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ascii genitals posted:Do you know much about methane clathrates? Those are what really freak me out. Ocean acidification is also bad, but I feel like there are ways we can mitigate it.. giant deposits of methane becoming soluble and boiling out of ice and the deep ocean would really gently caress us. Not a ton, honestly. Supposedly there's loads of methane clathrate deposits in e.g. the Pacific ridge systems, but it's not something I've heard a lot of in a while. It's yet another of a long list of nasty feedbacks that can occur if we let things get bad enough. The Earth warms sufficiently and the vast amounts of organic matter locked up in permafrost in the tundras all of a sudden thaws, decays, releases massive amounts of additional CO2. Same for clathrates.
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Dec 8, 2011 06:27
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You know, there may be an upside to all this that we haven't considered. In the early Jurassic period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was around 1800 ppm, about four and a half times higher than it is today. If we can push it up that high again, the dinosaurs might come back. 
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Dec 8, 2011 06:32
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Strudel Man posted:You know, there may be an upside to all this that we haven't considered. In the early Jurassic period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was around 1800 ppm, about four and a half times higher than it is today. If we can push it up that high again, the dinosaurs might come back. I'm sure it'll be a hell of a party in 5 or 10 million years when life has evolved to cope.
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Dec 8, 2011 06:50
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ascii genitals posted:Do you know much about methane clathrates? Those are what really freak me out. Ocean acidification is also bad, but I feel like there are ways we can mitigate it.. giant deposits of methane becoming soluble and boiling out of ice and the deep ocean would really gently caress us. There was a joint US-Russia emergency expedition to the Arctic in September to measure the methane releases. The report will come out sometime in April. http://arctic.ru/news/2011/10/data-arctic-methane-will-be-available-six-months quote:Data on Arctic methane will be available in six months
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Dec 8, 2011 08:58
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VideoTapir posted:I'm sure it'll be a hell of a party in 5 or 10 million years when life has evolved to cope. Anyway, I'm kinda surprised stratospheric sulphates haven't gotten mentioned yet. Naďvely, I see it as a pretty attractive prospect for a civilization pathologically averse to meaningful cuts in carbon emissions. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 09:41
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First I'd like to address terminology. This phenomenon was called global warming until spin doctor Frank Luntz persuaded George W Bush that "climate change" sounded less threatening, less apocalyptic. The Americans made it a condition of their signing any treaty on global warming that the term climate change be used instead. I really do feel that we should reclaim the language. There is overwhelming scientific evidence (and the wrath of a Something Awful moderator) supporting the view that the planet is getting warmer, let's stop hiding the truth. Next I'd like to talk about a point behavioural psychologist Dan Ariely made in his book The Upside of Irrationality which I think explains why this is so difficult to fix politically. Professor Ariely gives an example of a man going to an important job interview, dressed in an expensive new suit who, as he walks to an interview sees a child drowning. A very common reaction will be to jump in and save her. Yet considered rationally, how much does it cost to save a child's life? Probably you could do it for the cost of a couple of vaccines. Let's say $5. So this guy ruins a $1000 suit, fails to attend an interview which could significantly increase his earnings to save ONE child's life where he could instead have let her drown, gone to his interview, then sent $100 to a charity afterwards saving TWENTY children's lives. And we all, I think, understand exactly why a person would jump in the river to try to rescue a child even though we can now, perhaps, accept it's not rational, at least not economically rational. Ariely explains there are three psychological factors in effect: proximity, vividness and the drop in the bucket effect. When I read that last month I immediately thought of the global warming issue. Global warming more than just about any other political issue fails on Ariely's three criteria of why a crisis moves us to act. It's not close. The ice caps may be melting, the seaside towns may drown in fifty years, but nothing is happening close to any of us. It's not vivid. If I walk to work rather than driving I don't see a huge neon glow in the atmosphere as it becomes dramatically more breathable, I don't receive the rapturous applause of bystanders thanking me for saving the planet. And it's the ultimate drop in the bucket effect, one person deciding to not drive has a tiny tiny impact. I think this is the political tragedy of global warming - it's simply too distant and too long term for us to ever overcome our cognitive limitations and deal with it. Which is a shame because air is good and global catastrophes are bad. Morose Man fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 15:35
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Were any conclusions made in relation the rapid fish kill phenomenon that occurred around the world at the start of the year? Particularly the ones that happened at a California bay? Seemed like something that might be of concern and in relation to environmental damage.
