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What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

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Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#121

Post by adrianN »

AstralStorm wrote: post #119
adrianN wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building gas plants is not terribly stupid, because we'll probably need power-to-gas technology unless somebody finds cheaper ways to make batteries.

The only viable kind of gas is biogas which you have to sequester anyway. Other kinds speed up the catastrophe. There cleaner than some coal and oil but that's about it. They're not even close compared to nuclear or renewables. Why do you need gas? Can't use the electric vehicle or appliance? If you need trace gases for manufacturing, you can sequester them instead.

No, you can create Methane out of thin air with electricity and store that in the existing infrastructure for strategic gas reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

It's a very convenient way to store large amounts of energy for dark, windstill winters. If you then have a decent number of gas plants you can turn it into electricity to run the heat pumps in your homes.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#122

Post by adrianN »

robomartin wrote: post #102
adrianN wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.

No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a fe…

Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#123

Post by adrianN »

leereeves wrote: post #105
gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand no - warming by 5 degrees will cause all phytoplankton to die off and as a result we'll run out of oxygen(not immediately of course, but we inevitably will).

The world was once 8C to 14C hotter than it is now (during the Eocene) and it didn't run out of oxygen. In fact, this was the epoch when modern mammals took over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene

Prehistoric warm periods didn't happen as fast as what we're doing. If you give nature thousands of generations to adapt to warmer temperatures it's not as big of a deal. If you do it over a hundred years or so, ecosystems have a much harder time to adapt.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#124

Post by NeedMoreTea »

tempsolution wrote: post #75
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can't keep biosphere 1.0 viable, we have bugger all chance of creating a viable and sustainable extra planetary one. Besides how many launches will be needed to get 7bn to biosphere 2.0? Whatever the answer it's cheaper and easier to address AGW right here, right now. Or does your backup plan only involve sending a tiny few off planet?...

Why would you think that we send 7bn people into space? There should not have been 7bn people to start with. It just happened because somehow species tend to multiply until their environment can't sustain further growth. In space, it will be MUCH harder to sustain a population, as a result, the population there will be much smaller (think of maybe 100.000), at least in the early stages. I agree that we should be able…

If we can't avoid overpopulating a planet, how and why should we think will we avoid overpopulating Mars or Mini Ringworld?

Well if plan B in space is for only some, it's not saving humanity but is a "fuck you" to most of them. I think some pretty core human problems will show pretty damn quickly after that:

Once the remaining 6.9bn realise they're not invited to the party, that there is a definite plan for all the wealthy and politician types to piss off to Mars or some space station, the rest might very reasonably decide that's a tad unfair. Especially if their own future is some apocalyptic die off, perversely made worse by all those emissions from the thousands of rocket launches. They might sensibly think that instead of quietly waiting for the 4 horsemen to show up with their exit, better to go out by trashing all the supply rockets and bases of project space, and reach for petrol, pitchfork or assault rifle. Maybe one more emission laden launch to blow those entitled assholes out of orbit...

We haven't yet shown viability in any of the sealed biome experiments. Not once. The old Russian experiments back during their lunar programme got closest.

Hence me thinking much cheaper and simpler just to address the damn problem properly. :)

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#125

Post by NeedMoreTea »

benologist wrote: post #22

Alongside this is a story celebrating how more people are using 100 - 200 grams of internationally-shipped and hand-delivered plastic on the equivalent of a 256mb usb stick to distribute music instead of the internet. Most of us can't wait to replace our massive-carbon-sink computer with a new one and put the old one in a cupboard. Sacrifice was key to beating this and we didn't do it and we might be getting worse.

If we decarbonised power, industry and transport, we could afford to use a little vinyl for a niche hobby, some plastic for the few specialist packaging types that can't be done better in something else, for the medical uses and such like. We probably should be celebrating the rise of ownership over a monthly subscription to listen only while you pay. Until we are told the calculated impacts of each, neither of us knows the better choice for the planet.

