Live data from Hacker News

Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

today.oregonstate.edu

361–370 of 504 posts

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the IPCC being very conservative/optimistic in their scenarios, this is in fact in line with their reports; admittedly my comment above might be badly worded - when I said "near-term", I meant "in the upcoming two centuries or so". The IPCC reports say we might reach 4C, 5C or even more; based on the historical record, such a major change in such a short time - several orders of magnitude faster than previous…

There is lots of space on earth that would be a lot more hospitable to humans if 5C warmer. Like the central eurasian steppe.

average is an average, you're forgetting about extremes.

it only takes a few days (or hours) of above wet bulb temperatures to kill humans who live in and around the tropics today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#362
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything we should see significantly accelerated plant growth by about 10 to 50% If that’s true, there should be global evidence of this happening already- are you aware of any publications confirming this effect? You say accelerated growth like it’d be a good thing, but I don’t think we should wish for it or expect that to mitigate any damage… getting to the point of doubled CO2 would probably be extremely bad.…

> there should be global evidence of this happening already There is. https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization... for instance. "From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25." Interesting observati…

From your article:

"The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time."

The beneficial effects of increased CO2 will also be more than counteracted by other problems as the world temperature rises, such as greater heat stress and lower soil moisture.

> Trillions of dollars have been spent to date on emission reduction with many incurring a consequent lowering of quality of life

It's cheaper to avoid the warming in the first place rather than deal with the consequences, so complaining about the cost is a false economy.

> To date (as far as I can tell) there has been no discernible reduction in the rate of increase in CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa station

It's possible that we've reached peak CO2 emissions:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

...however we need to cut them significantly.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#363
post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

#1 isn't happening anytime soon, nothing we have is on a path in that direction. #2 people always worry about, but it's almost certainly not going to happen - insane dictators or no. Even in much worse scenarios we avoided it. #3 Real, but slow. I think we'll see some coastal communities devastated over the course of the next ~50 years, but the rest of the world will adapt and/or sweep it under the rug as best they c…

#2 People aren't evaluating this risk correctly. If the war in Ukraine has taught me anything, it's that the assertions, "Putin would never do..." is wrong.

#3 The real risk is the refugee crisis. The world is going to be split into two groups: refugees, and those trying to keep the refugees away. Large countries are going to experience crises from both internal and external migration. Think, people from mexico flooding into texas, while people from Texas flood north into the great plains. It's going to happen slowly, then all at once.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places could increase food production to twice what it is today if 5C warmer.

We're at +1.5C, more or less, and growing the usual grapes in France - of all places - is already becoming much harder (they keep dying of frost after waking up due to wild temperature swings). At +5C, there is no growing food in any substantial amount outside of high tech, low yield approaches; approaches that depend on complex planetary supply chains (both for initial deployment and maintenance), which will have di…

> At +5C, there is no growing food in any substantial amount outside of high tech,

It seems you have some specific geographic region in mind. Earth has a lot of regions that are more than 5C colder than the most fertile regions.

People adapt. People move. Sometimes they fight wars about it. This has happened many times before.

We're currently living it the most peaceful, prosperous and safest period that humanity has ever experienced. (Despite what social media is tricking our brains into believing). In the future we will surely live through periods that are closer to the average. But I'm not seeing any extinction-level events due to climate change within the next few hundred years.

AGI or nukes, on the other hand, they both DO have the potential to end us as a species.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#365
post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

1) Is real but will have net positive impact on humanity (of course there will be losers, but like most new technologies humans will have more for less effort) 2) It is real but unlikely to end humanity. Much more likely to create large areas that are unlivable, but a lot of work has gone into avoiding world ending scenarios. 3) Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong.…

Average increase of temperature has negative consequences, but the accompanying variance increase has a lot more catastrophic impact. Storms, forest fires, floods, droughts are some of those things where increased variance can screw societies over.

