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Plan to Slow Global Warming By Dumping Iron Sulphate into Oceans
ananyo writes "In the search for methods of geoengineering to limit global warming, it seems that stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after all. Despite attracting controversy and a UN moratorium, as well as previous studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae die. Each atom of added iron pulled at least 13,000 atoms of carbon out of the atmosphere by encouraging algal growth which, through photosynthesis, captures carbon. The team reports that much of the captured carbon was transported to the deep ocean, where it will remain sequestered for centuries — a 'carbon sink' (abstract)."
Where's the good-luck-with-that what-could-possibly-go-wrong tag?
I always worry about these ideas, they seem good in theory, but in reality you can just end up with a cane toad problem..i.e. when the algae has covered all the oceans we have no pollution...but also no fish....
anywho...maybe we can just set fire to the algae if it gets out of control...
I'm not going to lie..things with clock speeds turn me on...
Seems no more far-fetched than the current plan, which is assuming world leaders of developed and developing nations can all agree to limit the economic function and development of their respective countries, and not fall into a prisoner's dilemma.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
(Haruchai posting as AC due to previous mod)
Sorry. Not bloody likely.
The denialist throw a lot of bullshit at the theories and observations of global warming, one of which is how little we know because we only have reliable info for ( pick one ) 20, 30, 50, 70, 100 years.
And then, they dream up a bunch of half-baked, cockamamie predictions based on scanty data, weak facts, implausible records, oh, and simplified models ( that's a good one, considering how much they think climate models are unreliable) of stuff that happened centuries ago.
Hope you're not putting too much faith in Piers Corbyn
This needs a quote. " You don't know what you are doing!", " This whole place him, you, everything is gone, you are the one living the dream sullian!, It happens!" T2 Sarah connor..
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
How about the fact that we don't want to all die? Global extinction is a natural phenomenon, but I'd rather not witness it.
Before we have to drop giant blocks of ice in the ocean...
Global extinction is farther from reality than the human could possibly fathom. Beyond that, however, you'll have to face it: we're all going to die.
Don't do it. Global warming is a nuisance at worst (and probably a boon as-is.)
But accidentally overshooting and inducing an ice age, which may come on in as little as a year or two, will indeed kill billions.
Don't do it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We could find a way to trigger a super volcano. This would also help to curb global warming.
We could create a nuclear winter by setting of several giant nuclear weapons over the countries of choice. This would also reverse global warming.
There are lots of things which we could do, but doesnt mean we should.
Considering that we do not know the extent of the oceans impact on global weather patterns, we may do well enough to leave them alone until we do.
There is only one way to be sure, but unfortunately it isn't available to us. Outer Space Treaty prohibits deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit. But the scientific evidence seems to at least strongly imply that the problem exists and may not be entirely harmless.
Right....lets do random crap to solve a problem that may not exist.
This is NOT SCIENCE!
This is a RELIGIOUS CULT!
Science tends to include a lot of trial and error in the quest for a better understanding.
You are understanding that people are ready to spend massive (earth altering amounts) to solve this not-so-sure problem? Is it too much to ask that we be SURE about the problem and be SURE about the solution?
Probably.
Since everything we do destroys something on the planet, I'm gonna go ahead and call this one right now. Algea blocks sunlight below, kills seabed plants in shallow areas and kills...I dunno, Nemo or something in deep water by lowering the temperature, making automatic frozen fishsticks.
This did sound like one of the better theories for fixing the problem extremely quickly and cheaply when I heard about it on TV though.
not being able to order cheap hard drives from Thailand is more than a nuisance! Florida sinking into the ocean is a nuisance but don't touch my hard drives, damn it.
climatological warfare
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Do you people understand what I'm saying?
If I were a corporate shill, I'd be like, "Ya, do it. Dump away baby!"
Don't fucking do it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Having to move back from the ocean over the course of a century or three is indeed just a nuisance to a powerful economy.
Having an ice ace lock up most of the plantable land in permafrost will lead to the deaths of billions.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here's the National Solar Observatory, in case you missed it: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03sep_sunspots/
Being current with real s/e degrees from "good schools" is trolling at SlashDot? From an A/C, hah!
Here's the National Solar Observatory in case you missed it: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03sep_sunspots/
It is a risk management issue. We know there is a risk of global warming. We know it can potentially bring massive (earth altering amounts) losses if unmitigated. The question is do we wait uninsured, or do we consider an insurance policy of some sort.
To give you a car analogy, the situation is a bit like driving in a thick fog with high speed. You know that there may be obstacles ahead of you. You know it will be deadly if you hit one. You know you'll have a very short time to react when you clearly see one. What is smarter to do, slow down until the fog clears, or keep pressing the accelerator just because you enjoy high speed?
Yes, let's try to create massive worldwide algae blooms, cause the one's were getting already have been fantastic.
This line reminded me of plans to store radioactive waste in remote areas, keeping us safe from it for centuries.
Nobody seems to have a lot of faith in those plans I notice.
Surfer is eaten alive by sentient algae blob. Story at 11!
Let's convert carbon dioxide to methane,that's sure to help...
Excessive growth of algae (influenced by global warming and fertilizers washed down to the sea from farmlands) is a part of the problem, not the solution.
The problem with algae is that while, true, they convert CO2 to oxygen, they do so, by growing - building their own mass.
