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I think it's related to generally improved quality of life and reduced unexpected mortality (especially for kids) generally results in people having fewer kids.
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Nov 10, 2020 01:14
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Bucky Fullminster posted:Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but can anyone help me understand what Gates meant by this? How do vaccines and healthcare reduce population? This is one of the key things the conspiracy theorists' argument boils down to: The theory: Developed countries' population growth is close to nothing. Thus, helping countries to develop will in turn lower their population growth, and ensuring that their infrastructure is properly green will cushion environmental effects. Thus if this goes through, in 20-30 years, there will be fewer humans because more people will have better living conditions. The practice: Developing countries build infrastructure however they can, with the world bank among others prioritizing resource extraction, international level intellectual property, and growing industry via public/private export based partnership as a path to wealth building. None of those things when prioritized help countries develop at all but they keep capitalists rich. RIP.
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Nov 10, 2020 01:14
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:I think it's related to generally improved quality of life and reduced unexpected mortality (especially for kids) generally results in people having fewer kids. Yeah that sounds like it. So if people are comfortable and confident that their kids are likely to survive to adulthood (through vaccines and healthcare), they'll have less kids, and population growth rate will actually slow. I know that the conclusion of Project Drawdown, for example, was that by far and away the number one thing we need to do to slow climate change is to educate woman in developing countries, because that is the number one way to slow population growth. (In saying that now, I can understand why "conservatives" would be opposed to that too.) So I guess he's using "vaccines and healthcare" in the same way. Man he really could have taken an extra 20 seconds to explain that better.
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Nov 10, 2020 02:20
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pity about the lag time on that lol (to be clear, we should absolutely be doing that)
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Nov 10, 2020 07:05
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thing bad
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Nov 17, 2020 03:18
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is it not possible to filter the carbon from the ocean where it's been dissolved, as opposed to directly from the air? No? well gently caress then. 
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Nov 17, 2020 12:21
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double nine posted:is it not possible to filter the carbon from the ocean where it's been dissolved, as opposed to directly from the air? It's possible, it just isn't practical due to the energy requirements. If we had limitless clean energy we could fix the ocean's CO2 content no problem, but if we had limitless clean energy we wouldn't have a hosed up ocean in the first place.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:54
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bodies of water are easier to sift through than the atmosphere, and there's more carbon dissolved in oceans than there is in atmosphere so if you have a decent way of catching dissolved carbon it's technically easier i guess? it's still pretty much impossible because to capture appreciable amounts of carbon, you need to sift through appreciable amounts of ocean, since the concentration is still only a little higher than atmosphere (i think up to 500ppm), and you still need to sift through the entire ocean or you just get small patches of low carbon while the rest is still the same so, even if you have a very good device to capture carbon from seawater, i don't think you can do it without capturing less than you spent because you need a fleet of ships with it to comb the oceans lmao
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Nov 17, 2020 12:56
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double nine posted:is it not possible to filter the carbon from the ocean where it's been dissolved, as opposed to directly from the air? Not that just filtering it from either is ideal but shouldn’t it re-enter the atmosphere once levels in the air go down (lol) as the two systems re-balance
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Nov 17, 2020 12:56
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Effectively I'm asking if it would be more energy efficient (just lol) to filter the stuff directly from the air or filter it from the water instead. Either way it's probably comically impossible in practical requirements though.
