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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

#271

Post by soundwave106 »

briandear wrote: post #191
sd8f9iu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The big fear with climate change is that it's irreversible. That is not the case with the other problems you mention. 2. Climate change is predicted to cause food supply problems for hundreds of millions of people, trillions of dollars of economic damage, and rising sea levels that flood coastal cities. I don't see how the other problems you mention are more dire. 3. The problems you mention – homelessness, drug a…

I've been hearing about the sky falling because of climate change most of my life. Yet in the 1970s it was global cooling. The easiest way to convince someone of a particular 'danger' is to promise world-ending catastrophe. The science was 'settled' on Eugenics during the early 20th century as well and we saw how that turned out. There's no mention of any positive effects of global warming. The climate is certainly c…

One of the big problems I see with this issue is that the loudest people speaking up about it sometimes do it in almost absurdly apocalyptic terms, and do have more of an anti-capitalists and hardcore environmentalist vibe instead of a more science based one. This turns it into yet another politically polarized issue. But I think one should ignore the politics as much as possible and stick with the science.

Remember DDT? On one side you had Silent Spring, and on the other side you have people claiming bollocks and conspiracy and the like. I think the science is pretty settled on this one, really has been since the 1970s (eg, a metabolite of DDT, DDE, really is nasty for raptor egg shells, and wanton over-application of pesticide is an extremely poor way to control mosquitoes) but I still see things about the "DDT conspiracy" today.

Likewise, with climate change, I think the science is fairly settled to some degree. The issue here is that it's a very slow moving problem, with some degree of uncertainty. A lot of humans aren't terribly good at thinking very long term. Plus, the "easy" solution involves "giving up" our creature comforts, which contrary to the anti-capitalists opinion I don't anyone is going to want to do.

While you're right that most likely much of the world will adapt, there may be some pain points. We have so much infrastructure built along the coasts right now that could be affected by sea rise increases, for instance. Same with different weather patterns -- for instance, what's San Francisco going to do if climate change starts slowly, over time, affecting the Sierra Nevada snowpack they depend on for water?

The developed world, of course, probably can come up with some solutions for this; honestly I don't think the changes will be a complete disaster there. Poorer nations, might be another story. I'm not sure they are as able to cope.

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

#272

Post by wang_li »

JoBrad wrote: post #269
NickM wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The suggestions you mentioned all have substantial negative impacts to humanity - arguably as much as climate change itself I think that assertion deserves to be examined a bit more closely. We are already effectively subsidizing the fossil fuel industry to the tune of 5+ trillion USD per year [1]. This is a figure from the IMF that includes direct monetary subsidies as well as externalities like public health, env…

We should stop subsidies for all fossil fuels, and begin phasing in taxation of fossil fuels to account for their cost. But the cost I'm talking about it not just about money. There isn't a viable alternative to a whole host of products that we use. Off the top of my head I can think of plastics (huge) and large equipment. Even using energy-reclamation for garbage trucks is an "innovation" for us. We simply couldn't…

The major players in the fossil fuels industry are all net tax payers. If I'm understanding the summary from the linked paper, it's saying that they're not taxed enough for the satisfaction of the paper's authors. Thus they are being "subsidized".

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

#273

Post by m_mueller »

m_mueller wrote: post #201
goldenkey wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit! The methane clathrate gun is scary stuff..so basically there's a temperature that we dont exactly know that could eradicate our species in some kind if irreversible chain reaction. And almost no one talks about it.. Ive never heard of MCG before, thanks for your post.

Exactly. The most infuriating thing about it is that people keep debating about how serious we should take this. Even that wiki article seems to be poisoned by deniers. I quote from a previous comment of mine: > "Research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released, apparently through perforations in the seabed permafrost,[20] with concentrations in some regions rea…

Since I can't edit this comment anymore: I left a comment on the Talk page of this article [1]. Are there any climate scientists on HN?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

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

#274

Post by wang_li »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #259
headShrinker wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The suggestions you mentioned all have substantial negative impacts Not eating meat, invest Hyper Loop high speed ground travel, home solar, electric cars, dramatically raise air travel cost, stop cutting down tropical forests, and stop burning coal. These are all doable, and with minimal quality of life impact. If a life is ruined because they can't have a McQuarterPounder, a Chevy big block, and flying to Texas e…

Speaking as an American, not eating meat, buying (currently) much more expensive cars, and not being able to afford to fly are huge quality of life impacts.

As is the increased population density to make any kind of HyperLoop/high speed train/slow speed train/fixed route transportation effective beyond simply transferring money from tax payers to shysters.

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

#275

Post by joslin01 »

sd8f9iu wrote: post #236
wallace_f wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? I am opposed to climate change? Did you read my post? I never said I am opposed to progress on climate change or that it's not worth solving. This is exactly the type of politics I dislike when it comes to climate change: I called into question some of the political aspects of climate change, and now I'm being cast out of as an infidel, non-believer, someone opposed to climate change progress, and being gi…

If you're not saying, "it's not worth solving," then what exactly are you saying? What other problems pose "similar if not more immediate, or greater risks to humanity" than climate change? It'd be nice if you could name a few. It seems like your post boils down to, "we have other problems to solve too, besides climate change." Ok. Great. You do 2 things in your post: you prioritize climate change below other problem…

He's expressing his concern for the politicalization of the climate issue. It's the same concern that one might have had for the "war on poverty" in which the clout & organizations surrounding the issue become more important than the issue itself.