There's only so much of ocean surface where they can grow by absorbing light. The excess algae not receiving enough light die and rot. And they produce methane by rotting.
I'm pretty sure as greenhouse effect gas, methane is quite a bit stronger than carbon dioxide...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It won't harm the world economy, and could even stimulate it. And it's not about sure, it's about probabilities and consequences.
Learn to love Alaska
It was good up until that part where people "enjoy high speed". It is more that they don't want to slow down because they are being chased by something possibly deadly.
This is so common it is like a meme. You have arbitrarily set the cost of global warming to infinity, and the cost of "fixing it" near zero, thus leading to a useless cost-benefit analysis. Meanwhile you think you are more informed and intelligent than the "deniers". Read the IPCC AR4, they do a pretty good one.
Based on a theory with NO confirming experimental evidence, and with NO idea what the side effects will be, let's fill the oceans with a huge algae bloom!
Because THAT could never have unintended consequences!
Yep, lock up our atmospheric carbon at the bottom of the oceans where we can't get to it. Wouldn't it be better to find a way to directly capture it from the air (through electrolytic deposition or something) so that it can be used by the impending graphene and carbon nanotube industries?
It is more that they don't want to slow down because they are being chased by something possibly deadly.
What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?
You have arbitrarily set the cost of global warming to infinity, and the cost of "fixing it" near zero, thus leading to a useless cost-benefit analysis.
No, it is you who arbitrarily sets the cost of the consequences of global warming to zero and the costs of mitigation policies to infinity. I am ready to admit the outcomes are uncertain, but I also think the risk estimates we have do necessitate a mitigation strategy of some sort.
Unlike mine, your attitude is not constructive.
Your analogy is flawed. Slowing down would be limiting carbon emissions. Screwing with the ecosystem is more like creating a smoke screen in the fog to reduce visibility even further and hope that that will scare people into slowing down.
I took a course on oceanography a few years ago, and we actually studied this. I'll summarize my professor's powerpoint notes as best I can.
Iron is a limiting nutrient in phytoplankton growth. This is not in dispute. However if we are to add iron to the ocean in order to increase phytoplankton counts, and thus to increase CO2 uptake then we must consider several things. Firstly, how much CO2 will be semi-permanently transported to the ocean floor. In terms of percentages, if increased phytoplankton counts caused a CO2 flux in the surface layer of 50 Gt Carbon / year, the corresponding CO2 flux to the ocean floor would be about 0.7 Gt Carbon / year. This is due to the fact that the mechanisms of carbon transport from the surface to the sea floor (the "biological pump") is quite inefficient. Thus the increase in phytoplankton at the surface would have to be HUGE to transport meaningful amounts of CO2 to the sea floor.
Secondly, there may be dire unintended or undesired consequences of increasing the surface phytoplankton counts. Imagine we put significant amounts of iron in the ocean and imagine that surface phytoplankton counts increased significantly. At the surface we could get increased CO2 uptake and O2 production. But what happens when those phytoplankton die? They sink. And when they sink to deeper layers, other organisms would decompose them. Those decomposers would be oxygen breathers and would consume oxygen at the deeper layer. If their numbers increased due to increased dead phytoplankton, the decomposers could deplete the O2 levels in that level, creating anoxic zones at deeper levels in the ocean. In addition, some of these decomposers might be methane producing bacteria, especially in the absence of oxygen. That methane might make its way into the ocean. The worry is that the imbalanced increase in phytoplankton might result in an anoxic jellyfish ocean that would be rather unfriendly to fish like salmon, tuna, and the other common species that currently exist.
Unless the above arguments have been refuted, I don't know why iron fertilization is still being pushed as a realistic option. It seems to me that many decision makers are nearly completely illiterate in science.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
In many places of the world, nutrient-rich deep-ocean water rising to the surface causes natural algal blooms. Algae eating fish like sardines flock to them and breed up in huge numbers, and form the basis for many of the world's fisheries.
Indeed, practically all fish either eat algae, or eat marine life that eats algae.
So fertilising the oceans is just as likely to produce schools of fish and new rich fisheries to harvest as fish kills. In reality, it would probably cause both: overpopulation of fish that then die as food or oxygen dries up. But that is part of the solution: Algae feeding a massive bloom that collapses, and the bodies of all that marine life gets all the way to the bottom because they are not consumed by other life, as the water is oxygen-deprived.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I am not seriously considering the solution in the article. I think there was already an experiment that showed quite conclusively it isn't going to work
Actually, I don't believe I've heard of any other engineering solution that has a good enough probability to work.
Ready to turn the world's economy on it's head to to fix this supposed problem?
Economic alarmisim makes even less sense than the other kind.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
See those mountains of coal that get shovelled into our power stations every day? Can you use that much carbon nanotubes and graphine?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The team reports that much of the captured carbon was transported to the deep ocean, where it will remain sequestered for centuries - a 'carbon sink'
This sounds like a good quick patch (in the ecological time scale), but do we need that carbon? Seems like moving carbon from the Earth's crust to the deep ocean could have some long-term ramifications. I'm not sure I know enough about the subject even to qualify as an amateur, but it seems like it would be more profitable in the long run if we could grow plant life that would feed plankton or fish in the ocean example, other flora or fauna in general, or be harvested to make fuel. Turn the carbon back into a productive resource. Maybe harvest the algal blooms with a tide generator or wave generator powered filtration system.
