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We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

scientificamerican.com

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Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#61

Post by mirimir »

shouldbworking wrote: post #35
mirimir wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, CO2 levels and temperature were a lot higher, 50 million years ago. But the problem for people is that global climate change will mess with stuff that we depend on. Such as the existence of major port cities. And growing food. And more generally, other species can't adapt as fast as our culture could. So we're looking at a major mass extinction. Which we'll also need to deal with, to the extent that we depend o…

So far the biggest effect of higher CO2 levels seems to be increased foilage and crop yields http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstrac... I don't see how this would be expected to reverse when concentrations continue to rise

That's an effect of increased CO2, sure. But it's not going to be very helpful if your farmland becomes a desert.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#62

Post by gizmo686 »

bsdetector wrote: post #20

I haven't seen any talk about the health effects of rising CO2. I know there are studies finding a difference in productivity between 600 and 1000 ppm with just hours of exposure, so isn't it possible that going from 300 globally to over 400 has had some health impact over a lifetime? Is there a point where lower CO2 has no effect and how do we know that?

I doubt that increased atmospheric CO2 concentration is going to be a direct threat to human health. Humans have for a fair amount of time at this point, spent most of our time (and decision making time) indoors, where CO2 concentration grows far higher than atmospheric. In fact, reaching the 1000s ppm is already fairly common, and does not seem to have lead to major obvious health problems (although it does, as you identify, lead to short term cognitive decline).

The bigger problem is that in our quest for energy efficiency, we would further reduce ventilation, increasing the indoor CO2 concentration; but this can be countered with better ventilation (using a thermal exchange system so it is more energy efficient than opening a window). The reduction of indoor CO2 possible from this is probably greater in most places than the ~100ppm increase in background concentration.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#63

Post by orange_fritter »

shouldbworking wrote: post #13
mikeash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing CO2 does not necessarily result in more plants. The feedback cycles are complex and there are other limiting factors. Imagine, for example, if the oxygen concentration was increasing instead. Would you expect humans to multiply faster and reach a new equilibrium because of it? Concentrations have indeed been much higher in the deep past. The concern isn't destroying all life, it's damaging or destroying ci…

I read that the era of nuclear testing noticably decreased surface temperatures for some time. If we can't figure anything else out we could probably settle for blowing up a bunch of cleanish lead wrapped nukes out in the ocean every couple months? It sounds terrible but if done right it would have little impact to life on earth

The era of nuclear testing did significantly increase the amount of background radiation in the world. There is not a form of above-ground nuclear explosion that will not have worldwide environmental impacts.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#64

Post by cardamomo »

hyperbovine wrote: post #53
JshWright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

I take his point about predictions not factoring in any sort of human mitigation, though. It's pretty obvious to me that inventing ways to fight or even reverse global warming (basically, geoengineering) is going to become the defining scientific and industrial challenge of our (grand-)childrens' era. Think solid-state electronics or genomics but on an entirely larger, more urgent scale. Pretty much the only thing ke…

We need to start mitigation research now, not pass it along to our children's generation. The reason for today's urgency in addressing global warming is that previous generations kicked the can down the road to us.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#65

Post by bjelkeman-again »

acabal wrote: post #42

Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help? I've come to think that climate change will be humanity's defining moment, and that we'll all be suffering greatly come mid-to-late-century. I want to do what I can to put my professional skills to use in helping. But I'm not sure where to even begin.

I co-founded a SaaS data startup ten years ago, focused on international development. Most of our work is currently climate mitigation related (water, agriculture, poverty reduction) but also used in sustainable energy, like tracking small scale biogas production. The whole international development field is a USD 130 Bn/year industry, and there may be another USD 100 Bn coming in climate mitigation/renewables. They have mostly really poor key indicator tracking, monitoring of projects etc.

Most of the work in none-industrialised countries have really poor data tracking systems, so that is where we thought we could make the biggest impact. But some of our tools are even starting to see traction in Europe.

There is plenty to do in this field. Unfortunately there is an uphill struggle even educating people that they need to use data to drive decisions, but it is happening. Happy to answer questions.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#66

Post by mchannon »

hartator wrote: post #50
bsdetector wrote: post #20

I haven't seen any talk about the health effects of rising CO2. I know there are studies finding a difference in productivity between 600 and 1000 ppm with just hours of exposure, so isn't it possible that going from 300 globally to over 400 has had some health impact over a lifetime? Is there a point where lower CO2 has no effect and how do we know that?

The funny thing O2 is dropping faster than CO2 is rising, but for whatever reasons it's not really a subject of interest.

That's because it's easily explained. About half the O2 lost through burning of hydrocarbons becomes CO2. Other half becomes H2O. The latter doesn't increase its percentage in the atmosphere just because there's more of it.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#67

Post by shouldbworking »

hyperbovine wrote: post #53
JshWright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

I take his point about predictions not factoring in any sort of human mitigation, though. It's pretty obvious to me that inventing ways to fight or even reverse global warming (basically, geoengineering) is going to become the defining scientific and industrial challenge of our (grand-)childrens' era. Think solid-state electronics or genomics but on an entirely larger, more urgent scale. Pretty much the only thing ke…

Someone else in the thread mentioned releasing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to cause global cooling.

To me, the notion of getting the entire planet to reduce their CO2 production is laughable. People are still sold as slaves and dying of starvation in some parts of the world.

If global warming becomes a threat to humanity the only realistic solution is technological. It sounds like we already have the tech needed to cool the Earth as much as we want but we're still making a ton of noise about the impossible mission of controlling global carbon emissions.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#68

Post by [deleted] »

hartator wrote: post #50
bsdetector wrote: post #20

I haven't seen any talk about the health effects of rising CO2. I know there are studies finding a difference in productivity between 600 and 1000 ppm with just hours of exposure, so isn't it possible that going from 300 globally to over 400 has had some health impact over a lifetime? Is there a point where lower CO2 has no effect and how do we know that?

The funny thing O2 is dropping faster than CO2 is rising, but for whatever reasons it's not really a subject of interest.

[deleted]

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#69

Post by hartator »

mchannon wrote: post #66
hartator wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing O2 is dropping faster than CO2 is rising, but for whatever reasons it's not really a subject of interest.

That's because it's easily explained. About half the O2 lost through burning of hydrocarbons becomes CO2. Other half becomes H2O. The latter doesn't increase its percentage in the atmosphere just because there's more of it.

Yeah, but my point is that lack of O2 is very easy to explain why it's bad of the health!

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#70

Post by JshWright »

ythn wrote: post #47
Sharlin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change [citation needed] Equating "weather" and "climate" is such an old and tired fallacious argument that you ought to be downvoted to oblivion just because of that.

I didn't equate them. The analogy is that weather is extremely complicated, so much so that meteorologists struggle to predict what will happen in the next 12 hours. If climate is an order of magnitude more complicated than weather, why should the predictions suddenly be much more accurate? My local meteorologists get the prediction right maybe 70% of the time. You're telling me the apocalyptic climate predictions ap…

> If climate is an order of magnitude more complicated than weather, why should the predictions suddenly be much more accurate?

For the same reason a doctor can't predict if an individual patient will have a heart attack, but a public health researcher can accurately predict the overall rate of heart attacks in a population.

Forecasting weather is trying to predict a single event. That is by definition harder than predicting a trend of averages.

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