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Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#141

Post by aidenn0 »

mikekchar wrote: post #134
MikeHolman wrote: post #72

I've been having a bit of an existential crisis about this recently. Is sustainability even possible anymore? We are obviously living beyond the capacity of the earth to cope right now. But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?

I'm going to suggest 2 things which have historically been unpopular in my postings :-) 1. We don't need to sustain this many people 2. We don't need to sustain this standard of living The first one is pretty straight forward, although it's going to take another 100 years to sort out (barring a major disaster). Shifting child bearing years from the early 20's to the early 30's and changing cultural habits so that eac…

I'm going to posit that many of your proposed changes to standard of living aren't even downgrades. For the most part, cities eliminate cars in town centers to raise the standard of living, not out of fear of pending ecological disaster.

As far as consumerism, I think a lot of it is driven partly by corporations desperately trying to avoid us ending up in a post-scarcity society; inducing artificial scarcity by emphasizing fashion and planned obsolescence is a great way to capture what otherwise would have been excess wealth.

On top of that, certain resources are either naturally or artificially constrained, which lets the owners of those resources collect rent, again capturing what otherwise would have been excess wealth.

On a side note, I don't have air conditioning, and my house gets much warmer than 30C in the summer. Anywhere above about 32C is just plain too hot for me to do anything other than lay underneath a fan and drink water, so if I need to get work done I go to a coffee shop. At 15C I put on a sweater and am fine down to about 5C (assuming I'm sheltered from the wind). My wife, however is shivering under six layers of blankets and 3 layers of clothes at 5C, but is perfectly chipper up to about 35C. It's lucky we don't have thermostats because we already argue about when the windows should be open!

[edit]

About the clothes dryer... I live in a semi-arid area now, so I understand how clothes lines could work. I grew up in an area where much of the year at least one of the following would apply:

1) Raining

2) over 90% humidity

3) below freezing

clothes lines in those conditions were more than a minor inconvenience.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#142

Post by bjz_ »

fabled_giraffe wrote: post #91
MikeHolman wrote: post #72

I've been having a bit of an existential crisis about this recently. Is sustainability even possible anymore? We are obviously living beyond the capacity of the earth to cope right now. But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?

I believe in global warming, but I also think a higher or lower temperature Earth with a greater level of CO2 just means that different organisms will thrive. We think that we have damaged the Earth, but the Earth is much, much older than us, and we've barely made a dent if you consider the full lifetime of everything that ever will be. Now- if we had started a global thermonuclear war and eradicated all life on Eart…

Yes, these things will be rendered insignificant in the fullness of time, but as a human's with limited lives, it's still important to maintain empathy towards the human suffering of the here-and-now, and the very near future. It will be painful, it will be stressful, and we need to brace ourselves for the reality that many of our fellow humans will die from famine, regional war, and refugee crises whilst we struggle to adapt to and mitigate the worst of it.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#143

Post by foobarian »

partisan wrote: post #136
mikeash wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd to see people criticizing each other because their comments are too human-centric. I happen to be human, and I believe the same is true of most of the commenters here. I don't really care very much about what happens to the Earth as a whole, but the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me.

> the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me Just curious about what drives that particular viewpoint. Why do you care about the survival of the species? When you die, the world ends. It doesn't really matter what happens after that, does it? You could be dead two milliseconds and then a big rock hits the Earth and everything is gone. Still it doesn't impact you, because you are dead. And I am…

I suspect this kind of thinking is an innate evolutionary reflex. Similar to why people love having kids.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#144

Post by r00fus »

josho wrote: post #62
willholloway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can fix this, we can take the carbon out of the atmosphere [1]. There is reason for optimism. We. Are. Not. Doomed. The optimum level of carbon is probably slightly above pre-industrial levels. We definitely need to get back below 350ppm to keep human civilization... civilized. 400ppm+ is a trajectory to anarchy. The chimpanzee raiding impulse is alive and well in our DNA, a survival adaptation for stagnation and…

Yup that's all true. But when the next president of the largest economy either doesn't believe in climate change or wants to increase fracking then we clearly have a long way to go before change happens.

Both party candidates believe in fracking. Not sure how we lower our CO levels while fracking is the new coal.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#145

Post by brooklyndavs »

MikeHolman wrote: post #72

I've been having a bit of an existential crisis about this recently. Is sustainability even possible anymore? We are obviously living beyond the capacity of the earth to cope right now. But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?

"But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?"

In short no.

The reason being the current system requires endless growth (measured currently in GDP) in order sustain this many people with current standards of living. Of course current standards of living are not enough, especially for people in poverty around with world. If growth doesn't continue the entire economic system grinds to a halt. However, endless growth confined to a closed system (Earth) is not sustainable not only for the climate but also for resources like water, food, etc.

