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Notorious R.I.M. posted:
Climate has never been stable, we were always going to have to geoengineer. It's not like we would have been fine during an ice age or something 5000 years from now. Humans living on this planet was always going to mean locking the climate into a tight range.
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Feb 27, 2018 15:12
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Climate has never been stable, we were always going to have to geoengineer. maybe stability isn't a binary? just a thought for your smooth brain to ponder
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Feb 27, 2018 16:11
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self unaware posted:maybe stability isn't a binary? just a thought for your smooth brain to ponder Humans are shortening what should have been a thousands of years long period of favorable climates into like one and a half of a global agricultural civilization and we should fix that. But like, long term humans were not ever going to get some sort of eternal favorable climate that lasted forever and ever and we always were going to have to take up the reins of controlling climate. No matter what we did. It would have been better when it would have been thousands of years from now and on a longer time scale but we never ever had the option of "just keep it like it is" without major geoengineering projects.
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Feb 27, 2018 16:42
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:But like, long term humans were not ever going to get some sort of eternal favorable climate that lasted forever and ever and we always were going to have to take up the reins of controlling climate. No matter what we did. long term the sun consumes the earth and we all die in a fire so really why geoengineer? we should be trying to get off the planet, i suggest you take the first one way ticket to mars in fact (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 27, 2018 16:43
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self unaware posted:long term the sun consumes the earth and we all die in a fire so really why geoengineer? Events hundreds or thousands of years into the future are things people can think about now compared to things millions or billions of years in the future. Right now climate is naturally very favorable and we are ruining it but beyond that it's not like nature will always grace us with this good climate and at some point geoengineering will have to change from "restoring nature" to "mitigating nature". Like There is probably an argument that we shouldn't be ruining the atmosphere now with fossil fuel because our great great great x10 grandchildren are going to need it later to ruin the atmosphere then.
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Feb 27, 2018 16:53
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Actually, we kinda need CO2 to be below 800 ppm for things such as "going indoors" or "living in a city" to be safe without breathing equipment. That's easily achievable within our lifetimes!
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Feb 27, 2018 17:17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8IVI0sZ6F8 Electricity consumption in the US has been flat for 10 years and is trending down.
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Feb 28, 2018 13:38
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Arglebargle III posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8IVI0sZ6F8 Electric Cars may (or may not) change that. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Global electric car registrations increased 55% to 3.2M in 2017, according to research firm ZSW. EV Registrations in China topped 1M for the first time. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3334038-global-electric-car-registrations-55-percent-last-year?uprof=79&dr=1#email_link
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Feb 28, 2018 19:56
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Paradoxish posted:I think geoengineering is going to be a much, much harder sell than most people think too. Geoengineering projects sound good to a lot of people in the abstract, but a concrete plan to spend trillions of dollars to literally shade the sun is actually apocalyptic and scary as hell. Even the most uninformed people are going to hear about proposals like that and get freaked out in a "how did we let it get this bad?" kind of way. I don't see why that matters. Climate policy isn't decided democratically, but by government, corporate and NGO officials sitting around in closed-door meetings. We're not going to build a $10 trillion sun shade because it's a moronic idea, but there isn't really any reason to care about how scary things are in the abstract to an ignorant and indifferent public.
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Mar 1, 2018 05:54
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Geoengineering on that scale is effectively decided democratically because the cost is large enough to be a political issue.
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Mar 1, 2018 06:13
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Paradoxish posted:Geoengineering on that scale is effectively decided democratically because the cost is large enough to be a political issue. Lol if you think anything in the US is actually democratically decided.
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Mar 1, 2018 06:15
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The whole reason BECCS was chosen as the preferred geoengineering option was specifically to avoid that. BECCS generates electricity that can be sold to offset the cost that would require democratic consent, similar to how we're willing to invest trillions in solar and wind.
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Mar 1, 2018 06:18
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It seems like you couldn’t do the insane stuff like sun shields preemptively so the only time anyone would be offering that as a solution would be in a time the problem was already so bad no one really would be in a position to say no.
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Mar 1, 2018 06:27
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:Was curious about the health effects of CO2 concentration. I was thinking about this today. 426ppm is less than 9 years off at current atmospheric CO2 growth rates - and this little paper says that's the estimated lifetime toxic CO2 level. 600ppm, where transitory levels start to cause CO2 poisoning symptoms, is about 80 years off at current rates.