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Nov 17, 2020 13:22
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double nine posted:Effectively I'm asking if it would be more energy efficient (just lol) to filter the stuff directly from the air or filter it from the water instead. Either way it's probably comically impossible in practical requirements though. It’s a nice thought but barring some kind of magic innovation I can’t imagine it’s ever going to be more efficient to filter water because of all the mass you have to move let alone life to avoid. Especially since you’d have to wait on gradients to even out and later for more CO2 to redissolve. These are concerns in the atmosphere too, to some extent, but all less so
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Nov 17, 2020 13:54
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Truga posted:bodies of water are easier to sift through than the atmosphere, and there's more carbon dissolved in oceans than there is in atmosphere so if you have a decent way of catching dissolved carbon it's technically easier i guess? How about you pump water out of the one ocean, say the Pacific, and then shoot it out into another ocean, say the Atlantic, over the Panama canal or something stupid like that, somewhere where there's no appreciable black flow. Now you can have a static structure powered by a solar or wind or whatever (or even tidal capture or something) that can work effectively as hard as however many machines you can build in parallel
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Nov 17, 2020 16:02
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As for your fantasy thought experiment on carbon capture, oceans (still) have deep currents so the facilities would have to be placed in one for flowthrough. However, if you're looking for realistic large scale carbon capture a massive public works project of reforestation (and logging ban), Azolla fern and algae farms to capture CO2 and deposit dried biomatter in sealed mine shafts all using renewable or non carbon emitting energy paid for by confiscating the entire fossil fuel industry and all its generated wealth would be feasible from a practical standpoint. That would "work". But none of that will ever happen. Rich people will literally find a way to leave this planet before they allow this to happen. This should be clear by now. If the haves and the powerful wanted to bet on combatting climate change they would. They do not.
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Nov 17, 2020 16:24
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What about olivine? Seems that that is a very good candidate to help remove CO2 from the oceans via beaches. I can find surprisingly little about it online, but here is an article: Is Olivine the solution against Climate Change and Ocean Acidification? (Note: I realize there is no 'the' solution) And here is a Dutch company working with olivine: https://www.greensand.nl/en
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Nov 17, 2020 16:36
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Martian posted:What about olivine? Seems that that is a very good candidate to help remove CO2 from the oceans via beaches. It's a neat idea but this stood out to me: some dude posted:If the Olive grid is spread onto land and shallow water in the wet tropics, in a year about 20 percent of the CO2 will be weathered. When we repeat the proces every year with 7 cubic kilometers of rock, we will compensate the whole human CO2 emissions. 7 cubic kilometres a year is a lot, imo, in terms of spreading things around. not to say impossible of course, but it's a lot (for reference, the hoover dam used 3.3 million cubic metres of concrete and was built in five years, so this is of course not insurmountable). it would be interesting to see how well real world tests of a medium-large area would work, though. it would be interesting to see it replace other minerals in use vs crumbling and putting on beaches. mediaphage fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 19:28
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Some crude math shows that roughly 55 metric gigatons of olivine would be needed to be completely weathered each year to cancel out global carbon emissions. As a comparison global annual cement production is ~4 metric gigatons. Personally I think enhanced weathering of olivine is one of the more plausible negative emission possibilities, but that is not saying much. IIRC there are some processing issues too, as in the olivine needs to be ground fairly finely to be effective and this isn't trivial to do, esp at such large scale.
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Nov 17, 2020 19:43
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Gort posted:It's possible, it just isn't practical due to the energy requirements. If we had limitless clean energy we could fix the ocean's CO2 content no problem, but if we had limitless clean energy we wouldn't have a hosed up ocean in the first place. We'd need some impressive 'anti-whale, fish & all the other stuff that keeps an ocean alive' filters on that badboy to avoid fish soup..
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Nov 17, 2020 19:55
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I don't think anyone's shown a plausible carbon-neutral pathway for the production, processing, and distribution of that much olivine, which is a pretty fair criticism to level against any geoengineering effort. The carbon cost of doing it grows and grows with each marginal ton of CO2 you want to scrub into the air as the olivine deposits become fully exploited and the best places to seed it for weathering become saturated. It might be a way to knock out some marginal Co2 that we just can't get out of our industrial processes no matter how hard we try, but the idea of a silver bullet to our current (or even 10% of our current) emissions output is a joke.
