181–190 of 214 posts
Probably the asteroid Apophis, due to hit the Earth in 2029, will cause enough cooling to prevent most clathrate from melting. If that works we have a nearby supply of small asteroids that we can fire at the Earth to deepen the winter effect. It works best if you hit a shallow coastal shelf area with lots of limestone rock. Maybe we will sacrifice the Caribbean?
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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.
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.
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> Sadly I think lots of my countrymen think of green fields being the default state of rural UK and don't realise it's the legacy of deforestation by stone age man.. Much if not most of the deforestation in the United Kingdom took place in the Middle Ages and later, to extract resources during the Industrial Revolution. For example the Caledonian Forest in Scotland experienced massive destruction following the Highla…
Well if we want to be really pedantic then WW1 and WW2 are better examples then those you give.
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The annotated version with links to source data is probably a better option to link. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
The guy is talking about 10 degrees C scenarios, aka scenarios that nobody believes is going to happen. The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, believes that there will be 2-3 degrees C increase in temperature over the next century. When someone can rationally talk about what will happen in the IPCC predicted scenarios, which is the scientific consensus, then I will listen to them. If you are som…
The doomsday scenarios may be uncertain, but they do not (to my layman's understand) seem impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
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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…
That is the definition of research. Once something is discovered that works, it is called development.
> In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution.
Why is funding fundamental physics research a bad idea?
> Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.
Technology does not solve anything "for us," we choose to develop and apply technology. We can decide to spend resources on solar and wind electricity generation and to fund fusion research.
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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.
"a sufficiently large warming (roughly estimated as 5–6 ◦C, see Robinson 2000) would inevitably lead to an ecological disaster resulting in a complete depletion of oxygen."
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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…
I don't think scientists in the Manhattan project knew exactly how to do it. That's why they ended up having (at least) two totally different types of bombs, one with a Plutonium core using spherical implosion and another with a Uranium core using cannon-like ignition. Why try one scheme when you can try two at twice the price?
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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…
> 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. That is the definition of research. Once something is discovered that works, it is called development. > In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution. Why is funding fundamental physics research a bad idea?…
It's not a bad idea and we are doing it. Fundamental research into fusion is happening on many fronts. That is a good thing and I am not arguing against it. There may even be good arguments to increase funding on some of those approaches.
I'm saying that a 'huge' increase in funding, as proposed, at this stage would be premature given that there are plenty of other alternative power technologies that are proving very effective. We already spend billions of dollars on fusion research. If we're going to spend huge amounts of extra funding on power generation, there are better ways to use it right now.
>We can decide to spend resources on solar and wind electricity generation and to fund fusion research
What do you think we should hugely cut spending on in order to fund this huge increase? Proposals to spend lots of money on this or that are somewhat unconvincing unless you can explain where the money should come from.
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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.
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That's fair, but it'll be sad to see our species added to the dustbin of history after squandering such a great opportunity to move from planetary to stellar civilization. If there happen to be any other sentient species watching us, I can only assume they spend most of the time face-palming, head-shaking and eye-rolling.
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.
I'm personally not invested in the environment-preservation fight at all.