Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

This forum has been entirely too optimistic lately, covering things like retrenchment of the patriarchy, roll back of human rights, extreme force being used against peaceful protesters, endemic corruption, war, and genocide. So I thought it was time to have a thread that brought it all back down to earth, so that you could be aware of how utterly hosed the human race is.

Here's the latest honest piece I've found, though it still sugar-coats it.

http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-12-05-the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change

quote:

The brutal logic of climate change

The consensus in American politics today is that there's nothing to be gained from talking about climate change. It's divisive, the electorate has more pressing concerns, and very little can be accomplished anyway. In response to this evolving consensus, lots of folks in the climate hawk coalition (broadly speaking) have counseled a new approach that backgrounds climate change and refocuses the discussion on innovation, energy security, and economic competitiveness.

This cannot work. At least it cannot work if we hope to avoid terrible consequences. Why not? It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it. They don't want to believe it. They bring to bear an enormous range of psychological and behavioral defense mechanisms to avoid it. It sounds "extreme" and our instinctive heuristics conflate "extreme" with "wrong." People display the same kind of avoidance when they find out that they or a loved one are seriously ill. But no doctor would counsel withholding a diagnosis from a patient because it might upset them. If we're in this much trouble, surely we must begin by telling the truth about it.

So let's have some real talk on climate change.

For today's inconvenient truths (ahem), we turn to Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change who was, until recently, director of the U.K.'s leading climate research institution, the Tyndall Energy Program. Anderson is a publishing researcher himself and, in his capacity as Tyndall director, was responsible for weaving together multiple lines of research and evidence into a coherent story. This year, with his colleague Alice Bows, he published a must-read paper called "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world" [PDF]. If reading academic papers isn't your thing, he also delivers a digestible presentation here, or here with slides. (Discovered via Alex Steffen's excellent Twitter feed.)

Let's walk through Anderson's logic.

1. How much can global average temperature rise before we risk "dangerous" changes in climate? The current consensus answer is: 2 degrees C [3.6 degrees F] above pre-industrial levels.

The 2 degrees C number has been around for over a decade and was reaffirmed by the Copenhagen Accord just last year. Deciding on an "acceptable" level of temperature is a political and somewhat arbitrary judgment, of course, since it lets one number stand in for a wide range of heterogeneous considerations. But it's an important marker. And when it was first developed, it was based on the science of the day.

Here's a chart attempting to show, in simplified form, what amount of temperature rise will produce dangerous effects (the red zones) and what the 2 degrees C level means:

Image: Kevin Anderson, "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change"

Seems sensible enough. But there's a hitch: Climate science has not stood still for the last decade. According to the latest research, the level of damages once expected at 2 degrees C is now expected at considerably lower temperatures. Here's a graph that shows science's evolving understanding:

Image: Kevin Anderson, "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change"

As you can see, the 2 degrees C "guardrail" that separated acceptable from dangerous in 2001 is, in 2009, squarely inside several red zones. Today, the exact same social and political considerations that settled on 2 degrees C as the threshold of safety by all rights ought to settle on 1 degree C [1.8 degrees F]. After all, we now know 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous.

At this point, however, stopping at 1 degree C is physically impossible (we can thank our past inaction for that). Indeed, as we'll see, stopping at 2 degrees C is getting close to impossible as well. There is no longer any reasonable chance of avoiding "dangerous" climate change, so 1 degree C vs. 2 degrees C is a somewhat academic debate. At this point we're just shooting to avoid super-duper-dangerous. Regardless, the numbers that follow are based on 2 degrees C.

2. For the purposes of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees C, what matters is the total accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- our "carbon budget."

Anderson is adamant that the familiar targets almost all politicians and many scientists use in public -- e.g., "80 percent reduction in the rate of emissions by 2050" -- are deeply misleading. As far as the climate is concerned, the rate of emissions in 2050 relative to the rate of emissions today is meaningless. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for over a century; the atmosphere doesn't care what year it arrives. (Though targets in the distant future are comforting to politicians, for obvious reasons.)

The only thing that matters in limiting temperature rise is cumulative emissions, the total amount we dump into the atmosphere this century. When the total concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere rises, temperature rises. That is the correlation that matters.

If we want to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees C or less, then there's only so much carbon we can dump in the atmosphere. That is our "carbon budget" for the century, the amount we have to "spend" before we're in the danger zone. As best we know, the global carbon budget for this century is between 1,320 and 2,200 gigatons (There are too many uncertainties in the science to be more precise than that.)

