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Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

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Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#181

Post by FrozenVoid »

RandyRanderson wrote: post #133

Sea level rise is neither the largest nor most immediate threat of climate change. Water happens to have one of the highest, and I would argue, the most important thermal capacity of all the compounds we're likely to come into contact with daily. Water has about 5-10x the heat capacity of most common things and so heating up the all the oceans by say 2 degs average is an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Why is this importa…

Actually, escalating death of plankton and growth of anoxic zones are more important: it will cause systemic collapse of marine food chain. Storm damage can be mitigated(e.g. netherlands) http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping... https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-lo... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-beng...

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#182

Post by fsloth »

giardini wrote: post #155

Why the Chicken Little sky-is-falling panic? By the time the Earth freezes over or turns into a dustball (or whatever other disastrous scenario you envision): a) we'll have AI that can solve the climate problem cost-effectively, or b) we will pass our legacy on to our AI descendants, just like in the movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", where, at the end humans are extinct and Manhattan is buried under a glacier. Ni…

Both of those scenerios are so ill defined that at this point it's lunacy to think they are solutions to anything. This leads me to conclude you think our level of understanding is about two or three magnitudes higher than it actually is. We don't understand brains or intelligence. Therefore thinking we could replicate them is silly since we don't even know what to replicate.

This is not to say the march of creating ever better learning systems will not eventually reach "sentient parity" with humans, what ever that is, but that we have no idea what that would actually mean or entail.

On neuroscience, we are like paleolithic hunters trying to create the best spear to reach the moon. Yes, the same intelligence that allows homo sapiens to craft - more or less - better sticks for millenias will eventually lead to spaceflight. But it's a long way off.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#183

Post by peteretep »

programmernews3 wrote: post #176
peteretep wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Geo-engineering projects could not > come too soon And also, treating climate-change deniers like a cross between holocaust deniers and flat-earthers can't come soon enough.

We also need to treat people that ignore evidence of racial differences the same then. It is obvious to see - marathon runners, sprinters, etc

We don't ignore it. There's just not very much high quality evidence, and — unlike climate change — knowing that the distribution curve for blue vs green people is shifted over 5 IQ points gives virtually nobody any actionable information. Generally, in fact, it's leapt upon by people who don't understand the evidence or enough statistics as a cover for their prejudice.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#184

Post by basurihn »

josho wrote: post #44
dmix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Can anyone recommend a book that gives a good overview of current climate science? And what hypothetical scenarios may exist in the future?

An excellent introductory book is Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen. It speaks to the science and directly addresses the common objections that deniers bring up. What surprised me is that the science comes at this from multiple angles, so even if someone were to dispute the computer models, then we have other lines of science that still back the theories, e.g. looking at the environment over geologic time sc…

James Hansen is the Doctor Oz of climate change. Dude will release study after study before they hit peer review. He's a god damn charlatan.

https://theconversation.com/study-predicts-multi-meter-sea-l...

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#185

Post by scatters »

programmernews3 wrote: post #176
peteretep wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Geo-engineering projects could not > come too soon And also, treating climate-change deniers like a cross between holocaust deniers and flat-earthers can't come soon enough.

We also need to treat people that ignore evidence of racial differences the same then. It is obvious to see - marathon runners, sprinters, etc

What's so supposedly obvious? The best sprinters and marathon runners both are "black" according to conventional racial categorization. If you want to tell whether someone is likely to be a good sprinter, looking at their "race" alone is practically useless.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#186

Post by basurihn »

dmix wrote: post #40
AaronFriel wrote: post #28

As no one has mentioned it in the comments, the belief that this is concerning is related to the "Clathrate gun hypothesis"[1]. Essentially, low temperatures have allowed vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide containing compounds to accumulate for millennia. If the temperatures rise above a critical threshold, a positive feedback loop would exist between temperatures and global warming. Positive feedback loop…

Interesting. Can anyone recommend a book that gives a good overview of current climate science? And what hypothetical scenarios may exist in the future?

If you want an initial overview without all the hype, try:http://www.amplifier.gatech.edu/contributors/blogs/posts/201...

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#187

Post by basurihn »

basurihn wrote: post #186
dmix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Can anyone recommend a book that gives a good overview of current climate science? And what hypothetical scenarios may exist in the future?

If you want an initial overview without all the hype, try: http://www.amplifier.gatech.edu/contributors/blogs/posts/201...

And the sequel:https://enjeuxenergies.wordpress.com/2017/02/17/nature-unbou...

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#188

Post by zaroth »

Robotbeat wrote: post #123
flukus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the sun wasn't so bright then either.

If you're talking about when all the coal was buried, that was about 350 million years ago in the Carboniferous Period (so named because that's when the plant matter that became our coal was laid down). And yeah, it does appear the Sun was about 2-3% less intense, corresponding to roughly 2-3 degrees Celsius in the case of a blackbody at equilibrium in space. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/01/sun-…

That's a pretty neat fact, I didn't know the sun was measurably brightening over that timespan.

So the obvious solution is we just need to darken the sun a bit.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#189

Post by raverbashing »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #181
RandyRanderson wrote: post #133

Sea level rise is neither the largest nor most immediate threat of climate change. Water happens to have one of the highest, and I would argue, the most important thermal capacity of all the compounds we're likely to come into contact with daily. Water has about 5-10x the heat capacity of most common things and so heating up the all the oceans by say 2 degs average is an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Why is this importa…

Actually, escalating death of plankton and growth of anoxic zones are more important: it will cause systemic collapse of marine food chain. Storm damage can be mitigated(e.g. netherlands) http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping... https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-lo... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-beng...

Well, it's evolutionary pressure in action. Plankton will survive, and the ones who survive will have more food available

Algae will probably avail of the increased CO2 concentrations as well.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#190

Post by hueving »

drdrey wrote: post #81
hueving wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would civilization be over? The sea rise wouldn't happen over night and people would move or build walls.

We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now caused in part by a not-so-great-but-not-devastating economy and the Syrian refugee crisis. Imagine a worldwide crisis with tens or hundreds of millions of people losing their homes and livelihood, how is that going to play out?

>We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now

This is definitely not true for the US. At least not by any global notion of political instability. The US government isn't near collapse, there is a very limited likelihood of any kind of coup, the economy is doing very well, and riots have been very rare.

There is a lot of political bickering, but it doesn't seem to be any more-so than during the last party-in-the-office changes (Clinton to Bush, Bush to Obama).

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