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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

#191

Post by erikpukinskis »

forapurpose wrote: post #162
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…

> 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 scientific thing but a problem for society. Usually that only occurs when its pretty apparent that they have to do something to mitigate it. Many countries have agreed climate change is a serious problem and have acted on it, and for a long time. The U.S. is a majo…

The Republican Party in the U.S. is just a proxy for the big multinational corporations. Americans didn't vote them in, they voted themselves in. They'll continue to vote themselves in as long as they can find ways to manipulate public opinion in the handful of districts where it matters.

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

#192

Post by flukus »

baddox wrote: post #108
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.

Perhaps a singular consciousness could evolve that wouldn't have the inherent game theoretical problems that groups of conscious individuals have.

A colony species would also be free from these problems, they look remarkably like a singular consciousness from the outside.

At the moment we're a tribal species that builds colonies, we just haven't evolved to fit into them yet.

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

#193

Post by erikpukinskis »

simonh wrote: post #105
jerf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." If such feedback loops could be that dire and unavoidable, then they would already have happened direly and unavoidably. It has been this warm before, in the not-th…

All things being equal yes, but they're not equal. The Holocene Climate Optimum is the nearest thing in the last few hundred thousand years and it wasn't anywhere near this warm globally. What it did do though is melt the Laurentide ice sheet, dramatically raising global sea levels. But the ice sheet protected the North American continental tundra. Nowadays there's no ice sheet there any more to absorb the heat and s…

This train is a nonstop to the Cretaceous. Better start preparing.

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

#194

Post by smokeyj »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #176
smokeyj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fair to just say go buy someone's book without a single supporting argument. Drop some wisdom on me, man.

The tl;dr is that the commonly told origin of money, right back to Adam Smith, is a-historical assumption that is contradicted by archeological evidence. The a-historical account is that money was developed to make barter more efficient. This is not what we see in the records from Sumer, and there is similar evidence in the other locations where we know writing arose. Before the neolithic revolution societies economi…

So you're saying the first money was essentially "social credit"? I don't disagree with the spirit of the argument, but your good-will credit in your community doesn't have the properties we associate with currency such as fungibility and divisability.

If they used a formalized series of IOUs that allowed for the long term planning of capital then I'd be more inclined to call it currency. But sounds like an interesting book, may have to give it a read.

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

#195

Post by Boothroid »

sedachv wrote: post #183
Boothroid wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if we want to be really pedantic then WW1 and WW2 are better examples then those you give.

How so?

So they say, after WW1 in particular there was hardly a tree left standing in the country.

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

#196

Post by jerf »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #44
jerf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then trillions of dollars were extremely inefficiently allocated to the task of creating better worlds and a much better world could have been created with that money instead, costing lives in the process. Having noble goals doesn't immunize you from accounting.

I recommend you read "Money: The Unauthorized Biography [0]" You'll never look at money the same way again. Money is not a commodity even though we treat it as such. It certainly is not a finite resource. Plenty of money gets created everyday for thing far more stupid than trying to save the world. Look at how much money has been created (and will be spent) for no good reason at all in the current cryptocoin bubble.…

I already have an alternate view of money. I look at generalized wealth more directly, with money merely an somewhat interesting special case that is less special than most people think it is. (I tend to think even economists pay too much attention to currency. Not that they pay attention only to currency, but that they pay too much attention to it.) The simple truth is that if you bend the economy towards creating wind and solar and cutting down hydrocarbon usage and all the other things we have to do, all the people doing that stuff as the result of a hoax aren't doing something else that would have been more useful.

Money isn't the issue; finite time and resources are.

My point has nothing to do with how terrible capitalism is or any silly bete noirs like that. It is simply the observation that if we waste our time on A, we can't be using that time to do the better B. It sits at a level of fundamental truth far below debates about economic systems or the nature of money.

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

#197

Post by needcheapbw »

japhyr wrote: post #127
needcheapbw wrote: post #111

Has the waterline changed: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/AK/3_rid/waterfront_at...

Alaska has a lot of steep shorelines. You could have many "waterfront" homes that are in no danger from rising seas.

If you take a look at some of the locations, many are not steep, many are at or near the waterline.

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

#198

Post by needcheapbw »

mark-r wrote: post #130
needcheapbw wrote: post #111

Has the waterline changed: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/AK/3_rid/waterfront_at...

Sea levels are a lagging indicator of global warming.

Citation? How long is the lag? Years? How long does it take to fill a bathtub? If so much ice is really, actually melting in the world and has been for years; no shoreline changes have occurred anywhere in the world, then that must be some amazing lag.

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

#199

Post by bluGill »

EGreg wrote: post #175
bluGill wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are. The lumber and paper companies replant all the time. Sometimes directly, sometimes they don't have to because natural processes will do it. Many forests in the US are over populated. There is a lot of land that cannot support a forest though. Where we really go wrong is not lighting forest fires every year. As a result dead trees build up until the slightest spark (lightening) results in a hot fire that burns…

Why not simulate the smaller fires by chopping down trees and using them in construction after fireproofing the wood?

fireproofing wood generally involves toxic chemicals you don't want. Historically these chemicals have been found to offgas long after they are thought safe.

It also isn't worth it because one cheap way to get rid of a house after the end of its useful life is burn it.

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

#200

Post by mark-r »

needcheapbw wrote: post #198
mark-r wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sea levels are a lagging indicator of global warming.

Citation? How long is the lag? Years? How long does it take to fill a bathtub? If so much ice is really, actually melting in the world and has been for years; no shoreline changes have occurred anywhere in the world, then that must be some amazing lag.

The ice that's melting today is floating ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, because it's subject to warm ocean currents. Floating ice doesn't change sea levels when it melts. The ice that matters is the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Glaciers weren't formed in a day, and they won't melt in a day either.
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