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Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

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Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#81

Post by tzs »

eloff wrote: post #14
kjar wrote: post #5

Apparently it’s no longer mitigation, now adaptation. The desire to avoid nihilism at point is tough. I’m pushing 40 and I hope I get 25 more years, family kids are in for it.:(

I see comments like this all the time, but it doesn't happen that fast. You won't notice a big difference in your lifetime, and neither will your children, unless maybe they live in a very low area by the coast. This plays out over hundreds of years. It's still a serious problem and we need to address it, but I keep seeing emotional reactions that ignore the science and the current predictions.

> You won't notice a big difference in your lifetime, and neither will your children, unless maybe they live in a very low area by the coast. This plays out over hundreds of years.

...or they live in an area whose fresh water supply depends on current weather patterns or glacier levels.

Even if they don't, the water shortages in such regions could lead to war, and I believe some such regions include nuclear powers. A nuclear war between, say, Pakistan and India over water allocation will probably have serious economic effects well outside just that region.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#82

Post by klingonopera »

JaRail wrote: post #71
pdonis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Build nuclear power plants. All the other things are fine, but if you really want to end fossil fuels, you need a non-fossil-fuel source of reliable base load power. Nuclear is the only one we have. Other sources are fine, but they can't produce reliable base load power. And, btw, I think we should end fossil fuels even if it turns out not to make much of a…

And engineer some safe small-scale reactors for container/cruise ships. It's a crime we aren't hedging our bets on renewables with some next-gen prototype reactors.

Generally, I do find that a good idea, but I seriously doubt the people operating those ships are to be trusted in the proper handling of nuclear equipment.

Make operation of diesel cleaner and thus more expensive so that sails and PV would be considered and used as well.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#83

Post by rosege »

sriku wrote: post #74
rosege wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are correct there is just no way that this is going to happen. Even if you could convince all the West to give up FF then I don't think you could convince China and India. Also there is no way you could convince the majority of people in the West to give up FF because a large percentage still don't believe climate change is man made. I was having a discussion a couple of nights ago with someone who thought…

Consider these - http://www.walkthroughindia.com/walkthroughs/top-15-biggest-... https://www.news18.com/news/auto/bjp-led-nda-government-mull... On the wikipedia "list of photovoltaic power stations", China and India turn up on top when sorted by plant capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

yes I have heard of some of those but I've also heard of Adani wanting to build coal plants too - a quick search showed this https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/climate/coal-adani-india-...

So yes it would be great if they can make progress but I will hold judgement for some time.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#84

Post by flukus »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #67
mdorazio wrote: post #2

So have we fired a clathrate gun then [1]? It's getting increasingly difficult to pretend worst-case global warming scenarios won't turn into reality in the next 25 years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

No. Most methane calthrate exists at depths and pressures that will not be effected by warming for hundreds to thousands of years. The calthrate gun would more likely be the result of volcanic or continental landslides that mix warm surface water with disturbed sediments. This is probably a product of local geological activity.

> No. Most methane calthrate exists at depths and pressures that will not be effected by warming for hundreds to thousands of years.

The calthrate gun is on geological timescales, if we've created enough warming for the reaction to become self sustaining (releases create more warming, creating more releases) over thousands of years then we have fired the gun.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#85

Post by klingonopera »

jbay808 wrote: post #75
pdonis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything I’ve heard indicates a fairly dramatic change in the weather patterns as our global temperatures rise by even 1-2 degrees. These are not predictions based on data. They are predictions based on models--the same models that have been overpredicting warming for several decades now. The actual data says that extreme events have not been getting more frequent. Their consequences have been getting more severe…

Do you have a citation on the claim that mainstream models have been overpredicting warning? I'm not aware of it.

I'd like to seem them too.

From what I've heard so far, scientists have been underestimating the nature of climate change, almost perpetually, like any good scientist should do in order to keep their reputation.

2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7890988.stm

2019: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists...

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#86

Post by rewgs »

abootstrapper wrote: post #12
blhack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we do?

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

> eat less meat

While eating less or no meat is a big part of it, it's more nuanced than it's often presented. For instance, this talk provides a very, very good argument for keeping livestock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Not disagreeing with you, only replying to you for visibility/to add on to what you said.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#87

Post by strainer »

torpfactory wrote: post #51
blhack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we do?

Geoengineering is really the only realistic option if this is the case. Sulfate aerosol injection is by far the most promising. And cheap - maybe 5-8b per year [1]. I'm not claiming this is a good idea in any way. As they say: desperate times call for desperate measures. We could buy ourselves several decades to sort our (as humans) shit out. We don't understand the unintended consequences very well, but at least thi…

I've a hunch that a Lagrange point sun shield is becoming quite affordable with recent reductions in cost of launching to space. A sunshield consisting of many self orientating mirror bearing craft would have the advantage of being able to be quickly attenuated if required, even filtering more or less light on particular continents or weather systems.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#88

Post by tempsy »

eloff wrote: post #14
kjar wrote: post #5

Apparently it’s no longer mitigation, now adaptation. The desire to avoid nihilism at point is tough. I’m pushing 40 and I hope I get 25 more years, family kids are in for it.:(

I see comments like this all the time, but it doesn't happen that fast. You won't notice a big difference in your lifetime, and neither will your children, unless maybe they live in a very low area by the coast. This plays out over hundreds of years. It's still a serious problem and we need to address it, but I keep seeing emotional reactions that ignore the science and the current predictions.

Major US cities will see temp increases of 4-6 degrees in less than 30-40 years. That is not "hundreds of years".

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/climate-change-timeline-st-l...

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#89

Post by abootstrapper »

api wrote: post #77
abootstrapper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

I call these kinds of suggestions abstinence based environmental policy and it will work about as well as shaming teens into not having sex. Abstinence based sex ed results in more STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion. We've been preaching abstinence based environmentalism since the 70s. Load up the atmospheric CO2 graph and look at the plastic in the ocean and see that the result is basically the same. People pretend…

> The answer is to replace fossil fuels with [renewables]

I agree.

> So poverty.

Don’t be so dramatic. Would it kill you to turn the thermostat up while we convert our global power infrastructure to renewables?

My list of example actions one could do to to fight climate change was not exhaustive or exclusive.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#90

Post by bch »

zaroth wrote: post #80
daenz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Build nuclear power plants. And to all the people who say "they take too long there isn't enough time": the best time to start nuclear power plant construction was 10 years ago, the second best time is now.

Except by the time the plant is done being built (10 years late and 10x over budget) renewables will have surpassed it in terms of cost for deployed GW, and grid-scale and consumer batteries will be at the point where we can store and demand shift enough power to use all the renewables we can bring online. Renewables has already surpassed nuclear in the US. I think the new reality is the best time to build a nuke pla…

> renewables will have surpassed it in terms of cost

Are you thinking in terms of dollars or including the price of future use/materials? In other words, can’t a nuclear plant effectively be swapped in for a (e.g.) coal-fired generator and Just Work, versus all the materials (grid-scale collectors, batteries, etc), which is just the next generation of junk in a treadmill that’s still a carbon problem?

I ask because I don’t know.

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