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We Stopped At Two Nuclear Bombs; We Can Stop At Two Degrees.
Lasrick writes Dawn Stover writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that climate change is irreversible but not unstoppable. She describes the changes that are happening already and also those likely to happen, and compares what is coming to the climate of the Pliocene: 'Even if countries reduce emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising much above the internationally agreed-upon "danger" threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (which seems increasingly unlikely), we can still look forward to conditions similar to those of the mid-Pliocene epoch of 3 million years ago. At that time, the continents were in much the same positions that they are today, carbon dioxide levels ranged between 350 and 400 ppm, the global average temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than it is today (but up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes), the global sea level was about 25 meters higher, and most of today's North American forests were grasslands and savanna.' Stover agrees with two scientists published in Nature Geoscience that 'Future warming is therefore driven by socio-economic inertia," and points the way toward changing a Pliocene future.
Considering there have been over 2000 nuclear tests
We didn't stop at 2 nuclear bombs. We exploded them and exploded them like they were goddamn tic-tacs. We didn't even do that safely -- we exploded them near our own civilian populations, telling the people that it was harmless and not to worry about that fallout. Judging from our track record with the things, some politician in Washington had read too many comic books and was hoping that some of the civilians would develop super powers. Instead, they just got lymphoma and birth defects. We made those goddamn things and put them in the hands of the least responsible people on the planet and stopped only after irreparable harm was done to thousands of lives. So yeah, you can draw that analogy if you want to but I don't think it points to as rosy a future as you might think it does.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's clear there too much political indifference to reduce emissions, so instead of trying to force skeptics/deniers/unbelievers into towing the line, why not a contract with them. You're choose to be on the bus and help reduce the problem, or stick to your guns and face consequences if it turns out the science was right. I imagine you'd start by laying down a set of climate benchmarks, agree on what is an acceptable variation under normal conditions, then should the averages begin to venture beyond those on the regular basis, and cause significant economic damage, the public (govt) confiscates all the assets of the entity, the directors, the board, and any previous board members/directors and anyone they gifted or passe don wealth to, from now on. Seems like a fair way to deal with the problem, since if you firmly believe things won't change you have nothing to lose. Sure we end up in the shit, but it's clear we end up in the shit anyway, at least this way we eventually there's some risk to be taken on-board and we save all the pointless arguments. Right now the carbon industry has nothing to lose by blocking their ears, and this is this problem
May be we can't. But we surely can make it worse. And the appropriate piece of wisdom in such situation is: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!
Frankly, what are people so concerned about? Climate's gonna change, people gonna die or relocate, society will have to adapt, animals will die out... But nature will adapt qnd so will we. It's gonna suck a lot but it's not gonna be a tangible end to anything.
Global warming is a great thing - just ask Canada, especially the places that are currently -40 degrees.
Scientists need someone that knows marketing. We don't care about what they talk about... link the argument to our pay or something useful.
Final thought... comparisons are to rebuilding today's infrastructure as if it wasn't constantly changing already. We have decades and perhaps centuries to adjust - ever hear of constant improvement?
You're right, temperatures have not gone up. The ten warmest years since 1901 are not all in the last two decades, and the last 38 years have not all been above the 20th century average. It's all a hoax, North-East America is experiencing harsh winters so there can be no global warming.
The problem is that we're digging and Africa gets to sit in the hole.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look around yourself. I don't know about you, but I can't say that losing this failed system we call civilization sounds more like a chance for a reboot than anything else.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really. I can't help but laugh every time there's a climate change bickering here on /.
It's absolutely stunningly awesome. You have two sides, zealous in their quest to convince everyone and their dog that they're right. Both sides have various "studies", produced more likely than not in a dark, rather warm but also quite smelly place and pulled out of there with little ceremony. Both sides accusing the other side of shilling, resorting to name calling and whatnot.
And neither side has any idea what to DO if they're right.
That's the actual joke here. Let's say, just for argument's sake, that there is global warming and that the whole sky-is-falling scenario will happen (which, I will freely admit, I think actually will happen). What now? Does anyone where really think there will be anything REMOTELY close to global consent on laws to lower the impact? Seriously? Fuck, we can't even get international consensus on stuff that presents an immediate and direct danger rather than a maybe-kinda-could-be-sorta danger in half a century. Even if we DID know for a fact, no doubt about it, 100% sure, proven FACT, that in 50 years life on earth as we know it would be impossible, you would NOT get any kind of international law going. No chance, no way.
But hey, keep talking. If nothing else, it's entertaining.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Global warming is a great thing - just ask Canada, especially the places that are currently -40 degrees.
The History channel will be happy to learn that they can start planning a few years of Mud Road Truckers, after the permafrost melts.
What exactly is the relevance of CO2 concentration of exhaled breath ?
If you look at the data you will find we have been flat for the last 20 years
Bullshit. The temperatures have not deviated from the same trend established in the decades before that.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2...
