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WAFFLEHOUND posted:
Perhaps you could explain some of the problems with reconstructing past rates of change in the climate. I was under the impression we had pretty good temperature reconstructions for the last few hundred thousand years but maybe I'm mistaken? The Professor in my hazily remembered class on the atmosphere, oceans, and climate liked to say that human influence on climate is driving CO2 levels past anything experienced in Pleistocene, making the current era fundamentally different from other recent warm periods. Could you get into some the specific difficulties of reconstructing past climates, maybe some of the difficulties with using marine microfossils? You seem to be getting a little defensive and have been lashing out at jokes and the genuinely confused. I think getting into the specifics of your complaints might make your position more coherent regarding the problems you regarding many positions taken by those pushing to mitigate climate change
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Dec 9, 2011 19:37
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Cobweb Heart posted:If I read you right, you're saying that while the average individual can certainly help with their own personal lifestyle changes, there is nothing they can do to actually affect the climate problem? The common person in the USA (for instance) has, in practice, absolutely no effect on the country's environmental policies. It's true individuals have little impact on national policies, but as a member of an organization that advocates for greater sustainability you could have a much larger effect. Like gun owners writing angry letters on their own probably make much less of an impact on U.S. policy than the N.R.A. Well, that's my theory anyway. Organization is probably the second biggest key to politics after cash. Dogcow posted:
You seem pretty sure that factories building trains won't provide the same number of jobs as provided by modern car manufacturers, why don't you offer us a little more evidence to support your claim? All you've offered so far is jus' cus. Besides even if you're right the economic losses caused by reduced employment in the auto industry could be offset or even surpassed by consumer savings on the purchase and maintenance of expensive personal vehicles. You make important points regarding modern "Green" industries like paper recycling, which generally aren't sustainable in the strictest sense. Using Webster's definition: "of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged" Paper recycling isn't sustainable because each time the paper is recycled its quality decreases until it eventually becomes unusable and freshly logged pulp is required for the next ream of paper. That's why recycled paper gets used to make lovely packaging material. The same goes for recycled aluminum. Your standard beer can contains multiple alloys with small percentages of poo poo like manganese designed to give the top and sides different strengths. When you melt the whole can down you get a less useful alloy that can't even be reused to make more cans. Instead of recycling you get downcycling, A process in which you continually degrade the quality of your materials until you eventually have to throw them away anyway. To make recycling really sustainable you'd have to close the loop, so to speak, and be able to use your recycled material again in the original production process.
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Dec 10, 2011 05:44
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Yo Wafflehound we get that you're some kind of geologist but I'd appreciate it if you could stop being so oversensitive and flashing your degree around every time someone disagrees with you. The fact that it isn't even clear whether you believe in anthropogenic climate change is a pretty good indication you aren't being clear, rather than that we're all a bunch of dumb fucks who just can't get it.
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Dec 12, 2011 22:31
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Arabidopsis posted:Think of geography though. If you're a species whose range overlaps a solid northern barrier (top of a continent like Northern Europe, or Northern Africa) then you just can't shift northward period. That means your southern range contracts, and the more a species' range contracts the lower its population usually. In addition we've seen that many diseases and pests that previously posed little danger to their host species have become incredibly more dangerous with warmer temperatures. Bark beetles, although they have always threatened pines, have been obliterating billions of trees across the west coast and Canada's boreal forests, facilitated by milder winters.
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Dec 14, 2011 02:21
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Deleuzionist posted:It's actually a good question: what is the viability of planting a trillion trees? Did Dyson do anything but calculate the amount of trees needed to reduce carbon in the atmosphere? Does he have any idea where they should be put, with what resources, what they should use for nourishment, and what other impacts on the environment would they have? Probably not. I'm not sure about a trillion, but as far as I know reforestation is literally the only practical way to sequester carbon today. Unfortunately forests are being destroyed faster than they are being replaced, and the necessities of agriculture make completely replacing everything we're losing pretty much impossible. It's often overlooked that deforestation is the second leading source of human carbon emissions after fossil fuels. There's actually so much carbon sequestered in the Amazon that if too much of it gets bulldozed it'll set off one more of those nasty feedback loops similar to release of the methane clathrates.
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Dec 15, 2011 21:34
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Are you talking about particulate matter or is their some other pollutant reducing warming?
