Slashdot Mirror
Another 150,000 Years of CO2 Data
An anonymous reader writes, "We've known since 2004 that the past 440,000 years have shown atmospheric carbon dioxide levels varying between about 200 and 300 ppmv, the difference in extremes being the difference between advancing ice sheets and our current clime. In 2005 the data were analyzed back to 650,000 years and were found to be much the same — Al Gore was proud to be able to show that then-new analysis in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed, and the data show much the same pattern, according to the researcher: 'When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range' — to 380 ppmv."
You can "colonize" Mars all you want. Without precious foodstuffs and volatiles from Earth, what are you going to eat when Sol 3 goes under?
We need to start working on carbon sequestration right now, unless you want 140 degree summers across the entire midwest belt. And we need to use carbon taxes as our main source of governmental revenue, not stupid things like employment taxes.
I really think that unless we do something immediately, the habitability of at least half the landmass on Earth will be be jeapordy.
Seeing as how Mars' atmosphere has a lot of CO2 in it, and photosynthetic organisms do pretty well in such an environment, I'll probably eat a lot of green leafy things.
And since Mars doesn't appear to have a history of complex life, it's exceedingly unlikely that there's any coal or oil there.
And since there's not much oxygen there (on account of there being not much in the way of plant life at present), a gasoline powered engine is gonna be pretty useless.
Rest easy, secure in the knowledge that future Martians will never despoil their environment by using fossil fuels!
Now, as always, we can cue a horde of astroturfers and deluded followers, rushing in to tell us all how global warming is a myth, and that the shocking recent rise in CO2 levels is somehow not demonstratable, or not significant, or something.
Well, that's okay: Now that the Siberian permafrost is melting, along with Antarctica, it looks like the Earth's processes have been pushed into a region within which global warming will continue, even if humans reduce their carbon emissions, which itself isn't likely. So congratulations, guys: you won. You kept us from doing something about the problem until it was too late, and now we're going to be stuck with it.
You "skeptics": in twenty years, when the problems caused by global warming make Katrina and heat waves that kill 35,000 people look pretty trivial, are you going to look back on your postings on slashdot -- and whatever else you're doing to spread the idea that global warming can be ignored -- and feel ashamed? Are you going to feel partly responsible?
Probably not.
With respect to the first knock yourselves out. With respect to the second pull your heads from the magical oil sands.
But for the third here is what you can do: Contact your reps.
Those of you in the U.S. will find that election day is fast approaching. The Mid-term congressional elections as well as many state elections are next week!. Now is the time to call, write, and fax your elected reps. Quote this data to them and demand to know what they will do telling them, in plain form, that they will forefit your vote and your money if they do not make you happy.
Don't just focus on the federal politicians California recently showed how a state can aggressively (start) limiting greenhouse gasses. States also control the vast majority of funding for public transit and are in charge of monitoring many polluters. Local Govenrments can do more as well by tackling transit issues as well as local pollution control efforts.
Right now many of them are desperate and worried. Now, more than ever, they can in should be bombarded with calls and moved very clearly in the right direction.
I know that it's fun to sit on
Those of you in other countries do the same thing neither whining nor lunatic dreams of carbonless oil will get us there.
Karma is not action.
You intentionally (it seems) misinterpret the information provided. There are very few people who actively disagree with the concept of global warming. No, the disagreements are threefold:
1) The rate at which the warming is occuring.
2) What proportion of it is due to human activity.
3) Whether spending several trillion dollars trying to prevent it is a worthwhile activity.
My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted. Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right, and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions - when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?
Sorry, that's no way to spend a few tens of trillions dollars.
Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
The problem is *complete* industry needed for a self-sustaining, potentially expanding colony.
Want an example? Lets look at one single raw material: steel. We need mining equipment (possibly including blasting, but I won't go into that). Lets be nice and say that they're electrically powered, so we'll need power. We need a crusher and a ball mill to powder it. Well, look at all those moving parts! We need lubricants and probably hydraulic fluids as well. Lets skip them for now.
So, we take our crushed iron ore. And we're going to reduce it.. how? Certainly not with coal/coke; that's not present on Mars. No, the best process seems to be to recover the sulphur as sulfuric acid (we can't get sulfuric acid as readily as we do here on Earth -- from the petrochemical industry -- and it's such a vital industrial chemical) through superheating it in the presense of oxygen, then in a separate chamber mixing it with steam. The temperatures involved here and in the next step are hot enough that you can't rely on a nuclear power plant's heat directly, so it's going to be wasteful. Anyways, the gaseous sulfuric acid is going to need to be regeneratively cooled, channelled, and stored. Of course, you'll need proper equipment for all of this.
Now we've stripped out part of the sulfur. We need higher temperatures now in the next step (which we'll have moved our ore into, hopefully without wasting its heat) to melt the iron oxide. We'll then need to inject syngas (CO + H2) to rob the iron oxide of its oxygen. Naturally, we need to produce both of those elsewhere. We'll also need fluxing agents to isolate the other impurities, such as silicon -- we're looking at needing calcium carbonate, fluorspar, possibly others. Better hope that we can mine them!
Now we've got our steel and slag, and we need to get the carbon to the right level, or it will be horribly brittle. So, we bubble more oxygen through it until it's reached the right point. Now we have to skim off the slag, which we'll work into other useful products like rock wool for insulation (we already have a hot, workable substance; why waste it?). Of course, we'll need to regeneratively use the heat (notice that I keep mentioning this. 1) heat is hard to get on Mars, and 2) it's hard to radiate as well. Thus, reuse is critical). Then, we need to get our molten steel into moulds and recover the heat from it as well as we can, then cool the rest radiatively (probably with some convection as assistance). Now that we've got raw pieces of steel, we'll need to shape them, cut them, move them, and weld them. Each of these processes presents huge problems on Mars.
Just a few things that I skimmed: Electric power. H2 and O2. CO (made from CO2, which you have to refrigerate out of the sparse atmosphere) (nitrogen is even harder to get, but thankfully we don't need it for *this* material). Fluorspar. Calcium carbonate. Any other fluxing agents. Hydraulics and lubricants (yes, you need an entire petrochemical industry -- I was nice and didn't make that the example "product". Your entire petrochemical industry needs to be based on the Fischer-Tropsh process using the CO2 that you refrigerated from the atmosphere, reduced to CO. Horribly wasteful). Raw heat. Water. And, of course, hundreds to thousands of tonnes of high-maintenence industrial equipment.
Don't even dream, at this point, of chip fabrication or things like that on Mars (i.e., true independence).
Think "steel" is even a fraction of what you'll need? Think again. Most basic industrial chemicals require at least one of the major industrial acids to manufacture -- sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric, and hydrofluoric. Each of these requires specific ores and dozens of steps to make and refine. The nitric (from ammonia, also a critical chemical) is especially hard to make, as nitrogen is so rare on Mars -- yet if you want many chemicals (most notably, explosives and fertilizers), you need your nitrates. Your petrochemical industry is a nightmare because, s
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...