But again, it sounds better than having steadily worse hurricanes for the time being, until we can figure out how to capture that carbon for production. Not criticizing -- just noodling.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
98% of scientists think climate change is due to atmospheric carbon and that we should manipulate the ecosystem to remove the carbon for us? Total bullshit.
Who said anyone wants to shut down the economy? How about just pointing it in a different direction, away from fossil fuels? But I guess you guys like your strawmen, don't you?
Sorry...I meant "...the methane will end up in the atmosphere" (where it will act as a greenhouse gas...as well as producing sulphur gas which as poisonous).
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Stepping into a mine field here, but that's what I was wondering. This appears to be a proposal to remove carbon, rather than reduce adding carbon - that's fine, but is it sustainable? And is the carbon sequestered at the bottom of the ocean more or less "locked up" than it would be in trees or tar or oil?
"What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?"
A return to those hellish days when people had to repair broken things rather then throwing out and buying new, and not everyone could afford to take a holiday on another continant?
Climate change is but one of the problems we face. Pollution, loss of species, erosion and depletion of natural resources are all big problems as well.
The sad fact is that all of these have a single cause: humans, or rather, too many humans.
As of right now, the average Chinese person emits as much carbon as the average European -- and there are many more Chinese people.
The rest of the developing world is going to follow this pattern. Soon we'll all be emitting high amounts of carbon, but even more, each of us will require a lot of land for our lifestyles. Not just our homes, but roads, hospitals, shopping, parking, schools, storage, government buildings, etc.
For every person we put on this earth, there's less space for the natural world and its forests and oceans which renew our air and water. Earth is finite; humans are acting like its capacity to have new humans is infinite.
We're all in denial of how simple this is. There are too many people. We're making even more. At some point, we will have used up enough land so that pollution, species loss and loss of renewable resources makes us get a Darwin award as a species.
Futurist Traditionalism
A few years back, scientists pointed out there was evidence that ice ages could come on in as little as a couple of years, and that it required centuries or millenia of cooling was wrong.
All it takes is a couple of what would be severe winters in a row from random chance, combined with a big volcanic eruption or two (Krakatoa I think made London snow in summer.) All it takes is for one summer where the snow pack doesn't melt, and that summer the Earth, thanks to the albedo, never gets much summer energy, then the winter is utterly frigid, starting from a much cooler level, and then the snow pack never melts for 10-50,000 years. Each year then adds to the never-quite-melting snow of summer.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
*What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?*
death and shit, in that order. even ddt was meant to prevent death.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?
Hunger for food, and a desire for the things necessary to live, and a desire for products that make life easier, reduce work, and extend quality of life.
According to the IPCC report, the losses are not "massive", they amount to a few percent of global GDP, comparable to how much it would cost to mitigation. The losses for the US and Europe are even smaller.
Global warming is something we can live with: it causes changes, will impose some costs, but it is not a civilization killer. (Global cooling, on the other hand, is a huge problem. The US and Europe would be in deep trouble if climate went back to the way it was a few thousand years ago.) And carbon emissions will abate over the next couple of decades anyway, as solar and other technologies become more attractive and cheaper.
I'm pretty sure dumping massive quantities of iron into the ocean and causing algal blooms is not "insurance", it is pollution.
Fundamentally nobody is willing to do what it takes to deal with carbon emissions...it's perceived as too expensive.
On the other hand, geoengineering solutions (if they work) would be cheap. I heard an estimate that a fleet of small autonomous ships spraying seawater into the air (to seed clouds and increase albedo) would cost ~6 billion. That's nothing in comparison....there are individuals that could afford that.
Ah, the it's all cyclic - meme. That's a rather new one, isn't it? Of course, since there is no actual periodic cause to be found for the current warming trend, you gotta heap cycles upon cycles to get an arbitrary match to the data. I suspect that someone in the denialsphere lately discovered Fourier analysis without having a clue what it is actually good for. Starting from there, it got amplified by the usual blogorrhoea.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I suggest you go read the IPCC's disscusion on attribution in its reports before attempting to attack the conclusions. The +/- forcings due to changes in solar fux are swamped by the +/- forcings due to human activity to such an extent that it is difficult to detect any signal in the data. The areosols released by China alone do far more to cool the planet than changes in solar flux. Also your assumption that solar flux caused the little ice age is not supported by the data, solar fux is the least understood of many causes that might explain the the little ice age .
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Causing an algae bloom is good now?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
.. Futurama where they keep collecting huge blocks of ice from Halley's comet and dump it into the ocean? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqVyRa1iuMc
Didn't I just recently hear about the idea to seed iron to fight global warming. Right, it was the Panchaea project in Deus Ex Human Revolution. Well I just hope it works out better than it did in the game though :P
It is more that they don't want to slow down because they are being chased by something possibly deadly.
What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?
Starvation. If we were to de-industrialize, we'd have even more people starving all over the planet.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Cherry pick your data.
Now, what was it you were saying about being current?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This always confuses me. Why do people seem to think that climate scientists advocate deindustrialisation? I have never heard a serious case arguing for it. And yet, many arguments against global warming measures seem to claim that that is what is being proposed. Wherefore this misconception?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
they amount to a few percent of global GDP,
This is the lower bound.
dumping massive quantities of iron into the ocean and causing algal blooms is not "insurance",
Nice strawman there.
Some things you're forgetting:
More heat island effects.