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Dec 8, 2011 16:06
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Morose Man posted:First I'd like to address terminology. This phenomenon was called global warming until spin doctor Frank Luntz persuaded George W Bush that "climate change" sounded less threatening, less apocalyptic. The Americans made it a condition of their signing any treaty on global warming that the term climate change be used instead. I really do feel that we should reclaim the language. There is overwhelming scientific evidence (and the wrath of a Something Awful moderator) supporting the view that the planet is getting warmer, let's stop hiding the truth. "Global warming" is not comprehensible to the "but it's snowing outside!" crowd. You'll never get it to make sense to them (nor income distribution, or anything that contrasts averages with actual distributions). "Climate change" may not be as to-the-point to someone who isn't a loving idiot, but it doesn't have the same innumeracy barriers. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 16:20
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Strudel Man posted:I'm not sure much evolution would be necessary, really. Temperature and weather pattern shifts promise to upset existing biomes, but it's not like they're likely to open up fundamentally new niches. It's dangerous for modern civilization and for particular species, not life broadly. There's more to expanding or contracting biomes than just temperature change, and if temperature change is fast enough that the other things can't be changed before life dies, it dies. How bad the mass-extinction is depends on how fast the change is...and it only takes one generation unable to reproduce to kill off a species. You could easily be left with only those species that are able to occupy different, neighboring biomes, and which are not dependent upon any other species that cannot.
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Dec 8, 2011 16:29
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VideoTapir posted:"Global warming" is not comprehensible to the "but it's snowing outside!" crowd. You'll never get it to make sense to them (nor income distribution, or anything that contrasts averages with actual distributions). One phrase sounds alarming but puzzles imbeciles. One phrase sounds non-alarming which stacks with all the other cognitive problems I mentioned to guarantee we will never address this problem until we see Los Angeles drown. I know which one I prefer.
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Dec 8, 2011 17:49
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Aren't we just influencing evolution by changing the environment in ways that will select for different traits? Sure, the world won't be nearly as nice (or habitable) for humans, but I bet there are all kinds of other things that will do really well in a warmer world. I don't see a problem here, but I also have never been sold on the benefits or merits of human civilization.
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Dec 8, 2011 17:57
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Morose Man posted:One phrase sounds alarming but puzzles imbeciles. One phrase sounds non-alarming which stacks with all the other cognitive problems I mentioned to guarantee we will never address this problem until we see Los Angeles drown.  I prefer Arizona Bay too.
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Dec 8, 2011 18:03
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BTC.spengler posted:Aren't we just influencing evolution by changing the environment in ways that will select for different traits? Drowning people who like surfing?
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Dec 8, 2011 18:09
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BTC.spengler posted:Aren't we just influencing evolution by changing the environment in ways that will select for different traits? Billions of people dying aside, the problem is anthropogenic warming is causing climate shifts much much faster than would otherwise be indicated. Species don't evolve over the course of a hundred years. In the end this leads to reduced biodiversity.
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Dec 8, 2011 18:38
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rscott posted:Billions of people dying aside, the problem is anthropogenic warming is causing climate shifts much much faster than would otherwise be indicated. Species don't evolve over the course of a hundred years. In the end this leads to reduced biodiversity. Mass extinctions have happened before and will probably happen again even if we could undo the industrial revolution. I'm trying hard, I just can't get excited about this issue. The people that care about it are not the same people that are profiting off the current status quo, hence it seems very unlikely that anything major will be done about this. So, yes, that means a lot of people will die. Aren't we better off enjoying the time we have, than fretting about the inherently human tendency to consume everything in sight? Everyone dies, afterall.
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Dec 8, 2011 18:42
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rscott posted:Billions of people dying aside, the problem is anthropogenic warming is causing climate shifts much much faster than would otherwise be indicated. Species don't evolve over the course of a hundred years. In the end this leads to reduced biodiversity. Right but the data doesn't indicate that the temperature change rate is greater or lesser than previous events because that's not how the data works. Look at the K/T boundary which likely had much much much greater rates of change than now and yeah, there's a mass extinction event, but it didn't mean all life died off. That which survived, evolved.
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Dec 8, 2011 18:53
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Right but the data doesn't indicate that the temperature change rate is greater or lesser than previous events because that's not how the data works. Look at the K/T boundary which likely had much much much greater rates of change than now and yeah, there's a mass extinction event, but it didn't mean all life died off. That which survived, evolved. This must be very comforting to the yet-to-be methane breathing post-humans.
