Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 214 posts

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#91

Post by simonh »

devrandomguy wrote: post #88
taberiand wrote: post #3

I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life. "Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with increasing frequency.

There is one potential negative feedback loop that I am now curious about, since we recently learned that Antarctica is/was highly volcanic. If the continent deforms as the mass of ice melts off of it, causing the volcanoes go off in a mega-eruption, could the atmospheric particulates shade the Earth enough to trigger an ice-age in the near future, say, 50-100 years? And if so, could we conceivably modulate the level…

I expect 100 years is way too short term. There's no way all that ice is going to melt that fast, the amounts of heat required would be staggering. The consequences of climate change are going to take many hundreds or thousands of years to play out.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#92

Post by api »

amelius wrote: post #89
api wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a flaw in the species. It's a consequence of game theory and evolution and would likely be found in any species that was a product of evolution.

Yes, this is one of the explanations of the Fermi paradox.

I was discussing that with a friend once and I argued that a more intelligent species might fare worse in these matters. It would more rapidly and aggressively exploit its environment due to higher intelligence and would therefore run a greater risk of triggering catastrophic environmental events.

The problem is that there is no game theoretic advantage in cooperating to reduce CO2 unless everyone cooperates. If one large player (e.g. USA or China) or many small players do not cooperate then the incentive flips and it's actually in everyone's best interest to defect. If catastrophic climate change is going to happen anyway then you are better off burning as much CO2 as you want to build up your economy so you have a better chance of mitigating the damage. It's basically a variation on the prisoner's dilemma scenario.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#93

Post by simonh »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #62
zitterbewegung wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to that realization after taking an environmental education class where they " left out the feedback loops". I disagree with your sentiment that they had to leave things like this out of the model. If it was left out it was probably not well understood. Its pretty easy to see that any form of mitigation is irrelevant until it becomes a real problem because getting large groups to agree on things isn't a scient…

One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

To be fair to us we are only just barely sentient.

In evolutionary terms we have literally only just managed to build a technological society. Therefore it stands to reason we only recently evolved sufficient intelligence to do so. Otherwise we'd have done it sooner. In the grand scheme of things we're on the very lowest bottom level of the sentience hierarchy.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#94

Post by simonh »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #63
2OEH8eoCRo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to invent fusion like yesterday and use that to power efforts to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

I'm a big proponent of huge increases in funding for fusion research. But I think a better "extreme measures" project to mitigate global warming is the space sunshade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade

The fusion Manhattan project? The problem with that is the Manhattan project scientists knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. With fusion research there are already dozens of active research efforts, but we have absolutely no idea if any of them will work, or if we need a new approach nobody has thought of. In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution.

Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#95

Post by stale2002 »

lisper wrote: post #50
lutorm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really a "worst" case here. We can always make it worser...

The destruction of civilization will probably cap our ability to do further significant damage. If not, then our extinction surely will.

Nobody believes that global warming will cause the literal extinction of the human race.

The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a couple feet over the next 2 hundred years.

That's the science. Doesn't sound like doomsday to me.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#96

Post by cholmon »

mirimir wrote: post #70
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

I'm reminded of Stephenson's Seveneves .

my first thought as well

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#98

Post by ancientworldnow »

kdoherty wrote: post #21
taberiand wrote: post #3

I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life. "Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with increasing frequency.

The phenomenon that is being described where melting ice causes the release of CO2 into the atmosphere seems to have been known to climate scientists, though I don't know whether it has been included in climate change models. There is a great talk (video online here: https://www.facebook.com/WoodsHoleOcean/videos/1015459031268... ) by Richard Alley where exactly this phenomenon is mentioned (see Q&A at ~50:55 in the…

The latest IPCC report does not account for Arctic methane release. There were too many variables and they decided to omit it and avoid being alarmist. This is discussed on page 28 of WG1 AR5 SPM (the final 2013 IPCC policy maker report).

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#99

Post by stale2002 »

specialist wrote: post #49
cropsieboss wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most CO2 is indeed natural. We did increase the circulating amount by a very small margin. Large enough so that it accumulated over the years. This of course led to a feedback loop. Arctic ice has 1400Gt of carbon locked up as methane. [1] This is equivalent to 1400/10 = 140 years of human 2016 activity. [2] If ice starts to melt, we are doomed. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions [2]: https:/…

I believe (but cannot prove, obviously) that we're way past the tipping point. Meaning simply reducing anthropocentric emissions, even down to zero, will not meaningfully impact atomspheric CO2, methane. For civilization to survive, we must adapt, mitigate, or both.

The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by 1-2 meters over the course of 200 years.

Thats the science. And it doesn't sound like extinction to me.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#100

Post by losteric »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #62
zitterbewegung wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to that realization after taking an environmental education class where they " left out the feedback loops". I disagree with your sentiment that they had to leave things like this out of the model. If it was left out it was probably not well understood. Its pretty easy to see that any form of mitigation is irrelevant until it becomes a real problem because getting large groups to agree on things isn't a scient…

One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?
Post reply on HN