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Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

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Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#71
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

> The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Build nuclear power plants. All the other things are fine, but if you really want to end fossil fuels, you need a non-fossil-fuel source of reliable base load power. Nuclear is the only one we have. Other sources are fine, but they can't produce reliable base load power. And, btw, I think we should end fossil fuels even if it turns out not to make much of a…

And engineer some safe small-scale reactors for container/cruise ships. It's a crime we aren't hedging our bets on renewables with some next-gen prototype reactors.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#72
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

All of that is pointless, it will not work, and anything that requires human behavior to change en mass without direct incentives is wildly unrealistic. Imagine doing all that, only to die, all the same. We cannot accept simple answers, we need complicated engineered answers. Increasingly, I find the best thing to do is get your affairs in order, do not birth a child, and try to enjoy what is left of this life before…

Or live a carbon-negative life and teach your kids to be carbon-negative as well.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#73
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans have already noticed a "big difference" in the influx of Syrian and Afghani refugees. That invigorated anti-immigration parties, but those parties also advocated for various policies that went beyond immigration. A few million people had a huge impact on politics overall. Now imagine the turmoil and political ramifications that could spring, even in the short term, from the flooding of Bangladesh and the mi…

None of which is predicted to happen this century...

Bangladesh already suffers catastrophic floods and is already being exacerbated by human influences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh#Coverage_...

Small changes that we'll see well before the end of this century will have huge consequences. Don't be surprised if the country doesn't exist at all by the end of the century.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#74
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

While you are correct there is just no way that this is going to happen. Even if you could convince all the West to give up FF then I don't think you could convince China and India. Also there is no way you could convince the majority of people in the West to give up FF because a large percentage still don't believe climate change is man made. I was having a discussion a couple of nights ago with someone who thought…

Consider these -

http://www.walkthroughindia.com/walkthroughs/top-15-biggest-...

https://www.news18.com/news/auto/bjp-led-nda-government-mull...

On the wikipedia "list of photovoltaic power stations", China and India turn up on top when sorted by plant capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#75
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Everything I’ve heard indicates a fairly dramatic change in the weather patterns as our global temperatures rise by even 1-2 degrees. The atmosphere is not just the chemical makeup, it’s the weather it creates. The droughts. The flash floods. The unnaturally cold winters, and unnaturally hot summers. Or vice versa - neither is very good for us.

> Everything I’ve heard indicates a fairly dramatic change in the weather patterns as our global temperatures rise by even 1-2 degrees. These are not predictions based on data. They are predictions based on models--the same models that have been overpredicting warming for several decades now. The actual data says that extreme events have not been getting more frequent. Their consequences have been getting more severe…

Do you have a citation on the claim that mainstream models have been overpredicting warning? I'm not aware of it.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#77
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we do?

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

I call these kinds of suggestions abstinence based environmental policy and it will work about as well as shaming teens into not having sex. Abstinence based sex ed results in more STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion. We've been preaching abstinence based environmentalism since the 70s. Load up the atmospheric CO2 graph and look at the plastic in the ocean and see that the result is basically the same. People pretend to go along, do showy things like wear promise rings or ban plastic straws, and keep fucking and driving and running their air conditioners.

People won't go for being shamed into reduced wealth, especially when the shaming is coming from comparatively rich people. Try to force it on them and you will get a populist revolt.

So by all means keep preaching 70s style lifestyle shaming environmentalism if you want another 50 years that looks identical to the last 50 years. People will listen, nod, and ignore, just like they do with sexual moralism.

The answer is to replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, nuclear, etc. and to electrify transport and industry. Replace as in generate the same or even more energy. As I say this I live in a place where as much as 50% of my power is solar on some days and I drive an EV. We are close to cracking the storage problem with better batteries and scaling production of them. This is very possible.

Sort of like how you cut STDs and unwanted pregnancies by making contraception available and guys putting rubber things on their willies. It's what works. Only ideologues oppose it.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't read anything about it in a while but I believe the conclusion was it wouldn't work, basically because it would take way too much iron to even start to make a dent.

That wasn't the conclusion. It'd make a dent, but not sufficient by itself. The real reason is people are skeptical of the wisdom of geoengineering in general. But I think we will almost certainly have to look at it.

This is what I read as well. Couple this with planting 1e12's trees, maybe aerosol injection and possibly buy some time.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#79
post #66

Could this be mitigated by floating a whole bunch of logs / other flammable carbon based material and burning them, burning off the methane in the process? It would certainly lead to increased local temperatures in the short term, but it would remove the methane problem, and if we got enough carbon into the air we would eventually see a "nuclear winter" type cooling effect. This is obviously Bad and we'd need to burn…

This is a vast area, you could float and light the whole amazon rain forest and it would only make a small dent for a day.

In that case, maybe it'd be more effective to just drill for natural gas in the area and get it out of the ground before it has a chance to escape into the atmosphere? Might even turn out to be a profitable venture depending on how difficult it is to extract the gas in that area.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#80
post #33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Build nuclear power plants. All the other things are fine, but if you really want to end fossil fuels, you need a non-fossil-fuel source of reliable base load power. Nuclear is the only one we have. Other sources are fine, but they can't produce reliable base load power. And, btw, I think we should end fossil fuels even if it turns out not to make much of a…

>Build nuclear power plants. And to all the people who say "they take too long there isn't enough time": the best time to start nuclear power plant construction was 10 years ago, the second best time is now.

Except by the time the plant is done being built (10 years late and 10x over budget) renewables will have surpassed it in terms of cost for deployed GW, and grid-scale and consumer batteries will be at the point where we can store and demand shift enough power to use all the renewables we can bring online.

Renewables has already surpassed nuclear in the US. I think the new reality is the best time to build a nuke plant is never.

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