners to use it or find a way to make it cheap enough that they do it anyway.

Not trying to throw cold water on good news or anything, it's just that there's a cost here like with every other mitigation strategy.

The seaweed in question is literally an invasive species in Spain. It grows like a weed.

Seaweed farming is a valid strategy for ocean cleanup anyway, since it sucks nitrogen out of the water. You have to dry the stuff before it's any good as a feed additive anyway, which means you don't have to move all the cattle operations to oceanside property, so it's win-win-win.

# ? Oct 20, 2016 06:47

NewForumSoftware: Oct 8, 2016; by Lowtax

Some perspective on how the past few years of warming have been:

# ? Oct 20, 2016 06:55

Paradoxish: Dec 19, 2003; Will you stop going crazy in there?

Wanderer posted:

The seaweed in question is literally an invasive species in Spain. It grows like a weed.

It sounds like the people doing the research don't believe that it'd be economical to do without actual farming:

quote:

"Wild harvesting isn't going to do it because it's far too expensive and the resources aren't enough, so we need to get partners on board who can produce the seaweed in a cultivation process.

"Whether that be in South-East Asia where they are already farming millions of tonnes of seaweed, or beginning a new industry somewhere through the southern or western side of Australia."

From what I can tell doing just cursory research, the amount that'd be needed to supply cattle worldwide would be a pretty significant percentage of current global seaweed production. Keep in mind the pilot program they're talking about setting up here is intended to provide for less than 10% of just Australia's cattle, and they're still working on funding for that. This doesn't sound like a trivial economic problem at all.

# ? Oct 20, 2016 07:49

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

Paradoxish posted:

From what I can tell doing just cursory research, the amount that'd be needed to supply cattle worldwide would be a pretty significant percentage of current global seaweed production. Keep in mind the pilot program they're talking about setting up here is intended to provide for less than 10% of just Australia's cattle, and they're still working on funding for that. This doesn't sound like a trivial economic problem at all.

I've written about GreenWave farms in the thread before. There's already the start of an aquaculture movement built around seaside seaweed farming, both for food and as a cleanup method. The red seaweed in particular is already a staple of native Hawaiian cuisine, so there's even a preexisting market.

I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but happily, it's a series of problems that have been already working towards independent solutions for a while.

# ? Oct 20, 2016 08:15

Nice piece of fish: Jan 29, 2008; Ultra Carp

Wanderer posted:

I've written about GreenWave farms in the thread before. There's already the start of an aquaculture movement built around seaside seaweed farming, both for food and as a cleanup method. The red seaweed in particular is already a staple of native Hawaiian cuisine, so there's even a preexisting market.

I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but happily, it's a series of problems that have been already working towards independent solutions for a while.

I imagine government subsidies towards kelp farming would go a long way towards making it possible. I agree that this might be massively helpful, though I'd like to see some studies of the net benefactive effect of industrialized ocean farming. The fishery-industry is absolutely not enviro-friendly.

And as an added bonus for kelp farms: As the world warms and oceans rise, they'll have more and more growth space :v:

# ? Oct 20, 2016 09:01

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

I can't believe y'all spent most of the last 7 pages arguing with an Arkane parachute account with a reg date from this month.

Lemming posted:

I feel like the chances are very high that we're going to end up trying to do some geoengineering band aid patch that ends up with bad unintended consequences

This is almost inevitable at this point.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 02:06

Number_6: Jul 23, 2006; BAN ALL GAS GUZZLERS

(except for mine); Pillbug

Any thoughts on this CO2 > ethanol conversion thing that's been in the news lately? Is it just pop-science chatter, or does it have real legs?

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-accidentally-discovered-a-process-that-turns-co2-directly-into-ethanol

# ? Oct 21, 2016 06:48

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

Number_6 posted:

Any thoughts on this CO2 > ethanol conversion thing that's been in the news lately? Is it just pop-science chatter, or does it have real legs?

