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I think I agree with you. We could see some terrible climate catastrophe within a few years (dodged a bullet with some of the hurricanes, I think,) which when combined with our deteriorating geopolitical situation could lead to a near-term future that is pretty bleak in many areas. But we won't be extinct within 10 years (9 now, I guess?) like Guy prophecizes. But for anyone who thinks that the 2040s are going to look much like today, with the seas up a little bit maybe, that just seems completely impossible to me. We'll be well on our way to a new climate regime, it will be getting worse every year at an accelerating pace, and there will be no options left to stop it. Day to day life will be greatly different, more difficult, and with different concerns, than it is now. If I had to place more or less unfounded bets, I think there's a reasonable chance of some awful climate change-related event within a few years that serves as an undeniable wake-up call, but in the next decade or two we will just double down on geoengineering to buy more time and avoid really reducing carbon emissions, with uncertain effects (certainly in the long term, where the heat we defer could come back with a vengeance.) Given that sulfides are having a real effect on the current temperatures, it seems unavoidable that we will go heavy into purposeful geoengineering before long. Mozi fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 21:14
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Perry Mason Jar posted:That the debate is centered on "assured human extinction and personal death within 40 years" versus "assured human extinction and death for your immediate offspring, in 80 years" should be everything you need for despondency and flights of hedonism. Good example of the really stupid thought process in this thread. Assured human extinction is a much different thing than a few thousand humans surviving in tribes in places like Greenland. Full human extinction is a possibility, but the time scale is hundreds to thousands of years, and if we go most eukaryotes are going with us. There is a specific mechanism of action for extinction, and it involves CO2-loading the ocean while increasing atmospheric CH4. You can't just wave your hands and say "oh in 80 years I guess everything will be dead" without doing your homework on the atmospheric and ocean chemistry involved to make this happen. What could happen in 40 years? Extreme drought along the edge of the Hadley cell, extreme inundation events along the tropics, large increases in water-borne disease due to widespread wastewater infrastructure failure, biome shifts toward grassland as wildfires and land use consume more forest, etc.... All of these things involve large amounts of suffering for human and other life. None of them involve human extinction.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:21
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Really, we're not all that far off from some places on Earth being hot and wet enough at times to literally kill you. Places that are populated and where lots of people don't have air conditioning.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:28
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Permafrost and ocean vents both release CH4. There's other problems with the ocean outside of overabundance of CO2 - there's deoxygenation, acidification, pollution, and overfishing. I don't know where the mythical few thousand humans intend to farm or fish or hunt, nor how a post-civilization world contends with absurdly volatile weather the likes of which we're experiencing today, right now. And those are problems that can potentially be solved, but negative feedback loops pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere absolutely require geo-engineering, as far as I know, and they have direct consequences in terms of respiration, immunoresponse, thermoregulation, and cognition.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:36
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Mozi posted:Really, we're not all that far off from some places on Earth being hot and wet enough at times to literally kill you. Places that are populated and where lots of people don't have air conditioning. Notorious R.I.M. posted:On the other hand we have people saying that the 2040s will be like the 2010s
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Feb 20, 2018 21:38
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Perry Mason Jar posted:Permafrost and ocean vents both release CH4. There's other problems with the ocean outside of overabundance of CO2 - there's deoxygenation, acidification, pollution, and overfishing. I don't know where the mythical few thousand humans intend to farm or fish or hunt, nor how a post-civilization world contends with absurdly volatile weather the likes of which we're experiencing today, right now. And those are problems that can potentially be solved, but negative feedback loops pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere absolutely require geo-engineering, as far as I know, and they have direct consequences in terms of respiration, immunoresponse, thermoregulation, and cognition. The entire anthropocene has essentially been accidental geoengineering. Now we get to do less accidental geoengineering and hope we manage to do more good than harm! Geoengineering also comes in a lot of varieties ranging from spraying aerosols to managing aquatic biomes. You don't know what life will be like for those mythical few thousand humans because we have exponential uncertainty for things like permafrost methane release or mercury seep rates. These are things to research further rather than conjecture about specific outcomes. Which is to say that our cone of uncertainty starts to get loving wild past about 2040 or so.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:47
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We don't have any workable geo-engineering technology or even workable plans in the wings. Spraying aerosols is a short term solution unless the long term solution of aerosals is to spray them non-stop forever. We already have this issue: if we stopped spraying aerosol, or dealing with the problem of air pollution in myriad ways, we'd immediately see 0.5 to 1.1 degree rise in global temperatures. Now we're playing the balancing act of keeping the air polluted just enough to keep the Earth cool enough to live on but not so polluted we can't breath. How long can we sustain that? How long can that be sustained in a post-civilization Earth? I'd guess air pollution drops precipitously when billions of humans are dead, leaving "only" the problem of a global temperature rise. That's one example of the many, many human-survival precluding Catch 22s. All arguments saying human won't go extinct are necessarily, as you've done, predicated on geo-engineering or some other wishmaking (e.g., Elon Musk saves the planet or Jesus literally descends from heaven).