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Dec 18, 2011 01:24
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I often find a certain strain of thought in these Dnd climate threads, a strange and misanthropic conception of mankind. Its purveys look at the social worker, the psychologist, and the politician, and with an air of total exasperation ask "Do you seriously believe you can change him? How have you not realized yet that man is dead and frozen forever as he is now, as cold and enduring as the rocks beneath your feet? That perhaps he is even less animate than those rocks, as they at least have the hope of one day being inhabited by the spirit of science, or engineering, or art. These spirits lend a warm vitality to those rocks, a glimmer of geodesy, soaring architecture, and awe inspiring art. Oh you wretched fools! You waste your time on the dead, there is time only for those rocks that live! Where does this idea come from? How does one become so cynical that it looks easier to fight the sea than to change our behavior? Have they never seen an example of a society that changed?
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Dec 18, 2011 02:21
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ALSO I can only communicate in questions, apparently. Im just really frustrated when people say oh you want to change people well sorry that's impossible let's just drat the entire coast against a rising sea it's really the most practical solution you see!
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Dec 18, 2011 02:30
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a lovely poster posted:Who exactly is saying this? oops sorry, I meant to type dam, and I was specifically addressing the post that said we need to accept warming and just armor our coasts against hurricanes
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Dec 19, 2011 01:22
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It's relatively small but not exactly trivial. I seem to remember Like 10% of water used in Arizona went to domestic use... Though that probably includes stuff used for bathing and dishwashers and stuff. There's probably room to make many industries more water efficient but I'm sure there are some serious limits to how much can be cut. In contrast you could completely eliminate suburban lawns without costing anyone anything besides their hobby.
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Dec 31, 2011 00:34
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Haraksha posted:The only thing I could come up with was to find a way to remove carbon from the air with a device that created less CO2 than it captured. We already have something very similar to your "nuclear tree". It is purely solar powered, requires little to no maintenance and production is a cinch. You can call it the 'solar bio tree,' or more commonly, a 'tree'. Other than regular trees a carbon sequestration system that requires large amounts of carbon neutral energy probably won't be practical until we've already transitioned away from a fossil fuel powered economy. In which case it might be more practical to wait for natural carbon sequestering processes to undo our damage than to start a huge carbon sequestration project. I guess if you could create a way to sequester the carbon in fossil fuels as you are burning the stuff sequestration might become useful today, but most ideas for that I've heard were coming straight from the mouths of coal companies which made me a little wary.
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Jan 1, 2012 02:47
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cheese posted:My point was that a graph like this not going to do all that much to help anyone. Most people won't understand statistical certainty and error, and it will simply be dismissed as 'lawl scientists can't tell if its 1 degree or 6 degrees!'. If we are going to change things before its too late, we need something better than a 2070 graph that a lay person is not even going to understand. That's an odd point to make here, about a graph taken from a scientific report not designed for public consumption and posted in a thread in which climate skepticism is banned.
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Jan 1, 2012 18:19
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a lovely poster posted:Yes, shutting down large-scale industrial projects is going to be easier (not easy) than convincing people not to procreate. Welcome to reality. I have news for you buddy, somebody already convinced a heckuva lot of people not to procreate pre:Nation Total Fertility Rate Population Growth Rate Japan 1.21 children born/woman -0.278% Bulgaria 1.42 children born/woman -0.781% Russia 1.42 children born/woman -0.47% Germany 1.41 children born/woman -0.208% Thailand 1.66 children born/woman 0.566% Canada 1.58 children born/woman 0.794% There is no way we can possibly have a sustainable economy and maintain population growth forever. The more people there are the thinner we have to slice the pie for everyone. Don't you think shutting down those big carbon emitting industries like tar sand mining will be a bit more difficult if you add a couple billion more dissatisfied youth clamoring for jobs and energy? The earlier our population plateaus the easier it'll be to control emissions. There's a reason the IPCC puts so much effort into modeling population growth scenarios.
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Feb 8, 2012 23:02
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It ain't over til it's over dude, defeatism will get you nowhere. You might be dead already but some of us still have some kick. As far as mitigation goes if you have archives you could check out Dreyland's geoengineering thread here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3422047&userid=55080 but if we really went and burned every ounce of coal in the earth's crust I doubt any mitigation strategy in that thread could save us.