3. With a carbon budget, it's possible to develop a carbon reduction pathway.

Once the global carbon budget has been determined (and divvied up among countries -- more on that in subsequent posts), it's possible to conceptualize a way reduce carbon fast enough to stay under that budget. Here's a generic example of a carbon reduction pathway:

mage: Kevin Anderson, "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change"

A key fact to remember: For a given carbon reduction pathway, the later emissions peak, the faster they have to fall to stay under budget.

4. Any carbon reduction pathway that limits temperature rise to 2 degrees C shows global emissions peaking extremely soon and declining extremely quickly.

Right now, global emissions are rising, faster and faster. Between 2000 and 2007, they rose at around 3.5 percent a year; by 2009 it was up to 5.6 percent. In 2010, we hit 5.9 percent growth, a record. We aren't just going in the wrong direction -- we're accelerating in the wrong direction.

(Most climate modeling scenarios, e.g. the Stern Report, underplay the current rate of emissions growth, leading to sunnier-than-justified results.)

The growth of emissions is making the task ahead more and more difficult. The longer we wait to start shrinking emissions, the faster we'll have to shrink them to stay under budget. Here's a visualization of what that means -- some sample reduction curves with varying peak years (the four different lines are based on the four main IPCC scenarios):

Image: Kevin Anderson, "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change"

As you can see, if we delay the global emissions peak until 2025, we pretty much have to drop off a cliff afterwards to avoid 2 degrees C. Short of a meteor strike that shuts down industrial civilization, that's unlikely.

How about 2020? Of the available scenarios for peaking in 2020, says Anderson, 13 of 18 show hitting 2 degrees C to be technically impossible. (D'oh!) The others involve on the order of 10 percent reductions a year after 2020, leading to total decarbonization by 2035-45.

Just to give you a sense of scale: The only thing that's ever pushed emissions reductions above 1 percent a year is, in the words of the Stern Report, "recession or upheaval." The total collapse of the USSR knocked 5 percent off its emissions. So 10 percent a year is like ... well, it's not like anything in the history of human civilization.

This, then, is the brutal logic of climate change: With immediate, concerted action at global scale, we have a slim chance to halt climate change at the extremely dangerous level of 2 degrees C. If we delay even a decade -- waiting for better technology or a more amenable political situation or whatever -- we will have no chance.

6. Jeez, 2 degrees C looks hard. Can we just do 4 degrees C [7.2 degrees F] instead?

It might seem that, given the extraordinary difficulty of hitting 2 degrees C, we ought to lower our sights a bit and accept that we're going to hit 4 degrees C. It won't be ideal, but hitting anything lower than that is just too difficult and expensive.

It's seductive logic. After all, to hit 4 degrees C we would "only" have to peak global emissions in 2020 and decline thereafter at the relatively leisurely rate (ha ha) of around 3.5 percent per year.

Sadly, even that cold comfort is not available to us. The thing is, if 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous, 4 degrees C is absolutely catastrophic. In fact, according to the latest science, says Anderson, "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

Yeeeah. You'll want to read that sentence again. Then you'll probably want to pour yourself a stiff drink.

Obviously, "incompatible with an organized global community" is what jumps out, but the last bit, "high probability of not being stable," is equally if not more important. One of the most uncertain areas of climate science today has to do with feedbacks -- processes caused by climate change that in turn accelerate (or decelerate) climate change. For instance, heat can melt the Arctic permafrost, which releases methane, which accelerates climate change, which melts more permafrost, etc.

Based on current scientific understanding, positive climate feedbacks -- the ones that accelerate the process -- considerably outweigh negative feedbacks. At some level of temperature rise, some of those positive feedbacks are likely to become self-reinforcing and effectively unstoppable, no matter how much emissions are cut. These are the "tipping points" you hear so much about.

But at what level? Will hitting 2 degrees C trigger runaway positive feedbacks? It's difficult to know; this is one of the most uncertain areas of climate science. James Hansen thinks 2 degrees C will do it. Others disagree.

But the situation becomes considerably clearer around 4 degrees C. At that level, there's good reason to believe that some positive feedbacks will become self-reinforcing. In other words, 4 degrees C would very likely be a way station on the road to much higher temperatures.

That makes the notion of "adapting" to 4 degrees C a bit of a farce. Infrastructure decisions involve big money and long time horizons. By the time we've built (or rebuilt) infrastructure suited to 4 degrees C, it will be 5 degrees C [9 degrees F]. And so on. A climate in which conditions are changing that fast just isn't suitable for stable human civilization (or for the continued existence of a majority of the planet's species).

Oh, and by the way: According to the International Energy Agency, we're currently on course for 6 degrees C [10.8 degrees F]. That is, beyond any reasonable doubt, game over.

