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Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

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Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#61

Post by Diederich »

lisper wrote: post #51
rybosome wrote: post #42

Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? I have to admit that this topic depresses me deeply, as the United States' tepid response does not match the magnitude of the problem. It is shockingly easy to imagine scenarios resulting in the collapse of civilization (agricultural collapse places significant pressure on a few areas which leads to a domino effect of instability trig…

> Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? Yes: because failing to be optimistic about it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, you never know what will make people come around. In any process of winning hearts and minds there is always a time before which things seem hopeless. Look at the Sanders and Trump campaigns: when they started, no one believed they could suc…

This is the correct answer.

We don't know if or how we can deal with the problems coming up. But giving up will surely make things worse.

Further, we have to choose to not give in to excessive alarmism. I am typing as someone who struggles with this every day, since I've been watching climate change closely for quite a few years now. Things are objectively accelerating, so it's easy to give in to panic.

But that might be even worse than giving up.

We have to approach this with focus, an iron will and with an even temperament.

Every scary climate related news item should be practically drowned in data, as hard and objective as we can get it.

Because, these days, nothing puts people 'to sleep' the way unfounded alarmism does. Because people are numb to all of the alarm handles being pulled, all over the place.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #2

I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, generally in the range of 1-2 degrees F. But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it mus…

A change of X degrees in the global average temperature does not mean a uniform, across all times and locations, increase of X degrees in local temperatures.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#63

Post by dharma1 »

nibs wrote: post #44
dharma1 wrote: post #36

The "fun" starts when the feedback loops really start going https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate Depending on how fast we'll see arable land being lost, food supply for 9 billion people in 2040 could be quite problematic

We need to create a market for halophyte plants that can be grown using salt water in dessert/saline conditions. It requires extensive marketing investment and skill in order to create a market at each level of biomass (biofuel, animal feed, people food, niche health products, pharma).

Interesting. I had to Google it - it looks like 2% of plants tolerate salt water to different degrees. It looks like an interesting field for breeding or potentially GM to cultivate seawater tolerant food crops

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

vkou wrote: post #60
dragonwriter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real disaster isn't rising sealevels (except in Bangladesh). Homes can be rebuilt. Its just a question of money. The real disaster is agricultural collapse in the tropics and subtropics. Homes aren't the only thing destroyed by rising sealevels. Arable land that is under saltwater is a lot less arable.

Most arable land isn't coastal though - and most coastlines are urban. If you flood, say, all of China's, America's, and Europe's coastlines, nobody will have to go hungry. As another poster mentioned, the land doesn't have to be underwater to become unusable, but rising sea levels have a limited reach.

> Most arable land isn't coastal though

A very large share of arable land is at a low elevation above sea level along waterways; land distance from the coast doesn't control the effect of sea-level rise.

> If you flood, say, all of China's, America's, and Europe's coastlines, nobody will have to go hungry.

Well, except that its impossible geographically to do that without also flooding inland arable areas. Flooding America's coastline also means flooding (among other prime agricultural areas) much of California's Central Valley.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#66

Post by CWuestefeld »

vkou wrote: post #17
gruez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, it's not as if temperatures everywhere went up by 1-2 degrees. polar areas are more affected than average by global warming

The average world temperature is 1.4 C above the baseline this year. Yes, the poles have been hit the hardest, but we are still outpacing all predictions. Meanwhile, in 2015, the world's governments have agreed to cap warming to 2.0 C by 2100... But won't take any action today. Why do I have the feeling that we will completely miss that target?

but we are still outpacing all predictions.

It's this kind of stuff that I'm arguing about. First, there's a wide range of predictions, and up until a decade ago, the measurements were middle of the road across them - far from "ALL predicitons".

Then came the "pause". For over a decade, the warming seemed to pause. Notice I emphasize "seemed". The observed atmospheric temperature barely moved at all, it was way below ALL predictions. [1]

I'm not denying, I'm not claiming that the "pause" disproves the theory. We know that there were other phenomena occurring, like oceans acting as a buffer. But the fact remains that observed temperatures deviated significantly below predictions for a protracted period of time.

When people come along and make claims like we are still outpacing all predictions, they make it easy for deniers to single out these exaggerations and pretend like their inaccuracy disproves the whole idea. By giving the deniers an easy strawman to argue against, you're creating an obstacle to real progress on the problem.

[1] "Scientists who study climate change and skeptics of human-caused global warming can agree on at least this: Global temperatures haven't risen nearly as much this century as model projections say they should have." -- https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-war...

Of course, if you read on, you'll find proposed explanations for the phenomenon. But as far as atmospheric measurements go, it's absolutely false that things have been worse than predicted, and downright absurd to claim that things have been worse than "all" (i.e., even the most pessimistic) predictions.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#67

Post by bryanlarsen »

rybosome wrote: post #42

Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? I have to admit that this topic depresses me deeply, as the United States' tepid response does not match the magnitude of the problem. It is shockingly easy to imagine scenarios resulting in the collapse of civilization (agricultural collapse places significant pressure on a few areas which leads to a domino effect of instability trig…

Yes. Before global warming, the big global environmental crisis was CFC's destroying the ozone layer. In the 1980s nations got together and agreed on the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of harmful CFC's.

It was successful: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/antarctic-ozone-h...

Global warming is a similar problem. More difficult, sure, but essential characteristics are similar. We can do it, because we have solved similar problems in the past.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#68

Post by scatters »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #2

I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, generally in the range of 1-2 degrees F. But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it mus…

The problems affect a fairly narrow band of latitudes; specifically, those where the average long-term temperature was just below freezing i.e. the southern margin of the permafrost. 1-2F is indeed within natural variation, but historically a warm year or two was followed by a harsh winter to refreeze the surface so that the deep layer stayed frozen.

Now, the average temperature is just above freezing or close enough to it that the heating effect of the asphalt pushes the local average temperature above freezing. This means that deep layers are now thawing for the first time in thousands of years; they will stabilize eventually, but in the meantime they're going to be near impossible to build roads on. And the thaw line continues to march north, year by year.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#69

Post by sliverstorm »

vkou wrote: post #29
sliverstorm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind that this entire reduction comes from burning natural gas... It's still a huge improvement, cutting CO2 output by half and eliminating other byproducts.

Except that overall CO2 output has been steady since 2008. Yes, there has been GDP growth since then, which is great... But the atmosphere doesn't care about GDP. What it needs are reductions.

Keeping CO2 output steady instead of rising with ever-growing population size & energy appetite is, I think, an important first victory. The work is by no means done, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#70

Post by vkou »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #66
vkou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average world temperature is 1.4 C above the baseline this year. Yes, the poles have been hit the hardest, but we are still outpacing all predictions. Meanwhile, in 2015, the world's governments have agreed to cap warming to 2.0 C by 2100... But won't take any action today. Why do I have the feeling that we will completely miss that target?

but we are still outpacing all predictions. It's this kind of stuff that I'm arguing about. First, there's a wide range of predictions, and up until a decade ago, the measurements were middle of the road across them - far from "ALL predicitons". Then came the "pause". For over a decade, the warming seemed to pause. Notice I emphasize "seemed". The observed atmospheric temperature barely moved at all , it was way belo…

When I say all predictions, I should have quantified it as 'all predictions used by policymakers'.

There are certainly apocalyptic models that have called for more warming then what we've seen. We aren't using them to set policy - we are using models that have been underestimating the impact of warming.

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