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Feb 9, 2012 05:26
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I'm well aware of the relationship between wealth and birth rates, strudel man. I'm merely demonstrating that in many countries a majority are already forgoing large families. As obvious as that sounds there is literally someone arguing that it is impossible a few posts up
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Feb 9, 2012 14:43
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GreatKesh posted:Since carbon dioxide + h20 <=> carbonic acid + heat, won't increased carbon levels in the ocean result in a temporarily decreased PH, then an increased PH, due to global warming heating the water and thus pushing the equation back towards co2 and water? You are right about a decrease in carbonate ions being the primary concern relating to ocean acidification, but I'm not sure what you are saying about how this relates to temperature. How else would fish be hosed by ocean acidification, besides having their calcifying prey obliterated? I guess it might be comforting that the decreasing solubility of CO2 in a warming ocean could limit how bad acidification can get. Too bad that that happens to be yet another positive feedback system: Less CO2 dissolving in the ocean means more CO2 in the atmosphere. Amarkov temperature often has really big ecological effects, especially in aquatic environments. Unusually high water temperatures are probably the biggest cause of coral bleaching around. Even without acidification threatening corals the heat stress alone is threatening to destroy many reefs. Warmer water also holds less oxygen, which causes plenty of its own problems.
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Mar 4, 2012 05:26
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It's not the sole source of water for India but many of its biggest and most important rivers originate in the Himalayas where they are fed by melting snow pack. The Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra, rivers also important for Pakistan and Bangladesh, are all fed by snow and glacial melt. Sorry I don't have any data on what percent of their flow comes from melt water but I imagine it becomes important during the dry season.
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Mar 5, 2012 01:08
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Honestly I see no reason not to lie and cheat and fudge numbers and generally do everything it takes to get action on climate change. It isn't like our opponents on right have restrained themselves, why should we on the left? Sadly the moral high ground doesn't protect us from a rising ocean.
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Mar 14, 2012 00:57
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Its just that reason and science have proved so catastrophically useless when it comes to influencing public opinion on the issue of climate change... or government policy... With the threat of global warming looming larger with every passing year it feels like the environmental movement needs to take a different tack. Why bother telling off the idiot blaming the latest indian summer on climate change... What's the point of refuting IPCC conspiracy theories? There's some study floating around in which carefully reasoned arguments on topics with strong scientific consensuses were totally ineffective at changing opinions, that carefully reasoned arguments were actually more likely to reinforce someone's incorrect beliefs. On any large scale emotional appeals seem like the only way to have any impact on opinions... and science just isn't able to offer much on the emotional level.
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Mar 14, 2012 04:16
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The problem I see is that if we wait until we've already burned all the fossil fuels it won't matter if we transition to carbon neutral energy because we'll all be dead. Doing some super rough calculations if we burned all the currently recoverable coal in the world, some 930 billion tons, assuming half the emitted carbon is absorbed by the oceans and biosphere, we might see atmospheric carbon reach concentrations as high as 570 ppmv which would probably be game over for civilization as we know it. This is just coal recoverable with today's technology, and there isn't any scenario I can imagine in which it wouldn't be profitable to mine and burn it without government intervention.
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Apr 4, 2012 23:35
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Morbus posted:He's right, though. The time when "discouraging car-driven development" and building public transit infrastructure was relevant was the time when cities and towns were being initially planned and built. New development is almost irrelevant at this point--we are already stuck with a bunch of low-density developments not amenable to public transit. I completely disagree with you. Development isn't just a one time expense, that infrastructure requires constant maintenance and expansion. Nations are ALWAYS being built. It's not like America in 1950 was a blank slate waiting for Eisenhower to doodle the national highway system. In fact huge sections of many American cities were demolished to make way for new highways, a perfect demonstration of how we do not have to make do with infrastructure we find inadequate. So what if we have to redistribute the nations population, industry and infrastructure? It is always shifting around, we just need to make sure it shifts in the right direction. If industry and population has been shifting out of cities and small towns for the last 50 years, we just have to make sure that over the next 50 it shifts back. The shortage of resources and time just increases the urgency of the mission, we can't afford to throw money away building new highways to wasteful exurbs. quote:It is much more straightforward to try and reduce the carbon cost of car based transportation with e.g. batteries, fuel cells, biodiesel, etc., coupled with non-fossil fuel based electricity generation. At this point, even this approach is not really going to be able to make much of a dent in the climate change problem given the available resources and time, but its not quite as lovely an option as trying to redevelop an entire nation. Redevelopment doesn't just require time and money, it requires political will and the collective support of a large portion of the population. Technology, on the other hand, once sufficiently developed, and provided it is economically viable, propagates regardless of what anyone thinks of it. How can you not see the insufficiency of technological solutions when nuclear energy, the wet dream of SA technocrats has failed spectacularly to solve our energy woes despite theoretically being the perfect alternative to fossil fuels? How well do you think its "propagating" hmm? Can you not see that only a political solution is possible, that only a concerted collective effort can save us? Besides we should not place too much faith in technological advancement, an inherently unpredictable venture. We can never know the boundaries of any scientific venture until we have already bumped our noses against them. I mean Jesus, my parents thought humans would be living on the moon in 2012 when they were my age, that didn't turn out quite the way everyone hoped. The only think on which we agree is that we don't have the time, but I think we especially don't have the time to wait for a techno-deus ex machina to save us. Erg I kind of went off the chain here but you're acting like trends in population and industry and technology that may be less than 50 years old are immutable and inescapable laws of nature.