So this is where we're at: stuck between temperatures we can't possibly accommodate and carbon reduction pathways we can't possibly achieve. A rock and a hard place. Scylla and Charybdis.

What does it mean for the way we think about climate policy? I'll address that in my next post.

I said it sugar-coats it, and it does. It doesn't talk about acidification of the ocean, what that does to fish stocks, and what that does to the global food supply.

Here is a nice article on that impact from NASA back in 06 - you know, when they were deliberately understating how bad things are. They are talking about the warming here, since that is easier to manipulate than the pH changes

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/warm_marine.html

quote:

Climate Warming Reduces Ocean Food Supply
12.06.06

In a NASA study, scientists have concluded that when Earth's climate warms, there is a reduction in the ocean's primary food supply. This poses a potential threat to fisheries and ecosystems.

Image right: Satellite data reveals the ebb and flow of microscopic plant life in the world's ocean. In this image of the Pacific from the late 1990s, robust plant growth is represented in green; areas of low "productivity" are in blue. NASA research has now shown how these marine plants are linked to changes in climate. Credit: NASA

By comparing nearly a decade of global ocean satellite data with several records of Earth's changing climate, scientists found that whenever climate temperatures warmed, marine plant life in the form of microscopic phytoplankton declined. Whenever climate temperatures cooled, marine plant life became more vigorous or productive.

The results provide a preview of what could happen to ocean biology in the future if Earth's climate warms as the result of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Image left: A close-up view of phytoplankton, the tiny plants that live in the sunlit upper layer of the ocean. Changes in phytoplankton growth influence fishery yields and marine bird populations. Credit: NASA

"The evidence is pretty clear that the Earth's climate is changing dramatically, and in this NASA research we see a specific consequence of that change," said oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt. Md. "It is only by understanding how climate and life on Earth are linked that we can realistically hope to predict how the Earth will be able to support life in the future." Feldman is a co-author on the study, which was published this week in Nature.

Phytoplankton are microscopic plants living in the upper sunlit layer of the ocean. They are responsible for approximately the same amount of photosynthesis each year as all land plants combined. Changes in phytoplankton growth and photosynthesis influence fishery yields, marine bird populations and the amount of carbon dioxide the oceans remove from the atmosphere.

Image right: The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor launched in 1997 supports pioneering global environmental research. By providing a regular picture of plant activity on land and in the ocean, researchers are able to learn about the world's interconnected ecosystems. Credit: NASA

"Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere play a big part in global warming," said lead author Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University, Corvallis. "This study shows that as the climate warms, phytoplankton growth rates go down and along with them the amount of carbon dioxide these ocean plants consume. That allows carbon dioxide to accumulate more rapidly in the atmosphere, which would produce more warming."

The findings are from a NASA-funded analysis of data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument on the OrbView-2 spacecraft, launched in 1997.

Image left: Changes in phytoplankton change how much carbon dioxide the oceans remove from the atmosphere. The life cycle of phytoplankton in the ocean involves absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and nutrient-rich waters. That carbon is then passed on to higher life forms that feed on the plants. Some also sinks to the ocean floor. Click image to play movie. Credit: NASA

The uninterrupted nine-year record shows in great detail the ups and downs of marine biological activity or productivity from month to month and year to year. Captured at the start of this data record was a major, rapid rebound in ocean biological activity after a major El Ni�o event. El Ni�o and La Ni�a are major warming or cooling events, respectively, that occur approximately every 3-7 years in the eastern Pacific Ocean and are known to change weather patterns around the world.

Ocean plant growth increased from 1997 to 1999 as the climate cooled during one of the strongest El Ni�o to La Ni�a transitions on record. Since 1999, the climate has been in a period of warming that has seen the health of ocean plants diminish.

Here is a National Geographic article (and plenty of links) about ocean acidification

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/

quote:

For tens of millions of years, Earth's oceans have maintained a relatively stable acidity level. It's within this steady environment that the rich and varied web of life in today's seas has arisen and flourished. But research shows that this ancient balance is being undone by a recent and rapid drop in surface pH that could have devastating global consequences.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the early 1800s, fossil fuel-powered machines have driven an unprecedented burst of human industry and advancement. The unfortunate consequence, however, has been the emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists now know that about half of this anthropogenic, or man-made, CO2 has been absorbed over time by the oceans. This has benefited us by slowing the climate change these emissions would have instigated if they had remained in the air. But relatively new research is finding that the introduction of massive amounts of CO2 into the seas is altering water chemistry and affecting the life cycles of many marine organisms, particularly those at the lower end of the food chain.