A lot of this can push insurance costs so high, that insurance companies stop working. There are only so many times insurance can payout damage due to extreme storms, or crop failure. Once insurance stops, there is rapid deterioration of infrastructure.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#366
post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

1) Is real but will have net positive impact on humanity (of course there will be losers, but like most new technologies humans will have more for less effort) 2) It is real but unlikely to end humanity. Much more likely to create large areas that are unlivable, but a lot of work has gone into avoiding world ending scenarios. 3) Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong.…

This is what passes for common sense when you live in a conservative media bubble. The mainstream of climate science as represented by the IPCC has tended to be over conservative when it comes to how much change we should expect over a given period of time.

Right wing media outlets focus on the the predictions of lay people like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg and use those to try to dismiss the entire field of climatology. Which is a non sequitur.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And did you do it?

I actually had sea level rise and radius from likely thermonuclear targets in mind when I bought my house. I hadn't read The Science yet, so I believed The Propaganda. Now that I've read The Science (IPCC reports), it turns out sea levels are unlikely to rise more than 50cm, and definitely not 10+ meters like I was preparing for.

> radius from likely thermonuclear targets

which direction did you take it though? did you move to a place away from likely targets (which really, with as many nukes that are out there, what's not a target?), or did you move closer so that you'd be taken out in the first wave and spared the life of misery after? my dad used to say that one of the deciding factors where he chose to build the house I grew up in was based on the latter.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please explain how #3 is a non-threat?

And how hypothetical global warming is a threat? So let's assume it's happening. Let's assume some ices melt and ocean level rises. Let's assume some coastal cities gets flooded. Just move to higher places, eh? Why do you live in coast anyway, what a weird thing. I'd welcome global warming, I tired of paying $50/month every winter just to keep my house warm.

Your comment is so misguided I can’t tell if you’re joking, trolling, or serious. I don’t know what else to say other than please keep the following in mind: CO2 is transparent to solar radiation, but opaque/reflective to the IR wavelengths that earth radiates heat back to space.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#369
post #280

Climate change is unavoidable. People should start moving to highland now.

This is often said in the sense that “we shouldn’t try to stop it we should just adapt” No one ever thinks of ports. Imagine rebuilding all port infrastructure every 5-10 years. Move to highlands all you want but simply giving up is not likely to be cheaper.

We probably won't rebuild most of what is lost. People will largely have to make due with living in poverty for an indeterminate number of generations.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, this is correct. In theory a command from e.g. the President is authoritative and should legally be carried out. In practice, you'd require every person along the chain to implicitly agree to effectively ending the world. Even at the bottom of the chain, there are likely multi-key requirements so even there you don't have just one person with his hand on the trigger. This makes one of the biggest thr…

In America this is not actually a useful thing. America's ICBM silos have technicians sitting in front of consoles, and basically every day, they get a command of keywords/numbers to punch into the computers. The technicians do not know whether the numbers are a test, or a real launch, at any time. This is purposely designed to prevent a low level button pusher from preventing the US from launching nukes. If the pres…

This seems to run contrary to basically everything I've read on this topic. For instance during Trump's presidency there was a tremendous amount of fearmongering about him possibly wanting to nuke North Korea. This led to commentary from numerous generals and others opining on the topic about whether they would or would not obey the order. Here's some rando link. [1] The sort of system you're describing would enable the President to unilaterally carry out illegal orders independent of the military. I just find it difficult to imagine that they would concede that, not only because of the power concession, but because of the ethical or even constitutional implications. Notably officers don't swear an oath to their commanding officer or anything of the sort - they swear it to the Constitution.

As for Nixon, he was literally playing the madman as part of a strategic goal [2] (arguably the exact same thing North Korea is doing in modern times), but privately was the one who ultimately scrapped a plan that involved nuking Vietnam. [3] A nice quote from the Madman article (from Nixon), "I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

[1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5082689/Retired-gen...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hook

Post reply on HN