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Apr 6, 2012 23:08
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PBlueKan posted:Well, to be fair, nuclear energy hasn't really had its shot yet. That was exactly my point, we can not rely on technological solutions alone because even if we can be certain they exist, we can not be sure they will be implemented. It's totally irrelevant how efficient and wonderful nuclear reactors are if we won't build them. That is why any solution to our current energy problems must necessarily be political in nature. Not because I prefer political solutions to the technological, but because the application of technology necessarily requires a collective decision.
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Apr 9, 2012 16:51
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Corrupt Politician posted:This is only true some of the time. Many, many technologies are adopted by a large number of individual decisions. Society didn't make a collective decision that the average Joe should buy a car instead of a horse, or own a personal computer or smart phone, or get a refrigerator instead of an ice box. They were all adopted on the individual level by consumers wanting to better their lives. I would describe the free market as one way we choose to make collective decisions. The current energy market strongly discourages the construction of new nuclear plants, effectively forcing America to rely on fossil fuels. It is immaterial if you think it is excessive regulation preventing the construction of new plants. In fact that perfectly illustrates how free markets have been used to produce specific outcomes, in this case a halt in the construction of new nuclear plants. The fact that new technology is hard to predict is why we should never rely on it to solve our problems. Even if affordable long range electric cars are just around the corner we still have a responsibility to push for policy that will reduce fossil fuel consumption with today's technology, if only to hedge against technology advancing slower than we hoped. Corrupt Politician posted:Sure, until excessive fracking causes a major earthquake anyway. Then all the natural gas lobbyists can say "see, we TOLD you nuclear was dangerous!" Oh dear, try not to have an aneurism WAFFLEHOUND.
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Apr 9, 2012 20:31
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IT WAS A JOKE OKAY sorry WAFFLEHOUND Office Thug you aren't addressing my point. It doesn't matter at all how cheap or efficient or safe nuclear power is if we don't use it. Excessive safety regulation is a way the government has manipulated the market to produce a certain outcome, in this case the virtual halt in construction of new power plants. It would be foolish to expect nuclear power to "propagate" on its own and replace coal generated electricity under these circumstances. Similarly it is foolish to expect other unspecified future technological progress to solve all our climate and energy problems independent of government action. Will affordable long range electric cars necessarily replace gas powered automobiles? Or might we just ramp up coal liquefaction and continue using internal combustion engines? The latter scenario could occur regardless of how quickly battery technology progresses. Clearly we must make a decision, and complacency is a sure path to destruction.
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Apr 10, 2012 03:50
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*duck monster stares intently into his bathroom mirror, a few beads of sweat collecting on his forehead, eyes wide and white like a frightened deer* "Arkane arKANE ARKANE" *recoils in horror as a hideous apparition appears floating over his toilet screaming incoherently about hockey sticks*
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Apr 15, 2012 09:02
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I'm not sure what you mean by "technically," ungulateman. As far as I was aware most geothermal plants are actually expected to exhaust groundwater reserves and generally have projected lifespans of only 30 years. Large plants can literally pump so much water out of aquifers that they lose pressure and cease to provide energy. Not something I would describe as "technically renewable," although some geothermal plants today might "theoretically" be renewable, engineers have gotten a lot better about conserving that water. Interestingly geothermal plants produce many of the same ill effects you hear fracking opposition activists complain about like earthquakes, ground subsidence, and even ground water pollution. I don't know if anyone has ever actually had their well poisoned by leaky pipes at a neighboring geothermal plant, but considering all the nasty stuff likely to dissolve in water a few thousand feet underground it's something worth considering!
