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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

#341

Post by 24gttghh »

mastax wrote: post #332
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! Perhaps it is because of the influence of the largest industry in the world in terms of revenue: the petroleum industry. Money talks, or rather in this case, money hushes. Where do you think the primary source of climate change denial propaganda comes from?

ExxonMobil: http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-po... Donald Trump: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838... I don't know what to think anymore.

It makes complete sense in the 1984 style of Double Speak.

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

#342

Post by balabaster »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #269
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…

If the media covered everything they should have to the standard of quality they should have over the last, oh, let's say twenty years, the world would be an incredibly different place.

Unfortunately they're too busy exploiting human nature for their own advantage than to exploit it for the good of humanity.

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

#343

Post by hwillis »

dwaltrip wrote: post #118
british_india wrote: post #24

This is precisely why Dr. Guy McPherson has predicted human extinction on earth by 2030. Methane clathrates coming from the Arctic sea floor and from Canadian and Siberian permafrost. This is the most serious threat we face now.

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…

The poles will see the largest destabilization due to several effects, a major one being the loss of the Walker circulation cell (which causes El Nino).

In order for the south pole to be the best place to live all the ice would have to melt, which would essentially end life on earth as we know it. The sea level would rise about 100m, which would kill so much life on land that it would make the atmosphere unbreathable and kill everything else.

More fundamentally if we can't get it together enough to stop this, I find it highly unlikely we'll be able to put together a self-sustaining shelter on what will basically become an alien planet. We'd have to survive indoors for the length of our written history, minimum. It's not so much that it's outright impossible, but any tiny problem could lead to our extinction over ten thousand years. It's a lottery ticket for our species, and the only realistic expectation is that we will lose.

Plus there are tons of survival-killers that just get discounted. Will we be able to keep ourselves going technologically without a global distribution of resources? Will our genetic diversity survive isolation? Will we be able to survive antibiotic-resistant diseases?

We're struggling to stay ahead of antibiotic resistance with decades of mutation- once we no longer have the scientific effort to devote to controlling this, will we be able to do anything about centuries or millenia of bacterial evolution? A freak drift or reservoir incident (eg ebola in bats) could wipe us out in a week or two.

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

#344

Post by zebrafish »

anon1253 wrote: post #168
philipkglass wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A search on Google Scholar for "accelerated silicate weathering" will be more informative than my comment. But here's the shortish version... Naturally occurring silicates of magnesium, calcium, sodium, and potassium are thermodynamically prone to weather to carbonates in ambient conditions, when water absorbs CO2 and passes over rocks. In the case of magnesium and calcium in particular, the weathering leads to stabl…

It's not the only option either. Combine that solution on a massive scale with re-forestation and (even though eventually it's CO2 neutral) it might actually make a dent. My go-to model was always: - Plant heliostat molten salt reactors in desert coastal areas [1] - Use generated heat to desalinate water - Use desalinated water to provide irrigation - Plant (potentially GMO'ed) bootstrapping organisms to create a soi…

Would YC incubate something like this? If we sold excess water to California farms and sold energy to the grid and sold fiber/logs to paper or saw mills I think we could see positive ROIC and do some real good for the environment at the same time.

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

#345

Post by soundwave106 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #274
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.

Please stop with this tangent. grandparent is asking a question almost every average person is asking: what is the impact on me? and you basically started an entirely new unrelated subthread.

It's not a terrible diversion, but it is very US-centric.

Currently the fossil fuels industries and other "old school" extraction industries tend to align with the Republican party in the United States.

The issue is less "Republican party" and more those certain industries that stubbornly resist the notion a concept that could damage their businesses. I get the impression, for instance, that the much-maligned Koch family privately is aware of climate change. However, being in an industry that would be impacted by any regulatory push, they put up all psychological blinders to not only deny it -- but actively pursue an agenda against it. And they are not the only extraction industry leaders that do this.

That Upton Sinclair quote comes to mind: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".

I do not know if there is a similar situation in other countries; it's going to take more than just United States industry direction to slow down climate change, after all.

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

#346

Post by learc83 »

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.

Even if every bit of the icecaps melt, ocean levels won't even come close to ending civilization.