Carbonic Acid

When carbon dioxide dissolves in this ocean, carbonic acid is formed. This leads to higher acidity, mainly near the surface, which has been proven to inhibit shell growth in marine animals and is suspected as a cause of reproductive disorders in some fish.

On the pH scale, which runs from 0 to 14, solutions with low numbers are considered acidic and those with higher numbers are basic. Seven is neutral. Over the past 300 million years, ocean pH has been slightly basic, averaging about 8.2. Today, it is around 8.1, a drop of 0.1 pH units, representing a 25-percent increase in acidity over the past two centuries.

Carbon Storehouse

The oceans currently absorb about a third of human-created CO2 emissions, roughly 22 million tons a day. Projections based on these numbers show that by the end of this century, continued emissions could reduce ocean pH by another 0.5 units. Shell-forming animals including corals, oysters, shrimp, lobster, many planktonic organisms, and even some fish species could be gravely affected.

Equally worrisome is the fact that as the oceans continue to absorb more CO2, their capacity as a carbon storehouse could diminish. That means more of the carbon dioxide we emit will remain in the atmosphere, further aggravating global climate change.

Scientific awareness of ocean acidification is relatively recent, and researchers are just beginning to study its effects on marine ecosystems. But all signs indicate that unless humans are able to control and eventually eliminate our fossil fuel emissions, ocean organisms will find themselves under increasing pressure to adapt to their habitat's changing chemistry or perish.

There is really no positives here. The best case is about we go to global tyranny to muddle through with the most people surviving. Or individual freedom to keep making GBS threads up the cradle, but only the top few % have the resources to make it through the resulting mass die off when the food & water supplies go bye-bye. Assuming that in the resulting shitstorm of insufficient food and water, we don't all kill each other. More likely we keep trying to have our cake and eat it too, and we join most of the rest of the fossil record in extinction.

Let's share more detailed descriptions of how the environment is hosed and so are we! :eng99:

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 00:02

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 06:27

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Here is a nice article from NASA yesterday about how climate change related droughts have already started and are going to screw us over

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ancient-dry.html

quote:

Ancient Dry Spells Offer Clues About the Future of Drought

As parts of Central America and the U.S. Southwest endure some of the worst droughts to hit those areas in decades, scientists have unearthed new evidence about ancient dry spells that suggest the future could bring even more serious water shortages. Three researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Dec. 5, 2011, presented new findings about the past and future of drought.

Video at link

Pre-Columbian Collapse

Ben Cook, a climatologist affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York City, highlighted new research that indicates the ancient Meso-American civilizations of the Mayans and Aztecs likely amplified droughts in the Yucat�n Peninsula and southern and central Mexico by clearing rainforests to make room for pastures and farmland.

Converting forest to farmland can increase the reflectivity, or albedo, of the land surface in ways that affect precipitation patterns. "Farmland and pastures absorb slightly less energy from the sun than the rainforest because their surfaces tend to be lighter and more reflective," explained Cook. "This means that there�s less energy available for convection and precipitation."

click me for big map

New climate modeling shows that widespread deforestation in pre-Columbian Central America corresponded with decreased levels of precipitation. This image shows how much precipitation declined from normal across the region between 800 C.E. and 950 C.E. It was during this period of time that the Mayan civilization reached its peak population and abruptly collapsed. (Credit: Ben Cook, NASA�s Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
� Larger image

Cook and colleagues used a high-resolution climate model developed at GISS to run simulations that compared how patterns of vegetation cover during pre-Columbian (before 1492 C.E.) and post-Columbian periods affected precipitation and drought in Central America. The pre-Columbian era saw widespread deforestation on the Yucat�n Peninsula and throughout southern and central Mexico. During the post-Columbian period, forests regenerated as native populations declined and farmlands and pastures were abandoned.

Cook's simulations include input from a newly published land-cover reconstruction that is one of the most complete and accurate records of human vegetation changes available. The results are unmistakable: Precipitation levels declined by a considerable amount -- generally 10 to 20 percent -- when deforestation was widespread. Precipitation records from stalagmites, a type of cave formation affected by moisture levels that paleoclimatologists use to deduce past climate trends, in the Yucat�n agree well with Cook's model results.

The effect is most noticeable over the Yucat�n Peninsula and southern Mexico, areas that overlapped with the centers of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations and had high levels of deforestation and the most densely concentrated populations. Rainfall levels declined, for example, by as much as 20 percent over parts of the Yucat�n Peninsula between 800 C.E. and 950 C.E.

Cook's study supports previous research that suggests drought, amplified by deforestation, was a key factor in the rapid collapse of the Mayan empire around 950 C.E. In 2010, Robert Oglesby, a climate modeler based at the University of Nebraska, published a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research that showed that deforestation likely contributed to the Mayan collapse. Though Oglesby and Cook's modeling reached similar conclusions, Cook had access to a more accurate and reliable record of vegetation changes.