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May 17, 2012 05:32
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yeah I hear that. I mostly just want this thread to talk about something other than nuclear, if only for a moment.
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May 17, 2012 05:48
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Oh dear, buddy you got heart but you really have a naive understanding of liability and the tragedy of the commons. I dont have time to address every subject you've touched on but i hope i can clear up some of the practical barriers to your proposed pollution solutions. So you think we should consider pollution an act of aggression? Well i have good news, the U.S. legal system already does, it is called nuisance. A nuisance is the use of property in such a way that it harms someone else or their property. For example if you open a cement plant in your residential neighborhood, it would cause a lot of noise and smoke that would interfere with your neighbors use of their homes, and a court could issue an injunction or make you pay damages. This has even been used to prevent air pollution. In Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co. nuisance was used to shut down a plant whose sulfur emissions were destroying orchards and forests with acid rain. That was 60 years before the Clean Air Act. So if we already had this sweet nuisance doctrine why did we create these nasty regulations? Unfortunately nuisance proved ineffective at controlling pollution. Between 1907 and 1970 the damage from acid rain exploded, but those effected generally found nobody to sue. Sulfur emissions came from so many sources that each polluter could correctly say their own emissions were not the cause of the destruction. The same is true for water pollution, one sewage pipe is not going to destroy a fishery, so who are we going to find responsible when the fish are gone and the water's turned to sludge? The sad truth is nobody. Additionally you have to wait until the fish are already dead because you can not bring a case before there is demonstable harm. These regulations exist because traditional tools used to protect our property and health have failed. Next i'd like to talk about the tragedy of the commons. Private ownership can prevent the destruction of some resources, but it can also cause that destruction. For example land adjacent to water resources may be most profitably used for agriculture or building factories or whatever. Unfortunately that use degrades its value as a source of drinking water for eveyone downstream, who rely on forests to filter that water. If the property owners have unrestricated use of that land it will be developed, because that is what makes the most money and everybody else is doing it, and the water resource will be destroyed. This is why New York city is buying up land in the Hudson river watershed. Its odd you think education is the key. In the context of the T of the C it does not matter if people can see the ruin coming. Everyone knows there are too many sheep, but that's just another incentive to cram as many of your own on the common before it collapses completely. Do you really believe people will voluntarily cut carbon emissions? Even if you convince 90% of the world they should cut emissions is not the most likely scenario they look at the remaining 10% and say "Ill stop when THEY stop?" Finally are there any studies comparing the quality of government land to private land? I hope you would not go and make a strong claim like that without any evidence at all besides a the theory of the TC. I mean i dunno if youve ever been to a national forest but the ones ive visited were pretty sweet, to say nothing of placez like Yosemite. Imagine that in private hands, ugh thered be tourist poo poo everywhere. In fact on the subject of forests in private hands many would just get cut down and turned to cow pastures or something. Which is a big reason they were first created, to prevent the loss of so much forest as to endanger timber supplies. Please excuse the typos, posted from my mobile Squalid fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 20:41
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Your argument isn't false exactly, but is really weird. Toxic pollution (note this has a specific legal definition) does often get dumped on private property when it is not fired into the atmosphere or pumped into our rivers. The problem is it gets dumped on the polluters own property, who naturally does not give a gently caress. Cheaper to leave it in a big pit than clean up. This causes problems down the line when poo poo starts leaking and everyone responsible died decades ago. How are supposed to fight back against a miner who died in 1850 when his acid drainage is wrecking your spring water? Anyway, how do propose privatizing rivers? Seems challenging. How about the atmospere? And what's your problem with unleashing the unstoppable power of free markets to cut pollution in a cap and trade system? I mean Free Markets should be able to solve everything. Still eagerly awaiting those studies on public land. If you can't find them I'll just assume you were making stuff up to suit your preconceived notions, that'd be embarassing! Edit: I'll remind you they do have a method to protect their property called nuisance law, it's just really impractical. Like if fish in your local river are killed by nutrification, who do you sue? If they go extinct it might not matter since there is nothing that could be done to bring them back. I guess you'd need some way to prevent harm from even occuring in the first place, but oops that sounds lime regulation... Squalid fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 01:36
