climate change? I thought it was global warming...
We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
131–140 of 152 posts
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 Do you have any data on this? If you look at how quickly things cool off at night, Earth's biosphere reaches steady-state thermal equilibrium over the course of a few days. Your claim is essentially that we've already set off an albedo fo…
So warming is global and when there is night at one place, then that is because there is daytime somewhere else. Yes, if you can just shut off the sun for some time, we can definitely easily overcome global warming... ...
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Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 Do you have any data on this? If you look at how quickly things cool off at night, Earth's biosphere reaches steady-state thermal equilibrium over the course of a few days. Your claim is essentially that we've already set off an albedo fo…
https://climate.nasa.gov/ has lots of data. "Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries. That’s because it takes a while for the planet (for example, the oceans) to respond, and because carbon dioxide – the predominant heat-trapping gas – lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years."[0] [0] https://climate.nasa.go…
Interesting, thanks. The mechanisms that cause such a delayed temperature response are still opaque though, figure I gotta read more in-depth technical stuff to really understand.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 Do you have any data on this? If you look at how quickly things cool off at night, Earth's biosphere reaches steady-state thermal equilibrium over the course of a few days. Your claim is essentially that we've already set off an albedo fo…
So warming is global and when there is night at one place, then that is because there is daytime somewhere else. Yes, if you can just shut off the sun for some time, we can definitely easily overcome global warming... ...
You didn't make an effort to charitably interpret my question. My question is essentially about whether transient response to changes in albedo occur primarily over the course of days or primarily over the course of years.
Albedo is important, being snide is not.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#135It's amazing to me how most of these predictions refrain from calling out the single largest polluters in the world, China, from changing their behavior or doing anything substantial. In particular, this paragraph at the end: > In Chicago Thursday, he prosecuted a moral argument that implicates university administrators who refuse to divest from fossil fuels, journalists who fail to fact-check false statements made b…
The US has double the emissions per capita as China. [1] China is also steadily moving towards one of the most ambitious carbon tax / cap and trade systems in the world. [2] Don’t have the exact source in front of me but I read in a paper recently that China’s new carbon market will cover a significant percentage of global carbon emissions when it’s in full swing. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_…
This isn’t reddit. Please don’t downvote because you disagree, try and have a reasonable discussion. Read my comment again and please tell me where I cited emissions per capita. If you’re simply going to normalize data without an explainer, might as well do emissions over GDP and find the most efficient economies since the crux of the argument is around economic value of energy.
Your wiki source is based on world bank data and only goes through 2014. Here’s a more recent estimate: [1]
I have my doubts on the efficiency of the carbon tax as a mechanism to effectively reduce emissions but am willing to be persuaded by data that shows otherwise. But that is a topic for another time and does nothing to disqualify any of the points I made above.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-...
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#136It's amazing to me how most of these predictions refrain from calling out the single largest polluters in the world, China, from changing their behavior or doing anything substantial. In particular, this paragraph at the end: > In Chicago Thursday, he prosecuted a moral argument that implicates university administrators who refuse to divest from fossil fuels, journalists who fail to fact-check false statements made b…
"Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones"
“Snarky comments do nothing to further a discussion”
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
So warming is global and when there is night at one place, then that is because there is daytime somewhere else. Yes, if you can just shut off the sun for some time, we can definitely easily overcome global warming... ...
You didn't make an effort to charitably interpret my question. My question is essentially about whether transient response to changes in albedo occur primarily over the course of days or primarily over the course of years. Albedo is important, being snide is not.
The impact of albedo on this process can go either way. On the one hand, melting ice caps and higher temperatures can mean less ground covered in ice and snow, therefore lower albedo and temperature will rise even faster.
But warmer seas can also mean more evaporation, more precipitation and therefore more snow, higher albedo and a brake on rising temperatures, possibly even a new ice age. (It gets mentioned sometimes; an ice age is ironically a potential result of global warming.)
But it seems to me that effect will mostly be limited to higher latitudes. There's not a lot of snow around the equator, which receives the most sunlight.
But if we could somehow increase the Earth's albedo on a large scale, then that would absolutely have an impact.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#138The 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…
> global temperatures would slowly revert to normal I share your concern regarding the gravity of the situation, and that a whole battery of efforts need to be made in order to mitigate the effects of current global warming. But I wish intelligent people would refrain from supporting the notion that there is any kind of "normal" regarding the climate. There is no such thing. We have enjoyed a climate favorable to hum…
That is a fair point. It's unavoidable in a discussion about these issues that things get simplified, or nobody will understand it anymore. I try to be more nuanced than most, but I think it's impossible for anyone to fully grasp the total complexity of the situation.
It's undeniable that the past 8000 years have been pretty good to us, and that's not going to last forever, but the impact we're currently having on the planet is much faster, and very likely to be larger and more dramatic than the end of the last ice age.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#139Does "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…
> If 75-80% of ice has already melted, wouldn't we have seen significant elevation already? FTA: > Another is the pending collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which Anderson said will raise sea level by 7 meters (about 23 feet). The Greenland ice sheet is on land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet Most of the ice that has melted so far was probably already in the water. The ice that is already floatin…
Also, the Greenland ice sheet is mostly (all?) freshwater. If it melts, all of that getting dumped into the Atlantic ocean will affect the currents, screwing with weather patterns for at least North America and Europe.
Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says
#140The “we’ve been hearing scare stories for decades” argument is akin to “I’ve been driving drunk without my seatbelt for a decade and people keep saying I’ll die, but I haven’t yet.” For many, many people, the dire warnings have come true. Entire towns were erased by fire in Northern California last year. Severe storms are racking up billions and billions of dollars in damage every year — and entire islands have been…
> The amount of corn planted in the Midwest for the time of year is off the charts, due to freakish weather.
Either you found different reports than me, or you're using "off the charts" wrong. It means "too high/too much to measure"; the crop situation is actually lower than normal due to flooding.