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Dec 8, 2011 19:51
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Deleuzionist posted:This must be very comforting to the yet-to-be methane breathing post-humans. Release of methane stored in the Arctic permafrost is dangerous because methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, not because we're going to suddenly have a methane-dominant atmosphere. It isn't even a toxic gas, if that's what you're thinking. Biologically speaking, we could tolerate huge amounts of it just fine, as long as there was still sufficient oxygen in the air. Morose Man posted:First I'd like to address terminology. This phenomenon was called global warming until spin doctor Frank Luntz persuaded George W Bush that "climate change" sounded less threatening, less apocalyptic. The Americans made it a condition of their signing any treaty on global warming that the term climate change be used instead. I really do feel that we should reclaim the language. There is overwhelming scientific evidence (and the wrath of a Something Awful moderator) supporting the view that the planet is getting warmer, let's stop hiding the truth. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 20:27
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Deleuzionist posted:This must be very comforting to the yet-to-be methane breathing post-humans. What is this how do you even think this?
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Dec 8, 2011 20:37
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A lot of scientists prefer the term "climate change," myself included. "Global warming" is not a particularly good description of the actual changes expected to occur. Yes, the Earth as a whole will get warmer, but some areas will be colder, drier, wetter, stormier, underwater, etc. For the general public who may not be adequately educated on the subject, "global warming" implies it's simply going to get warmer everywhere and that is just not true and somewhat misleading. "Anthropogenic (or man-made) climate change" is what I use.
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Dec 8, 2011 20:45
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Exactly. The IPCC sure as hell isn't called that because of Frank Luntz.
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Dec 8, 2011 20:46
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"Global warming" also focuses the discussion on the warming aspect and neglects so many other related issues that are more easily incorporated under the broader umbrella term "climate change." Such as deforestation, ocean acidification, desertification, sea level rise, water scarcity, etc. It's like preaching the evils of liver cirrhosis. The larger problem is chronic alcohol abuse, and cirrhosis is only one of a myriad of problems associated with alcoholism.
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Dec 8, 2011 20:51
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Pellisworth posted:A lot of scientists prefer the term "climate change," myself included. "Global warming" is not a particularly good description of the actual changes expected to occur. Yes, the Earth as a whole will get warmer, but some areas will be colder, drier, wetter, stormier, underwater, etc. For the general public who may not be adequately educated on the subject, "global warming" implies it's simply going to get warmer everywhere and that is just not true and somewhat misleading.
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Dec 8, 2011 22:36
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Desmond posted:This is what I was going to reply with. However, "climate change" sounds un-daunting. I think we need a new term like "man-made fuckery that will ruin the earth". (I would be terrible as an ad copy writer.) Good science doesn't need alarmist rhetoric.
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Dec 8, 2011 23:53
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Good science doesn't need alarmist rhetoric. Unless you want anyone without a background in the field it addresses to take it seriously.
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Dec 9, 2011 00:43
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As someone with a background in the field that sounds preferable to me.
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Dec 9, 2011 01:04
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Good science doesn't need alarmist rhetoric. Now that we're done patting ourselves on the back, I should edit this derail with some content. I'm joining in on submitting oral and written commentary to the independent review process that is doing the environmental assessment for the Northern Enbridge Gateway pipeline project. I just saw this news bit today that pleases me to no end: quote:California announced on Wednesday it would support the European Unions’s plan to label fuel retrieved from Canada’s oil sands reserves as “dirty fuel” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, Reuters reports. On Oct. 4, the European Commission approved a proposal to label oil sands-derived fuel as highly harmful to the environment in a ranking system that allows fuel suppliers to identify the most carbon-intensive options. California has already introduced a system that goes a step further, allowing consumers to choose which fuel they use based on these labels. Alberta’s reserves have been a constant target of international criticism due to their potential effect on global warming. Oil derived from oil sands is said to emit more CO2 than coal or regular crude oil. Canada, in partnership with the oil industry, has lobbied against Europe’s ranking system, which it says is unfair and “not based on science.” It's great because Enbridge's PR is being very low and tricky right now. They actually bought one of the Gitxsan hereditary chief's agreement to speak for all of the Gitxsan First Nation in support of the pipeline project. Huge controversy ensued due to the fact that the majority of Gitxsan hereditary chiefs and people, and actually most First Nations, strongly oppose the pipeline proposal--and they say this one cheif, Elmer Derrick, has no legal ground to support the pipeline or to speak for the Gitxsan Nation. Yet, Enbridge keeps plodding along with their message that First Nations are in support of their pipeline. This "agreement" came shortly after First Nations declared a ban on tar sands oil exports through their lands and coastal waters during a one-year anniversary of Save the Fraser Declaration. 130 bands have signed this declaration. This is just a small fight in a bigger fight against not only climate change but all that comes with it, including resource extraction, deforestation, water pollution, etc. Edit: by field, I mean I work amongst scientists who study climate effects and other problems related to the Fraser River and shorelines of BC, Canada. Jenny of Oldstones fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Dec 9, 2011 |
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Dec 9, 2011 01:49
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Which field? There are a few relevant to this issue. climate buddy
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Dec 9, 2011 01:58
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Are there any theorized deadlines that we could see that would make us say, "we done hosed up"? I recall reading that by 2050 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic. Anything else? When will we start seeing poo poo hit the fan?