The records being broken are localized.
There are plenty of places that are way below seasonal still.
Less stations actually monitoring today, then 50 years ago.
And so on, and so forth.
Heck my town doesn't even have a station that monitors anymore. All weather data is from 50km away, and that's for "official" records as well. Ahhaha...yeah.
Om, nomnomnom...
Much fewer fucking people.
Seeing as how 1/3 of the earth is made of iron and we've assuredly been rained upon by some iron meteorites that probably popped somewhere in the atmosphere, something tells me that iron-rich moments in the ocean's history have not been unknown. Does the fossil record have anything to say on the subject?
What they've said is "We shouldn't have done this." Ok, fair enough, nothing wrong with that but that isn't a solution. Telling someone that what they did to cause a problem shouldn't have been done is all well and good, but doesn't solve the problem, it isn't really that useful.
It would be like going to the doctor because you'd broken your arm and having him say "Well you really shouldn't have fallen off your bike, had you not done that, your bone wouldn't be broken. You shouldn't ride your bike at all in the future. On your way then." While he's right that it would be better to avoid the situation in the first place, that doesn't really help fix it. Also supposing your bike is your own form of transport, his recommendation might not be so easy to just do.
Because many arguments comes from environmentalists, who frequently argue for human suffering if the alternative is environmental problems, rather than climate scientists. They cannot fathom just how much depended we are on current industry and how impossible it is to replace it with something even marginally less efficient without huge amount of human suffering.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
So in other words the IPCC is "yucky", did you come up with that devestating critique all by yourself? - Or did a 3yo give you some tips on how to defeat rational arguments?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's generally the environmentalists yelling about global warming the loudest, and shortly thereafter telling everyone that the solution is to go back to living in caves (quite literally).
But it's not a complete misconception... Scientists don't quite say it, but it's clearly implied, because seriously reduced consumption and activity is currently the only way to make as big of a dent in CO2 production as they advocate.
There are major things like cement production, which alone emits about 6% of total man-made greenhouse gases, for which there seems to be absolutely no possible option to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions, other than simply stopping cement production. With cement being one of the most important construction materials, this directly translates into stopping most large building construction, and a severe economic crash.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Actually I believe there's pretty wide agreement that seeding the upper atmosphere with ultra-fine particulate matter, similar to what happens in an exceptionally large volcano eruption, would pretty decisively mitigate the problem for a while. It would be extremely expensive, but not beyond the means of any of the economic superpowers. Frankly that's a last-ditch effort though, it would be a short-term solution, and the consequences of a miscalculation could be devastating - we could get a global version of the 1918 Year Without a Summer, and if our particles were longer-lived, which they would almost have to be in order to be cost effective, that could turn into the "Decade without a Summer". On the plus side I suppose the resulting famine would solve most of our other problems...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
as you are that a problem does exist. Really does it? Ready to turn the world's economy on it's head to to fix this supposed problem? Of course you are, because you are SURE.
--
Are you sure that the world's economy needs turning on it's head to fix it? Of course you are, because you are SURE. Right?
The economy is already being wrecked by wars, bankers, motor industry bailouts, etc. Are you fighting those things as hard as you're fighting the climate change people? Nope? Didn't think so...
Energy tech seems a much better investment to me than those things. Much cheaper, too, and much more likely to stabilize the future economy than petroleum wars, bailing out the manufacturers of gas guzzlers, etc.
No sig today...
We dump stuff into the ocean to get read of stuff we have dumped into the atmosphere. What do we dump where to get rid of what we have dumped into the ocean? Shouldn't we rather stop dumping stuff? Or at least think a little more before we dump?
Since when is it economic alarmism when someone wants to shutdown the economy?
So who is this someone? - Other than the "tear it all down and start again" types who turn up at tea party rallies and OWS sit-ins, I don't know of anyone who wants to "shutdown the economy"? If you are so certain about your basic assumption, surely you can give us a name and point to their published economic analysis? In fact if you are certain your claim is not alarmisim I would expect you would would also be able to point to an overwhelming consensus among working economists. AFAIK published economic modelling generally predicts a worst case senario of a 0-10% drop in global GDP over a 50yr period. To put that into perspective global GDP has more than doubled since 1995.
A real skeptic questions their own assumptions which is how (over a 30yr period) I became convinced that burning all known FF deposits would be a catastrophic course of action, as a grandfather of three toddlers I am seriously fucked off that burning every last bit of coal, gas, and oil we can find is exactly what we are planning to do for no other reason than preserving the bussiness model of some very rich and powerfull luddites
OTOH: I'm probably talking to a young "free market" ideologue who didn't hear the FF industry "cry wolf" when Nixon introduced the clean air act, or Reagan introduced cap and trade on sulphur emissions, or whoever it was that took the lead out of petrol. So I don't really expect my little rant will persuade you to question yourself. Besides being wrong would imply you have been recruited as a "useful idiot" by someone you already trust, and nobody likes to admit they have been fooled by what others see as obvious propoganda.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Believe that it's due to atmospheric carbon, yes. (or more accurately that CO2 is a major human-contributed forcing-factor disrupting a long-term quasi-equilibrium)
That the solution it to manipulate the ecosystem, hell no.