During the peak of Mayan civilization between 800 C.E. and 950 C.E., the land cover reconstruction Cook based his modeling on indicates that the Maya had left only a tiny percentage of the forests on the Yucat�n Peninsula intact. By the period between 1500 C.E. and 1650 C.E., in contrast, after the arrival of Europeans had decimated native populations, natural vegetation covered nearly all of the Yucat�n. In modern times, deforestation has altered some areas near the coast, but a large majority of the peninsula�s forests remain intact.

"I wouldn't argue that deforestation causes drought or that it's entirely responsible for the decline of the Maya, but our results do show that deforestation can bias the climate toward drought and that about half of the dryness in the pre-Colonial period was the result of deforestation," Cook said.

Northeastern Megadroughts

The last major drought to affect the Northeast occurred in the 1960s, persisted for about three years and took a major toll on the region. Dorothy Peteet, a paleoclimatologist also affiliated with NASA GISS and Columbia University, has uncovered evidence that shows far more severe droughts have occurred in the Northeast.

By analyzing sediment cores collected from several tidal marshes in the Hudson River Valley, Peteet and her colleagues at Lamont-Doherty have found evidence that at least three major dry spells have occurred in the Northeast within the last 6,000 years. The longest, which corresponds with a span of time known as the Medieval Warm Period, lasted some 500 years and began around 850 C.E. The other two took place more than 5,000 years ago. They were shorter, only about 20 to 40 years, but likely more severe.

"People don't generally think about the Northeast as an area that can experience drought, but there's geologic evidence that shows major droughts can and do occur," Peteet said. "It's something scientists can't ignore. What we�re finding in these sediment cores has big implications for the region."

Peteet's team detected all three droughts using a method called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. They used the technique on a core collected at Piermont Marsh in New York to search for characteristic elements -- such as bromine and calcium -- that are more likely to occur at the marsh during droughts.

Fresh water from the Hudson River and salty water from the Atlantic Ocean were both predominant in Piermont Marsh at different time periods, but saltwater moves upriver during dry periods as the amount of fresh water entering the marsh declines. Peteet's team detected extremely high levels of both bromine and calcium, both of them indicators of the presence of saltwater and the existence of drought, in sections of the sediment cores corresponding to 5,745 and 5,480 years ago.

During the Medieval Warm Period, the researchers also found striking increases in the abundance of certain types of pollen species, especially pine and hickory, that indicate a dry climate. Before the Medieval Warm Period, in contrast, there were more oaks, which prefer wetter conditions. They also found a thick layer of charcoal demonstrating that wildfires, which are more frequent during droughts, were common during the Medieval Warm Period.

"We still need to do more research before we can say with confidence how widespread or frequent droughts in the Northeast have been," Peteet said. There are certain gaps in the cores Peteet's team studied, for example, that she plans to investigate in greater detail. She also expects to expand the scope of the project to other marshes and estuaries in the Northeast and to collaborate with climate modelers to begin teasing out the factors that cause droughts to occur in the region.

The Future of Food

Climate change, with its potential to redistribute water availability around the globe by increasing rainfall in some areas while worsening drought in others, might negatively impact crop yields in certain regions of the world.

New research conducted by Princeton University hydrologist Justin Sheffield shows that areas of the developing world that are drought-prone and have growing population and limited capabilities to store water, such as sub-Saharan Africa, will be the ones most at risk of seeing their crops decrease their yields in the future.

Sheffield and his team ran hydrological model simulations for the 20th and 21st centuries and looked at how drought might change in the future according to different climate change scenarios. They found that the total area affected by drought has not changed significantly over the past 50 years globally.

However, the model shows reductions in precipitation and increases in evaporative demand are projected to increase the frequency of short-term droughts. They also found that the area across sub-Saharan Africa experiencing drought will rise by as much as twofold by mid-21st century and threefold by the end of the century.

When the team analyzed what these changes would mean for future agricultural productivity around the globe, they found that the impact on sub-Saharan Africa would be especially strong.

Agricultural productivity depends on a number of factors beyond water availability including soil conditions, available technologies and crop varieties. For some regions of sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers found that agricultural productivity will likely decline by over 20 percent by mid-century due to drying and warming.

Basically, droughts end the food supply, are becoming more common, and over larger areas, including places that haven't seen them with this frequency in thousands of years. Aces.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 00:30

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

ts12 posted:

Ah yes, but how can I be sure that these scientists aren't all part of some global conspiracy to invent climate change because they need grant money in order to live????