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Haha im too drunk to respond in detail but stop loving lecturing like some libertarian preacher. If you wanna talk poo poo bd specific so we can respond, right now your boring me with platitudes. Buddy you don't know poo poo for poo poo about free markets, literally every market is a government private collusion, government freakin invented property rights. You havent sharex poo poo in the way of solutions to environmental problems, just vaguely alluded to some weak preexisting restrictions on property rights that are totally inadequate for protecting our health and welfare. Do us all a favor and stop thinking logically for a second-think empirically instead. I can't believe you loving linked me to a wikipedia article on the TC, give me a newspaper article or something jesus I want to believe your beliefs have at least some basis in reality. I know the THEORY now DEMONSTRATE it with evidence. PS no wayin hell amI watching an hour long youtube video gimme some frickin bullet points (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 4, 2012 08:54
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Oh I'm sorry I forgot the weirdo propaganda broadleaf you posted. Sorry but if it is a source my highschool government teacher would mark me down for quoting in a paper im not that inclined to take its claims unsupported. Especially when it is totally wrong about nuisance law, which failed miserably to handle air pollution. Dont you have anything with like, references? And what are you going on about the Constitution for? Environmental laws have been scrutinized intensely by the supreme court. The is NO disputing the constitutionality of 90% environmental laws and EPA authority, not under any sane reasoning that is. EDIT: Cool fact I just remembered; it is unconstitutional for the government to privatize beaches and navigable waters. See Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois. The activist judges responsible for this crime against the free market died 100 years ago Squalid fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 09:20
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tatankatonk posted:At any rate, I think the question is moot. Broadly speaking, an animalcentric environmentalism that takes the long view isn't going to confict too much with a socialist environmentalism because, well, the things we need to do to keep wolves alive or whatever mostly overlap with the things we need to do to keep the majority of people of 2090 alive. Viewed in terms of AGW, it's cruicial to think of humans as habitat dependent animals as well. This is a complex and important question and I don't think the answer is straight forward at all. First off I'm not sure what socialist environmentalism is. In fact I've never heard a serious socialist plan to combat global warming and reduce carbon emisssions, or at least not one that differed substantially from a capitalist plan. Sure the left is less wedded to economic growth, but I have never seen a description of how their proposed zero growth system. Secondly while problems like deforestation are serious for biodiversity, and U.S. immigration has a large climate impact, controlling them may have a disproportionate impact on the world's poor. Like with that Aspen resolution it all looks 100% true doesn't it? I mean do you dispute any of those assertions? It is totally true that humans are habitat dependent animals, but our habitat is not always the same as that needed and used by other species. I am not convinced at all that policy designed to preserve biodiversity necessarily also serves "socialist environmentalism," or even climate change mitigation. Closely allied they may be, but good luck finding a solution that pleases everyone when latin american squaters seize land in a national forest and defy the authorities to throw them out. Of course I'll admit that many of the world's poor would greatly benefit from the resolution of environmental problems. For example fish and wild game are an essential component of the diet in many regions. Unfortunately many important fisheries and game species (including primates) are not managed sustainably if at all. Creating sustainable management schemes for these resources should benefit everyone. Just don't expect the benefits to always be universal.
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Nov 14, 2012 03:42
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Excuse me, I should have made it clear I meant Latin American squatters taking over land in Latin America, not in the United States. I just wanted to emphasis that not all environmental goals may be achieved at once. Oh? You want to protect endangered tropical birds but still permit limited sustainable logging within a forest? Too bad merely putting in a logging road could drive those species to extinction. It is important to remember this when assholes in Cape Cod are blocking development of wind farms to protect their expensive views. Not all environmental campaigns are grounded on the same premises, or share the same objectives.
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Nov 14, 2012 07:56
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Question. How certain are the drought predictions in the models, like the ones that call for possible desertification of the Midwest? I thought the oceans are what really drive rainfall in North America, so I'm a bit confused as to how warming can lead to such a dramatic change of weather patterns. Does the jet stream get hosed with or something? Air from Canada will still be cool, and water will still be evaporating from the gulf and colliding with it. One way CC will disrupt weather is by altering the temperature differential between the latitudes. I'm sure you've heard that the poles are warming faster than the rest of the globe. This is important because fronts are driven by pressure differentials, or the difference in temperatures. When the difference shrinks there is less energy driving cold air south and warm air north. This isn't much related to drought in the U.S. sw, which I believe is more related to changes in the Hadley Cell system, but it is theorized it could cause more distructive storms. The idea is that with weaker fronts storms are more likely to stall out and hammer one unlucky city rather than moving inland and losing energy.
