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Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

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Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#61

Post by evanlivingston »

pacala wrote: post #34
mr_overalls wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that scientists have understood the risks of global warming for decades, and yet our civilization (maybe I'm just speaking for the US here) seems impotent to effectively coordinate a response to this slow-motion threat. It could be our own Great Filter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

US emissions have plateaued two decades ago [0]. Emissions are growing unchecked elsewhere, a combination of population explosion and rapid industrialization. [0] http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/chinese-co2-emis...

I'm curious if the various ways American's and America spends it's money and consumes its good is factored into U.S. emissions.

Does the carbon it takes to produce an iphone and then ship it here count? What about all the fuel/power used by military bases abroad? Does our purchasing of Foreign cars count?

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#62

Post by vkou »

matte_black wrote: post #50
ceejayoz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such events are necessary to keep human population under a manageable number. Is there any evidence for this assertion?

Which part, that the events are necessary or that we have to keep human population to a level that the planet can currently support?

The former. At our current consumption levels/technology, we are obviously above our planet's current carrying capacity.

This is not controversial. We are living on borrowed time - our civilization currently relies on the consumption of non-renewable resources, and the non-sustainable consumption of renewable resources.

Even if this is sustainable for 10, 20, or 100 years, it is not sustainable for longer time horizons.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#63

Post by herbst »

jjoonathan wrote: post #53
johndevor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any models that predict accurately backwards?

All of them, because that's how you build models? Or do you mean something different?

Pretty sure he ment modern models that prove to be more right than others using past data.

Interesting question imo

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#64

Post by ProAm »

rconti wrote: post #57
ProAm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of all creatures to exist on earth are now extinct. [1] We're not special. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

How many of them were at the top of the food chain?

A lot of them at the time.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#65

Post by grinsekatze »

matte_black wrote: post #26
corpMaverick wrote: post #2

It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything. Edit: Doom scale... 1 Inconvenient storms. 2 More frequent natural disasters. 3 Destroying coastal cities. 4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations. 5 Decimating human population. 6 Destroying human civilization. 7 Destroying all humans on earth. 8 Destroying all lif…

There is something we can do. We can enjoy what we have here and now, for as long as it lasts, for as long as we can.

Completely agree. It’s all natural cycles, transformations ... but accepting this is not really easy as long as one fears death. There is so much eternal beauty that we are part of and that we could focus on instead of wars and Desasters.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#66

Post by dredmorbius »

knodi123 wrote: post #11
corpMaverick wrote: post #2

It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything. Edit: Doom scale... 1 Inconvenient storms. 2 More frequent natural disasters. 3 Destroying coastal cities. 4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations. 5 Decimating human population. 6 Destroying human civilization. 7 Destroying all humans on earth. 8 Destroying all lif…

"all human civilization"? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? destructive, sure. It would certainly lead to a lot of death, and a lot of hardship. Human civilization will certainly be changed- perhaps significantly. But I haven't see any evidence that it will cease to exist.

The resilience of humanity may actually be inversely proportional to its population.

Yonatan Zunger, of Google, writing nearly five years ago, tossed out a fact that's stuck with me since: the response of "large animal" populations to global temperature changes:

"When the biota of a planet get rewritten, the creatures that require the most delicate maintenance die first. This tends to mean really big creatures, that rely on large supplies of their foods; apex predators, which rely on the entire food chain beneath them; and "canary" species like many frogs, which are very sensitive and tend to be the first to die when something is going wrong. Historically, the cutoff for "large creatures" (that tend to not survive extinction events) seems to be in the ballpark of 20 pounds; things bigger than that just require the ecosystem to be too healthy."

That immediately following:

"The last big spike like this was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 55 million years ago. Average temperatures rose by 6C over a period of 20,000 years -- which is enough to look like a giant, sharp spike on the history-of-the-entire-planet graph."

We're on track to temperature changes of roughly that order of magnitude, and almost certainly in a far shorter period of time -- a few centuries, perhaps less.

https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/SgzQU5DM3LQ

I think this may be one of the related body-mass / extinction related articles (though it postdate's Yonatan's item):

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6262/812

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#67

Post by vkou »

pacala wrote: post #34
mr_overalls wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that scientists have understood the risks of global warming for decades, and yet our civilization (maybe I'm just speaking for the US here) seems impotent to effectively coordinate a response to this slow-motion threat. It could be our own Great Filter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

US emissions have plateaued two decades ago [0]. Emissions are growing unchecked elsewhere, a combination of population explosion and rapid industrialization. [0] http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/chinese-co2-emis...

Emission growth has stopped, but what we need to do is hit net zero.

We are no closer to that today then we were 20 years ago. There isn't even a vague plan for the United States to get there.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#68

Post by hueving »

ProAm wrote: post #17
knodi123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"all human civilization"? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? destructive, sure. It would certainly lead to a lot of death, and a lot of hardship. Human civilization will certainly be changed- perhaps significantly. But I haven't see any evidence that it will cease to exist.

99.9% of all creatures to exist on earth are now extinct. [1] We're not special. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

What a tired argument. Of course we are special. We are capable of genetically modifying our food supplies and building shelter that allows us to live in any climate on the planet.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#69

Post by ioioio8908 »

skrowl wrote: post #22
jjoonathan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there credible models that suggest Earth will turn into Venus or something? It would take a hell of a lot more to end humanity than it would take to "merely" hurt/kill the most vulnerable segments of our population (which is what I thought the stakes were).

There is definitely no shortage of doomsday climate models. CREDIBLE models is a different story. Look back at ones from 20+ years ago to see what they predicted would be happening by now. It's pretty funny actually.

So will the models of today be as "off" in 20 years?

We've come a long way in being able to collect and rapidly analyze large data sets.

Doesn't seem like a proposition that holds.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#70

Post by ProAm »

stickfigure wrote: post #54
ProAm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of all creatures to exist on earth are now extinct. [1] We're not special. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

We're not special With big brains and tools, humans can live in a much broader set of environmental conditions than any other species. While it doesn't make us extinction-proof, it makes us pretty hardy. It is hard to imagine what would destroy all the ecological niches that humans could survive in. I would bet on the humans.

We have a few people who are intelligent, and yet as a whole we constantly try to kill our fellow man and let people go hungry. The only difference is we know our eventual end is coming and the preceding creatures likely did not.
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