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-accidentally-discovered-a-process-that-turns-co2-directly-into-ethanol

It made the more respectable science journals and it's passed some amount of peer review. It's a potential game-changer.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 08:25

brakeless: Apr 11, 2011

The reaction happened for co2 dissolved in water and a specially made nanoscale structure raises questions about scalability. Also I didn't see any mention of the co2 concentration used on a quick read through their paper.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 09:31

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

It's also power intensive, but it has potential.

What will we do with the ethanol though? If we're just gonna burn it, that's hardly an improvement, and that seems to be what people are excited to do.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 14:01

Forever_Peace: May 7, 2007; Shoe do do do do do do do Shoe do do do do do do yeah Shoe do do do do do do do Shoe do do do do do do yeah

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/us/tennessee-nuclear-power-plant/index.html

First nuclear plant to come online in the US in 20 years. It's a few billion over budget, with a 40 year construction history, but it's the first of a few projects to be completed.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 15:35

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Forever_Peace posted:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/us/tennessee-nuclear-power-plant/index.html

First nuclear plant to come online in the US in 20 years. It's a few billion over budget, with a 40 year construction history, but it's the first of a few projects to be completed.

Watts Bar 2. It was good to see it finally turn on.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 17:10

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

GlyphGryph posted:

It's also power intensive, but it has potential.

What will we do with the ethanol though? If we're just gonna burn it, that's hardly an improvement, and that seems to be what people are excited to do.

Even if we just burn it, the ability to use carbon neutral electricity to make ethanol we can distribute and use in existing infrastructure to reduce total emissions now while we build out fancier infrastructure would be a viable path forward.

It is better to replace fossil fuels with recently captured carbon in a short to medium term timeframe.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 18:02

Potato Salad: Oct 23, 2014; nobody cares

Way easier to store and distribute than hydrogen.

If we need an energy-dense storage medium, ethanol is a contender.

The things you can do in a lab with nanostructures are, from a thermophysics standpoint, loving spooky.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 18:05

Nice piece of fish: Jan 29, 2008; Ultra Carp

Potato Salad posted:

Way easier to store and distribute than hydrogen.

If we need an energy-dense storage medium, ethanol is a contender.

The things you can do in a lab with nanostructures are, from a thermophysics standpoint, loving spooky.

Absolutely. If the technology is scalable and can be industrialized for greater efficiency, we could conceivably have nuclear plants creating fuel out of airborne CO2, at possibly a cost-effective level if a goodly portion of the transport sector was electric or public transport much more robust and available. It's probably possible to take some ethanol and store it underground or just store waste ethanol/water underground for net negative carbon.

Although really, carbon capture would be better with something like artificial coal/carbon lumps that could be stored underground in old mineshafts and the like. But I'm sure it would help.

# ? Oct 21, 2016 18:14

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Whoa whoa WHOA, there was WAY too much good feeling going around about that new nuke plant, here's some ballast to counteract http://www.pantagraph.com/business/...00ce0663f5.html

And in case you were wondering, Clinton is about 90% of the size of Watts Bar 2

# ? Oct 21, 2016 21:54

Uncle Jam: Aug 20, 2005; Perfect

Trabisnikof posted:

Even if we just burn it, the ability to use carbon neutral electricity to make ethanol we can distribute and use in existing infrastructure to reduce total emissions now while we build out fancier infrastructure would be a viable path forward.

It is better to replace fossil fuels with recently captured carbon in a short to medium term timeframe.

So much energy would be needed to capture the carbon, make the catalyst, and produce the ethanol that to make a dent in anything like the current CO2 concentration you would need way more 'carbon neutral' electricity than is available in the near term future. Even just carbon capture is this gigantic knot of a problem without two additional steps on top of it.

# ? Oct 22, 2016 04:46

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# ? May 14, 2024 17:13

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Uncle Jam posted:

So much energy would be needed to capture the carbon, make the catalyst, and produce the ethanol that to make a dent in anything like the current CO2 concentration you would need way more 'carbon neutral' electricity than is available in the near term future. Even just carbon capture is this gigantic knot of a problem without two additional steps on top of it.

That's fair, but recognize that we can build more nuclear/renewables and if we can solve a chunk of transportation emissions we can't electrify as quickly, that's a meaningful difference in marginal emissions.

# ? Oct 22, 2016 04:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

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