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Mar 4, 2018 03:14
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gently caress off with that terrifying bullshit, I want to live my middle class lifestyle in peace without having to worry about choking on the literal air I breathe. just get on with the mr. burns sun shade already, whatever you have to do
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Mar 4, 2018 04:07
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Alas, a Sun shade may reduce photosynthesis, and so CO2 would accumulate even faster in the atmosphere. The only real option is to somehow reduce CO2 levels, or like, live in purified containers.
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Mar 4, 2018 04:14
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Evil_Greven posted:Alas, a Sun shade may reduce photosynthesis, and so CO2 would accumulate even faster in the atmosphere. You guys are such pessimists. There's a lot of money to be made selling bottled air subscriptions and personal CO2 scrubbers to scared rich people.
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Mar 4, 2018 04:23
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Evil_Greven posted:Alas, a Sun shade may reduce photosynthesis, and so CO2 would accumulate even faster in the atmosphere. I keep coming back to sedimentation, weathering, and algaculture as the main part of our global chemical cycle to focus on actually dealing with CO2 concentration, not just temperature. Although mismanaging these can lead to huge cascades.
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Mar 4, 2018 04:26
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Evil_Greven posted:Alas, a Sun shade may reduce photosynthesis, and so CO2 would accumulate even faster in the atmosphere. Air conditioned mansions for the rich it is!
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Mar 4, 2018 04:29
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I'm in small-town northern Ireland for work right now and apparently every household burns about 50-100 kilos of coal every week for warmth. Anecdotally of course but I've been in a LOT of villages and homes the last few weeks.
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Mar 4, 2018 04:36
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Evil_Greven posted:I was thinking about this today. Well, gently caress. I wanted to live, dammit. 
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Mar 4, 2018 04:45
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Evil_Greven posted:Alas, a Sun shade may reduce photosynthesis, and so CO2 would accumulate even faster in the atmosphere. Not really man. Most ventilation systems are designed to keep CO2 levels at 1,000 ppm. People on submarines live with CO2 levels around ~3,500 ppm, spiking as high as 10,000. It will produce some minor unpleasentness but not anything worse than, you know, setting the thermostat a few degrees off your preferred level.
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Mar 4, 2018 04:47
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Thug Lessons posted:Not really man. Most ventilation systems are designed to keep CO2 levels at 1,000 ppm. People on submarines live with CO2 levels around ~3,500 ppm, spiking as high as 10,000. It will produce some minor unpleasentness but not anything worse than, you know, setting the thermostat a few degrees off your preferred level. Yeah I don't think the concentration at Mauna loa will tell you much about when CO2 might have any long term health impacts. Urban areas already have a significantly higher concentration and there aren't any compelling health impacts. I'd focus more on the ocean acidification side of CO2 for impacts.
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Mar 4, 2018 05:05
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The future middle class will be able to afford positive-pressure sleeping tents with pre-filtered and scrubbed air ensuring CO2-levels equivalent to the pre-industrial era. Sleeping masks flowing filtered air for lower price points, minimum wage earners will just have to deal with permanently stuffy rooms. Bottled air is already a hot commodity in major east-asian cities, so time is running out to get in on the ground floor for the defining products of the 21st century. Also what would be the sign of large-scale CO2 induced cognitive decline? For all we know it's already happening. Many aspects of modern society make more sense assuming the entire population is slightly addled from long-term elevated CO2 levels.
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Mar 4, 2018 05:16
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Nocturtle posted:The future middle class will be able to afford positive-pressure sleeping tents with pre-filtered and scrubbed air ensuring CO2-levels equivalent to the pre-industrial era. Sleeping masks flowing filtered air for lower price points, minimum wage earners will just have to deal with permanently stuffy rooms. Bottled air is already a hot commodity in major east-asian cities, so time is running out to get in on the ground floor for the defining products of the 21st century. Primary schools regularly exceeding 1250ppm in classrooms begin to see diminished performance in some reasoning categories with some students, with most students experiencing impairment in most categories by 1500.