He's also expressing concern for wealthy individuals concerning themselves with "climate change", but don't have the capability to make a direct, observable impact. He thus raises the question: "If we can save 10 humans now, is it worth worrying about saving 100 later?"

This is a deeply philosophical issue that deserves thoughtful discourse, but it seems you've devolved it into a battle and put intent behind his words such as "you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists" that probably don't fairly represent his.

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

#276

Post by splawn »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #256
tstactplsignore wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are specific mineral records that covary strongly with CO2 levels over that 400,000 year period. However, these mineral records go back millions of years - therefore, we can use the known relationship to predict how CO2 levels have changed in the past. These are known as "proxies" in paleoclimatology, and can be used to estimate past CO2 levels, O2 levels, temperature, and other attributes of Earth's climate. W…

Yeah, I know what a proxy measure is. That's not what the OP said, though.

If you knew they used proxy measures then why didn't you simply explain that to the OP rather than pretend you didn't understand? However, I am glad you asked because it caused me to investigate and learn something new.

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

#277

Post by lubesGordi »

wallace_f wrote: post #175

Sometimes I feel I am the only one sceptical of the politics and alarmism surrounding climate change. I am Not saying I'm skeptical that it is real (or to be more appropriately scientific, that the evidence suggests the observed increase in CO2 and temperature most likely is caused by emissions), but I'm saying the politics are more complex than that. I can think of a number of other issues that pose similar if not m…

You can thank Gore and his messianic ego for completely politicizing climate change.

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

#278

Post by GVIrish »

JoBrad wrote: post #252
blondie9x wrote: post #241

We all know by now CO2 and CH4 leads to a warmer planet. We also know what's driving greenhouse gas levels to rise across Earth. Contributors are deforestation, intensive animal farming, and primarily the combustion of carbon fossil fuels like coal, tar sands, oil, natural gas etc. But here is the underlying problem, despite us knowing how bad things are, (97+% of scientists who study this field agree we are causing…

Honestly, the whole point of worrying about climate change is its impact to humans (the earth has survived far worse over its history, and will likely survive worse in the future). The suggestions you mentioned all have substantial negative impacts to humanity - arguably as much as climate change itself (i.e. doing nothing) - and has a huge upfront cost, to boot. Additionally, such extreme actions will result in larg…

> The suggestions you mentioned all have substantial negative impacts to humanity - arguably as much as climate change itself (i.e. doing nothing) - and has a huge upfront cost, to boot.

Not even remotely true. If we experience massive economic pain for several decades as we switch over to renewable energy, big deal, that's a few decades.

If climate change displaces hundreds of millions of people, disrupts global weather patterns, and devastates ecosystems across the globe, what do we do then? Some of that damage is irreversible. We simply do not have technology to reverse climate change on any timescale that is going to prevent massive levels of death and misery for most of humankind, not to mention permanent destruction of major ecosystems.

We're talking about how habitable Earth is going to be for mankind into the foreseeable future. Damage to the current state of economic markets doesn't even come close to that sort of impact.

We can argue about what would be the most effective way to change, but to suggest that expensive changes would be worse than ruining the biosphere for humanity is ludicrous.

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

#279

Post by gjm11 »

_red wrote: post #232
gjm11 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its nice picking your time scales and models to convey a message Yeah, they're totally cherry-picking by only looking at the last four million years . Shocking. You're right that if we go back, say, 100 million years, we find CO2 levels somewhat higher than today. Other things we find: temperatures 20-40 degrees C higher at the poles than today; something like half of Europe and the US under water. (See http://www.…

For the vast majority of the earths history there has been no ice at the poles. We are coming out of an ice-age currently which is why there are still some remnants left.

> the vast majority of the earth's history

For the great majority of the earth's history there were no humans either, but I personally would be upset at the prospect of that situation recurring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_ice_sheet seems to indicate that there has been a south polar ice cap for tens of millions of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_ecology_and_his... suggests that there's less consensus about the north pole but the corresponding figure seems to be probably at least 700,000 years.

I'm sure the earth is in no danger from the melting of the ice caps, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be bad news for us.

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

#280

Post by 49para »

mikekchar wrote: post #134
MikeHolman wrote: post #72

I've been having a bit of an existential crisis about this recently. Is sustainability even possible anymore? We are obviously living beyond the capacity of the earth to cope right now. But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?

I'm going to suggest 2 things which have historically been unpopular in my postings :-) 1. We don't need to sustain this many people 2. We don't need to sustain this standard of living The first one is pretty straight forward, although it's going to take another 100 years to sort out (barring a major disaster). Shifting child bearing years from the early 20's to the early 30's and changing cultural habits so that eac…

First off - I agree with you.

Second - how do you propose this without being "King of the world" ?

Africa has a population growth rate of 2.53%, they will double from 1.2B to 2.4B in Just the fact that the world's economies are based on debt requires that there is an exponential increase in growth to support the interest.

I've thought about this issue a lot and without some kind of dramatic (i.e. catastrophic) change, I don't see the status quo working, nor the 'carbon taxes' which seem to be a lot more of the same.

If you consider declining energy ratios like ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested) or energy produced per global capita, we should be hitting these limits repeatedly over the next 50 years.

In order to stop growth, you would need to halt population as well as have a debt jubilee, I don't see either of those happening. You'd also have to tell most of the people in developing nations that they will never have the riches that the west currently enjoys.

I'm not sure how you achieve those goals without war.

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