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Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#101

Post by eru »

jamesdsadler wrote: post #86
erichocean wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as well. If myself (or someone else) were to develop a zero-emission approach to electricity generation (non-nuclear) that could handle "base load" and did not involve filling up the landscape with solar panels (or their moral equivalent), and did not produce waste, would that even help any more? We globally consume about 20,000 terawatt-hours of electricity right now annually, and in the US, electricity…

At some point it will become feasible to capture CO2 on a large scale and reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. So, not screwed yet.

If you have enough energy to spend, capturing CO2 is quite feasible.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#102

Post by arama471 »

wavefunction wrote: post #95
fabled_giraffe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in global warming, but I also think a higher or lower temperature Earth with a greater level of CO2 just means that different organisms will thrive. We think that we have damaged the Earth, but the Earth is much, much older than us, and we've barely made a dent if you consider the full lifetime of everything that ever will be. Now- if we had started a global thermonuclear war and eradicated all life on Eart…

My response to you is "what right do we have to usher in these changes?" You might argue the "might makes right" perspective that anything within our capability is acceptable and appropriate but I don't agree with that sentiment. I feel that we, as sentient/semi-sapient beings, must be as custodians for this world and all the life within it. We are actually the least among all, until we begin to serve the rest of thi…

He's not saying this is all fine and dandy, hes saying its not an apocalypse, just a global catastrophe from which both the earth and humanity will recover.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#103

Post by eru »

fratlas wrote: post #82
lprubin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having kids may be one of the biggest forms of environmental activism.

This. I had an argument with a friend because I said having more than 3 kids is selfish, and conversely, having fewer kids (or adopting) is selfless and should be praised. They retorted saying it should be part of an individual's freedom to have as many as they wish. I think after a few more generations we may be looking at a world wide child policy (similar to China).

Why? Global population is already forecast to peak pretty soon.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#104

Post by eru »

erichocean wrote: post #92
willholloway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can fix this, we can take the carbon out of the atmosphere [1]. There is reason for optimism. We. Are. Not. Doomed. The optimum level of carbon is probably slightly above pre-industrial levels. We definitely need to get back below 350ppm to keep human civilization... civilized. 400ppm+ is a trajectory to anarchy. The chimpanzee raiding impulse is alive and well in our DNA, a survival adaptation for stagnation and…

> That said if we cracked fusion, we would have all the energy we would need to desalinate seawater and sequester carbon. I've not heard this before. How does desalinating seawater help with sequestering carbon?

I think grandfather commenter is more worried about clean freshwater here. (A scarcity of clean freshwater might be one of the consequences of changing the climate and thus the water cycle.)

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#105

Post by eru »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #76
willholloway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can fix this, we can take the carbon out of the atmosphere [1]. There is reason for optimism. We. Are. Not. Doomed. The optimum level of carbon is probably slightly above pre-industrial levels. We definitely need to get back below 350ppm to keep human civilization... civilized. 400ppm+ is a trajectory to anarchy. The chimpanzee raiding impulse is alive and well in our DNA, a survival adaptation for stagnation and…

You're on the right track, but ditch fusion and flywheels. It'll be battery storage, wind, and solar: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/we-ve-almo...

And plain old demand shifting.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#106

Post by eru »

gizmo686 wrote: post #53
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I reading the visualization right that CO2 practically disappears every summer? Wouldn't it logically follow then that we're not actually too late to fix our CO2 levels? If we can reduce emissions, plant consumption during the summer months for the northern hemisphere appears to be incredibly effective at basically demolishing the built-up CO2. Or is the "too late" aspect more about the melting polar caps, and tha…

Unfortunately, plants do not sequester much CO2 long term. Instead, the CO2 gets released back to the atmosphere as plants die off.

Unless you bury the plants. That's what happened to create coal and oil.

The problem of too much CO2 in the atmosphere will solve itself in a few thousand years: the ocean currents will sequester lots of carbon in the depths of the sea. Of course, people alive today and their children and grand-children don't want to wait for so long.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#108

Post by rosser »

quasse wrote: post #96
Steko wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

{not a quote from link but the conversation reminded me of this} I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy... at the bottom of ah...some of our deeper mineshafts. Radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in drilling space could easily be provided... It would not be difficult, Nuclear…

This sounds essentially like the plot of the Book of Ember series if anyone (or their kids) is into post-apocalyptic cave living fiction.

It's from Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#109

Post by eru »

cconroy wrote: post #85

Forgive my ignorance on this issue but Earth has various feedback mechanisms that forestalls CO2: getting absorbed back into rocks and consumption by flora. Is comparing CO2 levels to 4 mya disingenuous because that is just one variable we are isolating? Are we sure that rising CO2 is producing these effects attributed to climate change and not some complicated combination of factors that is evidenced by Earth histor…

Understanding the climate is hard. Scientists are working on exactly these kinds of problems.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#110

Post by eru »

m4x wrote: post #42
tim333 wrote: post #36

I wonder why it was at 400ppm 4m years ago. Presumably the Earth survived the last time.

Earth will survive next time too. I'm pretty sure Earth could survive absolutely anything we throw at it. Life on Earth may not survive in it's current form, however. It's interesting to note that the last time a life form on Earth substantially changed the Earth's atmosphere, it caused "one of the most significant extinction events in Earth's history" (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event and…

See https://qntm.org/destroy
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