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Mar 4, 2018 05:22
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How impaired are we talking here? Will I still be able to enjoy my long pointless Sunday drives to eat double-beef burgers and the occasional long-haul flight to the rest of the countries on my 'bucket list'? I shouldn't need to do any maths, the lower classes usually do the calculations at the register
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Mar 4, 2018 05:36
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Potato Salad posted:Primary schools regularly exceeding 1250ppm in classrooms begin to see diminished performance in some reasoning categories with some students, with most students experiencing impairment in most categories by 1500. 1500 is a bigger number than 600
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Mar 4, 2018 05:59
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:1500 is a bigger number than 600 An HVAC system is only going to keep is so far above ambient, yes?
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Mar 4, 2018 06:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:1500 is a bigger number than 600 CO2 is not uniformly distributed in the atmosphere
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Mar 4, 2018 06:04
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hobbesmaster posted:An HVAC system is only going to keep is so far above ambient, yes? The recommendation to the Texas BoE was for teachers to open a window when levels reached 1000  Classrooms in Texas would regularly exceed 2000
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Mar 4, 2018 06:05
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You get cognitive decline from setting the thermostat a few degrees too high in the summer. In fact large parts of the world lack air conditioning and are unable to set a thermostat at all, or for that matter proper ventilation to assure optimal CO2 levels. And there's a whole host of other factors too. Atmospheric CO2 is a drop in the bucket of this problem and this problem is a drop in the bucket of the problems created by rising atmospheric CO2.
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Mar 4, 2018 06:17
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Nocturtle posted:The future middle class will be able to afford positive-pressure sleeping tents with pre-filtered and scrubbed air ensuring CO2-levels equivalent to the pre-industrial era. Sleeping masks flowing filtered air for lower price points, minimum wage earners will just have to deal with permanently stuffy rooms. Also you'd just need to scrub the breathing air, right? Buy stock in CPAP companies?
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Mar 4, 2018 06:31
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Thug Lessons posted:Not really man. Most ventilation systems are designed to keep CO2 levels at 1,000 ppm. People on submarines live with CO2 levels around ~3,500 ppm, spiking as high as 10,000. It will produce some minor unpleasentness but not anything worse than, you know, setting the thermostat a few degrees off your preferred level. quote:In 1971, NASA carried out a 90-day study of the effects of exposure of humans to 0.5% atmosphere content of CO2, i.e. 15 times the present atmosphere level (2). This showed significant alterations in the calcium and phosphorus body patterns leading to bone degradation and the deposition of calcium in the body tissues. Such a result can be fatal. This particular research goes into detail about what may really be safe for humans. I have as of yet been unable to find the referenced NASA research. I did find this on page 48 of Bioastronautics Data Book - NASA Technical Reports Server - Second Edition (NTRS): quote:for prolonged exposures of 40 days, concentrations of carbon dioxide in air less than 0.5 percent (Zone A) cause no known biochemical or other effect; concentrations between 0.5 and 3.0 percent (Zone D) cause adaptive biochemical changes which may be considered a mild physiological strain; and concentrations above 3.0 percent (Zone C) cause pathological changes in basic physiological functions. A bit further in the first paper: quote:An increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 20.6% and would reduce the hydroxyl ion concentration and increase the hydrogen ion concentration by this amount, giving a pH value of 7.319. This value is just outside the range of normal pH values of human blood and indicates the onset of acidosis. The CO2 concentration prior to industrialization was 280 p.p.m. (4). This is 20% below the present value. Under these conditions, the CO2 has been removed from Equation 5 and the bicarbonate and hence the hydroxyl ion would have increased. This reduces the hydrogen ion concentration and the value of the pH of the blood of humans prior to industrialization was 7.49. or just outside the upper limit of 7.45 in present-day humans. These values demonstrate that humans can survive a change in the atmospheric concentration of about +/– 20% from the present value of 353 p.p.m. This is how the author comes up with 426ppm being above the safe limit. Earlier in the paper, there is discussion of CO2 tolerance up to 5000ppm, but that's derived from calculations within water rather than blood. Alas, the author thought we would have until at least 2050 to act, and probably not many people are really studying what could happen: quote:As noted above, the present concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the predicted rise to 425.8 p.p.m. by 2050 AD are still within the limits of control by the human body. However, the accompanying changes in blood acidity caused by a rise in the atmospheric content of CO2 cannot be dismissed as insignificant when there has been no study of this aspect of the change in the atmosphere. At present, there is no effort to establish whether such changes are happening or are likely to happen two or more generations from the present date. Effects with a CO2 level in excess of 600ppm by 2050 (per an IPCC projection), assuming growth in emissions over time: quote:The blood pH of all humans would then be in the region where acidosis occurs and every human on Earth will suffer from acidosis for all of their lifetime. Humans born after 2050AD will begin to show the effects of acidosis from birth. The minimum effects of acidosis are restlessness and mild hypertension. As the degree of acidosis increases, somnolence and confusion follow. The second known effect of acidosis is the development of weaknesses in the bone structure of the body. It follows that a very large number of humans are likely to become incapable of physical activity taken for granted in present times 426ppm isn't a "we're all going to die instantly" threshold, but an estimate for where human health begins to suffer. The only problems are that said suffering is going to continue unless you have access to lower levels of CO2, and also health will continue to deteriorate as we continue to emit CO2.
