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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

#311

Post by saiya-jin »

Fiahil wrote: post #287
brogrammer2 wrote: post #258

Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on ri…

It's not all that bad, we will have the opportunity to live in a Mad Max like environment for real ! If we, humans, - as a species - are unable to focus away from dirty politics and gossips, then we don't really deserve to survive. Maybe we need to go through a few centuries of post-apocalyptic landscape to transform ourselves and evolve ?

while I agree that idiocy should be generally punished or it will persist, in this case the irreparable damage done to all living here would be too much. plus mad max scenario has what, 99% of the population dead? most probably you & me and all our (potential) descendants too...

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

#312

Post by saiya-jin »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #298
graeme wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For yours points: 1. Renewables in a century? We'd have burned through a large chunk of buried by then. With massive degrees of warming 2. I'm not sure you understand likely warming scenarios. The world doesn't just warm a bit, then stay stable at a new normal. We are triggering runaway feedback effects. At a certain point, even if emissions are zero, the earth keeps warming. 3. This may be something we'll have to do…

1. Yep, in a century. I don't see how we can realistically do that faster without some sort of planetary Stalin. You think that would be a better option? 2. "Runaway" is relative and it will stabilize at some point. The particular point is debatable, but it's surely not a Venus-like environment (not until the Earth geology stops). Earth has seen much, much warmer times (palms-on-Antarctica-level warmer) and yet there…

You remind me of a joke about guy falling from high balcony who keeps telling himself "20th floor, so far so good..."

Well, maybe you are a prepper and this is what you dream about on long sleepless nights, or you just don't care. That's irrelevant. One of the options down the road (in exactly the direction we are heading to, and we don't have clue if we get there or not) is something along permian-trassic mass extinction [1]. Maybe we can survive that dig somewhere deep enough. Or matrix style survival is fine. That's just a challenge too, right?

Oh I forgot I am most probably talking to needy troll, sorry.

Our children and their children will not be so kind when judging their ancestors though...

[1] random http://www.nature.com/news/acidic-oceans-linked-to-greatest-...

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

#313

Post by kaybe »

nroets wrote: post #275
brogrammer2 wrote: post #258

Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on ri…

Has anything been published in international peer reviewed journals ? Are there scientists at NASA or ivy league universities who became concerned and verified it through modeling and simulations ? If the answer is no in both cases, why should the public be alarmed ?

Yes, of course. There is a huge body of published research available. Data is collected, used to refine the models and then the uncertainties are researched to figure out where more measurements would help the most. Do you have a specific question? I'll throw some time at it.

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

#314

Post by NoGravitas »

whyenot wrote: post #139
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.

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.

Yes, that's the [Toolmaker Koan][0].

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Toolmaker-Koan-John-McLoughlin/dp/067...

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

#315

Post by kaybe »

fsloth wrote: post #276
louthy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it. I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of 1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found the political will.

Massive changes do happen. But - the changes are through economics and culture , not through politics. Culture guides the long term behaviours in a civilization, economics play key part in what resources they have to use, politics only guide the short term effects generally. I agree, it's unlikely a massive change can happen through a political shift (which happen only generally in revolutions and civil wars). A cult…

Can we make them do that somehow?

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

#316

Post by kaybe »

shostack wrote: post #53
bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

In layman's terms, how much are we screwed without hope of a solution, and what is the rough timeframe before the evening news starts looking like "The Day After Tomorrow?"

I answered the second question here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13769896

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

#317

Post by kaybe »

tremon wrote: post #286
dwaltrip wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we get a 5° - 10° Celsius increase, wouldn't there be plenty of opportunity for millions of humans to survive closer to the poles? Not that it would be easy or desirable. Some of the worst scenarios might result in 99% (or higher) of humans dying - obviously an unspeakably immense tragedy. Yet that would still leave tens of millions of people to carry on. It seems to me that it would be extremely difficult to…

Even if we get a 5° - 10° Celsius increase, wouldn't there be plenty of opportunity for millions of humans to survive closer to the poles? Probably not. That amount of increase will likely disrupt every food chain on the planet, and larger lifeforms will not be able to adapt fast enough. That means extinction time for everything larger than a mouse or unable to migrate. Even if some arable land remains around the pol…

Maybe we should start thinking about how to help other lifeforms to adapt, and put more research into biosystem engineering so we can predict what might happen if we start moving animals and plants around large-scale.

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

#320

Post by jnicholasp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #259
jnicholasp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition is not the only response to being one entity among many, and it is not even necessarily the most reasonable response. Cooperation is also possible, and it is one of the necessary elements in every human organization, from the family to global cultures. We have civilization because we are to some degree able to cooperate, and if you simply turn up the dial on that trait, it is easy to imagine that other cr…

Sure. The point here, we're not coordinated enough . Not by a long shot.

I'm not arguing here that we are. I'm arguing that it is conceivable that intelligent creatures could exist that were.
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