Wasn't that nonsense big news in the 90's?
How come we are still alive?
Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
71–80 of 254 posts
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the common sentiment is 'the best time to take action was 40 years ago. The absolute limit was 20 years ago. There's no stopping it now, even if we reduce our emissions to zero . The latent emissions in the atmosphere will already bone us. I'm glad I live in the Netherlands. We're a very rich country, and we have been battling water for more than a thousand years as a people. Places like Bangladesh will be comp…
> the common sentiment is 'the best time to take action was 40 years ago. The absolute limit was 20 years ago. There's no stopping it now My impression is that this is the latest fallback position intended to stop/delay us from acting (I don't know that the parent commenter intends it that way; this isn't a criticism of them). In rough order: 1) There is no global warming 2) There is global warming, but it's not caus…
6) It's all part of God's plan
That sounds like a cheap shot but the sad reality is that there are quite a few people who seriously believe that this is part of the rapture/apocalypse/tribulation revealed in Bible prophecy and that attempts to prevent or even mitigate against it are satanic.
Of course that's completely bonkers but we have to remember that there's a significant contingent invested in the idea that the bible is literally true and the realities of modern life are essentially illusions designed to test people's faith. I don't know exactly how many people believe this, but I'd bet on about 5-15 million people in the USA.
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#73Geo-engineering projects could not come too soon. Because of how grand they are in scale, they don't seem to get much attention from the mainstream scientific community, but it seems feasible technologically (albeit expensive) to put forth major projects to reflect sunlight over deserts and capture significant amounts of carbon from power plants and oceans, amongst numerous other creative approaches. https://en.wikip…
I really am not enthusiastic about our ability to technologically address a system as complex and poorly understood as the global climate. Our answer should be what India is doing, planting hundreds of millions more trees (restoring the american chestnut with the blight resistant variety is a start), reforming agriculture based on long-term perennial/silvopasture models and soil carbon capture, reducing the travel and industrial footprints of modern life, etc. These are all things that make more sense than geoengineering both in terms of their ease of accomplishment and the likelihood of unforeseen consequences they might produce. They also happen to be really good things for health and happiness.
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#74Geo-engineering projects could not come too soon. Because of how grand they are in scale, they don't seem to get much attention from the mainstream scientific community, but it seems feasible technologically (albeit expensive) to put forth major projects to reflect sunlight over deserts and capture significant amounts of carbon from power plants and oceans, amongst numerous other creative approaches. https://en.wikip…
> Geo-engineering projects could not
> come too soon
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the common sentiment is 'the best time to take action was 40 years ago. The absolute limit was 20 years ago. There's no stopping it now, even if we reduce our emissions to zero . The latent emissions in the atmosphere will already bone us. I'm glad I live in the Netherlands. We're a very rich country, and we have been battling water for more than a thousand years as a people. Places like Bangladesh will be comp…
> the common sentiment is 'the best time to take action was 40 years ago. The absolute limit was 20 years ago. There's no stopping it now My impression is that this is the latest fallback position intended to stop/delay us from acting (I don't know that the parent commenter intends it that way; this isn't a criticism of them). In rough order: 1) There is no global warming 2) There is global warming, but it's not caus…
6) We can still act but you don't want to give the power to do it.
7) You gave the power, but to the wrong people.
8) The people in power are going to survive but we aren't.
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#76Geo-engineering projects could not come too soon. Because of how grand they are in scale, they don't seem to get much attention from the mainstream scientific community, but it seems feasible technologically (albeit expensive) to put forth major projects to reflect sunlight over deserts and capture significant amounts of carbon from power plants and oceans, amongst numerous other creative approaches. https://en.wikip…
How well would geoengineering work, considering the acididation of the oceans? I haven't seen any proposals to handle that, yet it seems like a fairly major consequence all on its own.
The oceans are really, really, unbelievably massive. A molecule of water at the bottom of the Pacific takes a few thousand years to ride the currents from one side to the other and then the coastal upwelling to the surface.
We're only really acidifying the very top layer, unfortunately that's where a huge fraction of the stuff that matters is.
Artificial upwelling is a somewhat promising geo-engineering tech to reduce acidification and increase primary production (and thereby carbon capture). The idea is to somehow bring deep sea water up to the surface. Early attempts used long tubes with one way valves that were lifted up and down by wave energy. New more promising techniques use wave energy to compress air, pump the air down deep and then bubble it (and the surrounding water) up from a grid of pipes.
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't a 5 - 8 degree rise catastrophic though? Genuine question.
5-8C would lead to mass starvation. Our agricultural systems are built on extremely well adapted crop varieties for the regions they grow in. The lead-in time for generation of new crop varieties is very long (even with genetic modification). Rapid catastrophic climate change, with major associated changes in pest and disease prevelence, would simply overwhelm our ability to generate adapted crop varieties to maintai…
Don't we pretty much already have a massive oversupply of calories?
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? Even assuming that the runaway is unstoppable, that's a fixed quantity. The final outcome will be runaway CO2 + everyone else's CO2 + our CO2 and we've got control over one of these terms.
which term do "we" have control of exactly? also... define "we"? Speaking for myself, I live in a country in which my current elected leader claims that CO2-related climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and who plans (essentially politically unopposed, at least for the next 2-4 years) to undo what little protection prior administrations have put into place to try to help. This does not give me a feeling…
which term do "we" have control of exactly? also... define "we"?
I initially wrote "I" instead of "we", and I should have stuck with that formulation. I have control over my own emissions. Climate change isn't a binary thing. The more CO2, the more people will (possibly) die. My choices still have an impact on the outcome, on top of whatever runaway effect there is (or isn't).
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#79Geo-engineering projects could not come too soon. Because of how grand they are in scale, they don't seem to get much attention from the mainstream scientific community, but it seems feasible technologically (albeit expensive) to put forth major projects to reflect sunlight over deserts and capture significant amounts of carbon from power plants and oceans, amongst numerous other creative approaches. https://en.wikip…
> Geo-engineering projects could not > come too soon And also, treating climate-change deniers like a cross between holocaust deniers and flat-earthers can't come soon enough.
Right, because of all that obvious evidence of stuff that hasn't happened yet but might.
Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release
#80Geo-engineering projects could not come too soon. Because of how grand they are in scale, they don't seem to get much attention from the mainstream scientific community, but it seems feasible technologically (albeit expensive) to put forth major projects to reflect sunlight over deserts and capture significant amounts of carbon from power plants and oceans, amongst numerous other creative approaches. https://en.wikip…
> Geo-engineering projects could not > come too soon And also, treating climate-change deniers like a cross between holocaust deniers and flat-earthers can't come soon enough.
Yep. We also need to start treating people who don't believe in anthroponegic global warming the same as regular climate change deniers. Because at the end of the day both groups fight against efforts to curtail global warming.