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

#347

Post by dcchambers »

geoka9 wrote: post #220
dcchambers wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction of the cause of greenhouse emissions worldwide. Everyone changing to EVs isn't going to fix anything, especially when that electrical power can come from dirty power plants. The big changes need to come from agriculture, commercial, and industrial industries. The world also needs to quickly phase out coal and gas power plants and switch to all renewable so new "green" elec…

> Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction According to [1], transportation is 26% of greenhouse emissions, of which over half is passenger cars and light-duty trucks. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Those are US emissions only. What about China? India? The EU?

As you can also see from that report, 30% of emissions come from electricity generation. If we all switch to EVs, expect that % from consumer vehicles to just flip to electricity. That can't be fixed until all our electricity is 100% renewable.

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

#348

Post by scriptkiddy »

averagewall wrote: post #263
ythn wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's going to be bad. A little panic is not a bad thing. It's always lose/lose for the skeptics: Scenario A: skeptics were wrong - "burn them at the stake, they screwed us all over!" Scenario B: skeptics were right - "well, they got lucky. It wasn't as apocalyptic as experts were claiming. They were still wrong to have rejected the evidence at hand and I was still right to have believed the evidence at hand"

If reducing emissions means harming economies and impoverishing and killing people, then if skeptics are right, "you" will have caused needless destruction. If preventing climate change didn't cost anything, then nobody would be against it. But it will be pretty expensive and somebody will have to suffer to pay for that. That somebody probably doesn't want us to prevent it because they may well lose out, even in the…

Here's the logic:

Scenario A: We spend a ton of money and resources on combating climate change. Energy and fuel become more expensive. There is economic crisis in some areas of the word. There is large scale refugee migration. Some small proxy wars break out. We manage to stem climate change and even slightly reverse it back to a natural level. We keep our modern technology. We keep most of the cultural status quo. Maybe a couple hundred million people lose their lives due to indirect consequences. The Earth still spins. Coastal cities aren't underwater. There is no global famine. Climate change skeptics will complain that combating climate change was a bad idea because they didn't see the worst of it.

Scenario B: We decide to not try and combat climate change. We don't spend any money on it. We think "everything will work out". Everything goes on just like normal for a few decades. Climate change skeptics are saying "I told you so." The economy prospers. Technology improves. We continue our dependence on fossil fuels, continuously pumping carbon into the atmosphere. We continue dumping waste into the ocean. The permafrost continues to melt more and more every year. It's all so gradual that barely anyone notices. Coastal cliff faces in California start eroding and taking beach front property with them as the sea level rises. Farms at lower latitudes start having more and more of a difficult time producing good yields. There is less snow falling in the mountains meaning that come spring time there is less melt. This causes droughts in many parts of the world. This drought starts to impact farmers. The global food supply dwindles. We are noticing massive numbers of oceanic lifeforms start to die off. Fisheries are not able to keep up with the demand. There isn't enough feed for livestock. The global food supply falls even lower. The drought is getting worse over the years due to less snow melt. Smaller countries with sub-par infrastructure start seeing a massive exodus of their population. These refugees migrate to large developed nations causing cultural strife and putting a strain on their economy and food supply. This cultural and economic strain leads to warfare. This warfare leads to even larger migrations. Soon we have world war 3 in the midst of the greatest global famine and drought the world has ever seen. Billions of people die. Human civilization as we know it is destroyed. We regress culturally and technologically.

This is just one set of possible scenarios. So, I ask you; Why not spend a little bit of money now and avoid what is essentially the apocalypse later? Let's say I'm wrong. Let's say scenario B could never happen and climate change isn't as bad as we think it is. Well, you have insurance on your house, don't you? Your car? Think of combating climate change like car insurance. Even if an accident is unlikely, it's still nice to know that you have it covered if it does happen.

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

#349

Post by SubiculumCode »

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 ?

I'm sure you meant 'research universities', not 'Ivy League universities'. That is, unless you really are implying that only Ivy League universities (and NASA) do impactful research (FALSE), you are hopelessly snooty, or you are trying to be sarcastic (e.g. jamming on the Ivy League school penchant for producing individuals that land positions in political and corporate governance that by and large want to ignore climate change).

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

#350

Post by SubiculumCode »

vanderZwan wrote: post #288
nroets wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Are you seriously saying only NASA and Ivy League universities matter?

--the most outrageous part of his comment, imo.
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