Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#21

Post by fromthestart » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

cbkeller wrote: post #18

rland wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just a layman, not a climate scientist, but I don't think the magnitude of the warming is our big issue. The issue is how quickly it's changing. Previous warming events happened very slowly; even the quickest ones occurred over thousands or tens of thousands of years. Ours is happening a couple orders of magnitude faster. We can look back, not at the geological record, but at the biological record. Large, fast sh…

Coming from a geologist, you're exactly right!

As a fellow geoscientist, you especially should be aware of the dating limitations of rock and fossil records. We simply do not have the resolution currently to know whether this kind of warming speed is truely unprecedented.

Hell - a huge part of petroleum exploration is understanding conditions of the surface during deposition of sediment. We're lucky to get 10Ma uncertainty for 100Ma old formations.

I've witnessed firsthand the degree of non scientific handwaving that plagues petroleum geoscience - in both geology and geophysics; and this is in a practical, applied field, where there is some degree of [loose] validation in the form of exploration success/failure. In an unfalsifiable field like climate science, where "validation" consists of retroactively adjusting models with hundreds of variables that can quite literally be tweaked to show almost any outcome? It is simply irrational to not be at least somewhat skeptical.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#22

Post by rwcarlsen » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

calvinbhai wrote: post #9

I cannot take any of these reports seriously unless they are comparing emissions from each country on a per capita basis. This is an easy way to make US look like a responsible polluter compared to India and China. Its a different ball game, if you factor in the total emissions per capita over last 100 years, in which case, US emissions are probably a few multiples over China and India combined (that's my guess. I'm…

Earth's atmosphere doesn't care about per-capita emissions - it just cares about absolute concentrations of greenhouse gases. If you want to solve the problem, largest (in absolute terms - not per capita) emitters need to cut back. Somewhere in the world one human emits more CO2 per capita than everyone else in the world. If they stop emitting, we haven't solved anything.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#23

Post by upofadown » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:47 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #8

>> Even as coal has fallen out of favor in some markets, the rise in emissions has been driven primarily by stronger demand for natural gas and oil This is interesting. If you care about CO2 emissions, you don't want to use coal because it's mostly carbon. But if you care about the greenhouse effect, you probably want to burn coal rather than gas or oil because those contain a lot of hydrogen which forms water vapor…

Water vapour from burning fuel does not contribute to climate change:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_v...

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#24

Post by fromthestart » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:48 PM UTC

ZayleePyrex wrote: post #6

fromthestart wrote: post #5

It's hard for me to take climate science seriously when 1. We know of the state of crisis that all other soft sciences are in (p-value abuse, publish or perish, institutional bias, replication crisis) [3] 2. We know that the earth has been substantially warmer in the past (with accompanyingly higher CO2 levels) and life thrived [2] 3. We know that we've been coming out of an ice age since long before the industrial r…

In response to #2 and #3: https://xkcd.com/1732/ Also, yes. Earth has been substantially warmer in the past. Earth's atmosphere also had higher oxygen levels in the past[1], but it would be very bad for most life on earth if we suddenly returned to those conditions[2]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity

>Exposures, from minutes to a few hours, to partial pressures of oxygen above 1.6 bars (160 kPa)—about eight times normal atmospheric partial pressure—are usually associated with central nervous system oxygen toxicity

You need 8 times current oxygen levels. This is a non issue.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#25

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:48 PM UTC

sologoub wrote: post #17

merlincorey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states that China accounts for twice as much emissions as the United States: > The world’s largest emitter is still China, which produces 27 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the report. The United States accounts for 15 percent of emissions, the European Union 10 percent and India 7 percent. > China’s emissions are projected to rise 4.7 percent in 2018, the report said. The country is stim…

EU seems to be doing way better than the US on a per capita basis - 10% for 512 million people versus 15% for 325 million in US.

Population density (people/km2)

- EU: 116

- US: 33

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#26

Post by fromthestart » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #15

fromthestart wrote: post #5

It's hard for me to take climate science seriously when 1. We know of the state of crisis that all other soft sciences are in (p-value abuse, publish or perish, institutional bias, replication crisis) [3] 2. We know that the earth has been substantially warmer in the past (with accompanyingly higher CO2 levels) and life thrived [2] 3. We know that we've been coming out of an ice age since long before the industrial r…

1. Do you discard all sciences then? 2. Were there mammals living on Earth at these times? 3. Did temperatures rise this fast after the previous ice ages? If so, how did the most complex organisms adapt? Did they survive? 4. Is global warming taboo enough for the fossil fuel industries to look for benefits in all directions? 5. Maybe we're studying the effect of climate change on a shorter time period because the cur…

1. No, but one must be aware of limitations before making decisions

2. Yes, of course, and thriving, e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

3. One of my points is that because of limitations of time resolution of our current data sources, we really don't know.

4. I'm not sure what you mean

5. Again, we don't know. More importantly to this point, you're looking at less than <.001% of time series data and treating it as a trend. This could very easily be a transient spike.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#27

Post by sambull » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:54 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #2

Relatively ignorant observer here. I thought things were looking pretty good on this front. How does this headline square with "The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions" (Oct 2017)? [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-...

It means the natural means of sequestering carbon are being overloaded

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#28

Post by mberning » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

That is a pretty staggering amount of uncertainty. The US for example looks like it could be anywhere from 0.5% to 4.5%. That is something I would like to know with more certainty before undertaking any major public policies.

From a simple triage standpoint it would seem that focusing on developing economies would hold the most promise. China and India are the likely leaders and given the population and current state of development could get much worse.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#29

Post by fromthestart » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

If you want proof as to how taboo climate science skepticism has become, look at how quickly (less than ten minutes) my sourced, rational comment in this thread was down voted and flagged.

Flagged! For skepticism!

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#30

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

It seems to me we are truly and globally fucked:

1. There were just massive protests and riots in France (a relatively ecologically-aware country) due to an increase in the diesel tax of about 8 cents a liter meant to help wean the country off carbon. As a result of the riots, the tax was cancelled.

2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal.

3. Even if places like China and India go all out to try to reduce their reliance on carbon, their huge populations and still relatively low level of development mean that there is a tidal wave of new "carbon users" coming.

It's pretty clear to me that the short/medium term incentives to cheap energy are just much too great to counter the long(er) term impact of climate change. Major change (i.e. in the 3-4 degree range or more) appears completely inevitable to me, and we should at least start recognizing and dealing with that fact. The only thing that can possibly counter this is if the economics change drastically in favor of non-polluting sources, but given the timescale in which that would be necessary and the natural equilibrium economic forces fighting against this (e.g. if wind and solar get much cheaper, could lower demand for oil, but that would also lower price for oil - some alternative oil sources might become uneconomic but I'm certainly betting that all the carbon under Saudi Arabia is eventually going to be in the air), at best we're just extending the inevitable a little bit.

Drastic climate change is coming, and it is unavoidable. The planet (and I believe humanity) will most definitely survive, but sunken cities, mass starvation, climate-change induced wars, stronger and more powerful storms and fires are coming, and at this point there isn't much we can do to stop it.