In fact many argue that even discussing it is a bad idea because it will allow policy makers to continue business as usual feeling they have an insurance policy against the day things eventually do go south, when in reality it's an "oh god, maybe we won't all die if we do this" emergency patch. The consensus is that what we should be doing is reigning in carbon emissions while it's still economically feasible to do so, but every year we put off doing so means the cuts will have to be more drastic. Had we started 50-80 years ago when the warnings were first becoming clear it would have been a minor inconvenience - pour a few hundred million a year, chump change by global GDP standards, into developing efficiency and alternative energy technologies and we'd be in a much better place today.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Time to start working on the Futurama solution. Mine a comet and dump a block of ice in the ocean every couple of years or so.
No, it's not even that - it's politics.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Because you've got to make your strawman look really ugly before people will want to set fire to it.
Some prefer the word "phenomenon" over "problem". You realize the Earth has been on a warming trend since oh I dunno, the last ice age, right? And the Earth has been far hotter on average than it is today, as well. So where exactly is this "problem"?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I know we shouldn't be screwing around with the environment but it looks like we'll be getting desperate by the time we get off our butts to do something. And anyway, as other posters have mentioned, we've been running an uncontrolled experiment into the release of many gigatons of CO2 for quite some time now.
So, while their are undeniable risks that this entails, are there any benefits? If these phytoplankton aren't snapped up by noxious jellyfish* (and all of them don't sink to the bottom although that wouldn't be all bad) could this bolster the food chain? I mean wouldn't this cause an increase in the productivity of the whole food chain? They don't call some parts of the ocean (the southern pacific I think) a "desert" for nothing. We are basically fertilizing the ocean, if done right that might be a very good thing! (sushi)
Did the researchers look into the fish/krill/higher predators populations? Did they see any noticeable increase (or decrease)?
*even this might not be too bad, don't pelagic sunfish and sea turtles eat jellyfish? Turtle soup anyone?
Stop breeding like rabbits and maybe the environment won't be so threatened. I always enjoy listening to the rants of lunatics who think they know something when the real problem is staring them in the face, is 100% under their control, and yet they refuse to do anything about it.
If the Earth's population was 7,000 people instead of 7 billion, I'm sure we'd be hard pressed to have any impact at all on the environment. As the population grows, each human has to make less and less effort to add to environmental damage, until at one point just being alive will cause damage. That's when we all fall down the "crash" part of the J curve.
Oh, cue the part about how (some) western countries have declining populations. Yeah, the "West" is a very, very small fraction of the global population. Add the US, Canada and Europe and you don't even reach 10%.
He's talking about terrorists. Because we all know that them darned terrorists are behind this, god darn it, they want to make the whole world a desert so they can ride their camels.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Maybe this will convince you ?
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
It will be sequestered for centuries ... a nuclear sink.
Out of curiousity, after centuries, what happens?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It's confidant, not cosmonaut, dumbshit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
as you are that a problem does exist. Really does it? Ready to turn the world's economy on it's head to to fix this supposed problem? Of course you are, because you are SURE.
--
http://i.imgur.com/yQwlx.jpg
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
We're headed for an anemic solar max, late and low on sunspots. Perfectly in line with the NSO paper.
If the Kyoto Treaty had been ratified by the U.S. Senate, the American economy would have been devastated to an extent to make the crash of 2008 look like a mild recession.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
>>Why do people seem to think that climate scientists advocate deindustrialisation?
Because of people like Hansen.
What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?
Other humans. If we don't outrace them, they will kill us.
Total economic collapse. The world economy is based on a series of gigantic multi-generational ponzi schemes (insurance, banking, social security, etc) that got too big to fail. If they fail the flow of money will stop and supply lines will break, no generation has wanted to deal with this so they kick the can down the road. The only way to continue them is extracting wealth from the earth at ever increasing rates. There will not be a reduction in consumption until the current system is gone one way or the other.
The most constructive thing you could possibly be doing is creating decentralized alternatives to the services offered by governments and their products (the large corporations) so that the collapse of their network of debt and involuntary participation is less of a big deal. Then they can be gotten rid of without bringing down everything around them.
Seeing as how 1/3 of the earth is made of iron and we've assuredly been rained upon by some iron meteorites that probably popped somewhere in the atmosphere, something tells me that iron-rich moments in the ocean's history have not been unknown. Does the fossil record have anything to say on the subject?
Banded Iron Formations.
Yeah, that whopping 0.05% GDP in non-US Kyoto economies will be a real killer (the paper looked at non-US costs since the US didn't ratify the treaty)
.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Funny, I thought he supported a feebate. Guess that's just code for "going back to living in caves".
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Ironically, guess what we're probably going to run into if we keep charging blindly ahead? "Hunger for food and a desire for the things necessary to live and desire for products that make life easier, reduce work, and extend quality of life". If climate change prompts world wide crop failures, and in causing climate change we deplete the world's fossil fuel supply we're just making the situation temporarily better before it gets much worse.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually, I've found it's the people doing the polluting who claim that polluting less would mean everyone would have to go live in caves, I can't say I've ever heard a serious environmentalist argue we should do so*.
* Excepting the one group that advocates building homes in caves, but to be faire, the caves they want people to live in are better than the houses that most people live in now.
There are major things like cement production, which alone emits about 6% of total man-made greenhouse gases, for which there seems to be absolutely no possible option to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions, other than simply stopping cement production. With cement being one of the most important construction materials, this directly translates into stopping most large building construction, and a severe economic crash.
