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The Great Siberian Thaw

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Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#81

Post by pvaldes »

vbezhenar wrote: post #58
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sarcasm is fine, but I have no sense of whether or not the point is even valid. Do you have any back of the napkin maths to illustrate how effective covering the Earth’s land masses in trees would be, even if we could terraform all the big deserts? Planting a load of trees is at least actionable, but I wonder if it’s also futile.

Phytoplankton is what makes oxygen from CO2. Trees actually do not add much. IMO we should bioengineer phytoplankton to allow it to grow faster, so our oceans will just turn more CO2 into O2 and solve that issue.

> Trees actually do not add much

Keywords: Plumes; Oceanography.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#82

Post by marcus_holmes »

missedthecue wrote: post #7

I wonder how much of the land is going to become farmable now

I wonder how many more trees are going to grow on the defrosted land. Siberia is basically one enormous birch forest already [0]. I assume that as the land warms that treeline is going to advance north.

[0] I rode the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Ulan Bator, and it was days of the exact same scenery: birch trees lining the railway, with the occasional breathtaking scene that was just often enough to keep me staring at trees most of the trip.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#83

Post by screenbreakout »

kragen wrote: post #77
screenbreakout wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Let's take the case of Switzerland, everyone wants to go there, they are literally spending money to supress the increasing exchange rate to avoid a collaps of exports... what would happen if they took a years break.. I mean maybe it would be better, letting the CHF, go higher , allowing the swiss to leave to greener pastures, allowing others to visit such a beautiful country (and use the empty living space f…

A year's break? You mean, nobody work for a year? The death rate would skyrocket as the Swiss died from easily treatable medical problems like appendicitis. Everyone in a nursing home would be dead after a few days, and you'd have mass starvation and riots in every city within weeks. No food would be planted or harvested, so even when the truckers and supermarket workers began to work again the starvation would not e…

I'm sorry on what planet do you live? Up to the point of food (and probably after) I was thinking you were being ironic, but though HN are reputed for humor, could you not humour me and explain why food prices would skyrocket? Basic foodstuffs are cheap, even in Switzerland, 500g of good cheap brown bread at Migros cost 1$... noone is taking noones savings away, according to google Switzerland spent almost 17B$supporting the swiss franc in 2021... yes the common joke is swiss are apoplectic at having to stop work (thereby dying of appendicitis?) however reality is they have one of the highest suicide rates currently , due to burnout? and imo are a society where fear of the future is one prevalently to keep (people)change in check...

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#84

Post by burntoutfire »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #82
missedthecue wrote: post #7

I wonder how much of the land is going to become farmable now

I wonder how many more trees are going to grow on the defrosted land. Siberia is basically one enormous birch forest already [0]. I assume that as the land warms that treeline is going to advance north. [0] I rode the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Ulan Bator, and it was days of the exact same scenery: birch trees lining the railway, with the occasional breathtaking scene that was just often enough to keep me…

Further north, it's mostly spruce.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#85

Post by zionic »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #55
lmilcin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As a casual observer trying to follow the conversation and learn more, I would prefer to hear just the facts with the data to support it, rather than the personal attacks regardless of whether you think they’re fair or not.

As a casual observer of casual observers, it bothers me when I see people more concerned with how someone said something then what they said.

This flaw in human comprehension is responsible for a lot of what’s wrong with our society.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#86

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

zionic wrote: post #85
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a casual observer trying to follow the conversation and learn more, I would prefer to hear just the facts with the data to support it, rather than the personal attacks regardless of whether you think they’re fair or not.

As a casual observer of casual observers, it bothers me when I see people more concerned with how someone said something then what they said. This flaw in human comprehension is responsible for a lot of what’s wrong with our society.

I’m not tone policing if that’s what you’re suggesting. If that is indeed what you’re suggesting, then the failure in comprehension is your own.

My criticism is not about how something was said. My criticism is specifically about what was said, in that I found it irrelevant.

I’d like to learn more about the topic, but I can’t learn anything about the topic from personal judgements made about an interlocutor. It’s just noise and detracts from the argument being made.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#87

Post by abathur »

kragen wrote: post #76
abathur wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree on the price signals, but this is the logic of corporations with assets, liabilities, cash flows, investors, boards, etc. It isn't necessarily the same as the logic of nation-states sitting on finite resources that may, from some point, only fall in total value. Or the logic of money launderers, who are perfectly willing to make terrible deals in order to convert undesirable resources into desirable…

But how could that play out? If you're Mohammed bin Salman and you want to maximize your earnings from the oil left in Ghawar and the smaller fields, stipulating that you believe the international oil market will be vastly smaller in a decade or two, how do you do it?

Anything you can convince yourself isn't losing money.

I suppose that math can get very weird if countries factor in expected appreciation of crypto they plan to hold. And even weirder if they end up perceiving a geopolitical stake in maintaining a certain fraction of the global hash rate.

When I mention the logic of money-launderers, I mean something more like https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to...

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#88

Post by lmilcin »

mellavora wrote: post #64
lmilcin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

What if we consider the sealed environment "the earth"?

Removing CO2 from atmosphere is still much, much more expensive than alternatives. People just don't seem to understand the vastness of our atmosphere and the scale of operations that would be needed for this.

Our atmosphere weighs ~5 quadrillion (5x10^15) tonnes. We are talking about an apparatus that can suck that amount of gas and process it to remove CO2 that is already very dilute.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#89

Post by bpodgursky »

lb0 wrote: post #65
bpodgursky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm. Modern fertilizer has done a lot to neutralize the importance of good soil. You can't farm rocks, but the US west has done a lot with sand + fertilizer. As long as you have money, water, sun, heat, and something better than bedrock, I wouldn't call it unrealistic.

Short term - long term we realize now it is eroding and "destryoing" it - like tech debt it is creating soil debt :)

There's been a bad loss of topsoil in "good" farming areas but I don't think aggressive farming of marginal soil or subsoil in arid areas does much extra damage on top of natural erosion.

Re: The Great Siberian Thaw

#90

Post by mym1990 »

masklinn wrote: post #71
mym1990 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soil is not an essential piece to growing crops. Even now hydroponics is taking off in many places.

The siberian thaw has literally no relevance if you don’t plant things in the ground.

What are trying to find relevance to? I was just responding to the comment saying we are screwed if we can't plant things in the ground...

On a longer time scale, the thaw absolutely has impacts on many things. Over time the soil WILL develop fertility, if we are around or not at that point idk.

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