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

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

#151

Post by sadfsafaasdfsa »

specialist wrote: post #51
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this line several times before, and it is the environmental equivalent of "What if there is no God, and we are being good to each other for nothing." It completely ignores tradeoffs. General environmentalism has been very aggresively anti-nuclear. In a world of CO2 caused climate change, it has to rethink that opposition. Another example is with diesel engines. There is a tradeoff between NOX emmisions a…

There is no tradeoff. Reducing waste (CO2, methane, heat, whatever) increases profits. Not for the entrenched interests, obviously. Happily, everyone else who's been paying their externalized costs (taxpayers, consumers) benefits.

"Reducing waste (CO2, methane, heat, whatever) increases profits."

That's a broad generalization and far simpler model than what the poster is referring to.

Yes, riding a motorcycle instead of an SUV decreases all emissions. This is the simple base case.

However driving a diesel SUV decreases CO2 but increases NOx wrt to a gasoline one. This is the higher-order effect.

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

#152

Post by mAdamTus »

cryoshon wrote: post #60

and we can't even get people to agree that there's a problem. and we have no leadership to guide our response. and we can't winnow our way out of this alone. what now?

Civilization collapses and we begin the glacially slow, many thousand year process of extinction.

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

#153

Post by pier25 »

cropsieboss wrote: post #26
graeme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've been misunderstood. Are you saying: 1. Most CO2 release is natural 2. We increased CO2 through our own efforts as well 3. [implied statement you may agree with: this led to a feedback loop] 4. We now may be too late to stop it merely by reducing emissions, if planetary emissions of stored carbon take over and become the main source of CO2 emissions I think's actually fairly…

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:/…

> If ice starts to melt, we are doomed.

It's already happening. Natalia Shakhova has been studying this for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSsPHytEnJM

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

#154

Post by vvanders »

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 Newsroom captured this pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0uZ9mfOUI

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

#155

Post by tajen »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #145
guelo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a prisoner's dilemma type problem. Unless you can get everybody to agree then the rational thing to do is to use as much carbon as you can to stay ahead of the other guys.

> the rational thing Perhaps that indicates that reason itself has some hardcoded fundamental limits.

The hard limit is just that the ones who survive survive. And the reasonable people die. The reasonable are those who don't consume more resources than their environment provides.

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

#156

Post by tajen »

seikilos wrote: post #83
cropsieboss wrote: post #27

Arctic ice has 1400Gt of carbon locked up as methane. [1] This is equivalent to 1400/10 = 140 years of human 2016 activity. [2]. Methane also has a stronger effect than CO2. If ice starts to melt, we are doomed. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions#Contr... [2]: https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions

How long would that all take to melt? According to your source only 50 of the 1400Gt could be abruptly released.

I think they've tried to convert those 50Gt into palatable comparisons: It equals to a 2 additional degrees increase of global warming, or reaching the 2100 temperature in 2080. But we're talking about methane – the original article was about CO2.

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

#157

Post by fencepost »

ForHackernews wrote: post #110
stale2002 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...

The annotated version with links to source data is probably a better option to link.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...

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

#158

Post by fencepost »

mark-r wrote: post #121
ancientworldnow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

But this report is about CO2, not Methane. Methane is yet another reason to be worried.

I believe the article is primarily talking about carbon release as a result of microbial action, I don't think it focuses on a particular form.

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

#159

Post by ams6110 »

MoOmer wrote: post #140
ams6110 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there aren't any. Maybe all sentient species self-destruct when they discover and start developing technology but don't understand all the implications. There's a theory along these lines that explains why we've never found any signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

Yes. I actually subscribe to the idea that local maxima at a lower level if sentience is much more common.

We'd probably still be a dinosaur-populated planet if not for a random asteroid.

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

#160

Post by mirimir »

moultano wrote: post #122
mirimir wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of Stephenson's Seveneves .

I would have never imagined that a book about the utter obliteration of the world could be so hopeful .

I recently read D.O.D.O., and I'm convinced that it's in the same literary world as Anathem and Seveneves. I won't say more, but do read D.O.D.O., if you've otherwise liked Stephenson's work.
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