These threads are loving depressing

Whenever your will to live becomes too strong, read one of my posts. I'll either be talking about something horrible or being a terrible poster, so both will drive you to despair.

Here is about the most optimistic http://news.opb.org/article/osu-study-casts-doubt-worst-case-climate-change/

quote:

A new study led by Oregon State University scientists casts doubt on a climate change worst-case scenario. The new study helps narrow down what the greenhouse effect might mean for the earth�s climate.

"Climate sensitivity" is the measure of how much earth's climate is affected by atmospheric changes, such as increasing carbon dioxide. Previous studies have suggested temperatures could rise as much as ten degrees, if carbon dioxide doubles. OSU professor Andreas Schmittner has now published a study in the journal Science that tested whether such a profound temperature change is at all possible.

"Our study now shows that's not the case, that we can exclude those very high climate sensitivities, and therefore it is feasible to avoid drastic impacts of CO2 emissions, Schmittner explained.

Schmittner's study uses Ice Age data from 20-thousand years ago -- the last time carbon dioxide levels changed dramatically.

Schmittner says avoiding ten-degree increases is good news. But, he says even if global temperatures only go up by a few degrees, it can mean major changes to the world's climate.

A single study says we won't get more than 10 C increase. Of course, there are plenty that contradict this, and less than 10 appears to still be more than enough to wipe us out completely, but hey, ray of sunshine where you can get it, you know?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 00:37

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Pellisworth posted:

I'm a chemical oceanographer working on my PhD. My thesis involves some stuff indirectly related to climate change, but I'm very familiar with ocean acidification, warming of the oceans, and other interactions between the atmosphere and oceans. I'm more than happy to (try and) answer any questions on those topics as well as give a little perspective as a scientist.

Ok, short version: How bad is it? I used a good chunk of hyperbole there in the OP, but from my extreme layperson understanding, we should basically be in triage mode to save as many lives as possible, rather than adapting. Am I overstating the probable case and impacts? Is there any source for optimism?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 00:56

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

BobTheFerret posted:

Just for anyone who's not up on what modern chemistry/biochemistry is cooking up to solve the problem of excess CO2, it might not be completely unreasonable to say we could have a way to fix massive amounts of CO2 in the next 5-10 years, assuming the powers that be are willing to throw money at the development of what has already been discovered.

On the chemistry end of the spectrum, this is what I believe to be the most promising development in CO2 fixation I have ever seen:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5963/313.full

They do have video of it in action that they showed at a conference, and the results are simply stunning. For those without institutional access, this is a very small molecule that binds copper and forms a bond between 2 CO2 molecules making the compound Oxalate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalate), which can then be turned into any of a number of useful compounds. Only uses electrons, acid, and a very easy to synthesize organic molecule. Performs millions of turnovers with 95+% efficiency, and is stable in air. There are pictures in the supplemental of the oxalate crystals formed. It's pretty amazing, and they stumbled on it completely by accident, and performed no engineering whatsoever to optimize their setup (which would help a lot with efficiency).

On the biochemistry side, you have carbonic anhydrases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_anhydrase), which will catalyze the conversion of CO2 to HCO3 using only water and a metal cofactor. They are already incredibly efficient (they are among the most efficient enzymes around, and will happily truck along at the rate of diffusion until the protein degrades - which takes a very, very long time). All that needs to be done to make them effective for carbon fixation is to optimize the pH and temperature at which they will function, which many powerplants/power companies are already contracting out to biochemistry labs to do. Since you can isolate HCO3 as a solid (baking soda!), you can simply complex it with a counterion that will prevent its re-dissolution or prevent it from coming into contact with water again (bury it underground in a lined container? Preferably both methods). Better yet would be to chemically convert it into something useful (another protein could do this, or we could use it in some sort of chemical reaction).

These are things that are happening right now, and will be effective ways to fix CO2. The problem isn't so much the way as the will at this point - once there is actual urgency about climate change that reaches across political lines, there will be enough funding to solve the problem of excess CO2. You could imagine a dedicated CO2 fixation site being mated up to a power-plant (nuke, solar, wind, etc.), as well as perhaps a chemical production facility of some sort. Oxalate is tremendously useful, as is bicarbonate, in the lifecycle of microorganisms, and many will happily use these molecules as carbon sources. With a little metabolic engineering, we could convert oxalate/bicarbonate to any of a number of biofuels (not saying that organic combustibles should be our goal, but they are what get grant money...)