The goal is to reduce overall emissions to a sustainable level, they don't need to be cut to 0. Imagine for a moment that we were rational creatures, we could use taxes levied on carbon emissions to fund carbon sequestration, to achieve a net-0 emissions rate. We also don't need to cut every industry identically. For instance, if the will existed, we could switch the world to mostly electric vehicles in a generation. That would greatly cut transportation emissions while potentially increasing power generation emissions, while still reducing overall emissions.
There are alternate methods of concrete production that produce lower emissions, they aren't used because they are more expensive than the cheapest methods and CO2 emissions cost the company nothing. That's one reason why taxing emissions makes economic and environmental sense. If CO2 emissions have a cost, it makes the processes that emit less CO2 comparatively more cost-efficient (and it spurs more research into making those processes more cost-effective).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Not true. The world was on a cooling trend until the industrial revolution.
So? Who cares what the temperature was like at some arbitrary point in the distant past? Species change, ecosystems change. What matters is the *rate change*, because adaptation doesn't occur instantaneously. It's the rate change that's concerning. The last time Earth saw this sort of rate-change was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The world was left as uch a different place that we call it a different era (the Eocene).
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Because they want to take away the ability to burn carbon based fuels without allowing for any form of reasonable replacement.
If they wanted to use the money from carbon taxes to fuel LFTR research and reactor production, then they would at least have a plan that doesn't involve starving half of Africa to death as an "unintended" consequence.
Are you really defending mass human sacrifice?
That is like defending the Khmer Rouge by talking about North Vietnamese war crimes.
So you're saying that we should nuke the shit out of east Asia?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Dumping 300 million years of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in a little over a century is a "natural cyclical phenomena"[sic]?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Carbon caps. Carbon taxes. No decrease in nuclear regulation. Increases in nuclear protests.
Somehow I don't think you have thought your brilliant plan all the way through.
A lot of us are. Nice strawman, though.
I used to think the Golden Girls troll was just annoying, but the fact that every single time he does it someone is compelled to correct the lyrics is actually starting to make me laugh. Seriously guys, we know it's not cosmonaut. We know because there have been literally dozens of Slashdot commentators who jump in and correct him, sometimes, as in this case, multiple people in a single thread. The troll isn't in posting the Golden Girls song, the troll is in getting a word wrong and making people react, stop feeding him!
Are you really defending talking snakes?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Well, often, yeah. Of course. You'll need to say how much economy and how much environment to really compare, though.
Seriously?
Someone is destroying your entire ecosystem, and telling you "we can't stop doing that, because we would lose money." And someone else says, "well, maybe if we cause a corresponding rapid radical transformation in ocean ecology it will offset the other catastrophe". And your answer is "hmm, yeah, that might work."
Give me 20+ years of climbing temperatures (a mere drop in the bucket considering how old this planet is) and i'll change my mind...wait what?
Would 40ish years do?.
HOWEVER, We are breaking records that were set 40-60+ YEARS AGO PEOPLE! This is a WARM year, nothing more, nothing less.
The issue with temperature records is that in a stable climate, both record warm and record cold temperatures become progressively less likely to occur. The chance is 1/n of setting either record, where n is the number of readings taken. Climate change, however, loads the dice, so far this year we've set 10 times as many warm records as cold records. Now, that could be just one warm year, but 13 of the top 14 warm years occurred in the last 14 years.
The last record high temperature in MY area was set in 1954.
In my area it was set last year, and then again earlier this year, and again last week.
Why did it take almost 60 years to break a high? Oh i know why! Because there is no such thing as global warming! Because we are experiencing a fluke in what is otherwise a cooling of the earth.
That's some fluke, the long term global cooling trend ends around 1900, and a global warming trend takes over.
You mean scientists can't actually PROVE that global warming exists?!?!?!
They already have proved that global warming exists, you just weren't paying attention. Now you seem to refuse to look at the evidence. It's hard to take your protests seriously when you appear to have your eyes shut tight, your fingers stuck in your ears and you're shouting "Nananana - I can't hear you! Nananana - I won't hear you!".
There are at least 4 separate temperature reconstructions that all show long term warming trends, including one funded by the Koch brothers who as owners of a vast fossil fuel empire have vested interests in showing that global warming isn't happening. If the scientists they hired to prove that global warming doesn't exist actually came to the conclusion that it does, why don't you believe them?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Because astroturfers and useful idiots for the corporations will fight any regulation to their last breath with every lie distortion and deception they can
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Because if we really want to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere now, so we can get back down to 350ppm, that will be the result.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
it's the same guy. it's part of the gag.
The concept of even needing to provide a reference to counter this is laughable, in that every serious dataset contradicts it. "Google" is a good enough reference here.
Funny, I don't remember saying that. Oh yeah, that's because you made it up. I said, "What matters is the *rate change*".
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
This one's my favorite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV9gRFv5Kgc
Stupid woman thinks seeing a rainbow when spraying water from a garden hose is some kind of government conspiracy.
This is what the IPCC report says:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains5-7.html
So, they are not "lower bounds", the costs and benefits of mitigation are "broadly comparable in magnitude".
In different words: stop lying.
Or we wouldn't have had as much money floating around to blow on the dot-com bubble, and cause the 2008 crash, and things would be pretty much as they are with a few less millionaire parachutists floating around.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Stop breeding like rabbits and maybe the environment won't be so threatened
I know. Why is this so hard to figure out.