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Nov 17, 2020 19:59
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The Oldest Man posted:I don't think anyone's shown a plausible carbon-neutral pathway for the production, processing, and distribution of that much olivine, which is a pretty fair criticism to level against any geoengineering effort. The carbon cost of doing it grows and grows with each marginal ton of CO2 you want to scrub into the air as the olivine deposits become fully exploited and the best places to seed it for weathering become saturated. This was my main thought as well. It seems reasonable to consider adding it as a mitigation strategy where it can be useful (facades, perhaps, or walkways? I’m no geologist so know very little about the useful properties of the mineral) but probably not as a primary effort until we’ve already stopped emitting co2 (lol).
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Nov 17, 2020 20:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWXvMQ3xqg Joegan is the American ur-dumbass so he's a great interviewer.
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Nov 17, 2020 23:19
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Nocturtle posted:Some crude math shows that roughly 55 metric gigatons of olivine would be needed to be completely weathered each year to cancel out global carbon emissions. As a comparison global annual cement production is ~4 metric gigatons. Where are you going to get that much olivine? If you can get it grinding it up and spreading it around wouldn't be too much problem with the work spread across the whole of humanity but you need it first.
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Nov 17, 2020 23:42
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Arglebargle III posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWXvMQ3xqg What the gently caress is all that garbage all over his desk? God I hate it so bad.
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Nov 18, 2020 04:06
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Flannelette posted:Where are you going to get that much olivine? If you can get it grinding it up and spreading it around wouldn't be too much problem with the work spread across the whole of humanity but you need it first. I don't think you can get that much olivine. A quick Google search suggests the world's largest deposit in Norway is a mere 2 gigatons.
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Nov 18, 2020 04:08
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Nocturtle posted:I don't think you can get that much olivine. A quick Google search suggests the world's largest deposit in Norway is a mere 2 gigatons. They’re rare but olivine-rich asteroids do exist
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Nov 18, 2020 04:12
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Just gotta find a seven cubic km asteroid to wack into the atmosphere and it will mostly spread itself. It probably does not even need to be olivine to cure ongoing human generated carbon emissions.
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Nov 18, 2020 07:19
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Flannelette posted:Where are you going to get that much olivine? If you can get it grinding it up and spreading it around wouldn't be too much problem with the work spread across the whole of humanity but you need it first. Nocturtle posted:I don't think you can get that much olivine. A quick Google search suggests the world's largest deposit in Norway is a mere 2 gigatons. What? Wikipedia says: quote:Olivine and high pressure structural variants constitute over 50% of the Earth's upper mantle, and olivine is one of the Earth's most common minerals by volume. The mine in Norway is just the biggest because there is not much reason to mine more right now, it seems. If there were, it would be easy to do so. Martian fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Nov 18, 2020 |
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Nov 18, 2020 07:58
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Nice piece of fish posted:As for your fantasy thought experiment on carbon capture, oceans (still) have deep currents so the facilities would have to be placed in one for flowthrough. Actually for maximum CO2 removal using forests, you should grow forest, log it, grow another forest. The trick is preventing the logged material from returning to the atmosphere (rotting, burning).
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Nov 18, 2020 12:14
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So what I’m hearing is our future is megacities built out of wood felled and milled by hand with olvaline roads and foundations. I’m imagining a 30 story log cabin. So simple!
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Nov 18, 2020 12:39
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Martian posted:What? Wikipedia says: Yes, there's a lot of olivine in the Earth's upper mantle. Unfortunately, we are not able to effectively mine the upper mantle (hell, we can barely even dig holes that deep), so most of that olivine is effectively off limits to exploitation for the foreseeable future.
