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The Great Siberian Thaw

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Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#21

Post by chillwaves »

vermilingua wrote: post #17

The Newsroom said it best, "your house is burning to the ground, the situation is dire; your house has already burned to the ground, situation's over." [1] I don't see a way that we plausibly reverse course, when nearly every government, the people running them, and the private sector leaders are all just doing an end-run to accumulate as much as they can, planet be damned. Every "climate target" gets re-evaluated an…

After the coming resource\migration wars, some of this will sort itself out. Don't worry.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#22

Post by xwdv »

Once the permafrost starts melting off, there isn’t much time left for us. Hold your children tight, and comfort them for the rest of their short lives.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#25

Post by kragen »

xrd wrote: post #23

Is it possible to live in isolated sealed compounds that protect us from all that carbon? Can we build filtration systems?

The gases being released aren't toxic until a hundred times higher than current levels. Filtering out methane and CO₂ is routine for life-support systems in submarines, spacecraft, and, yes, bunkers, so it's not infeasible. The problem is that they cause global warming, not toxicity, and we can't build an isolated sealed compound to protect the planet from them.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#26

Post by kragen »

vermilingua wrote: post #17

The Newsroom said it best, "your house is burning to the ground, the situation is dire; your house has already burned to the ground, situation's over." [1] I don't see a way that we plausibly reverse course, when nearly every government, the people running them, and the private sector leaders are all just doing an end-run to accumulate as much as they can, planet be damned. Every "climate target" gets re-evaluated an…

The article says of Ted Schuur, "He and his colleagues estimate that permafrost emissions might make up five to fifteen per cent of the I.P.C.C.’s allotment." So I guess we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions 5–15% below where we would have otherwise needed to.

We did need a moonshot tech breakthrough, namely scalable affordable renewable energy. But that breakthrough has already happened: both PV and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels now in much of the world, and PV definitely can scale up to replace fossil fuels, and wind probably can too. So in 8–16 years we enter an era of unprecedented energy abundance, similar to the First Industrial Revolution. There are relatively straightforward ways to use this abundant energy to capture atmospheric CO₂. I outlined one in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29327736.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#27

Post by [deleted] »

nelox wrote: post #20
vermilingua wrote: post #17

The Newsroom said it best, "your house is burning to the ground, the situation is dire; your house has already burned to the ground, situation's over." [1] I don't see a way that we plausibly reverse course, when nearly every government, the people running them, and the private sector leaders are all just doing an end-run to accumulate as much as they can, planet be damned. Every "climate target" gets re-evaluated an…

What makes you think we deserve to survive?

[deleted]

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#28

Post by ed25519FUUU »

xrd wrote: post #23

Is it possible to live in isolated sealed compounds that protect us from all that carbon? Can we build filtration systems?

If only we could invent some kind of living organisms which consume CO2 and emit oxygen! (Sorry, it’s a little snarky!)

I’m all seriousness, earth seems to find a balance when it goes through these types of events. Whether we’ll make it through the ride is to be seen.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#29

Post by lmilcin »

xrd wrote: post #23

Is it possible to live in isolated sealed compounds that protect us from all that carbon? Can we build filtration systems?

Filtering carbon dioxide to have breathing air at home isn't difficult. But housing 8 billion people in sealed environment is.

The trouble with CO2 is that already the amount of it in atmosphere starts making us measurably dumber and it is only going to get worse.

1000ppm is a badly ventilated room that causes headache and poor performance on tasks. Imagine experiencing this for your entire life. Imagine ALL kids having trouble with concentration, entire Earth's population getting dumber. As if we did not have problems already...

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#30

Post by lmilcin »

kragen wrote: post #25
xrd wrote: post #23

Is it possible to live in isolated sealed compounds that protect us from all that carbon? Can we build filtration systems?

The gases being released aren't toxic until a hundred times higher than current levels. Filtering out methane and CO₂ is routine for life-support systems in submarines, spacecraft, and, yes, bunkers, so it's not infeasible. The problem is that they cause global warming, not toxicity, and we can't build an isolated sealed compound to protect the planet from them.

> The gases being released aren't toxic until a hundred times higher than current levels.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

Current atmospheric CO2 level is 400ppm which already has a measurable impact on performance on tasks (compared to 250ppm couple decades ago).

Increasing it to just 1000ppm further degrades performance. And 2500ppm makes it difficult to concentrate on anything complex.

Even slight increase in concentration could lead to drastic changes over time when you consider everybody gets a little dumber.

https://skepticalscience.com/how-sapiens-in-the-world-of-hig...

*

EDIT: kragen, I am being throttled so here is my response to your below comment:

When there is plenty arguments and scientific consensus to the contrary, and the person presents numbers obviously derived from thin air, I think it is fair to state the person does not know what they are talking about.

Toxicology is a complex topic. But it is safe to say CO2 becomes toxic way before it becomes lethal. Which is to say you see adverse effects even before the concentration reaches lethal level. It may maybe take hundreds of times before it becomes immediately lethal but it is already toxic at about current concentration or 2-5 times current concentration, depending on who you ask, and not "hundreds of times" higher.

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