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Burning All Fossil Fuels Would Scorch Earth, Says Study (phys.org)
mspohr quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study published in the Journal Nature Climate Change shows our precarious climate condition: "Using up all known fossil fuel reserves would render Earth even more unlivable than scientists had previously projected, researchers said on Monday. Average temperatures would climb by up to 9.5 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) -- five times the cap on global warming set at climate talks in Paris in December, they reported. In the Arctic region -- already heating at more than double the global average -- the thermometer would rise an unimaginable 15 C to 20 C." This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans (although the dinosaurs seemed to do fine with it 65 million years ago). The report also stated that if fossil fuel trends go unchanged, ten times the 540 billion tons of carbon emitted since the start of industrialization would be reached near the end of the 22nd century. For comparison, "older models had projected that depleting fossil fuel reserves entirely would heat the planet by 4.3 C to 8.4 C. The new study revises this to between 6.4 C and 9.5 C," writes Phys.Org.
Don't worry, I'm sure all your answers will be answered if you $32 to access the full text of the article. Then again maybe it won't and the study is complete bullshit and you'll have spent that money for nothing.
We seriously need a shift in the way we share scientific data with each other. The system we have now is broken.
If you burned it all tomorrow, yes the planet would burn.. burn it over a millennia, no, it won't.
What are you basing that on? CO2 in the atmosphere is CO2 in the atmosphere whether it gets there quickly or slowly (unless you're talking the millions of years it takes to be transformed back into fossil fuels, which we are not). And speaking of time-scales, economists seem hell bent on exponential growth in everything, including energy consumption. And they genuinely don't seem to give a damn where that energy comes from and at what environmental or human cost: ergo it will be the cheapest available source. So while it's not guaranteed it seems highly probable we'll do our darnedest to burn as much as we can as fast as humanly possible.
Something else might (and probably will at the rate we're going) do it in in that thousand years, but it would not be emissions from fossil fuels.
And you might trip in front of a bus tomorrow, but that is not a good argument for taking up smoking today.
The article makes absolutely NO MENTION of time frame, and no mention of preventative measures that may be (and are) taken.
Because that is not what the research is about. It is a simple if a then b projection: *if* we burn all our available fossil fuel resources *then* we are monumentally screwed afterwards (whenever that is). The hope, presumably, is that the bare facts will motivate people to take (further) action, but really that is outside of the scope of the research.
Err, the "if nothing changed" scenario was kind of the point. And people modded this idiot up?
It is say that *if* we do nothing to reduce fossil fuel use and continue to emit as we do today, what is likely to happen. Its not predicting that we do nothing. The best guess is that at least some countries keep the Paris pledge and reduce emissions. But, if everyone decided that they could not be bothered to make the changes required, then we can expect significant warming.
A serious question about the squabble. Even if GW is not AGW, even if GW is not real, why should we not as a species work to reduce our impacts everywhere?
Silence is a state of mime.
. . . they are very difficult to get rid of. Give 'em a scorched Earth . . . they'll figure some way to survive in it.
Will a lot of folks suffer and die in the process? Hell, yeah. But there will still be some humans around who have figured out how to thrive in that environment.
People like to joke about cockroaches being the only living critter that will survive the nuclear apocalypse.
When I think of the post-nuclear apocalypse world, I see a creepy looking humanoid, munching on cockroaches.
McCockroaches, indeed.
"Would you like some fries with your roaches?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
CO2 in the atmosphere is CO2 in the atmosphere whether it gets there quickly or slowly (unless you're talking the millions of years it takes to be transformed back into fossil fuels, which we are not).
ignorant much ?
why do you want it back as fossil fuels?
have you heard of photosynthesis? it takes far less time than "millions of years" for plants to remove CO2 from atmosphere.
so unless we burn the fossil fuels all at once, or at a very rapid rate, and remove most of the plants as well, earth is not going to be "scorched"
you are not going to make a rational case for a sustainable climate, and for less fossil fuel use, successfully, by peddling alarmist ignorant nonsense like this.