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Feb 20, 2018 22:00
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Perry Mason Jar posted:We don't have any workable geo-engineering technology or even workable plans in the wings. I have not said humans won't go extinct. I have said that the timeline for a human extinction is not 40 or 80 years, it's several hundred to several thousand years, and the primary mechanism of action will be atmospheric hydrogen sulfide due to euxinic oceans. If you want to argue that we've already locked in an end-Permian style extinction, I'm game to hear it because I've not seen any literature to indicate that this is the case. This is true even when we account for the current rate and duration of carbon and sulfate load we've put on the planet.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:08
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It'll be locked in in five years. https://gritpost.com/humans-extinct-climate-change/ edit: Note that Anderson says that within these five years we'll need geo-engineering, too. Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 22:11
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Perry Mason Jar posted:It'll be locked in in five years. Okay cool, you've posted an article that doesn't include any quotes from the author making a claim of extinction. I see a claim that we'll revert to an Eocene-style equable climate regime. I completely agree with this, and I think exiting the Quaternary and transitioning to such a state is inevitable due to loss of Arctic Sea Ice and freshwater hosing disrupting North Atlantic Deep Water circulation. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum also wasn't a mass extinction event even though it was close. Here is a paper that shows carbon-loading rates and estimates of mass extinction tipping points. It includes both the PETM and the end-Permian and indicates that we have ~310 +/- 155 PgC of headroom at +/- 50% confidence before we pass the mass extinction tipping point: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/9/e1700906.full The 5 year limit is close to the lower bound of this uncertainty estimate of 155PgC. I think this is reasonable. I also don't think that allows us to make the claim "It'll be locked in". I do think this should be a motivator for us to deploy a Marshall Plan-style overhaul to combat this. Your problem is that you're trying to divine single outcomes out of a probability distribution of outcomes, and you make no attempt to understand the science behind those distributions because you'd rather hear one that fits your narrative.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:22
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Perry Mason Jar posted:It'll be locked in in five years. Not to say he's wrong, but that's not a persuasive article and I can't find any links to his actual speech. That said his recommendation I entirely agree with. It's what the world should be preoccupied and united about now, we're missing our last chance and future generations will hate us. Mozi fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 22:25
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I will say that it's refreshing to see scientists arguing from the other side of the distribution instead of erring on the side of least drama like they've been doing for the past 20 years, though.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:26
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Mozi posted:Really, we're not all that far off from some places on Earth being hot and wet enough at times to literally kill you. Places that are populated and where lots of people don't have air conditioning. Yes, we came within a few degrees of a 95ºF (35ºC) wet-bulb* temps in the Middle East. Bandahr Mashrahr in Iran recorded record a wet-bulb temperature of 34.6 degrees in 2015. At that or above people will die (without AC). * The wet-bulb temperature is the temperature a parcel of air would have if it were cooled to saturation (100% relative humidity) by the evaporation of water into it, with the latent heat being supplied by the parcel.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:52
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The US passed a $50/t carbon sequestration subsidy. Pretty good news. If you can actually get the cost of sequestration that low it makes the gigaton-scale operations we'll need by mid-century start to look viable.
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Feb 20, 2018 23:23
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:Okay cool, you've posted an article that doesn't include any quotes from the author making a claim of extinction. I see a claim that we'll revert to an Eocene-style equable climate regime. I completely agree with this, and I think exiting the Quaternary and transitioning to such a state is inevitable due to loss of Arctic Sea Ice and freshwater hosing disrupting North Atlantic Deep Water circulation. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum also wasn't a mass extinction event even though it was close. I'm folding in my belief that we will not do enough to slow (and then stop, as is required) emissions to stop the trends that, by your own admission, will lead to extinction. I'm also folding in my belief that we will not be able to geo-engineer our way out of the problem like the Marshall Plan mentioned therein, and every other extinction-precluding model, necessitates.
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Feb 20, 2018 23:42
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Perry Mason Jar posted:I'm folding in my belief that we will not do enough to slow (and then stop, as is required) emissions to stop the trends that, by your own admission, will lead to extinction. I'm also folding in my belief that we will not be able to geo-engineer our way out of the problem like the Marshall Plan mentioned therein, and every other extinction-precluding model, necessitates. Is there any reason at all that anyone else should give a flying gently caress what you believe if you don't have any evidential basis for it?