I wouldn't be so sure... http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
http://www.pnas.org/content/99...
http://journals.plos.org/plosb...
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...
http://www.esajournals.org/doi...
http://www.pnas.org/content/10...
It means the concentration of CO2 in everybody's lungs is at least 40,000 ppm. So people blaming their "ailments" on 600ppm is complete BS.
lol @ wordpress link.
Lol @ attacking the messenger. Here's the source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
That wasn't so hard. The graphs even say "NASA".
Global warming is a great thing - just ask Canada, especially the places that are currently -40 degrees.
As opposed to those near freezing - at the Arctic Circle? There is a reason why "Global" is capitalized. Here's a nice world map how temperatures where compared to the average for Jan. 2015: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/
Final thought... comparisons are to rebuilding today's infrastructure as if it wasn't constantly changing already. We have decades and perhaps centuries to adjust - ever hear of constant improvement?
We are decades behind fixing our infrastructure already - do you really want to drag that out even longer?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You have your grimy, bridge-girder-mangled finger on the reason why climate activists are doomed, I say, doomed.
When scientists render their final verdict on the carbon warming hypothesis, it will be one of these alternatives:
1. Manmade warming is somewhere in the range of nonexistent to exaggerated. Activists' heads explode.
2. Manmade warning is some value of significant to apocalyptic. If we need to immediately stop emitting carbon, we will have to nuclear. If there is already too much carbon in the atmosphere, we will have to geoengineer. The activists' heads explode.
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering StraiÐ and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
Global warming is a great thing - just ask Canada, especially the places that are currently -40 degrees.
Right, because when their average temperature suddenly jumps up to 25C, those northern frozen wastelands will instantly become a tropical paradise/breadbasket of the earth. Nevermind that since nothing has grown taller than a foot in 100s (1000s?) of thousands of years there are no nutrients in the soil and its much more likely to turn into a desert (much like rainforests do after deforestation). The effort to turn our newly thawed tundra into the fertile paradise all you "AGW aint so bad" crowd like to spout all the time could well be greater than eliminating all CO2 emissions within 5 years.
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering Strait and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
I like the way you think... it's a beautiful dream and I'm right there with you, except for the 'doable' part. See this great Megastructures documentary, Bridging The Bering Strait. So many great things to accomplish. If more than ~19.6% of engineers receiving a Bachelors in engineering were women I think we would be much better off. (Not what you said, just thinking that because my daughter is choosing a major.)
There is such an expanse between things that are good ideas and those that are practical --- that is, practical in the sense that you can imagine them happening in your own lifetime or would bet on them. As opposed to merely being able to imagine them. Unless mankind blows a stinky one and goes tits-up, a global power grid is desirable, inevitable and necessary. But when? And what first?
Presently deployed technology principally uses resonant AC generated mechanically.
A inter-continental or global grid MUST be spanned with high voltage direct current.
The converters that render DC to properly synchronized AC (and back) are not perfected and are expensive.
A series of overlapping HVDC loops within a continent is a good start.
Presently North America utilizes three grids with no appreciable energy connection between.
This is ridiculous. A country should be able to pool electrical energy as necessary coast to coast.
We did it with railroads and then highways.
Sometimes positive change requires reasons beyond corporate interests.
The US was once spanned by crappy roads.
The Interstate Highway System was Eisenhower's way to insure that the US could move troops quickly if invaded.
From awful scenarios and bad times, good things may arise.
Likewise with nuclear energy.
BUT.
Grid rebuilding does not 'create' new energy.
The politics of spanning the globe with cable are insurmountable.
Because an idiot with a hacksaw just cut off Northern Arizona.
There are a lot of idiots out there with hacksaws and explosives.
Therefore, any single globe-spanning initiative is actually a single point of failure.
In engineering, despite the beauty of this planet-spanning solar dream, it is a bad idea.
I don't like it, you don't like it, but could we bet our future, our childrens' future, that it would never happen?
SO.
What is the next step?
Some form of wealth creation.
Energy is wealth, so let's create energy.
Something that requires a few hundred somethings, not tens of thousands or millions of something.
A few hundred somethings that are weatherproof, self-contained concrete fortresses that just output energy.
Something we can build, not just (for example) borrow money to have the Chinese build for us.
We can defend hundreds of things located in our back yard. We must.
DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Successful at identifying it as rhetorical fluff.
Convenient for him that his graph started in 1970, but that's a subtle form of dishonesty since it's been warming since at least 1890.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
Who is NASA shilling for when they say "there has been no warming this century" ?
Who was NASA shilling for when the pointed out in 2010 the IPCC model was indeed broken in the exact same way Freeman Dyson said it was?
Who was James "Gaia theory" Lovelock shilling for when he said "I was wrong, and being alarmist . CO2 has gone up but the temperature hasn't risen this century. But them I'm not getting a climate grant so I can say that".