If we adjusted the rules of the capitalism game such that sustainability, repairability, life of product, company and planet were baked in, that carbon, pollution and environment cost has to be displayed on labels and every service. Maybe simple taxes can do that, maybe it needs a little or a lot more creativity.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#126

Post by NeedMoreTea »

swayvil wrote: post #42
frabbit wrote: post #38

I have heard meat-eating car-drivers push this line of thinking for at least two decades. You know the sort of person: willing to rag on the republicans or the Koch brothers for being bad, but ultimately unwilling to do anything except moan about how it is all too hard.

The billionaires choose the song, we only dance to it. Unless you fancy a cardboard box under a viaduct.

...until it's so far gone folks start reaching for pitchforks or constitutionally enshrined assault weaponry.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#127

Post by _ph_ »

unicornporn wrote: post #97
_ph_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and we still have a good chance to keept it well below 5. For most technologies emitting CO2, we now have emission free replacements, so if we strongly push for using them, we do have quite a fighting chance.

> if we strongly push for using them What do you mean by that?

Make the transition to those technologies a top priority in each sector. Like installing solar and wind energy as fast as it can be done. House heating should be done with heat pumps in most locations, so any new heating system installed should be low CO2. Make a big push for electric cars. Norway is at over 50% electric in the new cars already. But for that, the car manufacturers need urgently to ramp up their production capacity for electric cars.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#128

Post by jfalconer »

leereeves wrote: post #106
tw04 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter in the least if you agree with a candidate on everything. This one specific subject should be a deal breaker though, regardless of just about any other stance. Your opinion on free market is irrelevant in the face of Extinction.

Alarmism only discredits the effort to respond to climate change.

What can you really call alarmism at this point, though? We passed 400 PPM in 2016. Even the best-case scenario is incredibly alarming.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#129

Post by robomartin »

adrianN wrote: post #122
robomartin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a fe…

Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.

Once again, it's about quantification. All ideas sound great until we grab a calculator and do the math.

Thankfully some math has been done with regards to planting trees [1].

The next questions are:

How much suitable land is there and how many trees can it sustain?

How much water will they require?

Will they require chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc.)?

How much petroleum will they require? Keep in mind that oil is an inescapable part of most processes. An easy example of this would be transportation, tractors, cranes, packaging, etc.

Not being negative at all. Just want to make sure we all understand that without quantification anything sounds great.

As far as my investigation into this domain has revealed, yes, trees are the ONLY technology we have that stands a chance to do some good without making a larger mess in the process. The problem is that deployment at the planetary scale isn't easy. And there exists a real limit function on just how many trees you can actually plant around the world.

Not sure about your claim that trees can solve this problem in centuries.

Ideas like seeing the oceans with iron scare the hell out of me. Again, we are talking about planetary scale effects here. The energy and resources required for such a task are monumental. Beyond that, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of experiences where an experiment was predicted to result in A and I we got Z instead. I cannot imagine doing something like that at a planetary scale. We could literally kill-off half the species in the ocean if we are not careful.

The most important thing we need today is to stop our politicians from spewing nonsense. Seriously. These people are dangerous beyond belief. It isn't only about none of their proposals being worth the paper they are not written on, they could actually cause massive harm and hamper real science-based approaches to making things better. In general terms, politicians have turned climate science into a disgusting circus act (or whatever analogy applies best). If you ask me, THAT is the most urgent task ahead for the scientific community: Getting politicians the hell away from this domain.

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#130

Post by robomartin »

adrianN wrote: post #122
robomartin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a fe…

Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.

Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is:

Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle?

Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years?

The answers to these questions are simple:

A1: Fires. Massive continent-scale fires...burning forests.

A2: Massive natural reforestation and weather. Yup. Hurricanes, cyclones, rain, etc.

While the idea of planting trillions of trees is excellent, we also have to understand an important point. The more trees we have the greater the probability of going backwards by decades when --not if-- a large fire rips through millions of them. We can't fight fires at those scales. And, if we could, you'd have to calculate the energy and CO2 we would produce in doing so (planes, trucks, equipment, etc.).

Climate change isn't an easy problem, not even close. I don't know if I want to laugh or cry when I hear politicians pushing some of the truly brain-dead stuff they get behind.

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