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Feb 21, 2018 00:18
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:People seem to either drastically overestimate or underestimate climate impacts during the 21st century. On one hand we have idiots saying that literally everyone is going to die either through black magic self-reinforcing thoughts or speeding up the rate of ocean acidification by 100-fold. On the other hand we have people saying that the 2040s will be like the 2010s while neglecting regime changes in atmospheric circulation and the speed at which climate can affect weather. There's also the issue that a lot of the effects on Westerners in the near term won't even come from climate change directly. Alex Steffen likes to talk about this a bit, but in general markets are fairly good at reacting and panicking once it's clear that something big is coming. So the problem isn't, for example, Miami being submerged, but instead the moment when most of the money starts realizing that they'll live to see their coastal properties (literally) underwater. Thug Lessons posted:The US passed a $50/t carbon sequestration subsidy. Pretty good news. If you can actually get the cost of sequestration that low it makes the gigaton-scale operations we'll need by mid-century start to look viable. We're a long, long way from this making it viable to capture carbon from the air, though. It makes point source CCS (slightly) more viable, but we're going to be paying a whole lot more than $50/t if we want to actually hit the negative emissions goals we need to in order to make any serious carbon budget work.
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Feb 21, 2018 00:23
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No there's no reason to care at all but I don't think we're exactly lacking in evidence for climate change inaction.
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Feb 21, 2018 00:29
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Perry Mason Jar posted:No there's no reason to care at all but I don't think we're exactly lacking in evidence for climate change inaction.
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Feb 21, 2018 00:41
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Paradoxish posted:There's also the issue that a lot of the effects on Westerners in the near term won't even come from climate change directly. Alex Steffen likes to talk about this a bit, but in general markets are fairly good at reacting and panicking once it's clear that something big is coming. So the problem isn't, for example, Miami being submerged, but instead the moment when most of the money starts realizing that they'll live to see their coastal properties (literally) underwater. Yeah the signal for actual climate adaptation in the first world to me is when insurers refuse to insure flood or wildfire prone developments.
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Feb 21, 2018 00:50
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Paradoxish posted:We're a long, long way from this making it viable to capture carbon from the air, though. It makes point source CCS (slightly) more viable, but we're going to be paying a whole lot more than $50/t if we want to actually hit the negative emissions goals we need to in order to make any serious carbon budget work. Petra Nova's estimated to sequester at $50 so that's at break even under the subsidy, and I really don't see any reason that's some sort of hard limit. I agree we're a long way away on any sort of capture technology, (besides bioenergy, which we know works but has insane land use requirements and all sorts of other problems, but makes electricity to offset costs), but we're also decades away from needing to roll it out at scale. In any case the subsidy a big step in the right direction.
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Feb 21, 2018 01:11
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I don't believe or hope anything.
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Feb 21, 2018 01:11
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Grouchio posted:I believe our collective actions towards battling climate change are, have been and will be exponential. 
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Feb 21, 2018 01:13
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lol TIL if trump gets re-elected it could literally doom the human race
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Feb 21, 2018 01:20
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Exactly this with futuretech like hydroponics and plant genetic engineering.
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Feb 21, 2018 01:37
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Thug Lessons posted:Petra Nova's estimated to sequester at $50 so that's at break even under the subsidy, and I really don't see any reason that's some sort of hard limit. I agree we're a long way away on any sort of capture technology, (besides bioenergy, which we know works but has insane land use requirements and all sorts of other problems, but makes electricity to offset costs), but we're also decades away from needing to roll it out at scale. In any case the subsidy a big step in the right direction. I'm sorry, but this is incredibly disingenuous. Petra Nova's captured carbon is being used to extract oil, and even then it is isn't profitable unsubsidized. You're completely glossing over the primary issue with CCS, which is that there's no economic reason to do it that isn't counterproductive from a climate standpoint. edit- Just to be clear for anyone who isn't familiar, they are literally pumping the CO2 underground in order to extract oil which does an end run around the issue of not wanting to waste money pulling carbon out of the air just to bury it. And I realize that they are (potentially) sequestering more carbon than they're bringing up, but the point is that their math stops working if you aren't using your captured CO2 to extract oil. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 02:02
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Is it generally a bad idea for a climate change optimist to read Six Degrees by Mark Lynas?
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Feb 21, 2018 07:21
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If you feel optimistic then you're definately going to ruin that by reading up on it more.
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Feb 21, 2018 08:20
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Is it actually a good book or just cherry-picked alarmist crap?
