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Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

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Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#111

Post by maxxxxx »

rexaliquid wrote: post #87
maxxxxx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It can destroy all human civilization." I think saying stuff like this should be avoided. There is almost no chance that civilization will be destroyed. There will be major problems but the world won't go under. By making up total doom scenarios credibility of climate change proponents goes down a lot in my view.

Our systems of civil society are fairly robust, but at some point those major problems become greater than our ability to cope. Unfortunately, "almost no chance" and "no chance" are not the same thing.

It just seems highly unlikely to me. Even if 90% of the world becomes uninhabitable there is still plenty of space left for a lot of people. You can lose 90% or even 99% of world population and will still have a lot of people left. Not saying this is a good thing but I just don't believe civilization will get totally wiped out. Emphasis is on "totally".

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#112

Post by lozenge »

evanlivingston wrote: post #61
pacala wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US emissions have plateaued two decades ago [0]. Emissions are growing unchecked elsewhere, a combination of population explosion and rapid industrialization. [0] http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/chinese-co2-emis...

I'm curious if the various ways American's and America spends it's money and consumes its good is factored into U.S. emissions. Does the carbon it takes to produce an iphone and then ship it here count? What about all the fuel/power used by military bases abroad? Does our purchasing of Foreign cars count?

Under most measures it isn't counted. What you are looking for is called consumption-based emissions accounting and unsurprisingly it shows US emissions are still going up.

Moving to consumption based accounting aligns closely with the generally accepted best economic solution for reducing emissions - a global carbon tax, which would be pushed onto developing countries as a requirement when they want to export to developed countries.

Incidentally, the US military has been exempt from all climate agreements since Kyoto, and so are international flights.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#113

Post by ekianjo »

leggomylibro wrote: post #110
mlloyd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God that is hard to read. The guy might be thought a genius but I got absolutely nothing from that passage save the penguins.

Honestly, I think he's more seen as a pulp-y xenophobe than a genius. But could he write portentous purple prose, or what?

> xenophobe

More than the people of his time?

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#114

Post by lozenge »

vkou wrote: post #67
pacala wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US emissions have plateaued two decades ago [0]. Emissions are growing unchecked elsewhere, a combination of population explosion and rapid industrialization. [0] http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/chinese-co2-emis...

Emission growth has stopped, but what we need to do is hit net zero. We are no closer to that today then we were 20 years ago. There isn't even a vague plan for the United States to get there.

I don't know why you're downvoted. The RCPs that show us respecting the goal of the 2C limit all show emissions need to shrink globally and reach zero around 2050 or even earlier. The fact emissions have stopped growing is not really much progress. It is like we are cruising to disaster rather than accelerating towards it.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#115

Post by rexaliquid »

maxxxxx wrote: post #111
rexaliquid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our systems of civil society are fairly robust, but at some point those major problems become greater than our ability to cope. Unfortunately, "almost no chance" and "no chance" are not the same thing.

It just seems highly unlikely to me. Even if 90% of the world becomes uninhabitable there is still plenty of space left for a lot of people. You can lose 90% or even 99% of world population and will still have a lot of people left. Not saying this is a good thing but I just don't believe civilization will get totally wiped out. Emphasis is on "totally".

I think you are equating "human civilization" with "humanity". I agree that some people are likely to survive a catastrophe, but I don't think that what we think of as civilization is likely to survive a 90% or 99% population reduction.

Or as lifeformed put it elsewhere: "Destroying all civilization doesn't mean destroying all humans, but just the structures that hold society together. A runaway heating scenario may be a pretty effective way of doing that - all crops die, wars for food, nukes get used."

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#116

Post by thrillgore »

matte_black wrote: post #26
corpMaverick wrote: post #2

It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything. Edit: Doom scale... 1 Inconvenient storms. 2 More frequent natural disasters. 3 Destroying coastal cities. 4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations. 5 Decimating human population. 6 Destroying human civilization. 7 Destroying all humans on earth. 8 Destroying all lif…

There is something we can do. We can enjoy what we have here and now, for as long as it lasts, for as long as we can.

As long as I have a guarantee we can preserve our culture, I can care less about my future. Even if we lose our species, we should leave something behind that indicates we mattered.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#117

Post by sndean »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #7

There could be anything underneath all the permafrost, including new biodiversity which we haven't catalogued yet. NPR ran a story[0] where Russian animals such as reindeer infected with Anthrax had thawed out, and caused outbreaks where people had to get preventative treatments against it. As a future threat model, what if there's new viruses or bacterium contained under previously frozen earth for which modern medi…

> what if there's new viruses or bacterium contained under previously frozen earth for which modern medicine isn't prepared for?

A group at Harvard found that the traits that now enable enterococcal survival and transmission in hospitals were an advantage in the Paleozoic [0] and suggest that the multidrug resistant (i.e., untreatable) strains seen in hospitals were trained to be that way millions of years ago. There was also a split between commensal/friendly and unfriendly enterococci around the time of urbanization. So it's certainly possible that we'd encounter something we don't have an answer for. It has already been seen, in a way.

[0] http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30478-6

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#118

Post by craftyguy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #71
hanniabu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and yet our governments

In all countries that matter, governments are elected. And they do what they need to do to be elected for the next term. Assuming they really swept global warming under the rug, they did it because accounting for it was unpopular. We prefer to vote for a candidate that won't reduce our comfort rather than one who decides to tackle a problem most people don't really understand. We are the ones to blame, governments ju…

> In all countries that matter, governments are elected.

Well, except China, and Russia, two very large industrial nations that certainly matter in terms of global impact. You're kidding yourself if you believe those governments are elected.

> We are the ones to blame, governments just gave us what we wanted.

No, governments are giving their sponsors what they want. The electorate is led to believe they want it too.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#119

Post by kmm »

goatlover wrote: post #39
jjoonathan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there credible models that suggest Earth will turn into Venus or something? It would take a hell of a lot more to end humanity than it would take to "merely" hurt/kill the most vulnerable segments of our population (which is what I thought the stakes were).

No, the Earth has been a lot warmer and colder in the past. We've had massive volcanoes going off for thousands of years, we've had iceball earth, we've had crocodiles and palm trees in the arctic. The Earth's systems always balance out over the long run. We don't stay trapped in ice ages or hot phases.

The difference with the past is that the sun is slowly getting hotter. Increasing the incoming solar power by a mere 10% would be enough to tip the climate into a runaway process that will boil the oceans and scour the surface. Our Earth only has a billion more years to go

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131216142310.h...

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