Geoengineering is just another foolish attempt of humans to try to bend the planet to our wishes. This line of thinking, that we are somehow better than the earth, somehow removed from all earth systems as a species, is what got us in this mess in the first place. Yes, I realize the irony of saying this on a forum with readers, like myself, who solve technical problems for a living.

Parts of the environmental movement are now starting to focus on economic system change for this very reason.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#146

Post by yongjik »

Tushon wrote: post #133
rosser wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get ready to enjoy eating things made from jellyfish. Like, a lot of them.

I would venture that seaweed or algae is more likely.

As a Korean, I'm glad we're prepared. Jellyfish salad and seaweed soup, anyone? :)

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#147

Post by edanm »

fratlas wrote: post #82
lprubin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having kids may be one of the biggest forms of environmental activism.

This. I had an argument with a friend because I said having more than 3 kids is selfish, and conversely, having fewer kids (or adopting) is selfless and should be praised. They retorted saying it should be part of an individual's freedom to have as many as they wish. I think after a few more generations we may be looking at a world wide child policy (similar to China).

I don't think it's that clear cut. Other than the personal freedom aspect, which I agree with, you can also argue that more people == more scientists/engineers/minds working on advancing our technological capabilities. This is arguably the number one thing that will lead to a solution.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#148

Post by JustUhThought »

willholloway wrote: post #55
lisper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I reading the visualization right that CO2 practically disappears every summer? No. The concentration does drop seasonally, but not even close to zero. See: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ Click on the "full record" tab and note that the Y axis starts at 320 (compared to the preindustrial level of 270). The seasonal drop is about 5PPM, and we're at about 400 now, roughly 50% over pre-industrial levels.…

We can fix this, we can take the carbon out of the atmosphere [1]. There is reason for optimism. We. Are. Not. Doomed. The optimum level of carbon is probably slightly above pre-industrial levels. We definitely need to get back below 350ppm to keep human civilization... civilized. 400ppm+ is a trajectory to anarchy. The chimpanzee raiding impulse is alive and well in our DNA, a survival adaptation for stagnation and…

"The optimum level of carbon..."

Such a human thing to say.

Between that, and all the top comments as of writing this start out addressing how beautiful the data visualization is. That is why humans are doomed.

Mother nature is fine with or without us.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#149

Post by nardi »

zaroth wrote: post #88
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I reading the visualization right that CO2 practically disappears every summer? Wouldn't it logically follow then that we're not actually too late to fix our CO2 levels? If we can reduce emissions, plant consumption during the summer months for the northern hemisphere appears to be incredibly effective at basically demolishing the built-up CO2. Or is the "too late" aspect more about the melting polar caps, and tha…

The NASA video is very pretty, but the scale is like a line chart where the y-axis doesn't start at zero -- it's picked to most vividly distinguish minute changes in CO2 concentrations. The linked WaPo article has a chart which is much less pretty, but much more informative and significantly more troubling. [1] What you see from the zoomed-out historical chart is the variations throughout the year which produced such…

More importantly, the NASA video is only for a single year (2006). The chart from WaPo that you linked clearly shows the problem with looking at only a single year of data.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#150

Post by foxylad »

mikekchar wrote: post #134
MikeHolman wrote: post #72

I've been having a bit of an existential crisis about this recently. Is sustainability even possible anymore? We are obviously living beyond the capacity of the earth to cope right now. But is it even possible to sustain this many people (at current standards of living with foreseeable technology)?

I'm going to suggest 2 things which have historically been unpopular in my postings :-) 1. We don't need to sustain this many people 2. We don't need to sustain this standard of living The first one is pretty straight forward, although it's going to take another 100 years to sort out (barring a major disaster). Shifting child bearing years from the early 20's to the early 30's and changing cultural habits so that eac…

Refreshing viewpoint. I agree with both suggestions.

I hope as you do that humans start limiting their population. It seems to me that we can either breed un-controllable and have the maximum number of humans living awful lives fighting for scarce resources; or we can control our population and have less humans living happy sustainable lives.

Thanks to technological advances, those living today have been blessed with plentiful resources, which has meant most of us have had happy lives. Read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for what happens when resources run out - in almost all cases, humans start literally eating each other within a generation.

And you are right on the standard of living too. We can (and most of humanity does) have very happy and fulfilled lives with a fraction of the resources most western people consume. Go and knit a sweater/carve a spoon/write a poem, instead of watching the Kardashians (or Cardasians!).

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