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Feb 21, 2018 09:03
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I'm clicking through a vid from the guy who wrote it and it's... ok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_pb1G2wIoA The general scope of impact for each degree from 2-6 is alright, although I disagree with a lot of the specifics. I would say that based on the current outcomes we'll probably attain over the 21st century as well as where climate science is in 2018, we're probably locked in for somewhere around 2.5-4.5C of warming by 2100. My main issue is that he mostly focuses on temperature and water impacts, and this is a pretty myopic view that can be expanded on heavily. By trying to phrase everything in terms of a sliding temperature scale, he loses a significant amount of nuance on atmospheric chemistry. From what I see, it doesn't really discuss the carbon, methane, and sulfur cycles and how they interact. Here's a basic example of what I mean: The mass extinction point is probably somewhere loosely around 6C as he outlines. However, this cascade is started by ocean anoxia which requires enough heat to lower oxygen content and enough CO2 to lower the pH past the point where oxic life like foraminifera can survive. You can get 6C of warming in different ways which have different impacts on ocean anoxia. For example, if you have +9C of CO2 forcing and -3C of sulfate aerosol forcing, you have a net load of +9C worth of atmospheric CO2 reacting to lower oceanic pH. If you have +6C of CO2 forcing and 0C of sulfate aerosol forcing, you only have a net load of +6C worth of atmospheric CO2 doing the same. This is why coal is an evil, evil thing to burn. This focus on water also neglects important discussion on land use and soil impacts which are mostly glossed over as desertification. At one point in the video I saw a claim that northern Canada would be arable land. This would certainly not be the case due to several factors, like mercury content in the soil and permafrost instability causing land to warp, deform, and blowout. For what they do discuss on water, I think general trends of drought, inundation, and desertification are pretty good. I think ocean circulation changes and ice sheet collapse can happen earlier than they indicate, especially in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Overall, eh why not read it, there's probably worse. Not sure you'd get more than what's in the video though. I think I'd still recommend just reading skepticalscience and the arctic sea ice forums regularly
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Feb 21, 2018 10:18
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:This is why coal is an evil, evil thing to burn.
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Feb 21, 2018 11:56
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:This is why coal is an evil, evil thing to burn. Cingulate posted:In contrast to natural gas?
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Feb 21, 2018 12:19
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Paradoxish posted:I'm sorry, but this is incredibly disingenuous. Petra Nova's captured carbon is being used to extract oil, and even then it is isn't profitable unsubsidized. You're completely glossing over the primary issue with CCS, which is that there's no economic reason to do it that isn't counterproductive from a climate standpoint. I don't believe this is correct. The cost of the Petra Nova's CCS operation is estimated at $50/t, not the net revenue of CCS + EOR. It's hard to say because Petra Nova doesn't release their finances, but if I'm being disingenuous it's by not including deployment costs, (which was estimated at $1 billion). In any case the economic viability of CCS + EOR depends on a lot of factors (oil prices, costs of transport, availability of geological CO2 reserves) that aren't relevant when you're talking about doing CSS for the purposes of negative emissions. The entire point is that these sort of programs can push down the costs of the underlying technology.
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Feb 21, 2018 12:23
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Well, natural gas is a lot less CO2-intensive relative to the energy you get out of it. Still not great, obviously, coal is just amazingly terrible. Sorry, I am really really really bad at chemistry.
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Feb 21, 2018 12:23
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Conspiratiorist posted:Is it actually a good book or just cherry-picked alarmist crap? I haven't read Six Degrees but Mark Lynas is hardly an alarmist.
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Feb 21, 2018 12:25
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Cingulate posted:I thought NRIM was implying there was something in addition to that (sulphate aerosols)?
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Feb 21, 2018 12:31
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Natural gas is composed of fairly short hydrocarbons, primarily methane and not a lot else, compared to the mass of poo poo that's all mixed in with coal. Even with scrubbers you still end up with way more dirt and side-products than you do with natural gas, which combusts pretty cleanly into CO2 and H2O. Not that we should even be burning natural gas at this point, CO2 is still pretty bad, just not as bad as CO2 + a bunch of other poo poo from coal.
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Feb 21, 2018 15:07
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Cingulate posted:In contrast to natural gas? Natural gas mainly gives you carbon monoxide, dioxide and water. Coal pumps a ton of other crap into the atmosphere too.
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Feb 21, 2018 16:57
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ChairMaster posted:Natural gas is composed of fairly short hydrocarbons, primarily methane and not a lot else, compared to the mass of poo poo that's all mixed in with coal. Even with scrubbers you still end up with way more dirt and side-products than you do with natural gas, which combusts pretty cleanly into CO2 and H2O. Not that we should even be burning natural gas at this point, CO2 is still pretty bad, just not as bad as CO2 + a bunch of other poo poo from coal. hobbesmaster posted:Natural gas mainly gives you carbon monoxide, dioxide and water.
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Feb 21, 2018 17:53
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Cingulate posted:And that stuff is bad for the climate? I know it's poisonous to humans all by itself, but the add-ons are also climate killers (compared to natural gas)? No, but coal plants also emit about twice as much CO2 compared to natural gas.
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Feb 21, 2018 18:04
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