Who is the national snow and ice center shilling for when they point out the arctic ice as grown steadily for three years?
If you're so sure it's warming, how much warmer has it been each year compare to the previous? Why don't you know this? Why have all the graphs in the press shtoped showing up?
Because the temperature had flatlined that's why. Only the Daily Mail got this right. Imagine a world where out of all the newspaper only the Daily Mail had data that aligned with NASA and CERN, the rest misinterpreted it.
Don' t give me that "hottest year" crap, the 2014 data won't be qualified until march 2015. Not that one year indicated a trend.
At some point the math will run out. "Truthout" printed this:
"The last time we had this discussion was 2013, remember? Before that it was 2010. Before that it was 2005, and everything started with the Super El Nino in 1998. Statistically, saying that 2014 was the hottest year ever is a very valid thing, and if you understand statistics, I am envious of you."
Maybe if you hadn't skipped grade 10 stats you wouldn't be so confuzzled.
"But the global average temperature for these years, and every year since 1998 except 1999 and 2000, have all been virtually tied, if one is a casual civilian statistician watching or reading reporting on television or other media. But a few things have been overlooked in this and the periodic media outbursts that have preceded this event."
Look, I'm no math major... oh wait, yes, yes I am a math major. Not that that matters, "stats for the humanities" will also learn 'ya that when a record is tied for sixteen years that sorta mean it's NOT GOING UP. How many math classes do you have to skip to write something that fucking stupid? All of them?
http://www.truth-out.org/news/...
When did the US become such a fact free zone?
The fact that The Guardian just got popped for publishing ghostwritten climate article as stories when they're ads may not help.
As a liberal I'm just revolted at this dumbing down. What the hell kind of world has a Comedian pretend to be a "science guy" with no science degree but who contradicts the guy that took over Einstein's job? And secretly influences media because of his "fame". Blinky the science clown strikes again.
Facts used to matter it he US.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Yes, really. Are you that stupid?
You're talking about a soil layer measured in inches on top of permafrost, that is, ground which is mostly frozen water. If you start thawing this, the ground subsides, generally fills with water, and then a ten-thousand-years-delayed decomposition period starts. The North Slope of Alaska is dotted with millions of tiny lakes for this exact reason.
Maybe your imaginative powers are able to compare that with the places that we are currently growing crops. Turning bog into fertile farmland is not impossible, and neither is greening the desert, but it's not trivial and it's not going to happen without a huge amount of time and human intervention. But even if you do all of that, you're still going to have a short growing season, because of that whole "axial tilt" thing.
I'm failing to come up with an analogy to describe how irrelevant the conditions of Earth 100 million years ago are to the current carbon crisis. Maybe you can try again with a non-bogus argument and save me the trouble.
Literally every nuclear plant in construction throughout the entire world is way overbudget, even the ones in China.
You're right... but China aims to change that. China is cool with the delays in AP1000 construction... why? Because Westinghouse is refining the pump design.
China is much more than a happy customer experiencing some delays in delivery and construction. They have a plan in place to build the CAP1400, their own proprietary version of the Westinghouse AP1000.
If you're a flag-waving American who believes that we're still in the race to help develop and industrialize the world, this August 2014 slide show from China's SNPTC (State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation) is worth a look. "China has basically established the 3rd generation nuclear power industrial system, built up the complete equipment supplied chain, completed the standard design of localized AP1000, and prepared for mass construction of the localized AP1000."
And that is merely to ensure its entry into the market as a supplier of AP1000-compatible reactors in the short term. Their CAP1400 project promises to build on the AP1000 concept while scaling up the output by half (to 1530MWe). They are also suggesting an actual four-year construction cycle.
So if Westinghouse (majority owner: Toshiba) wishes to delay construction today in order to improve the design of coolant pumps --- I'm sure China is amenable. They will note the improvements and incorporate them.
While the United States feeds Africa for a day and attempts to impose unworkable energy solutions, Japan and China will build its coal plants today and become its infrastructure partners. Then with the same steadfast determination with which the USA built out railroads, the Chinese will lay high speed rail, energize itself and New Africa with grids and mature PWR nuclear energy tomorrow. And on the third day, Thorium reactors using liquid fuel. Ultimately a quadrillion dollars of infrastructure... financed and built without the US dollar, perhaps.
So if China supplies nuclear reactors to the world --- and ultimately also the United States for a hefty price, when natural gas declines and we shake ourselves awake from this renewables nightmare, what a pity. We could have done it first and we could have done it better.
___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"when a record is tied for sixteen years that sorta mean it's NOT GOING UP."
The implication "If A then B" can be true when both A and B are false.
The record has not been tied for 16 years: it has not been exceed for 16 years, which only tells you that records are set by outliers, not trends.
Marketing wont help. when 90% of the population are functional morons when it comes to science you cant say anything to convince people that just can not understand why warmer planet means more dramatic cold during the winter.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.