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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.
" In the absence of global mitigation actions, five trillion tonnes of carbon (5 EgC), corresponding to the lower end of the range of estimates of the total fossil fuel resource" i.e. assuming we take no action and keep burning fossil fuels at the current rates. From the time scales talked about on the first page, it looks like they assume burning it over the next couple of hundred years. Maybe some one want to give the full article a read?
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.
What, get smaller and grow feathers?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Nope, 'Dino sludge' was a one-shot deal. On the timescales needed for new fossil fuel, the sun will have died to the extent that Earth CO2 levels will have dropped below the level needed to sustain plant life (and thus animal life).
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
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!
The article makes absolutely NO MENTION of time frame
Absolutely no mention, except for the six mentions of time frame in the article: "by year 2300", "in 2300" (twice), "during the 2100-2300 period" (twice), "to the year 2300", plus 3 mentions of the 2100 time frame. And I stopped to count before even reaching the end of the first page (out of 6)
Considering the rate at which new reserves are discovered as it becomes profitable to look for them in more difficult places, it wouldn't surprise me if we could find enough fossil fuels to last a millennium. That would of course make the Earth considerably hotter than this projection.
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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.
ten times the 540 billion tons of carbon emitted since the start of industrialization would be reached near the end of the 22nd century.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Hey, I live in Iceland, where the average January low is -3C and the average July high is 13C. Such warming would make us the new California. Bring it on ;) I own some land, you can start booking your timeshares now.
It's funny, when you hear people talking about forestry here, they talk about things as if they only apply to our current climate. They plant douglas fir, sitka spruce, etc, trees that can become true giants in the right climate, but insist that they'll stay (comparatively) short and grow slowly because our climate is too cool for their optimal growth. Yes, our current climate, but these are trees that can live for much of a millennium. Heat up the country 4-5 degrees and you've turned the climate into that of coastal Washington / British Columbia where they reach their record heights; we have similar sun, soil, precipitation, summer/winter temperature differences, etc (windier, but that's in large part due to the shortage of trees).
Iceland once even had redwood forests. Washington/British Columbia species are not going to stay short forever if the climate keeps warming.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
300-400 million years to form supposedly. The Oregon Rainforest Coal Deposits tell a different story- they're only a few feet down, possibly two or three millenia old, and are constantly replenished by the living forest sitting on top of them.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Stop peddling your bullshit anon:
They can't explain the mechanism
Bullshit: http://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-d...
nor can they explain why Earth was so much colder during times when CO2 concentration was 10 times what it is today.
Bullshit: https://www.skepticalscience.c...
They talk out of both sides of their mouths and are bullshitting for money, lots and lots of taxpayer money. Why do they need taxpayer money?
Bullshit: Fossil fuels recieve considerably more taxpayer money than renewables, and they only reason climate science needs funding is that fossil fuel interests insist on continuously pushing back on scientists recommendations.
You think there would need to be reports like this if, in the 70s, governments had simply agreed that yes, they do need to reduce and stabilise CO2 production? The only reason climate scientists continually need to prove themselves is because of big oil shills and IDIOTS LIKE YOU who are drinking their koolaid.
I mean hell you're not even honest enough to use your account.
Models being too extreme? Hardly.
Forecast: 1990 IPCC sea level rise predictions vs. actuality
Forecast: 1988 Hansen temperature predictions vs. actuality (Scenario B was described as most likely)
Forecast: IPCC temperature predictions vs. actuality vs. contrarian models
Backtest: IPCC AR1 sea ice loss models vs. actual
Temperatures are tracking, on long running average, right on what has been forecast. Sea level rise is well on the high end. As it stands, our arctic sea ice models predict significantly less loss than we actually see (we're not very good with sea ice right now, and this is well acknowledged by the IPCC).
I know there's been this contrarian myth circulating claiming that climate models predicted warming that never occurred. There's a nice, well-referenced debunking of it here.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
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.
Burning all the fossil fuels on the planet at once in a large thruster will SAVE the planet. All we need to do is move the planet further out in orbit from the sun and it will counteract all effects of global warming.
These scientists today are only looking for problems and not solutions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Firstly, "Purchase article full text and PDF $32", fuck that shit, if those whoremongers really believed that my actions was going to destroy the world their Greatgrandchildern need to live in, they would be paying me to read it!
Secondly,
Every other modeler since Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, and especialy Svante Arrhenius uses logarithmic relationship
These guys are claiming the entire body of Climatological "Settled Science" is wrong and they are just throwing it out there like a bunch of assholes trolling click-bait; at least on Facebook the click-bait trolls give you some side-boob or camel-toed yoga-pants.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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?
Secondly,
Every other modeler since Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, and especialy Svante Arrhenius uses logarithmic relationship
These guys are claiming the entire body of Climatological "Settled Science" is wrong and they are just throwing it out there like a bunch of assholes trolling click-bait; at least on Facebook the click-bait trolls give you some side-boob or camel-toed yoga-pants.
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
The point of the pseudo-skepticism is put off that day as long as possible. There are great fortunes founded on fossil fuels, and those that have those fortunes want to maximize profits. Of course, they have a lot of witless mindless soldiers who they've convinced that climatology is really a communist fantasy, and those brainless idiots run around the intertubes with oft-repeated memes and a near total ignorance of the actual science (though some of these people are a little more capable and thus have rehearsed a somewhat more complex version of the pseudo-scientific drivel).
But make no mistake, when Saudi Arabia is creating the largest sovereign wealth fund in history, it's not because it sees a bright future for oil.
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).
Here is the press release from the University of Victoria:
www.communications.uvic.ca/releases/tip.php?date=23052016
and here are some sources that discuss the paper without quite as much in the way of scare words and hype:
www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/23/unmitigated-emissions/
www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/05/23/uvic-researcher-models-worst-case-climate-change.html
By 2015, the growing share of renewable energy in the national electricity market (26% in 2014, up from 4% in 1990) and the government's mandated CO2 emission reduction targets (40% below 1990 levels by 2020; 80% below 1990 levels by 2050) have increasingly curtailed previous plans for new, expanded coal power capacity.
... taken verbatim from the source you cite.
A few month ago I looked through all available data for Germany's coal plants, and I found that since 1997, no new coal plant has been licensed, and all coal plants that are under construction now were already licensed before 1997. And all of the current coal plants under construction are to replace older coal plants, but will not increase total capacity.