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We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

scientificamerican.com

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Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#81

Post by semi-extrinsic »

hyperbovine wrote: post #53
JshWright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

I take his point about predictions not factoring in any sort of human mitigation, though. It's pretty obvious to me that inventing ways to fight or even reverse global warming (basically, geoengineering) is going to become the defining scientific and industrial challenge of our (grand-)childrens' era. Think solid-state electronics or genomics but on an entirely larger, more urgent scale. Pretty much the only thing ke…

Mitigation isn't a big technological challenge per se. The big showstopper is the fear of the unknown unknowns; the remote possibility that despite our careful science and engineering, the cure ends up being worse than the disease. Because we only have one shot, and no "undo" button, large scale geoengineering will be put off for as long as possible.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#82

Post by ivanhoe »

shouldbworking wrote: post #4

I don't know much about climate science, but won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? I guess the only danger is reaching thermal runaway before that happens? Then again, earth CO2 levels have been far higher in the past without signs that it killed off much life on Earth. Is rising CO2 that dangerous? Don't humans already have effective ways to reduce surface heating…

Not an expert on climate either, but I own an aquarium so have a decent experience with artificially high CO2 levels. It's a common trick to inject pressurised CO2 to aquarium to speed up growth in planted freshwater aquariums. It works great for plants, but only if you provide them sufficient levels of other two necessary components: light and nutrients. If either of those is lacking plants will actually suffer, become unhealthy or algae will take over. Nature is all about balance, so you better increase all variables or not touch anything. Increasing just one almost always generates instability which can easily cascade into a disaster for farmers and the whole ecosystem. And it's such a dynamic system with so many variables in play that it's impossible to account for all possible side-effects this can create.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#83

Post by mchannon »

hartator wrote: post #69
mchannon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's easily explained. About half the O2 lost through burning of hydrocarbons becomes CO2. Other half becomes H2O. The latter doesn't increase its percentage in the atmosphere just because there's more of it.

Yeah, but my point is that lack of O2 is very easy to explain why it's bad of the health!

Silly point. O2 shortages are irrelevant- 210,000ppm to 209,800ppm O2 is far less of concern than 300ppm to 400ppm CO2.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#84

Post by cardamomo »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #73
cardamomo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an apt analogy. > I ask whats going to happen when the building gets hotter quickly and get 10 different answers. It shouldn't be surprising that there isn't one clear answer. Earth is a complex system, and it is changing in many ways right now. > I ask if it's actually even bad that the building is getting hotter quickly and everyone says "Of course it is! It's never heated up this fast before!" The pace…

> Not an option. Actually, it is an option. Either we can take CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back underground where it came from; or we could start doing climate engineering to increase the reflectivity of Earth (less sunlight in), using water vapor clouds at low altitude or aerosols at high altitude; or we could put up a big shade in space between us and the sun. Are those expensive and difficult things? Defi…

I guess I was thinking more literally: the Earth does not have large windows we can use to exchange air with the outside environment. Carbon sequestration doesn't remove CO2 from our "spaceship," though it may help.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#85

Post by cel1ne »

acabal wrote: post #42

Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help? I've come to think that climate change will be humanity's defining moment, and that we'll all be suffering greatly come mid-to-late-century. I want to do what I can to put my professional skills to use in helping. But I'm not sure where to even begin.

There is a nice essay about that, by Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#86

Post by iand »

JshWright wrote: post #15
shouldbworking wrote: post #4

I don't know much about climate science, but won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? I guess the only danger is reaching thermal runaway before that happens? Then again, earth CO2 levels have been far higher in the past without signs that it killed off much life on Earth. Is rising CO2 that dangerous? Don't humans already have effective ways to reduce surface heating…

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

Those structural engineers benefit from the millions of repeatable experiments in engineering over the past few centuries. It is an extremely well understood subject. Climate science, by comparison, has no repeatable experiments on the scale of a planetary atmosphere and is in its infancy. No-one knows with certainty the impact of 400ppm vs 410ppm so they have to rely on speculative models, so it's right to treat climate science as less reliable than structural engineering.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#87

Post by twoodfin »

humanrebar wrote: post #79
codecamper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's time to get very very excited here. Well if you only care about yourself, then screw it. If you have an ounce of care for the next generation or the ecosystems of the Earth, then it's time to start doing everything possible to replace our power generation with renewables (solar & wind) and our cars with electric cars. It won't cost all that much. Not doing it will cost a whole heck of a lot more.

> It won't cost all that much. Not doing it will cost a whole heck of a lot more. It's possible that it would change 3% year-over-year productivity growth to 0.5%. That "it" might be the difference between a marginally healthy economy and "lost generations" and political upheaval. The "give us the flight controls now or regret it for eternity" position is not necessarily wrong , but there's a real lack of credible ev…

The issue is, as I understand it, how to make a carbon tax "progressive". In particular, how to make it so progressive that the developing world will accept it (i.e., it won't condemn their poor to generations of high energy prices and much slower economic growth) but still strong enough to dramatically reduce future emissions growth.

Just imposing it on the developed world would help some, but any benefit would be at least partially offset by emissions-heavy industry shifting further to the developing (and higher emissions-intensive) nations.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#88

Post by iand »

riffic wrote: post #78
anigbrowl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a species level we'll probably survive it, but that doesn't mean it won't be disastrous at the individual level. Suppose, for example, that a natural disaster reduces the human population by 50$ over a few decades. Humanity survives, but the deaths of 3-4 billion people would be pretty awful.

>On a species level we'll probably survive it This is an arrogant assumption. Another assumption, one I find more realistic, is that we're driving full-speed towards the cliff.

If this is true then I presume you are devoting all your waking hours to preventing it?

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#89

Post by saalweachter »

ythn wrote: post #21
JshWright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

Not quite the same. Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change - kind of like how meteorologists are often bad at predicting the weather. Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting? It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering…

Why is there still a pop culture cliche of weathermen being terrible at their job?

Precipitation forecasts are usually accurate several days out and temperature forecasts are good a week or two out, in my experience. If I want to know if it's going to rain on Saturday I check the weather on Thursday and it's usually right. When there's a big storm comin', a local meteorologist does rolling updates with the latest data and it usually gives a consistent but evolving picture that matches up with what actually happens.

Are people disappointed by this? What are you wanting out of your weathermen that you're not getting?

I know the weatherman used to be a joke, back before satellites and computers, but I swear the cliche only survives as part of climate change denialism.

Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

#90

Post by [deleted] »

ythn wrote: post #21
JshWright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…

Not quite the same. Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change - kind of like how meteorologists are often bad at predicting the weather. Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting? It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering…

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