Anyone who doesn't make predictions based on nothing changing for 200 years will never learn what changes are needed in the next 200 years.
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If by "livable" you mean "pockets of humanity are able to eke out a subsistence living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland" then sure!
Because, the trend remained unchanged in their minds. Modeling and fortune telling are more art and religion than actual science.
Um, no, the study isn't predicting that fossil fuel usage will go unchanged, it's predicting what will happen IF fossil fuel usage goes unchanged. That's a very important difference.
Photosynthesis only removes carbon from the atmosphere for a short period of time. The plants eventually die and decay. When they do, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. The problem is that all of this carbon was locked out of the usual carbon cycle by being buried deep underground (in the form of coal or oil). We're pulling it out of the ground, burning it, and putting it back into the normal carbon cycle. The only way to restore the carbon cycle to the normal (pre-industrial age) amounts of carbon would be to bury it again - an endeavor that would either be highly expensive (use some sort of atmospheric scrubber to remove the carbon and then pump it deep into the Earth) or would take millions of years (wait for the same process that formed the oil in the first place).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Those who are in "policy making" are bad at math and physic. I always get a sense that low IQ or low persistence people become politicians that always want to control others. It was always like that through ages, since the times when everyone knew that earth is being held by three giant whales or elephants.
Most of fossil fuels represent energy of sun converted to carbohydrates or coal. Of course burning all of it would heat up mother Earth. But burning it slowly, won't.
Those models that calculate carbon dioxide emitted to earth always, and I say, always, fail to take into account intricacies on how fast carbon dioxide is consumed by the oxygen making living organisms of the earth. Have there been any studies that demonstrate marginal increase in carbon dioxide absorption compared to the increase of the output of carbon dioxide.
If there are any serious studies, such studies will never be mentioned by policy makers. Nobody is denying that a lot of carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere, and that the climate is changing (it always changing).
To battle climate change by wearing green shirt and driving Prius, is similar to the rainmaking rituals of Zuni: one most wear blue feather and avoid staring to the buffalo on the day of the ritual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And I don't know where you get the notion that a slower release would make things better.
I'm not a denier, by any means, but it does make some sense that a slower release would be better. There are processes (photosynthesis being the most obvious) that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Conceivably, there is some rate of fossil fuel use that is sustainable, but maybe that rate is so low that it's irrelevant on a global industrial scale.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
>> This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans
Are you sure you're counting the large landmasses in Canada and Siberia?
So, in summary, what you are saying is that you didn't read the article, but you are sure it's wrong. Plonk.
Okay, fine, I didn't mean to leave you Libertarians out, so I'll rephrase:
It has to be wrong, because the Invisible Hand wouldn't let the wonderful substances known as oil and coal be harmful.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The plants eventually die and decay. When they do, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
You do realize that carbon is not a gas, right? And that it happily bonds with A LOT of things other than oxygen? Also, dead plants don't break down into a gaseous state, any one with a compost pile can show you that. Some is given back into the atmosphere as CO2 and methane when the plants die, but not all of it. We can sequester a notable amount of CO2 as soil through decaying plant matter in a relatively short period of time (as in months given the right conditions).
You're confusing two different things -- Fourier and Arrhenius (and everyone else) say that there is a logarithmic relationship between the increase in CO2 concentration and the increase in temperature.
This paper (as do many others) claims that there is a (near) linear relationship between emissions and temperature.
That's because doubling the amount we emit will more than double the atmospheric concentration, as the oceans will be taking up a smaller part of what we emit. Look for articles that talk about the TCRE "transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions", e.g. Le Duc et al 2015
So they are saying that since the atmosphere contains over 2,996×10^9 tonnes of CO2, adding an addition 29*10^9 tonnes of CO2 will cause the atmosphere to contain over 6,000 *10^9 tonnes? I think you are grossly underestimating increased primary production; CO2 is a fertilizer, not a growth imhibitor.
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