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Nov 18, 2020 17:25
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Main Paineframe posted:Yes, there's a lot of olivine in the Earth's upper mantle. Unfortunately, we are not able to effectively mine the upper mantle (hell, we can barely even dig holes that deep), so most of that olivine is effectively off limits to exploitation for the foreseeable future. just convince musk that this is the way to cement his legacy
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Nov 18, 2020 17:32
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mediaphage posted:just convince musk that this is the way to cement his legacy No, we can't use any more cement
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Nov 18, 2020 22:04
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Arglebargle III posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWXvMQ3xqg I'm happy you shared this because not even David Wallace Wells believes in RCP 8.5! He even wrote about it! And yes, of course he says that in the article higher levels of warming are still catastrophic and I agree. We’re Getting a Clearer Picture of the Climate Future — and It’s Not as Bad as It Once Looked quote:Nearly every one has told me the IEA projections, while limited in ways, nevertheless represent a more plausible projection of the medium-term energy future than is contained in RCP8.5. Most — though not all — told me that they did not see RCP8.5 as a plausible scenario, even in the absence of meaningful climate policy. Honestly, this surprised me; while objections to RCP8.5 have been around for a decade or more, those who view it skeptically now seem to outnumber those who see it as useful — at least as a vision of a “business as usual” future. quote:The second takeaway is that anyone, including me, who has built their understanding on what level of warming is likely this century on that RCP8.5 scenario should probably revise that understanding in a less alarmist direction. Scientists who are studying particular impacts should probably stop using RCP8.5 as a stand-in for “no policy” or “business as usual” climate trajectories, and certainly stop describing research that does use it as reflecting a “business as usual” world. We could still get to an RCP8.5-like situation, theoretically, but it is pretty unlikely, and would probably require a departure from the blithe stumbling-down-our-current-path-blindly pattern of the last few decades. This is all, absolutely, cause for optimism, even if it is optimism in the face of great uncertainty. (In climate, we’ll take what we can get.) To clear here, I know that RCP 8.5 has been discussed in the past, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse nor I'm not trying to purposefully upset anyone. Global Warming is a serious problem and it should be taken seriously. It is critical to be clear about the risks and avoid engaging excessive speculation. Claiming that we're all simply doomed isn't true. Because we can absolutely make a difference even with the damage that'll come from past emissions. Supporting "end-of-the-world" RCP 8.5 scenarios ironically merely makes you useful a useful idiot of the fossil fuel industry and essentially climate change denial. After all, if there's nothing we able to do then what's the point? 
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Nov 21, 2020 21:03
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RCP 8.5 isn't realistic as an emissions scenario because it requires extensive coal and nat gas usage through 2100. However, the warming temperatures given in RCP 8.5 can be attained along lower pathways if equilibrium climate sensitivity is higher than previously estimated (something which many recent models have been showing may be possible).
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Nov 21, 2020 21:43
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:However, the warming temperatures given in RCP 8.5 can be attained along lower pathways if equilibrium climate sensitivity is higher than previously estimated (something which many recent models have been showing may be possible). Could you explain that a little further or link me to any articles that go deeper?
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Nov 21, 2020 21:58
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Gabriel S. posted:I'm happy you shared this because not even David Wallace Wells believes in RCP 8.5! He even wrote about it! And yes, of course he says that in the article higher levels of warming are still catastrophic and I agree. Too obvious a troll. You were doing so well..
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Nov 21, 2020 21:58
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Gabriel S. posted:Could you explain that a little further or link me to any articles that go deeper? Climate Brief usually has the best articles for actually explaining climate science - the issue of Equilibrium climate senstivity and RCP8.5 emissions is covered well in this article about the latest CMIP6 models The TLDR is that RCP8.5 assumes that net CO2 emissions will become 100 Gigatons of CO2 a year by 2100, up from current emissions of 40 gigatons a year, which is implausible for a variety of reasons. However, the ECS (if we double CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, how much will temperatures go up by?) in the latest generation of climate models (CMIP6) is much higher than in the previous generation (CMIP5), and the increase is greater in the more accurate climate models. So we need less emissions to cause a certain increase in temperature than we thought, even as emissions aren't rising as fast as we'd fear (CO2 emissions have stalled for a decade instead of increasing, for example). Personally, I think we'll end up with about 3 C of warming by 2100 - which is roughly a RCP-4.5 scenario. It's not going to be catastrophic, but it's gonna hurt, and it's going to take alot of work to limit damage to just this than any higher scenario. Nothingtoseehere fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 22:15
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Climate Brief usually has the best articles for actually explaining climate science - the issue of Equilibrium climate senstivity and RCP8.5 emissions is covered well in this article about the latest CMIP6 models This is helpful. Thanks! EDIT - I kind of feel like we should be talking about RCP 2.5, 4.5 and 6.0. I want to know what the world is going to look like in these scenarios. They are the most likely and I'll be alive in it. 
Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 22:29
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Gabriel S. posted:Supporting "end-of-the-world" RCP 8.5 scenarios ironically merely makes you useful a useful idiot of the fossil fuel industry and essentially climate change denial. After all, if there's nothing we able to do then what's the point? It basically boils down to 
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Nov 22, 2020 01:22
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Stickarts posted:So what I’m hearing is our future is megacities built out of wood felled and milled by hand with olvaline roads and foundations. I’m imagining a 30 story log cabin. So simple! Wood is a better building material than concrete for carbon emissions, yes. Ideally new forms of engineered wood would replace a lot of what we use concrete for when it's structurally possible.
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Nov 23, 2020 00:45
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Gabriel S. posted:This is helpful. Thanks! Well it's still pretty lovely. Many island nations will be essentially gone, or at least far enough gone that they are useless for permanent habitation. Food production in the tropics will drop by something like 1/3. Storms, floods and droughts will continue to intensify. I don't know the effect on Himalayan snowpack but it's not likely to be good, which poses problems for India and China. The biggest losers in this scenario are first island nations, who will be wiped out and become climate refugees. The second-biggest losers are fast-growing tropical countries in Africa and South America who will find hard limits to water and food supplies. Mass death in the summers in India, Niger, and other very hot countries will be the norm until people abandon unlivable areas. In these places it will be risky to grow crops we think of as heat-tolerant, like maize and rice, in a good year. In a bad year drought and heat waves will touch off food crises in the global south. The pain won't be limited to the tropics, though. Economic activity in general will shift northward. Miami, New Orleans and Norfolk are write-offs in 3 degrees warming, but areas of cities now considered "safe" at least in our cultural imagination will also have to be abandoned. Portions of Brooklyn and Queens will have to be evacuated when it becomes clear mitigation efforts began too late. Much of the Chesapeake Bay will likewise be abandoned. The American West will continue to dry out as temperatures rise. Various ongoing environmental crises will interact with warming temperatures to make things worse, like invasive species killing the West's climax stage forests and the fossil water crisis. California and Oklahoma will be the first to run out of well water.** This isn't a scenario in which a remnant of humanity moves to what is now northern Russia and Canada to survive, but it is a scenario in which the tropics are depopulated. I believe the ambassador for Mali called the Paris Accord's 2 degree target (which we almost certainly exceed) genocide by the global north against the global south. There's no real way to dispute that statement. The UN puts its climate and pollution death statistics in handy "Holocaust per year" units in some of its more graphic sections. In rich countries tropical diseases, heat waves, water crises, refugee crises, and a general economic shift away from the coasts and northwards is what you can expect from a moderate* climate future. I wouldn't buy property in Phoenix. *Here "moderate" should be understood as "moderate disaster" which is a contradiction in terms. And the David Wallace-Wells "cautious optimism" stance requires the assumption that we exclude feedback loop breaking points from consideration. We haven't reached any yet but that hardly means the break points don't exist. **There is some hope in that Pretoria, South Africa faced a similar fossil water crisis and was able to stabilize its water supplies practically overnight. The bad news is that this required a very different water use regime that American rural gentry won't be happy with at all. The current race to drain the Central Valley and southern Ogallala aquifers of water is 100% driven by economic incentives of farmers. Those farmers will be wiped out if they haven't moved away from water-intensive crops and methods when the state finally clamps down on their egregious water use in order to rescue residential and industrial areas. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Nov 23, 2020 |
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Nov 23, 2020 01:02
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