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Dec 1, 2012 23:55
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krispykremessuck posted:I was born in April of 1984! In your face everyone younger than me by one year, or more! USA! USA! USA! eh that's not too far from the truth, insofar as the midwest isn't really expected to desertify or glaciate. Well, depending on what you consider the midwest. Parts of Nebraska and Kansas might be vulnerable, but a serious risk of desertification is mostly confined to more westernly regions. I'd be surprised if Canada doesn't suffer extra desertification though, they have a lot of prairie that's awfully vulnerable to overgrazing.
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Dec 20, 2012 20:23
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duck monster posted:
The claim under discussion is whether an increase in temperature caused the permian mass extinction, not whatever you say he's saying. I don't remember anyone posting evidence supporting that conclusion recently so Sylink has good reason for skepticism. I don't have time to get into it now but tomorrow I can explain the theory if anyone is interested. Maybe describe some elements of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum relevant to climate research.
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Feb 3, 2013 01:48
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duck monster posted:Then why did he post this;- eh I just don't think it's fair to ask someone to disprove something like that. First you have to show why you think a 10c rise would cause an extinction. The answer is ocean hypoxia and a drier terrestrial climate but there is a lot up for debate regarding the causes of the extinction.
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Feb 6, 2013 18:20
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JonDev posted:So I'm doing a scientific research paper on permafrost for a class I'm taking on global environmental changes. Part of this paper is a background on different modeling studies and their predictions for CO2 emmissions from thawed permafrost. There's a lot in those studies, if you can point out exactly what's confusing I'm sure someone will explain it. The first created a more accurate model of permafrost soils that suggests larger carbon emissions than predicted by the IPCC. The second attempts to reduce uncertainties surrounding carbon flux in permafrost to better understand how current warming could release more carbon. It concludes that by 2100 33-114 Gigatonnes of carbon will be released if nobody tries to reduce emissions. tl;dr we are so screwed
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Feb 7, 2013 16:40
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duck monster posted:I do accept theres debate about the causes, I was however replying to the comment that that temperature rise wouldn't necessarily cause such an extinction. Which is of course absurd. So I am arguing it on the premise that the temperature rise happened. Ie if it happened, we can safely say thats the cause, occams razor and all that. However I do accept that whilst the siberian traps part seems to be certain, the permafrost stuff is still up for debate. That's not absurd at all, at least for someone who isn't familiar with climate science or ecology. If we fast forward to the PETM which was 5-8 degrees warming I think? the extinction rate hardly blips above the background level. A few specific groups did suffer extinctions like benthic foraminifera but you also see increases in diversity among mammals, here both ungulates and primates first appear in paleontological record. It's hard to imagine just how loving hot it was 55 million years ago. The average temperature in Venezuela was 30C (90F)! In modern plants photosynthesis shuts down around 35-40C, and we have almost no idea what tropical ecosystems looked like under these conditions. Well, we do know there were 13 m 1 ton snakes that could eat a saltie for breakfast roaming around but there generally the record is really bad. The point I was making before I distracted myself with giant snakes is that this stuff is complicated, and it isn't unreasonable for someone unfamiliar with the topic to be skeptical. Especially when those claims are about events that occurred 250 mya and being applied to political arguments. As long as you're reasonable genuinely interested and not Arkane you diserve an explanation. really I was just annoyed you asked someone to prove a negative. bad form that. Also I have sources for any facts included in this post, if someone is interested.
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Feb 8, 2013 05:56
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Uranium Phoenix posted:the statistical evidence is that people, if given power, would actually work to stop climate change like I'm claiming. You did not post statistical evidence of that. Sorry. Also idea that if people are wealthy enough to afford climate change mitigation they'll pay for it seems very optimistic, and doesn't really jibe with what I know about people. Specifically that many (most?) people are never wealthy enough, and even doctors grumble about the price of gas or airline tickets. Besides according to your theory, why aren't the uber-rich pushing for climate mitigation? Many of them will lose millions, for what it's worth, even under moderate scenarios. Maybe if you could provide some evidence for your claims, have any psychology papers supporting your thesis? Any demonstrations of collective bottoms up movements fighting for long term goals at the expense of short term hurt? Excuse me but your ideas seem more grounded in faith than evidence. Opinion polls are not evidence of how people behave, btw, and they are especially not evidence of how theoretical future socialist governments will behave.
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Mar 20, 2013 01:13
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