101–110 of 164 posts
To see both the longer trend (graph), a comparison with the value at the same time the previous year, and the current value for CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6 I occasionally check the Global Monitoring Laboratory (NOAA): https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ Link to methane, click on one of the four switched at the top for the others. Warning: It always is pretty depressing to visit this site. You can also check out a tab "G…
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But doesn't the article suggest that the recent rapid rise comes from methane produced by microbes? If this is true, it is not the melting permafrost, but (intensive) agriculture that is the culprit. > But since 2007, when methane levels began to rise more rapidly again, the proportion of methane containing 13C began to fall (see ‘The rise and fall of methane’). Some researchers believe that this suggests that much o…
Isn't the methane in permafrost produced by microbes? It's basically wet lands that ended up being frozen, and as they thaw they go back to releasing the methane being processed by the breakdown of organic matter from microbes.
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A couple things. First is that we are on track to overshoot the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C. It's now more a question of how much we are going to blow past 1.5C. Every bit counts now and a pulse of very potent greenhouse gasses at this time is very unhelpful. 2. There could be tipping points that aren't predictable. Methane may temporarily add a small increase to the global average temps, but could end up being…
Alternatively, attempting to curtail human emissions to some arbitrary level will, unquestionably, have drastic impact on human quality of life worldwide and the impact will be particularly acute on the developing world and those in poverty in the developed world. Large, influential emitters like China and India will not play ball. As such, the climate experiment will inevitably continue unabated, despite any of the…
That being said I see no reason why doing any of the things mainstream scientists and economists are calling for would in any way diminish anyone's quality of life. If anything it will improve quality of life at the very least by reducing air pollution and it will prevent drastic reductions in quality of life in the coming decades from the effects of unchecked global warming.
I really don't know where this crap even comes from. Like we get x amount of energy from fossil fuels. Therefore we must reduce energy usage by that much? Do you think that's what we're advocating for?
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BTW she works for the Environmental Defense Fund who will soon be launching a satellite to measure methane (funded by a $100MM grant from Bezos). Despite giving a TED talk she's a serious scientist.
"Despite giving a TED talk she's a serious scientist." I was actually trying to edit my comment to hone in the fact that the video is a good one despite being on TED. ;-)
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4 : space colonies
If we can't live comfortably on earth (even with the worst expected effects from climate change), how can we live on another planet or in outer space which has a far less hospitable environment than any climate change could cause here on earth. I think of space colonies as being protection from some catastrophic event on earth, not as an answer to climate change. It's not like we could move significant numbers of peo…
Rather than spending the next few hundred years going round and round in ever-decreasing circles, obsessing over reducing the human impact on the planet to negligible levels using limited technological advances, while remaining largely inward-looking and ensconced within our gravity well.
I find that there's a weird mixture of pessimism (billions will die of starvation within 30 years) and hubris (we need to adopt measure X so that we can achieve Y degrees of warming by 2050, rather than Y+1 degrees) that has categorised the more prominent Malthusian technocrats over the last few decades (such as the Club of Rome, and then the IPCC).
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Or we could go with the cheap option. If there’s anything that the global pandemic taught us, it is that nothing about human behavior is ever set in stone and there will always be a way to make even draconian policies like lockdowns and mandatory face masks politically viable. The billions we’d spend building the crazy ideas you suggested which also have no guarantee of success, could be channeled into whatever it ta…
I’ve burnt 12 cars after lockdowns to ensure that you don’t get the idea that climate lockdowns would be a nice solution after Covid lockdowns. My CO2 emissions now far outweigh (perhaps 10x) the base level, not to talk about the poor grandmas who can’t afford a new car. Lockdowns are absolutely horrible. I don’t get why you don’t kill us directly, and pretend to do it for our health. Suicide, harm, family violence,…
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>China and India will not play ball. That is a lame excuse, mostly used by people from developed countries that are responsible for the issue, so you dodge responsibility and also try to put blame on the developing country why you are continuing screwing the environment. It is like you have a history of you and your ancestors abusing your children and you don't want to stop because the new neighbor is also abusing hi…
> It is like you have a history of you and your ancestors abusing your children and you don't want to stop because the new neighbor is also abusing his children too This is a poor metaphor. It's more akin to having a family history of child abuse, trying to stop the cycle, explaining to your neighbor why it's bad, and then your neighbor saying "well, your grandpa beat the shit out of your dad, so we get to beat our k…
Additionally the idea that deploying new technologies equates to economic self harm is absurd. The price per kilowatt hour of renewable energy has been dropping continuously for decades in a pattern similar to moores law. Soon renewable energy will be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it will be similar to what the discovery of crude oil deposits did to the whale oil industry. Betting on fossil fuels from an economic perspective is stupid as hell in 2022 and risking the survival of worldwide ecosystems and society on that bet is literally the stupidest thing I can think of people advocating for.
China is a problem. We absolutely need China to reduce their emissions much more aggressively than they are. Instead of using them as an excuse to sleepwalk humanity towards potential catastrophe we should be reducing our own emissions so as to have a legitimate position from which to argue about what China should be doing while using our significant economic leverage to incentivize China to reduce their emissions.
To see both the longer trend (graph), a comparison with the value at the same time the previous year, and the current value for CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6 I occasionally check the Global Monitoring Laboratory (NOAA): https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ Link to methane, click on one of the four switched at the top for the others. Warning: It always is pretty depressing to visit this site. You can also check out a tab "G…
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Watching climate change deniers periodically change up their bullshit because the old bullshit got too obviously wrong has been equal parts hilarious and frustrating. I guess now we're at the "okay okay fine, it's a problem, and humans are causing it. But we should still do nothing to fix it, because... China?" Screaming right past the acceptance stage and in for another loop of denial.
Why is that unreasonable? US emissions are actually lower than in the past. But the US could go to zero and if China and India don't lower emission it won't matter . Tragedy of the commons and all.