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Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

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Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#151

Post by msellout »

indefatigable wrote: post #131
graeme wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could equally ask, how do you falsify the theory of 'things continue to be fairly ok'. I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm not sure absolute falsification is meaningful with this kind of prediction. We only have one system, very hard to falsify. We can falsify elements of evidence which suggest one planetary state over another. That's about it.

I'm not sure absolute falsification is meaningful with this kind of prediction. Then it's not science.

Whether or not an activity is science does not affect the need to take action.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#152

Post by SupremumLimit »

DanBC wrote: post #16

What can I, as an individual with no money nor power, do to help stop this? I can reduce my energy use as far as possible. Apart from the online stuff I'm pretty low CO2. I can reduce, reuse, and recycle. (I need to get better at that.) But what else can I do?

As somebody else mentioned elsewhere in the thread, get involved with 350.org, or alternatively Greenpeace. AFAIK, these are the largest and most effective organisations in the climate change area.

We're well past the point where changing individual behaviour will be enough (and also, this strategy has been promoted over the last 30 years and largely failed - emissions are still rising). We need protests and actions that will lead to policy changes around the world and the shutdown of the fossil fuel industry.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#153

Post by Mithaldu »

lutusp wrote: post #107
Mithaldu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please watch this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_... In it Hans Rosling explains how something simple as making people able to use a washing machine to clean their clothes, will ultimately reduce population growth. This is because the knock-on effects of that are that women are more able to educate themselves, more able to keep their kids alive as a result of education and thus the…

> The key is not to educate people about overpopulation, but to educate them effectively in how to remove the need for high reproduction while increasing their life quality. This doesn't take the Population Paradox into account. I'm not saying such measures shouldn't be pursued. To do otherwise would be to abandon democratic principles and the uncontroversial advantages of education. But it won't make any difference.…

> This doesn't take the Population Paradox into account.

Because it's bullshit. The core of it is this statement:

> Insensitive, unintelligent, uncompassionate listeners don't -- they will have the usual number of children.

It entirely ignores the fact that having children and rearing them is WORK, EFFORT. People in poor countries do the work for a single reason: They NEED their kids to care for them in old age. As you remove this need, even dumb people will want to avoid having kids, because it's less work.

There's a reason the US fertility rate has stabilized to 2 childs per woman, and an overpopulated country like china is even below it, and it is that the complex real world pressures cause an equilibrium on their own.

In short: Don't just write massive posts, also ask "why?" a LOT more.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#154

Post by plorkyeran »

waps wrote: post #148
snowwrestler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not two theories; they are more like complimentary consequences. The ocean absorbs excess CO2 from the atmosphere. If it absorbs it as fast as we produce it, there will not be any warming, but a lot of acidification. If it absorbs it much more slowly, then there will be a lot of warming but little acidification. The truth is somewhere in between.

What I don't get is the other part of this statement. Acids, by definition, contain chemical energy that can be harvested by life. What is the basis for the assumption that any ocean acidification won't suddenly disappear, because some algae species decided it is now sufficiently widespread and easy to acquire to use it for lunch ?

That is not necessarily any less catastrophic.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#155

Post by refurb »

Steko wrote: post #143
001sky wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...didnt that just happen? check the data post 98 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

"didnt that just happen?" No. The claim that AGW implies that mean global temperature will increase every single year is a naked straw man. http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/images/uploads/GlobalSurfaceTem...

Ok, but what would need to happen to demonstrate that global warming is not happening? If the warming stopped or reversed over a 5 year period? 10? 20? 50? Never?

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#156

Post by CamperBob2 »

msellout wrote: post #151
indefatigable wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure absolute falsification is meaningful with this kind of prediction. Then it's not science.

Whether or not an activity is science does not affect the need to take action.

Well, yes, it does, or we'll lurch from one imaginary crisis to the next.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#157

Post by danielharan »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #37

The most important component of a strategy to reduce CO2 emissions is a carbon tax, which is economically equivalent to a cap-and-trade system. However, people involved in tech seem to be especially prone to what I call a "problem solving" bias: discrete problems require discrete solutions, and we just have to figure out if the right solution is solar, nuclear, or the Savory Institute. The (correct) economic point of…

A carbon tax is a technocratic solution that requires far too much coordination.

One solution that works at a lower political level if densifying cities and making them walkable. See e.g. grist.org/carbon-zero/

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#159

Post by patrickg_zill »

lutusp wrote: post #138
patrickg_zill wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making a straw man argument, conflating a bad map with supposed bad science... Japan's own testing showed contamination even in 2011, by cesium isotopes, some 2000km out to sea from Fukushima. The answer is, that you don't know.

> You are making a straw man argument, conflating a bad map with supposed bad science... The map was bad, and the science was worse, but there's no meaningful connection between them, certainly not in my presentation. > Japan's own testing showed contamination even in 2011, by cesium isotopes, some 2000km out to sea from Fukushima. Yes, measurable with specialized equipment, but not significantly above the natural ba…

Neither you, nor I, have any idea as to the ultimate fate of the cores that have melted, the other (spent or not) fuel rods, any other radioactive materials on site.

We do know, that they are not contained as of today.

We also know that some unknown amount of radioactive material of unknown composition (Iodine-131, Strontium-90, Cesium-137 - but in what ratio?) enters the atmosphere or the Pacific.

TEPCO does not know the numbers or the amount; and in fact, they hope but do not know for certain that the melted core is still on top of the 7 meter thick concrete slab which is under the pressure vessel that used to hold the core, but which was breached.

Really, your response is arrogant.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#160

Post by CamperBob2 »

kbutler wrote: post #99
masklinn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the pessimists are correct, death due to climate changes will be on the scale of world wars.

If the pessimists are correct, death due to climage changes will be a mass extinction like the end of the Cretaceous period.

Fortunately they've never been correct in the history of recorded civilization.
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