We are always going to be a burden on the environment. When one technology feeds a billion new mouths, we just make a billion more and repeat the cycle. Something has got to give eventually.
Good god man, a best selling conspriacy theory? That's what you call a reference? What next - quotes from the Da-Vinci code?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
With the bonus of a nuclear winter for some global cooling right away.
I think this issue needs to be approached on two levels. 1. Continued reduction in carbon emissions. 2. Let mother nature do her job. We can help her by planting more trees, ie replacing the ones that have been removed/destroyed through deforestation. I don't know, call me crazy, but that seems more logical then dumping a crap load of iron in the ocean. The rise in CO2 levels did not happen over night, therefore we should not expect a decrease in levels to happen overnight either. Seriously, if people truly want to help this planet, go home and plant 5-10 trees in your yard.
Somehow I think you lack imagination.
Why is that supposed to be hard to fathom? Just picture Earth becoming more like Mars, or totally like Mars if obliteration of all life on Earth was somehow possible.
I can picture earth becoming more like the surface of the sun, that doesn't mean it's going to happen.
"The last time Earth saw this sort of rate-change was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum." You should note there were no humans around at that time, yet it occurred.
You're forgetting that Global Warming fanatics only see the past ~50 years. I've personally talked to a few that never heard of the drought and extreme heat during the mid 1930's which took place during the great dust bowl. Sure a few will go back ~150 years but very few will even acknowledge the fact that the earth has gone though extreme temperature changes over the past 500+ million years.
1. Plant Trees
2. If you don't have a family yet, don't have more than 2 kids of your own
3. Don't drive a vehicale that is bigger than you need.
Ah, the it's all cyclic - meme. That's a rather new one, isn't it?
No, it comes up from time to time.
What is this deadly thing that is chasing humanity and necessitates the environmental destruction of the past 100-150 years?
I know of at least one: Starvation.
Without technology (currently-petroleum-based) to run the tractors and fertilize the soil, the 1.6-to-2 acres requirement per person becomes a minimum of ~20 acres per person.
The whole "organic" thing is cool and all, but there's a reason that shit's expensive: spoilage, crop losses before harvest (no pesticides/herbicides), lower yields, greater labor intensity, etc...
So unless someone can cough up sufficiently cheap electric/hybrid tractors and a fertilizer that's just as good as Anhydrous Ammonia, stopping that nasty evil petro-based ag industry is going to starve a whole lot of people off.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sure it is!
1. Intelligent species learns to use fossil fuels at a massive scale before becoming collectively intelligent enough to manage their use
2. Species burns every last trace of them until an unstoppable extinction event is triggered
3. Rotting organic matter returns to petrochemicals
4. New intelligent species arises
5. Return to step 1
You know what, I'm not even sure I'm joking now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Wow, maybe these tests are the cause of the Algal Blooms that some countries have been experiencing? I don't think we want more and bigger algal blooms either. Action-> reaction, duh.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
the source of the warming is the phenomenon which you don't understand.
You would have made a very clever analogy if not for this part which is totally wrong.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Nicely done.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's generally the environmentalists yelling about global warming the loudest, and shortly thereafter telling everyone that the solution is to go back to living in caves (quite literally).
Can you back this statement up? From what I can tell, there are a few extremists in the environmental movement (as there are in any political movement) that might think this but you make it sound as if most environmentalists think this.
That 98% is 75 out of 77
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Yeah, mod up :-)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
No. But you are defending mass murder because of some petty problem you have with Christianity.
I am an atheist. I also have a moral compass. It tells me that mass murder is bad. Aztecs committed ritual mass murder on a scale never seen before or since. The Mexican people were definitely better off under their harsh Christian rulers than they were before, but not as well of as they would have been under a more liberal form of government.
The economy doesn't run on imagination.
Start protesting for increased nuclear research and a removal of the de fact ban on LFTR tech. It will be much more effective than bitching about CO2 emission without proposing solutions.
Because people who deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change believe that asking anyone to change their behavior in any way in order to mitigate it is a bridge too far, an affront to freedom, the destruction of democracy, blah blah blah.
In reality, the developed world will have to make a lot of adjustments--most modest, some probably severe--in order to survive. Less developed and prosperous countries, however, will suffer the brunt of the effects.
And that's just the best case. The worst case is, we do nothing and ruin this planet for human life. It's unclear just how bad things have to get for that to happen, but I'm not particularly interested in trying to find out, either.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
All progress runs on imagination. Otherwise there would be no progress.
I'm not against nuclear power per se but it is one of the most expensive ways to produce power.
Clean the atmosphere while fucking the ocean.
The issue here, is that people are not interested in true, long range, sustainable projects, they want to fix everything with nukes. At this point it may seem wiser to just let it roll and nature do its job, either, we all die (humans) and Earth heal by itself, or 90% of humans die, and the rest learns to play nice with the ecosystem (untill they fuck up again).
If climate change prompts world wide crop failures, and in causing climate change we deplete the world's fossil fuel supply we're just making the situation temporarily better before it gets much worse
Currently, fossil fuels are required for efficient farm production, and for distribution of food, so in the face of fossil fuel depletion, climate change is an irrelevant detail.
However... "charging blindly ahead" is what got us fossil fuels in the first place.
There is no reason to believe that human innovation stops with fossil fuel depletion.
