Anderson, the "Godfather of climate change science' advocates aerosol geo engineering experimentation https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgaq57/harvard-calls-for-...
We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
81–90 of 152 posts
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Al Gore didn't say this, James Anderson did. James Anderson is a "Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer." 2. You're right about the rhetoric - it has been around for centuries but so have major ecological disasters . The Dust Bowl alone forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families to abandon their farms, una…
Al Gore has made the claim multiple times: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/ e.g. in 2007: Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
Could, not would. Like smoking can kill you, not smoking will kill you. It is a common and fundamental English language pattern, clearly indicating doubt and should never be misinterpreted as certainty.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended, similar to how wild predictions in the past have not borne fruit. Please don't misrepresent claims that "we have X years to stop global warming before it becomes irreversible" as "the earth will be uninhabitable in X years."
To be honest, it’s obvious that we’re already too late for “reversing” anyway: there is no practical way to dramatically change how 7.5bn people live and work, in just 4 years. Even if we all dropped what we’re doing this very minute and started looking for other ways to live, in 4 years we would’ve barely scratched the surface of the problem. At that point, whether we have 4 or 2 years before the tipping point, is f…
A significant portion of "bracing for it" would involve trying to minimize the level of damage; that's basically the same effort as trying to avoid it, so...
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#84The title is very misleading. There is no hard deadline to save ourselves from climate change, or if there is, we already passed it. We're currently at the point were every year we continue doing nothing, means it takes multiple years (decades? centuries?) to recover from the accumulated effects.
Permanent ice is already melting, climate is already changing. Even if we completely stop emitting CO2 right now (which we can't), there would still be too much CO2 in the atmosphere for some time, leading to further heating and longer melting. Even if we were to remove all excess CO2 from the atmosphere right now (which we obviously can't), Earth would still be too warm and icecaps would continue to melt while global temperatures would slowly revert to normal.
We're doing none of those things; we're still arguing over whether we should do anything at all. Our inaction over the past couple of decades on this issue is going to have repercussions for the next centuries.
The issue right now is: how bad do we want things to get? We can't stop it anymore, but we may be able to mitigate it. I really really hope we can prevent the Eastern Antarctic icecap from melting, because that would truly be a disaster. When that melts, most major population centers will have to be evacuated.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the downside of boys crying wolf... when the actual wolf comes we don't listen.
Except nobody was crying wolf. If we took the problem seriously back then, we wouldn't be fucked now. The reality is that we're living through a mass extinction driven by climate change. Over 60% of animals have gone extinct since the 70s. The fact that people are looking at the world today and asking where's the problem is beyond belief.
It's not beyond belief; it's that it's happening so slowly that it's not perceived by the common person. And the "crying wolf" that people upthread were referring to was the "this will be irreversible in N years" specifically, not the broader threat of climate change generally.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of Earth's history made it a completely uninhabitable place for humans. Seems like it would be in our combined best interest to prevent it from becoming that way again.
+2.5C increase will render earth uninhabitable? Or will it upset insurance coverage of high dollar coast lines?
Indefinitely adding CO2 to the atmosphere at an increasing rate... it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of Earth's history made it a completely uninhabitable place for humans. Seems like it would be in our combined best interest to prevent it from becoming that way again.
+2.5C increase will render earth uninhabitable? Or will it upset insurance coverage of high dollar coast lines?
+2.5C increase over tens of thousands of years, as happened in the past? Extinctions, but the ecosystem adapted.
+2.5C increase over tens of years, as predicted? Very different story.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#88The loss of sea ice is stoking US heat waves: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-loss-arctic-sea-ice-stokes.htm... Intense heat is also predicted for Europe this summer: https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/accuweather-2019... James Anderson, the scientist from the article, also has linked ozone depletion with climate change: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-ozone-prob...
I think his four years is too fast but I also don't think we can totally destroy the planet (aside from nuclear destruction). We know too much and have too much technology. Some (small?) fragment of civilization will survive while the earth recovers. For example, methane has a half life of seven years so it will take some time. The more immediate threat seems to be around food and water. The Ogallala Aquifer is dryin…
> We know too much and have too much technology.
That's a risk that massively adds to fragility. As seen in every civilisation crash across the entirety of history.
Some small fragments surviving when every village had a blacksmith, everyone farms a little land, keeps a pig and cow, and makes clothing etc means each isolated fragment can rebuild a recognisable world and plenty have the knowledge. Bronze requiring tin and copper that typically came from regions thousands of miles apart added a fragility.
When my medicine, food, clothes etc come over thousands of miles and/or depend on complex multi-stage specialist supply chains and knowledge means that any isolated fragments won't have the first clue how to restart. Educating yourself when wikipedia is down, there's no power, comms or international supply chains and some local plant, machine or process just failed... You get the idea.
Not so very different to the many regions occupied by the Romans that found that for centuries after they had lovely advanced buildings and services they could not recreate. So they could use what was still standing, but watch them deteriorate.
"This time it's different" is an arrogance seen across the ages too. We're not crash or dark age proof. Not at all. Society is now so complex that it might take a relatively small spanner in the works to break it.
You're right about growth. Humanity will recognise it. Eventually.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#89Does "no more permanent ice" means there is a period of the year where there is no ice at all at the poles? That seems hardly believable. I was also under the impression that melting ice would push the level of the oceans by multiple meters. If 75-80% of ice has already melted, wouldn't we have seen significant elevation already? Just some facts that I found surprising, coming from someone who doesn't know much on th…
I think permanent ice is essentially permafrost as in "too cold for any seasonal melt/freeze cycle".
Technically net ice mass /could/ increase in that state depending on precipitation vs melt rate and even an increase may not be a good thing (fresh artic snow could cause ecological issues even).
That tangent aside it opens the door to potential eventual total melt by definition - if the area is still permafrost that means it never melts year round.
Which while a worrying sign doesn't equate to total immediate melt in four years.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#90Does "no more permanent ice" means there is a period of the year where there is no ice at all at the poles? That seems hardly believable. I was also under the impression that melting ice would push the level of the oceans by multiple meters. If 75-80% of ice has already melted, wouldn't we have seen significant elevation already? Just some facts that I found surprising, coming from someone who doesn't know much on th…
edit: Polar ice caps are already floating in the sea, so they will not effect sea level as much by melting - the volume is already accounted for. The problem is that the sea ice caps reflect a ton of energy that allow ice to form on land. Melting land ice has a different effect on sea level rise. All I could find on short notice was related to Antarctic Ice cover, this article from NASA does a good job of explaining…
> Polar ice caps are already floating in the sea, so they will not effect sea level as much by melting
The Arctic icecap is floating, so its melting (which is happening rapidly) will have no impact on sea level rise. The Antarctic icecap is mostly on land, and if that melts, it will raise the sea level by 60 meters. That will flood most major population centers.
I don't think we can save the Arctic anymore, but I really hope we can still save the Antarctic. (The good news is that it's not melting yet.)