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Dec 9, 2011 02:13
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Which field? There are a few relevant to this issue.
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Dec 9, 2011 02:32
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err posted:Are there any theorized deadlines that we could see that would make us say, "we done hosed up"?
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Dec 9, 2011 02:34
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err posted:Are there any theorized deadlines that we could see that would make us say, "we done hosed up"? In the US Northeast it's obvious already. Season changes are getting increasingly uneven (October 29th snowstorm, anyone?). I know I'm just being anecdotal, having lived here all my life. But I think the data will bear me out (just too cheap/lazy to buy it from NOAA) NYC has to spend extra money to keep the subways from flooding (there have already been a couple close calls)
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Dec 9, 2011 02:45
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I'm pretty sure we'll be able to rationalise away any number of catastrophes. Even by the time coastal populations have turned into refugees, the refrain will be "woops, mistakes were made, look forward not back".
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Dec 9, 2011 02:51
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Ghost of Babyhead posted:I'm pretty sure we'll be able to rationalise away any number of catastrophes. Even by the time coastal populations have turned into refugees, the refrain will be "woops, mistakes were made, look forward not back".
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Dec 9, 2011 02:54
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So, blame China?  I think you pretty much have to give up selling climate change to the oldest two generations. But wait, there's more! In Australia, as in other First World countries, the demographic is heading for a big boomer bubble at the grey end, so their political influence will probably wax instead of wane. Add to that the estimated rise in dementia: according to this scary little projection for Europe, the sky's the limit. Add to that the likely energy crisis, and it's going to be fun times in 20 years.
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Dec 9, 2011 03:11
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Right but the data doesn't indicate that the temperature change rate is greater or lesser than previous events because that's not how the data works. Look at the K/T boundary which likely had much much much greater rates of change than now and yeah, there's a mass extinction event, but it didn't mean all life died off. That which survived, evolved. That which survived was significantly less than before. With huge chunks of the food web removed, not just biodiversity, but biomass may have declined. That's what I meant by "it'll be one hell of a party after life recovers." Not that all life will die off, but that an awful lot will, and it will be rough going for a while...but once life can do something with all that extra CO2 (and has altered biomes that were useless at their particular temperature/ph conditions, with the organisms available to colonize them) things will be pretty active. In some areas, at least, I'm right: http://books.google.com.hk/books?id...ecrease&f=false And the point is: SO WHAT IF NOT ALL LIFE DIES OUT? That which doesn't die is mostly going to wish it did. The lucky ones in Soylent Green are the ones who were eaten. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Dec 9, 2011 |
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Dec 9, 2011 03:27
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eh4 posted:Add to that the estimated rise in dementia: How much do you think that accounts for the political climate in the US?
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Dec 9, 2011 03:43
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eh4 posted:So, blame China? "Canada only emits 1% of emissions. China emits way more! Therefore we should do nothing." gently caress I hate that line of logic.
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Dec 9, 2011 03:56
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Stephen Harper posted:"Canada only emits 1% of emissions. China emits way more! Therefore we should do nothing." gently caress I hate that line of logic. Bbbbut China and India are developing countries! The industrialized world burned through a lot of fossils fuels when it developed, so we're hypocrites for calling the Chinese on their coal-burning bonanza! No one is to blame, everyone is to blame.
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Dec 9, 2011 04:00
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Strudel Man posted:Loss of low-lying areas to the advance of the oceans seems like it would be pretty obvious and difficult to ignore. We're already ignoring that. I guess because it's not happening in the US yet.
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Dec 9, 2011 04:15
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