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Mar 4, 2018 06:59
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So everyone will have to buy sodium bicarbonate tablets? I'm not even sure how fast that's eliminated from the body.
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Mar 4, 2018 08:04
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I'm very skeptical that he can infer the blood pH of past human populations from the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The human body is stuffed with proton pumps and, believe it or not, deals with surges in blood CO2 all the time. You don't keel over in acidosis on the treadmill, right? I think if we could go back in time to pre-industrial people and have a look at their blood I would expect they'd have the same blood pH. It's true that excessive carbon dioxide can cause acidosis but that's typically patients in respiratory failure and the carbon dioxide is coming from the patient's tissues. The partial pressure of CO2 in human blood is around 40 torr. The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 0.3 torr. So I have a very hard time believing this idea that we're going to get acidosis from a change in atmospheric CO2 from 0.3 to 0.4 torr.
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Mar 4, 2018 09:13
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If Thug Lessons' comment about submarine CO2 concentration is accurate, then do people returning from lengthy assignments on submarines suffer acidosis? Edit: Quick Googling found two papers from 1971 looking at submarines with ~0.9% CO2 concentration; one found "no evidence of acidosis during the study and post recovery period" and the other found "evidence suggestive of an existing (??) acidosis". I'm not sure how convinced I am by two papers from the early 70s that appear to have been funded by the military, though. TACD fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 09:38
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TACD posted:If Thug Lessons' comment about submarine CO2 concentration is accurate, then do people returning from lengthy assignments on submarines suffer acidosis? The difference there probably corresponds to the study period: the first study is 56 days long while the latter is just 7. It takes some time for the renal system to adjust and start filtering out the carbonic acid. Like Arglebargle says, our bodies have means of compensating for environmental toxins. It's possible carbon can put additional stress on body systems but it's not going to literally turn the air into poison.
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Mar 4, 2018 15:49
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Evil_Greven posted:The rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and the effects on human health, circa 2001 Great article from Medical Hypotheses. Wonder what that journal is. Turns out it's "a forum for unconventional ideas without the traditional filter of scientific peer review", and "the only Elsevier journal that did not send submitted papers to other scientists for review." (wiki). Their editorial standards were so low that they ended up publishing AIDS denialism articles, and the ensuing controversy forced them to rescind this practice in 2010. *toilet flushing noises*
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Mar 4, 2018 15:57
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Thug Lessons posted:Great article from Medical Hypotheses. Wonder what that journal is. Turns out it's "a forum for unconventional ideas without the traditional filter of scientific peer review", and "the only Elsevier journal that did not send submitted papers to other scientists for review." (wiki). Their editorial standards were so low that they ended up publishing AIDS denialism articles, and the ensuing controversy forced them to rescind this practice in 2010. quote:4. Robertson, D. S., The rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and the effects on human health. Med. Hypotheses, 2001, 56, 513–518. Perhaps the initial article is bunk, which would be good news for a change. It appears the author of the initial is the same author of the reference, and I assume the initial article passed review.
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Mar 4, 2018 16:10
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Evil_Greven posted:I'm just following back from the initial article from Current Science; that Medical Hypothesis article is one of those references and is how the initial article comes up with 426ppm as being past a safe point: Current Science is a relatively obscure Indian journal. Shouldn't it raise some eyebrows that, when he's not avoiding peer review (the vast majority of his publications are in Medical Hypotheses), this guy has to go overseas to get his articles published? Also, why am I not the least bit surprised that Googling the Current Science article leads directly to the Arctic Sea Ice forums?
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Mar 4, 2018 16:27
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