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Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

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Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#231

Post by richardw »

mattmanser wrote: post #166
whyenot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their) planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.

It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the will. The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it.

The problem is that any race gets increasingly powerful as technology and science improve, so it takes a smaller and smaller mistake to end us all. Also, the population of those who are able to end us increases. Right now very few people have the ability to save or destroy us. One day every human might be able to, unless we hand the keys to the robots and we aren't certain how that'll play out.

Edit: and we affect our environment more, which is always a battle with our level of understanding to manage that. Right now it's the climate. One day it could be the sun.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#232

Post by mirimir »

M_Grey wrote: post #134
marcosdumay wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Everything depends on how fast that methane will get released. It can vary from "we are completely fucked up, good bye" to "that's a rounding error, no big deal". Methane should be easier to take out of the atmosphere than CO2. Spraying something at the Stratosphere could be incredibly helpful even if the substance is short lived. (But I have no idea what to spray there, would water make any difference?)

When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions? They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.

The freakiest one in Peter Watts' Echopraxia is the firestorms.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#233

Post by richardw »

tomelders wrote: post #225
astrodust wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...a political miracle occurs. You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.

I think we might be about to see the political miracle you're hoping for. The Dems are already cleaning up their act, and if the system works, and Trump is impeached for treason, the GOP will need to clean house too. We might just end up with an actual, honest to goodness, functioning democracy in the U.S. as politicians seek to regain trust.

I honestly thought Bush had doomed the Republicans for a generation, but all that got wiped away somehow. Two wars and a fucked world economy? Can Trump top that?

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#234

Post by tonmoy »

marcosdumay wrote: post #98
tonmoy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to know, what percentage of temperature increase due to greenhouse effect is caused by methane right now?

Isn't Wikipedia great? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas ) |Water vapor and clouds |36–72% | |Carbon dioxide | 9–26% | |Methane | 4–9% | |Ozone | 3–7% |

Ok, so release of 50 gigatons of CH4 means 10x increase in atmospheric CH4, then we are looking at around 50% contribution to greenhouse effect from CH4 after that I guess.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#236

Post by konceptz »

averagewall wrote: post #227
M_Grey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions? They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.

How would any of these things end us? We've have world war II. That didn't make a dent in the population. Famine and drought would be localized so we can use international trade to smooth them over, just like we currently do. For long term failures, there will always be other arable places to grow crops, they just might be fewer or more inconvenient than they currently are, and they'll change at an easy human scale s…

I think what the point of the parent is saying is that we have never witnessed the likes of something like this and that our system is more fragile than we think. Previous wars and other events have all been leading up to "the big one". We can see it beginning to happen in what you mentioned above or in smaller instances.

Also saying that poor people can just not eat meat or seafood seems a bit distasteful; not that you might be wrong.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#237

Post by buzzybee »

Every time I see stories about runaway climate catastrophe, I stop and consider the scenarios and how it might affect how I lead my life, and none of them really change how I plan to do things. I'm working and training in ways I believe will contribute, and that is sufficient to calm myself.

Basically, either we make all the turnarounds necessary, on every front - policy, technology, engineering, culture - to beat this stuff by a huge margin, or it's all over. I don't see a middle ground of "things kind of suck for a while and then it's okay" happening. And that guides a lot of my thoughts on other topics: I want survivability, and of a form which preserves key freedoms. I believe massive reforms to the economic and political system are needed to do it. I believe our existing social network structures and cultural norms are insufficient to address this. There's a lot of room to change in all directions.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#238

Post by konceptz »

sqeaky wrote: post #11

At first I was thinking "stupid click bait title", then I saw the pictures. Anything making those craters is properly an explosion. Anything heard 100km away is properly and explosion. If anything this article plays it down with words like eruption and venting. This seems super dangerous for people in the area. And dangerous in the climate change sense for the rest of us.

I imagine the literal boiling of the earth. Yes, not accurate but just interesting to picture (for me).

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#239

Post by M_Grey »

mirimir wrote: post #232
M_Grey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions? They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.

The freakiest one in Peter Watts' Echopraxia is the firestorms.

I have to get around to reading those books... I have Blindsight sitting on a shelf.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#240

Post by api »

mattmanser wrote: post #166
whyenot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their) planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.

It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the will. The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it.

What if it's not lack of will but game theory? Maybe it's actually impossible for a large complex system to act against these trends because there exists no stable game strategy for the kind of large-scale cooperation that is necessary?
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