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.

Comments

Poor choice of example

[Ginger_Chris]

Considering there have been over 2000 nuclear tests

Re:Poor choice of example

[peragrin]

Even more so when you think no one else had a good reason to use nukes againist an enemy. Even today the estimates for bringing an end to world war two wa hundreds of thousands of lives, and another 1-2 years of fighting. Unlike Germany fire bombing Japanese cities wasn't having the desired effect.

No wars since then have been that desperate for those with nukes. Which is the only reason why north Korea is troubling. North Korea or Iran will feel desperate enough to use them.

Re:Poor choice of example

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany never fire bombed Japanese cities, mostly due to commas.

Re:Poor choice of example

[penguinoid]

Considering there have been over 2000 nuclear tests

We stopped at 2000 nuclear tests, we can stop at a 2000 degree Celsius increase in temperature.

But We Didn't

[Greyfox]

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.

Re:But We Didn't

[Eunuchswear]

Yup, sounds exactly like the way we're "dealing" with global warming.

Re:But We Didn't

[tnk1]

No. The reason we have not blown up the rest of the world has nothing to do with luck. There has been a very concerted effort to keep them on a leash. If you think that its all luck, remove all the controls we have added over the years against proliferation and watch how quickly a very large western city becomes an irradiated wasteland due to some extremist with too much money and too little sense.

If World War III is going to happen, it is not because someone got unlucky, but because someone created a plan to use those weapons for some purpose. That won't be luck, that will be pure stupidity.

Climate change phobia

[Kokuyo]

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.

Re:Climate change phobia

[drolli]

Only question is the speed.

If you change something over 10000years, ok people will move and adapt.

If you change the same thing over 100 or 200 years, you may have a period of an increased numer of wars.

Re:Climate change phobia

[mystuff]

I'm no expert on the matter either. But I can imagine that a sea level rise of a few meters (at the turn of the century) will results in tremendous economic damage (relocation of hundreds of million of people *and* real estate, as most of the population on Earth is housed in large cities in coastal regions), famine (due to loss of agricultural land), and territorial conflicts.

In any case, I think we have now arrived at the point where anyone that has children born after 2010 finds oneself in the situation where ones children, and grandchildren are going to be seriously affected by climate change and overpopulation. Those have to ask themselves what they are going to tell their grandchildren, 50 years from now, about how they had the ability to make a difference but couldn't agree on how bad it was going to be and therefore decided inaction was the best course of action.

Anyways what's the worst that can happen? and what is the real cost of climate change?

Re:Climate change phobia

[TremulousUK]

The further back into the past you go, the lower the resolution of the data. There's no way you can assign any confidence to judgements about the speed of natural variation today compared to that 3,000,000 years ago. You simply cannot have the statistical confidence. But that doesn't usually stop scientists (but mostly environmentalists with political agendas) attempting to do so.

Re: Climate change phobia

[Mspangler]

Read E. C. Pielou, specifically After the Ice Age. It's a nice description of what happened last time we had climate change.

As of 1990, we were still not as warm as we were 10,000 years ago. The Milankovitch cycle still continues, and the next ice age approaches.

It's funny

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:It's funny

[drinkypoo]

And neither side has any idea what to DO if they're right.

No, we know what needs to be done, we don't know how to force people to do it. And it very much takes force. The people whining about it seem to forget that this is how the world works. People with different ideas eventually come to blows because in the real world you can't do both things.

Re:It's funny

[itzly]

NASA had only 38% certanity that 2014 was hotter by 0.024 degrees. How can they be only 38% sure?

Never heard of measurement error bars ? Other years have them too. If you sort all the years by probability they were the hottest, then 2014 remains at the top.

Then I read another story about people researching past records that have been horribly manipulated

And you liked that story so much that you decided to believe it ?

Re:Actually, we've already stopped...

[itzly]

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...

Re:Who did the study?

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re:ok, so it's not unstoppable

[CaptainLard]

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.

Re:Who did the study?

[TheRealHocusLocus]

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.
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"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.