The only thing that will get in the way of humans finding a better way, is other humans trying to frivolously and vainly prevent the inevitable "climate change" and "depletion of fossil fuels".
The climate change, and eventual depletion are just facts that have to be accepted. The climate change, humans have no real control of. Attempting to prevent depletion of fossils will just do more harm than good
And it's not nearly as catastrophic as you suggest
I can only guess that it is a strawman created and maintained by those benefitting from the status quo. It is also easier to get people to take a position (particularly a negative one) if you frame the whole debate as an all-or-nothing, black and white issue.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
You do not even know what the IPCC does and yet you have concluded a video put out by a retired paper industry executive is a better source of information. For your edification the IPCC does NOT "do science".
But hey, don't go to the IPCC site and find out what they are actually doing since that migh force you to question what you already know to be "fact", keep putting your faith in people like the director of that video who has no qualifications in climate science, has published no journal papers on the subject, made his millions turning forrests into paper, and warns you of the evil IPCC. Don't listen to the thousands of boffins who DONATE millions of manhours of tedious work reviewing and summarising mankind's current state of knowledge on the subject. Don't pay any attention to the billions of dollars spent collecting and analying data via everything from research ships to space ships. The boffins are just there to get free planes rides and access to confrence rooms so they refine their NWO plans. And of course who pays for these things, politicains! Sure those politicans come from over 120 very different nations but they are politicians so by definition anyone who deals with them must be untrustworthy, right?
No, wrong. You are the victim of propoganda from vested interests. However if you think that's an insult to your intelligence, then you're not very intelligent.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He wants an ever increasing carbon tax to phase out pretty much all CO2 production, and transition to electric cars run by clean power.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change
Or we can try this on a trial basis, and scale it up if it seems to be working.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7959570.stm to discover how trials did not yield meaningful results whe using pure Fe, which does not have the risk of generating sulfuric acid.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
It is very likely that globally aggregated figures underestimate the damage costs because they cannot include many non-quantifiable impacts.
I don't lie, you quote selectively.
Ok, I should have seen this coming, shouldn't I?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
And what are those "unquantifiable losses" supposed to be? Loss of life, loss of property, loss of species, loss of arable land, disease, sea level rise, migration, etc. are quantifiable. The IPCC report looked at each of these, quantified them, made a risk assessment, and put a final price tag on everything. That's the price tag you see in that section.
What does that leave in terms of loss and risk? Not bloody much. Your claim that there are significant additional risks beyond those that the IPCC report analyzed and quantified is nothing more than FUD.
And if there were quantifiable risks that the IPCC didn't include in the total, then they did shoddy work, in which case their entire case collapses anyway.
[citation needed]
Why do people seem to think that climate scientists advocate deindustrialisation?
Why do people seem to think that the proposed policy changes are being driven by scientists? There are neo-luddites who are using the science of climate scientists as justification to return us to the pre-industrial age.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The oceans are already dying off at an alarming rate due to dissolved carbon dioxide, creating carbonic acid.. hell this was even in the NEWS recently.. Where's the proof that by algae pulling even more carbon in, we wouldn't have an even HIGHER level of CO2 saturation?
Great idea. Then in 20 years when we have another unexplained period of global cooling maybe we will have some glaciers form in Scotland and Germany.
Who will make money from this BS and will the people that depend on the fish in those same southern oceans be amused?
And is the theory of global warming based on small changes in atmospheric CO2 levels really true?
Or is it caused by lower levels of magnetic field strength resulting from a slightly slower core spin rate?
Or is it part of a normal and self-limiting cycle relating to vegetation levels and solar reflectance?
And what are those "unquantifiable losses" supposed to be?
Well, you can familiarize yourself with the full report. If you read it for the information it contains instead of cherry-picking stuff that seems to confirm your own beliefs, you'll get a pretty good idea.
Now excuse me, feeding lying trolls isn't what I enjoy doing on Sunday mornings.
Cheers, liar.
No, if you honestly think multiple degrees of global warming would probably be a "boon", I don't believe you know that you are a corporate shill. Possibly, on this issue, a bit of a fool.
However, I do agree that an ice age would be worse than global warming.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I did read the full report (but you apparently didn't understand it). It lists a long list of things with quantifiable consequences and then totals them up and comes to the conclusion that the total is about as much as mitigation.
To say "we did a cost/benefit analysis, and it came out a wash, but we don't like the result and there are all these other things we didn't count" is unacceptable. If the cost/benefit analysis in the report is missing significant costs, then the authors need to come up with a better estimate. If something isn't quantifiable, it isn't relevant to economic decision like spending hundreds of billions a year on mitigation.
In different words, proponents of mitigation need to either put up or shut up. Put a price tag on the loss of polar bears, put a price tag on the loss of island habitats and ecologies, etc. because that's the only rational way of talking about these kind of decisions.
The only thing that will get in the way of humans finding a better way, is other humans trying to frivolously and vainly prevent the inevitable "climate change" and "depletion of fossil fuels".
What if you've got it backwards? What if what's going to stop (or delay) humans finding a better way, is other humans trying to frivolously and vainly prevent the replacement of fossil fuels?
The climate change, humans have no real control of.
Collectively, we can have control over climate change, however, there are a lot of people who hate the word "collectively" for ideological reasons.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
that just freezes the CO2 out of the atmosphere, and then we can figure out what to do with it...
This is my sig.