How cost effective and scalable are these methods? My understanding is that the proposed solutions either didn't pan out (iron fertilization), are prohibitively expensive (any space solution), can't be done fast enough (going nuclear), don't scale (direct air capture) or can't be done fast enough (tera preta production)

Do these have those problems negated? It would seem to me as the rate of carbon introduction to rate of capture would be a problem, as would limited supplies of copper

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 05:44

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

SGRaaize posted:

This thread is making me depressed, but it really sounds unbelievable that people are suggesting catastrophic scenarios in the next 20 years and literally no one is thinking about it, which does give me some doubt to these claims.
I'm not saying Climate Change doesn't exist, I'm just asking if its gonna really get apocalyptic-level

Oh they are. The US Department of Defense has been incorporating Climate Change catastrophes into their operations planning for years, the ICEWARS program is designed to merge behavioral modeling and available data to identify points of conflict and unrest before they erupt so that they can be eliminated ahead of time, and there has been increasing militarization of police forces with a focus on crowd containment and disruption.

If you are asking why they aren't trying to avert climate change, well, that goes into how big a shock to the system it would take to stop it. What half solutions we have can't be done fast enough to stop it, and investigating more will rile people up as more about the problem leaks out. Instead they are readying for pure triage when it all goes to poo poo, to hold onto control for as long as possible.

People are most certainly planning for this. You just have to remember how godawful most people are and factor that in.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 03:49

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Wolfy posted:

Hell and high water. I like that. I mean I don't like that, but I like it. God we are so hosed. Nobody is ever going to listen, are they?

Read the thread title

# ¿ Oct 20, 2012 20:53

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

All of you talking homesteading and crash shifting to micro-gardens are missing a few big farming issues. Chiefly, germination factors. Things like water pH will be easy enough to correct for, and last time I checked oxygen levels will be within tolerance. But temperatures will be a big problem. Anything that needs vernalization (exposure to cold) to break dormancy is going to get clobbered by this (that would be most of our fruits). A 4-6 C shift will also throw off most of the ranges for most of our crops. Most of them germinate 16-24 C

Here is a table of germination (It is in F unfortunately)

Here is one in C that I pulled from a PDF and converted (I rounded down if anyone wants to quibble)

code:

		Min	Optimum		Optimum	Max
		(�C)	Range (�C)	(�C)	(�C)
Asparagus	10	15-29		23	35
Bean		15	15-29		26	35
Bean, Lima	15	18-29		29	29
Beet		4	10-29		29	29
Cabbage		4	7-35		29	37
Carrot		4	7-29		26	35
Cauliflower	4	7-29		26	37
Celery		4	15-21		21	29
Chard, Swiss	4	10-29		29	35
Corn		10	15-35		35	40
Cucumber	15	15-35		35	40
Eggplant	15	24-32		29	35
Lettuce		1	4-26		23	29
Muskmelon	15	23-35		32	37
Okra		15	21-35		35	40
Onion		1	10-35		23	35
Parsley		4	10-29		23	32
Parsnip		1	10-21		18	29
Pea		4	4-23		23	29
Pepper		15	18-35		29	35
Pumpkin		15	21-32		32	37
Radish		4	7-32		29	35
Spinach		1	7-23		21	29
Squash		15	21-35		35	37
Tomato		10	21-35		29	35
Turnip		4	15-40		29	40
Watermelon	15	21-35		35	40

Here's another thing - these temperatures listed are based off population studies of the seeds. So if you go "ok, the temperature is higher, but it is still within range", that doesn't mean things are hunky dory - it means that while some of your seeds will still germinate, a lot of them won't. Again, you might be able to get by on a small homestead if you get lucky with diminishing returns and enjoy eating a lot of turnips. And the countries living in more temperate regions (America, Europe, Russia, Australia, etc) (you know, the people causing all this), could get by with a minimal shift. But the major concentrations of the human population, places like India, Brazil, most of Africa and China? They won't.

Basically the only way to handle this will be genetic engineering of the crops so that they will germinate in the new temperatures, or large scale controlled farming (vertical farms in the extreme, massive freezers to simulate vernalization at a minimum).

Tempus Fugit people. Realistically, humanity will put another 1-4 teratons (1,000,000,000,000 tons) of carbon in the atmosphere. 4 is the cap of extractable fossil fuels, 1 is if you are optimistic about how fast we can shift. Even if we did it NOW, full stop, we would still see the impact from what we have already done, which has us playing global Russian Roulette as it is. At this point I think the discussion needs to be how we adapt to and minimize the impact of the change. Stuff like the germination issue gets little coverage, but we need to start talking about it.

Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Dec 1, 2012

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 20:09

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

The Ender posted:

...Source?

About half of the American public doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change (anecdotally, none of my 'worked in the oil patch in Alberta their entire lives' family believes it) according to anonymous polling / surveys. Granted, they might be lying on the surveys, but that's the only data we have.

It's pretty dishonest to take all of those surveys, say, "Meh, they're all lying anyway. I'm sure most people believe it."

Half the American public is very few people. They are 2% of the total population. China has been doing the Great Green Wall since the 70s, India has to handle the monsoons on steroids so they care and are going nuclear asap, Europe has high portions of climate friendly energy generation. The average person in the third world may not know the theory of climate change, but they absolutely see "hey, the water levels sure are a lot higher than they used to be! Yeah, and it is hotter and the storms are worse!" The only reason that 2% isn't negligible is because they have a disproportional amount of power.

McDowell posted:

Natural Gas (and by association fracking) get marketed as clean and green. So it must be a solution you decrease oil and coal demand a little.

Nuclear is needed immediately, but plenty of people don't understand that fossil fuels are the root of the problem, and NG is just another one.

From the space thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KobRfGqlpGc

Someone is taking these problems seriously and the effort needs to be expanded.

... is that narrated by Norm MacDonald?

Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Dec 1, 2012

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 20:10

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Wubbles posted:

What does that imply about the world's future?

Read the thread title

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 20:17

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

quote is not edit

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 20:19

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Wubbles posted:

I was hoping that was an exaggeration.

I suppose that depends on how you want to define "screwed". Climate change isn't the only thing gunning for us. We have things ranging from the emergence of the panopticon to superbugs to water shortages to running out of critical supplies like phosphates. All of these have secondary and tertiary effects that have to be addressed as well. It is really, REALLY hard to overstate the problems that lie ahead. We face enormous challenges in our life times. Not as individuals, or nations, or a class, but as a species. Our usual work-arounds will not help here - the free market or science won't invent a replacement for phosphates, they are a critical building block of life.

But that doesn't mean we are doomed either. A few pages back someone said we would see the end of liberal western democracy as we know it due to climate change. This is a true statement, but not a particularly informative one. Liberal western democracy today looks nothing like it did when our parents were born. It looks completely alien to when our grandparents were born. It changes with the time and circumstances, and if climate change wasn't going to be the big shift, the demographics of western nations would or the change in technology would.

Things are going to change. They have to - for climate change we have done too much damage already, and the challenges are too big for it and everything else. They are going to change at a faster rate - we have more brains working with more information and swapping it back and forth now. It is going to spin off in some bewildering ways. When Moore was talking microchips production, one of the Intel executives sarcastically responded that if it were true people would be using processors in doorknobs. Have you gone to a hotel lately? A lot of the changes will not be good, or at least not good for everyone - look at high frequency trading. A lot of them will be great - look at what cell phones are doing for Africa.

Will we make it? Probably, but what we make it into isn't something we can really predict. Law of averages say some of the big changes will help us, but most of our long standing institutions won't end up standing. I'm ok with that - it is the nature of things. The sun set on the British Empire after all. But it means that we can't become complacent, or we are out of the running. If you are hoping to have the stereotypical American life with a few small tweaks like a victory garden or solar panels or homesteading; of a stable career and family where power and structure mean that today is more or less like yesterday and you can take things at a leisurely pace, then yeah, you are screwed. That's what most people have been doing since 2000, and it ended up with the changes they were ignoring blowing up the global economy and taking them out with it. The same principle applies here. A lot of stuff is coming down the pipe, so if you want to make it out you need to stay on your toes. If you are willing to embrace the new and scary and weird, and constantly learn and experiment and interact, willing to keep apace of what is happening and think outside the box, you and your family will probably be ok.

The future is going to be strange and dangerous and beautiful and horrifying. We can see some trends in it, but the black swans and the missing data points and the human factor means it will be a mystery until we get there. And the only way to make it that far and survive is to embrace change and roll with it. Jump in.

Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 1, 2012

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 21:28

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 06:27

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

TACD posted:

I would be shocked if we didn't see increasing numbers of desperate geo-engineering schemes put into place by nations and other groups imperiled by the more immediate effects of climate change. (Remember this?) Then climate deniers can point to the actions of 'rogue eco-terrorists' as exactly the sort of harm they expected 'global warmists' to cause.

I will be absolutely amazed if India doesn't start doing something like shooting sulfides into the stratosphere. They have the technical base and economy to do a lot of these geo-engineering ideas, and are looking straight down the barrel of multiple guns: Super-powered monsoons, Chinese water supplies drying up/being cut off, heavy heatwaves, extreme food demands...

They are aggressively taking actions with their nuclear program and such now, but no way that will be enough. They have a strong motive and the means, so I fully expect them to take action

# ¿ Dec 6, 2012 05:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed