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Carbon-Emitting Soil Could Speed Global Warming, Warns 26-Year Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quote the Guardian:
Warming soil releases more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, suggesting a potentially disastrous feedback mechanism whereby increases in global temperatures will trigger massive new carbon releases in a cycle that may be impossible to break... The 26-year study is one of the biggest of its kind, and is a groundbreaking addition to our scant knowledge of exactly how warming will affect natural systems. Potential feedback loops, or tipping points, have long been suspected to exist by scientists, and there is some evidence for them in the geological record. What appears to happen is that once warming reaches a certain point, these natural biological factors kick in and can lead to a runaway, and potentially unstoppable, increase in warming...
In the Science study, researchers examined plots of soil in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, a mixed hardwood forest in the U.S. They experimented by heating some of the plots with underground cables to 5C above normal levels, leaving others as a control. The long-term study revealed that in the first 10 years there was a strong increase in the carbon released from the heated plots, then a period of about seven years when the carbon release abated. But after this second calmer period, which the scientists attribute to the adjustment of the soil microbes to the warmer conditions, the release of carbon resumed its upward path. From 1991, when the experiment began, the plots subjected to 5C warming lost about 17% of the carbon that had been stored in the top 60cm of the soil, where the greatest concentration of organic matter is to be found...
Lead scientist Jerry Melillo, points out that currently 10 billion metric tons of carbon gets released into the atmosphere every year, but "The world's soils contain about 3,500 billion tons of carbon. If a significant amount of that is added to the atmosphere, due to microbial activity, that will accelerate the global warming process. Once this self-reinforcing feedback begins, there is no easy way to turn it off. There is no switch to flip."
In the Science study, researchers examined plots of soil in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, a mixed hardwood forest in the U.S. They experimented by heating some of the plots with underground cables to 5C above normal levels, leaving others as a control. The long-term study revealed that in the first 10 years there was a strong increase in the carbon released from the heated plots, then a period of about seven years when the carbon release abated. But after this second calmer period, which the scientists attribute to the adjustment of the soil microbes to the warmer conditions, the release of carbon resumed its upward path. From 1991, when the experiment began, the plots subjected to 5C warming lost about 17% of the carbon that had been stored in the top 60cm of the soil, where the greatest concentration of organic matter is to be found...
Lead scientist Jerry Melillo, points out that currently 10 billion metric tons of carbon gets released into the atmosphere every year, but "The world's soils contain about 3,500 billion tons of carbon. If a significant amount of that is added to the atmosphere, due to microbial activity, that will accelerate the global warming process. Once this self-reinforcing feedback begins, there is no easy way to turn it off. There is no switch to flip."
Global warming effects the habitability of every region for every organism, bacterial included. Before denialists complain on economic costs they must recognize the second layer of economics impacts from damage to the base agrarian sector that powers all of the economy. Humans require food to live, to use and to make everything else. We face quick changes that disrupt our existing transportation and market networks that distribute these resources, as well reduction in total yields. That damage and the cost of that damage dwarf all complaints about the costs of responding, through limits and changes in production techniques, and through transition to alternative sources of fuels and electricity.
Ok banning it might not work. I say we tax possession of soil, maybe with a carbon credit system. Fallback plan: take all of this 'soil' and bury it deep, preferably under tons of dirt. As any politician knows, burying things takes care of them once and for all. /s
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
you are a fucking retard
use energy to convert carbon and carbonoxides into any kind of solid or even liquid via an endotherm reaction?
you can turn it back into oil for all I care.
I'm impressed by the fact that 26 years ago, some scientists put underground cables to warm the soil 5C and kept it that way for 26 years.
I'm glad somebody even thought of this that long ago, it was (for most people) not on their radar. Who knows what other studies were proposed and were denied because of the political climate from the (Bush) administration. Then again, maybe it was funded by the university. Go Hahvahd!
To the deniers: If we agree on nothing else can we at least agree on continuing to fund well planned scientific studies on the climate? If you really think there is no truth to this then you should be all for it, all the data is public and in fact you can run the studies yourselves! I've always thought that the TRUTH may come from people you completely disagree with.
It would be a crime if due to the political winds/lobbyists these studies were denied, it's like an ostrich sticking its head into the ground (do they really do that?). It's would be like how federal studies into the links between gun ownership and gun violence is PROHIBITED or how the federal government isn't allowed to even negotiate for lower drug prices (despite being a huge buyer, through medicare/medicaid).
Two things are crippling America: poor basic education in some parts of America due to widely uneven funding based on local communities resources (kinda defeats the idea of giving the next generation a fair chance). The other is legalized corruption by allowing unlimited corporate donations to politicians; for example this has resulted in American health care costs being more than twice that of the next country in the entire world! (With worse outcomes)
Once you have some nuclear power plants to stop the CO2 released from coal then use some of that nuclear power to mine and pulverize basalt rock as fertilizer for crops.
http://www.energyfromthorium.c...
Once spread on the fields the calcium oxide, or lime, in basalt will react with the CO2 in the soil to reduce the acidity. Farmers already lime their fields, only now it's produced from mining limestone and then cooking off the CO2 to produce lime. Any CO2 this takes from the soil will only counteract what was released in the lime kilns. It does nothing for the CO2 released from the fuel burned in the kilns. Any CO2 taken from the soil will mean reducing CO2 in the air since natural processes, such as the rain, will carry the CO2 out of the air into the soil where the lime can trap it chemically as limestone, or CaCO3.
There are other uses for the lime and sand from the mined basalt, like making cement and glass. Using nuclear power is an important aspect of this plan since this is an energy intensive process that would have to operate in the mines. They'll have to mine where the rock is easy to reach, not where the sun shines and wind blows. They may be far from infrastructure, making running power lines impractical.
Farmers need to replace this lime in the fields continuously as the nutrients are taken up in the crops and as rains wash it away, so it's not like they spread it out once and the acidity problem is fixed. There is an incredible amount of basalt on Earth, we just will not run out.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Pave the Earth.
One People.
One Planet.
One Sheet of Asphalt.
(and yes, this *****IS***** sarcasm. . . )
You need a lot more than basalt to grow crops.
Did I say that's all was needed? Of course other materials would need to be used. The point is that farmers currently use source of lime that produced a lot of CO2 and we have a means to produce this lime that is CO2 negative. To get this working we need nuclear power, nothing else we currently have will do. That might change in the future but it's nuclear power or this won't work.
Also, nuclear power generation is horrendously expensive - a new plan with decades old but improved design costs 30 billion.
More expensive than finding a new planet? Any argument against nuclear power looks really petty when compared to saving life on Earth. I just proposed a plan to save all life on Earth and all you can come up with is, "it will cost too much". Compared to what? You have a better plan?
We can't use wind power. Those silly windmills made of wood and sheet metal can't power anything more than a small water pump. Oh, you say windmill technology has improved in the last 100 years? IMPOSSIBLE! Because... because I said so. The argument that nuclear power has stood still for the last 50 years is just as logical that wind power has stood still. Why is it that whenever windmills and solar panels are brought up we get, "Yeah, it still sucks now but just wait ten years!" At the same time when nuclear power is brought up we get mentions of the problems of nuclear power from 50 years ago, as if nobody has bothered to improve the technology.
There are hundreds of nuclear power plants operating on Earth right now. We know how to build them to produce power safely, reliably, and cheaply. Any complaints on them should be left in the 1970s when the USA stopped building them until very recently. When people complain about the spent fuel the claim is that the mass is as much as the heaviest element, with the radioactivity of the deadliest element, with a half life of the longest lived element. To make it sound dangerous they have to lie.
It's not "waste", it's fission products that contain some very valuable materials if we'd just get some politicians to take their head out of the 1970s. I guess it makes sense, so many of them got into office in the 1970s. Nuclear power costs go down with economies of scale, kind of like how solar panels get cheaper the more they are made.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
> The sun's total energy that hits the planet Earth surface is 174 000 Terawats of heat energy every year. Humanity generates only about 25 Terawatts of enegy annually [...]
Warming is about the retention of (some fraction of) those 174 petawatt (no I didn't check the numbers), not about a bit more or less of those 25 terawatt (no, I didn't check the numbers).
You stupid, drooling trumpbot.
You are confusing energy with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If your numbers are correct, the point is not the relative energy generation of humans vs the sun, but that due to the higher CO2 concentration caused by humans, more of those 174 000 Terawats of heat energy from the sun that you mention will be retained in the atmosphere.
Energy is not measured in watts.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
The atmosphere is clearly fake news... if there were something covering the whole planet, 10's of thousands of feet of it, I think we'd have seen it by now!
Clearly there is no atmosphere, and "air" is just a myth created by the LIBERAL MEDIA to control us by making us think we have to breathe... I stopped breathing weeks ago and I encourage all good hard working americans, the ones who can see through the liberal media's lies, to do the same, it's the only way we can get the message across to the liberal media that we aren't listening any more!
Hmmm, I wonder... "conventional wisdom" has been that all of the paving humanity has been doing has created heat islands that are increasing localized global warming. But given this research, I am left to wonder: is there an offset? Clearly I'd think that paving or building over large plots of arid land would certainly squelch this CO2 emission. Of course, there is the carbon cost of the manufacture/construction to consider, but have we perhaps been abating something we didn't even know existed (or, at least, know was a significant CO2 source)? It would seem to me the next logical step for this group would be to pave or concrete over part of one of their experimental plots, accounting for the CO2 "cost" in doing so, and compare. I hate to see all the parking lots and acre-sized warehouses that are overtaking the lush green in my area, but...
(Also, causes me to ponder fictional planets like Coruscant or Trantor.)
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Tell it to Venus and Mars (runaway cooling in second case).
As for the last 11 inter-glacial periods.. in how many of them so much of fossil fuel was burned? Technology and population density changed a bit since last interglacial...
http://phenomena.nationalgeogr...
http://northernwoodlands.org/d...
Ah, I see. You'd rather people die than use nuclear power. All you said was a repeat of what you said before, that nuclear power costs too much so we should all die instead.
I got it. We're done here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Mars has no magnetic field, that is the reason it has no atmosphere, hence cold.
The fact that you brought it up as a point to make an AGW point and are too stupid to have known means anything else you post is probably wrong. You liberals as so dumb and think just because a bunch of other idiots vote you up, you "must" be smart. No, it means you all wallow in such ignorance and are actually proud of how stupid you are.
Sad.
Well you are just being a unsmart person, mister dumbly-dumbo.
Climate change is now a totally proven factological theory, and it's also known to be 100% true. It's why all the bad weather happens, because Al Gore said so. What are you, stupid or something?
>Disastrous feed back cycle impossible to break
Immediately disproven by the fact that we have had higher temperatures in the past and are not currently Venus. This is what passes for scientific thought these days.
The Carbon Cycle is well understood. Of the CO2 emitted by human activity, half of that ends up in the atmosphere, the other half ends up in sinks. Half of that half goes into the ocean and the remaining half of that half goes into the soil.
The reservoir capacity of the ocean is vast, orders of magnitude greater than the atmosphere. What prevents all of the CO2 from diffusing into the ocean is 1) the equilibrium of atmospheric and ocean CO2 follows a non-linear roughly 10th-power relationship owing to the chain of chemical reactions by which CO2 is "dissolved" (rather chemically bonded into soluble carbonates) and 2) there is a finite rate of mixing of the surface ocean layer with the deep layer. This model of the ocean along with some assumptions regarding the cycling of carbon between the atmosphere and the soils on land gives an accurate trace of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration from about 290 ppm at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to over 400 ppm today. It also predicts the carbon isotope concentrations along with the seemingly short lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere from the rapid extinction of radioactive C14 from atmospheric H-bomb testing that (mostly) ended in the mid 1960s -- this has to do with the non-linear absorption of CO2 by the ocean, which exchanges CO2 molecules at a high rate but resists requires greater changes in atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 to shift the chemical equilibrium. This may seem counter to intuition, but this is well understood P-Chem.
Even though only half of the CO2 emitted by humans ends up in the atmosphere on account of the sinks, just about all of the increase in CO2 is the fault of humans. That is, unless there is a natural source of thermally stimulated emission of CO2 that needs to be taken into account.
It is perhaps not widely known, but there is a large fluctuation in the year-to-year increase in atmospheric CO2. The fluctuation is of comparable magnitude as the human contribution that is believed to be much more steady -- we have boom and bust cycles in industrial output, but the variations are not quite that much.
You may not have heard of this fluctuation, but NOAA's Carbon Cycle Guru Pieter Tans certainly knows about it. He attributes it to the effect of temperature changes on the rotting of fallen leaves and other litter in the tropical rainforests. He claims that the leaves that fall are very quickly rotted away, releasing most of their carbon back as CO2 into the atmosphere. His claim is that owing to the rapid decay of dead plant matter under tropical conditions, the reservoir is small. It accounts for the correlation between temperature and increase in atmospheric CO2 (called "net emissions), only occurring over short time windows. This correlation exists over longer time scales, but matters get fuzzy because human CO2 has ramped up over a time of gradual warming.
Were you to believe Pieter Tans (yes, believe as much of this is based on modeling assumptions), there is minimal effect of decades-long increase in atmospheric temperature in driving CO2 emissions from the soil -- the decades-long increase is all attributed to the decades long gradual increase in industrial emissions with minimal contribution from warming of soils. Were you to regard NOAA's top Carbon Cycle dude as wrong, that increasing temperature drives a positive feedback of CO2 emissions over longer times than the year-to-year fluctuations seen in the atmospheric CO2 "Keeling curve", which TFA does, you would have already seen the effect on atmospheric CO2 because the climate has indeed been warming for most of the 20th century -- it has been warming, has it not, that is, unless you are a Climate Change Denier?
If contra-Pieter Tans Head of the Carbon Cycle Section at NOAA the long term temperature trend is stimulating CO2 emissions from the soil in a positive feedback, there must be a countervailing negative feedback in the form of a commensurately higher absorption of CO2 by plants, an absorption that is sens
Remember this scary shit?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I wonder if there could be any other "guns" we don't know about. Ah the joys of running an unintentional, unplanned geoengineering experiment on your only habitable planet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And nuclear is overly expensive in countries whose legal systems allow protesters to tie up projects with decades of worthless lawsuits. Build them in places like France and China that just ignore protesters, to a common design with as many factory built modules as possible.
take all the carbon, keep as much as need, box the rest up and shoot it into space. jobs a goodun, get trump on it.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Your 175 TW to 25 TW comparison refers to heat dissipation, which is trivial compared to the warming effect of greenhouse gas emitted by the fossil fuel share of our 25 TW.
Yes, our climate models are not very good at telling us how much of the weather we experience year on year is altered by manmade carbon. It’s just a good idea for us not to go on making the problem worse.
Do you think your old ICE car has spring water in its gas tank and oil sump? Have you ever seen what an oil refinery or tar sands mine looks like?
The toxic materials needed in electric cars are needed in far smaller amounts and can be recycled. We should welcome their reduced requirement for toxic materials.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Absolutely wrong, where did you learn this nonsense? We aren't crawling up anything that could appear to be a natural spike, we've made our own spike in what should be a trough:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
The earth should be cooling now, if there were no anthropogenic climate effects.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If this tipping point is truly an issue, it's a good thing we're heading into a solar minimum. This could be our opportunity to reduce our carbon emissions and slow things down during a time when the temperature will be trending down for a decent amount of time (I've heard a number of estimates, most of them at least a decade). At the minimum we have an opportunity to delay the tipping point, we'll see I guess.
Well, let's assume the periodic cycle you are talking about is driven by climactic restoring forces rather than exogenous forces like orbital forcing. Even that assumption doesn't lead an ironclad conclusion that there is no point of no return. The oscillating behavior is the product of underlying system processes that could conceivably be disrupted by sufficiently large change -- like stretching a coil spring until it becomes a wire.
But let's just assume there are restoring forces that will undo any anthropogenic changes. They don't work overnight; in fact in the data you allude to they take 36,000 years to reverse direction. So for us, and our descendants for hundreds of generations, there may as well not be any return. Even on the timescale of civilization lifespans that's a long time.
And that's really what the big climate change concern is: not the survival of the species, but the stress that the change will place on civilizations, which will manifest itself as destabilizing financial costs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The reason I say this is because it didn't happen in the pass. What may happen is a jump in the temperature large enough to render large parts of the tropic inhabitable. That includes most of the Southern and Middle United States. You do need to know that the fossil extraction industry does believe a decade of profit is more important to them than your survival.
the natural world is amoral. without humanity there is no morality. until such a future time when some animal develops the intelligence to understand good and evil.
i'm betting on the other primates, then the pigs, then dolphins then cephalopods.
primates are easy, pigs because land is infinitely more conducive to that evolution i think. necessity for persistent tool use etc. etc. dolphins because close, but water based. and cephalopods because they only live for 3 years. crows never, brains too tiny and costly for flight.
We've already banned humans (evil carbon producers), just ban soil.
Kevin Costner says if we wait long enough, the soil problem will take care of itself.
the natural world is amoral. without humanity there is no morality.
You do realize that by making this statement, you are essentially saying that morality is a human invention and also by definition there is no objective morality. Evolutionary psychology and existentialist philosophy would agree with that. And it also follows from this that morality is all subjective and a collective morality is an agreed upon set of standards defined by all the members of the collective. Good or evil is irrelevant unless you believe there is something that can 1) be measured objectively and 2) that the measurement matters. For this reason, I prefer to look at it from a Utilitarian point of view. Moral standards are only of utility where they add positive value and even then it is people who define what positive value and positive outcomes are. There is no objective standard of that either.
We'll make great pets
Specifically about 3.7 W/m^2 per doubling of atmospheric carbon, which works out to be about 1 degree C. Unfortunately, most of the world's surface also happens to be covered with reservoirs of a much better greenhouse gas, which not only is leaping to be a part of this atmospheric party, but which can be dissolved in exponentially greater amounts with increased temperatures. Not one of those kind and gentle exponents either, as anyone from the South ought to be able to attest.
Waste heat from human processes will also become an issue if our energy use continues to rise, but we have probably a few hundred years even assuming current growth rates continue indefinitely. In the meantime we have a feedback issue to deal with.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Once upon a time, there was an enormous amount of phytoplankton in a warm shallow ocean, which died and sank and became carbon-dense oil precursor rocks. These migrated northward to be buried thousands of feet beneath the frozen wastes of what is now the North Slope of Alaska. The normal decay of plants and animals produces minuscule amounts of oil and is unrelated to the oil in the arctic, or the formation of large oil deposits generally. And whether there are "nutrients" in the dirt is actually rather irrelevant, because the difference between rock, sand, and frozen mud, and fertile soil is a whole ecosystem of fungi and bacteria.
It would be about as easy to farm the North Slope as it would be to farm the Sahara.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Almost as if there has been a natural control on global warming and cooling that has existed for millions of years.
There are several such sinks. Plants aren't a particularly good one, but CO2 also dissolves readily in water, and in the longer term silicate weathering is an excellent way to get rid of excess carbon. The problem is that those things aren't working well enough. We know they're not working well enough because the CO2 levels are rising.
Climate has not ever been stable -- that would be the 19th-century view of things. When we started discovering signs of Ice Ages, it was clear that this "warm years are balanced with cold ones" theory could not account for a world which produced mile-high glaciers across Europe. Various persons in the early 20th century calculated that, far from being stable, changes of the order of a few percent difference in albedo at the poles could begin a feedback cycle that would massively disrupt the planet. Of the various theories of climate change that resulted, carbon dioxide has proved to be the most concerning, since it has been known since the mid-19th century that many human processes produced large amounts of 'carbonic acid'.
So do you want to try again with an argument not from the 19th century?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
yes, i realize that. animals can neither be good or evil, that's entirely a human construct on the nature of existence.
i would say that jordan peterson has convinced me that it is evolutionary in nature and not strictly subjective.
the story i'd summarize is that morality is the ingrained pattern of behaviors and mores that has worked for us so far and in general has outcompeted every other 'moral structure' that has arisen by happenstance. And that at this point, it is so deeply ingrained in our make-up from generations upon generations of reinforcement through selective breeding mechanics that it is no longer strictly subjective but transcendent to a certain extent.
that is why utility might seem good, sacrifice the 1 for the 100. but that is a pretty simple moral system which has most likely been tried in the past, and the current morality, that muddies that calculus has won in the long run.
sacrifice might be good, but self-sacrifice is ideal if one person needs to die. and the reverence we hold for those that give their life for their fellow man, is no accident. it's bred into us to revere those people.
AGW is a theory of climate change. Theories of climate change were a response to the "static climate" theories (read: assumptions based on Christian theology). It was widely believed that humans could not affect the planet, but we kept finding evidence of ice ages, and so there were a number of theories of climate change that arose in the 19th Century. Just before the dawn of the 20th Century, a guy named Arrhenius proposed a CO2-induced theory of climate change, which after being considered debunked for five decades has gained near-universal support.
Deniers would like to believe that there is some naming conspiracy, which is at this point probably nothing more than a litmus test to see if you'll believe other kookery. Someone failed to inform the IPCC that they had the wrong acronym, I guess? But the conspiracy also assumes that you're not smart enough to figure out that, to the degree that there has been any change in terminology, it's because of Frank Luntz and George W. Bush. In actual fact, the terms "climate change" and "AGW" are closely related but distinct terms, which only tend to be synonymous when discussing current climate issues. I can't think why exactly this conspiracy theory would be meaningful if true, but you should probably avoid the argument unless the goal is to look incredibly stupid.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Learn to understand scales. What you're talking about is basically noise.
Did you even look at my link? Note the scales changing on the x-axis. Your data DOES appear.
Yours from Skeptical Science (a good site, btw) show scales of decades and one with centuries. I'm talking 1000+ year scales. Look at the 20ky-200ky span. Pulse...decline....pulse....decline...pulse....decline.... What do YOU think would come next in that series?
-Styopa
People talking about "tipping points" are something of a problem. Probably "inflection points" would be better. However, most people only talk about "runaway" warming because they're deniers who want to use it as a "reductio ad absurdum". There are a handful of researchers who have got up on their hind legs and said that a Venus-type runaway scenario is possible on Earth, and while this sort of thing cannot be entirely discounted, the consensus view is that we can't keep the atmosphere hot enough for long enough to enter a 'true runaway' scenario. On the scale of 10e4-10e5 years silicate weathering and other long-term sinks should take care of the excess carbon. However, unless you're good on waiting until then, that does leave us with a bit of a short-term carbon problem.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You seem to be asserting that an irregular temperature spike is happening right now, against the shorter-term factors I linked to earlier and the fact that we should be entering an ice age. Those spikes aren't happening at regular intervals, the interval between them has almost tripled over the last million years, as the article I linked to points out. You're expecting the next one to arrive at the same interval as the last one did, when you should instead expect it to arrive later. This would mean we should be in a cooling period which brings us back in line with the best scientific evidence.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think it's pretty interesting to have a comment where one merely links to a scientific study modded as "Troll". Boy, does that speak volumes.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
yes, i realize that. animals can neither be good or evil, that's entirely a human construct on the nature of existence.
It also means humans can be neither good nor evil by your logic. We are also animals. I'm not sure why you keep referring to "good" and "evil". When people use those terms they usually mean objectively "good" or "evil" which there is no basis for. You could only say something like "By human standards, Bob is good" or something to that effect which is precisely the same as humans collectively agreeing upon standards for subjective morality or relative morality. The criteria for "good" or "evil" is equally subjective to human beings. Furthermore, the concept of "good" and "evil" referred to by those words is entirely the invention of human beings.
Not that I want to go off topic here but almost all concepts of some objective morality or good and evil are associated with supernatural religious claims. As far as we can tell objectively, all of that is also the invention of the human mind.
People who hold such beliefs are nearly impossible to have a rational, objective conversation with on these topics. You are attempting to establish an objective premise for "good" and "evil" so that you can assert a higher moral ground that will make your position appear to hold more authority. The problem is all that thinking is built on a house of cards. You and I, we are on equal footing. If you fail to recognize that, you are just asserting that you are on some higher moral ground than I am. That's a very bold claim without any rational or logic basis. I suspect you won't understand as most irrational people making appeals mostly or solely to emotion always fail to grasp. I understand you but you do not understand me. I understand you to such a depth that I see the flaws in your mental models. You, however, do not see that and it's your lack of understanding why a constructive conversation cannot be had on these topics. You keep thinking "If they would just understand me, they would see the light". We already know what you see and feel and it's not compelling.
We'll make great pets
I have no idea what you mean by "restoring" forces, sorry. What I meant to say is that the geologic record going back nearly 1 million years shows a cycle of cooling and heating. Everyone in this debate wants to focus on warming, but for some odd reason no one ever brings up the other side of the cycle. I find such cherry-picking very odd.
If the argument is that humankind has reversed a 1 million-year-old trend (!), I would say that is an extraordinary claim and would want extraordinary evidence.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
If only we *were* crawling up on one of those spikes as you say...
The problem is, we're not crawling up one of those spikes, we're rocketing up on one, with no sign that we are about to level off (ie, our speed is still increasing).
Changes in tenths of degrees normally take several millenia, but here we are measuring such changes in mere decades, or two orders of magnitude faster than anything we ever seen or measured before.
Scroll down to the bottom of this picture to see how amazing recent measurements really are: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Please stick to the topic at hand, which is the geologic record of the earth.
Not Venus.
For as far back as we can directly observe, the earth has exhibited cycles of cooling and warming. If your argument is now that mankind has reversed this nearly 1 million-year-old trend, I would say that is not just an extraordinary claim, it is perhaps the most extraordinary claim in all of the history of science. And I would like to see the mountain of extraordinary evidence you have that proves your claim.
I just don't like sloppy science, period. Do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of heating and cooling we are talking about to change an entire world's temperature from ice 2 miles thick to the wonderfully warm climate we have today, and then compare that to the total energy that would ever be trapped in a chaotic feedback system by a century-long use of fossil fuels. It's a pittance.
If you want to make wild claims, show me the science.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Once a post has been seen enough times, it is no longer intelligent. You are a broken record and since you haven't been aware of my previous post, I will repeat it again at the risk of not being intelligent. Automatic fire wastes ammo that would have been put to more effective use killing people had the shooter actually aimed, thus auto actually saves lives, you moron.
Yes dear, the heating is mostly natural. Donot believe what these so-called scientists and climate specialist say, as any child can deduce in 4 simple steps how this planet works without even needing special equipment or even measuring anything.
I'm talking about negative feedback, which is an essential element of any system which exhibits oscillatory behavior in the absence of external drivers.
How you feel about a million year "trend" has been reversed is neither here nor there as to whether it has happened. What matters is evidence. The current thinking based on our best evidence is that the climate cycles you are referring to are caused by variations in insolation due to orbital forcing. However if that is true the current era should be cooling.
The past patterns of climate are not governed by some kind of mystic law, like astrology. They are caused by quantifiable physical phenomena.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I intend to eat dirt, you know the stuff with carbon in it that the article complains heating up releases carbon making the planet heat up, because my body is partly made out of carbon. Other animals can potentially eat dirt too, so eating plant animal and mineral.
Everybody needs to react impulsively to this news and call for a ban on this stuff.
Seriously? All plants take carbon out of circulation. They're probably one of the key players in the cycles of ice ages we have on this planet.
- Ice caps recede, more room for plant life, less and less CO2 in the air as layers upon layers of dead soil stacks on top each other.
- Less CO2 results in less greenhouse effect cooling the planet down... ice caps grow reinforcing the cooling by reflecting more heat and leaving less space for CO2 consuming life.
- Things look stable for a few millenia (but they're not really)
- CO2 is slowly building up as not all of it is taken from the air anymore. The temperatures slowly increase.
- Increasing temperatures are reinforced by melting ice caps and permafrost thawing pumping even more CO2 in the air. Plants and other CO2 consuming live flourishes.
- Things look stable for a few millenia
- Repeat...
our positions are probably closer than you think. my position is simply saying that there is a underlying basis for all our subjective moralities that is evolutionarily driven and determined. higher power does not necessarily factor in.
we do define good and evil. but it is not independently determined person to person because of our shared evolutionary path. i'm atheistic by necessity by the way. so no, the supernatural doesn't factor into my world view.
Switzerland has a law requiring all men in a certain age range to be armed. Any mass shootings in Switzerland that you know of?
France bans guns. Didn't help the people who worked at Charlie Hebdo.
No-one on this planet needs access to an automatic rifle of any kind at home, only if you are in the forces so you require this kind of weapon.
Fuck you. The whole 20th century is a lesson in what governments do to unarmed populations.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
* Carbon and other particalate form clouds
* Rain scrubs out the carbon and the cycle resets
This is not how it works, because CO2 is not a particulate. The methane released from soil will react with other things to form particulates, but the CO2 which isn't converted in photosynthesis mostly has to be absorbed by the ocean, which becomes more acidic. This is happening more quickly than subaquatic limestone can react with the ocean water, which is the primary mechanism by which the ocean is normally subsequently deacidified.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The argument that nuclear power has stood still for the last 50 years is just as logical that wind power has stood still.
That's not the claim. The claim is that it hasn't advanced sufficiently to overcome its shortcomings. And it hasn't. Nobody has yet promoted commercially viable nuclear power. It always requires a government to wave a wand and change the rules on the say-so of a for-profit corporation.
Why is it that whenever windmills and solar panels are brought up we get, "Yeah, it still sucks now but just wait ten years!"
You are intentionally misrepresenting the argument in order to make your argument seem intelligent, but it is not. The fact is that polycrystalline PV panels were capable of earning back their energy investment in around seven years back in the 1970s, and most of the panels produced back then are still working fine. Today's thin-film panels pay back their energy investment in three years or less, in typical conditions, and today's PC panels are somewhere in between. The simplest truth is that we should have been installing PV panels all that time, not spending a damned dime on new nuclear.
Wind has had its bird-killing problems, but has always been commercially viable. Notably, you can insure them, because when something goes wrong with a wind turbine, you tend to get a small stationary fire and not a major disaster. The bird-killing problems have been solved, the high wind problems have been solved, the lightning strike problems are at least manageable, and there's really no reason not to increase wind capacity.
There are hundreds of nuclear power plants operating on Earth right now. We know how to build them to produce power safely, reliably, and cheaply.
You keep saying that, but the evidence runs contrary to your claim.
It's not "waste", it's fission products that contain some very valuable materials if we'd just get some politicians to take their head out of the 1970s.
It's not commercially viable to reprocess nuclear waste any more than it is to produce it in the first place.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Naturally they would. The Mexican Cartels have them and guns are actually pretty hard to legally own in mexico. And yet the cartels have machine guns and whatever else they want.
Right, because we sold them to them...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
our positions are probably closer than you think. my position is simply saying that there is a underlying basis for all our subjective moralities that is evolutionarily driven and determined. higher power does not necessarily factor in.
Where we might diverge is that I don't think because our evolutionary instincts pushed us in the direction we've gone in up until now is compelling. There is both System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is instinct and emotion (what you're talking about) and System 2 is rational and logical. System 2 is a relatively recent evolutionary trait and the thinking from that perspective is very different from the System 1 perspective. Both are evolutionary but System 2 is relatively recent and what I notice is System 2 is gaining market share in our population via natural selection. By the way, the two are not mutually exclusive. What I find is that System 1 dominated thinking usually lacks System 2 capabilities or the capability to develop them but System 2 can learn how to tap into both. However, yes, System 2 thinkers often have zero emotional intelligence but not all of us. Some of us are rational, logical empaths if you can believe that. :) We choose what wins in our thought process. There is a judge process in a way.
We'll make great pets
i've moved in a conservative direction with age and thus believe that 'if it ain't broke don't mess with it in the hopes of improving it.'
i would say that the best case for the 'system 1' thinking is that it has worked so far for us, and we consciously or unconsciously shift from it at our peril. a little bit of entropic theory plays here, with the understanding that the number of ways you can screw up is invariably orders of magnitude greater than the number of ways you can succeed.
the rule of rationality is new, and it's powerful... but as jordan peterson suggests, it does not indicate how we should act in the world. it's not really in the domain of rational or logical thought to direct human endeavor.
the why is irrelevant to logic, only the how and what happens. i think peterson would say, while correct, the second mode of thinking addresses how the world is, but not how we as individuals should move through it.
Changes in tenths of degrees normally take several millenia
Says who? There's absolutely no long term temperature proxy that can reflect a decade long temperature change, in either direction. The proxies that exist that proxy times more than 1000 years ago are all very low resolution. There is no evidence whatsoever that temperatures "normally" change in several millenia, because there is no proxy with the resolution to indicate shorter term changes in the first place.
I love Randall as much as the next guy, but he overreached with that graphic.
No kidding. If he had spent less money on guns and bump stocks and just got one really good gun with a laser rangefinding night optics package, the story would have been a lot worse. And you can just order the super fancy-pants scopes up off le internet in every state, you don't need to see a gun dealer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
i've moved in a conservative direction with age and thus believe that 'if it ain't broke don't mess with it in the hopes of improving it.'
I can see where you and I have a different school of thought. All the evidence as far as I can tell points to an material world independent of us. That's the mental model I run with currently. You can call it the natural world if you like but it is independent of us. Therefore, to adopt this attitude of being conservative towards natural processes such as evolution is absurd. It's like saying I don't care for the changing weather so I'm going to have a conservative attitude towards it. That's absurd. It is working independent of you and it doesn't care about your opinion nor mine. To ignore it is to reject reality itself and I would argue that's not wise but by all means, carry on. It's your life. You make your choices and you get to live with the consequences of your actions.
We'll make great pets
Actually he apparently had the fixings for some DIY improvised explosives. If the nuttball didn't have the guns he would have gone with the bomb option which would have had a much higher death toll. Good luck outlawing everything that can be used to make a bomb.
There are hundreds of nuclear power plants operating on Earth right now. We know how to build them to produce power safely, reliably, and cheaply.
You keep saying that, but the evidence runs contrary to your claim.
My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google. Perhaps the point on being cheaper is debatable if one lives in a sunny location like Arizona but not everyone enjoys having that much sun. (Then again, I've talked to people that lived in Arizona and they didn't always "enjoy" that much sun.)
Tell me something, what is the price of solar power at midnight in Michigan? In January? No need to be precise, the nearest cent per kilowatt hour will do.
It's not commercially viable to reprocess nuclear waste any more than it is to produce it in the first place.
It's been done in France for a very long time now. It's failed in the USA since the government banned it for so long and it's real hard to compete with the government facilities that can rely on an endless supply of taxpayers' money to cover up their poor management.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Why don't you start here and let us know where you get hung up. The total energy captured by a century of fossil fuel use is going to have some relatively wide error bars, but it's almost exactly as much as required for the climatic shift you mention. Curiously enough, the relation of CO2 levels to ice ages was exactly the topic of Arrhenius' 1896 paper which originated the Theory of AGW. The exact number has varied slightly, but that a halving or doubling of CO2 levels could cause or reverse an Ice Age is an undisputed result for something more than a century now. If you've gone thus far without reading anything scientific on this matter, Arrhenius isn't a bad place to start. After that I imagine that you will be interested in the many reasons that his work was entirely dismissed for the next five decades, as being the best hopes for actually, say, coming up with a semi-plausible reason why AGW isn't true.
I'm not sure what in particular you're claiming doesn't exist (or is it just a need to be spoon fed?) but the science is most certainly out there. The "back of the envelope" science you're asking for is found in literally the oldest paper on the topic. Consider doing us the favor of reading it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
i don't actually know what you mean by a conservative attitude toward evolution.
I have a conservative attitude toward the moral structure of our society. and a conservative attitude toward societal structure as a whole. that stance is partially informed by my belief that the evolution of our species and of our societies has built in a working model of how societies can function properly over long spans of time. sure it moves over time, but radical shifts are more likely than not to produce worse results and not better.
My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google.
Then you should do that instead of making bullshit claims and waving your hands.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean like this:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=is+nuclea...
If what I say is bullshit then perhaps you can provide something that proves me wrong. Nuclear power is the safest, most reliable, energy source we have with a carbon footprint and cost as low as wind, solar, or hydro. Or do I have to Google that for you too?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You mean like this:
No, I mean like providing an actual citation, not pointing at the internets. You're going to get laughed out of here for that bullshit just as surely as if you did it in any other venue. You're making a scientific claim, and then backing it up with an appeal to stupidity.
If any of those google results were worth pasting here, you would have done so. But you know they aren't, so you hand-wave instead. Pathetic.
If what I say is bullshit then perhaps you can provide something that proves me wrong.
So far, you haven't provided any evidence whatsoever, only made a bunch of unfounded claims, so there's nothing to refute.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
i don't actually know what you mean by a conservative attitude toward evolution.
I know you don't understand. I didn't at one time either. If you saw the bigger picture your point of view would probably be different. I can't show it to you. You have to want to know. You have to value truth above all to find truth. The only thing I can tell you is the Japanese proverb of the cup of tea:
A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Everyone gets a choice whether they allow all that is to permeate them or to uphold the ego. Good luck!
We'll make great pets
So far, you haven't provided any evidence whatsoever, only made a bunch of unfounded claims, so there's nothing to refute.
You mean like you made unfounded claims? How you provided no evidence? Is it that hard to click on the link I gave and then click on the results?
https://www.iaea.org/sites/def...
https://www.fool.com/investing...
Let me guess, because the data comes from the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Association it cannot be trusted? I tried to find similar data from someone that might be more neutral on the topic. Why could that be? Perhaps because wind and solar aren't that safe.
Also, you didn't answer my question before. It should be easy enough to find. What is the price of solar power at midnight in Michigan? In January? I found the price for nuclear, about 16 cents per kilowatt hour.
https://www.eia.gov/state/rank...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google.
I call bullshit. I have looked all up and down Google results regarding safety and total lifecycle cost of nuclear. Everything is spin as far as the eye could see. Scammy looking studies on both the pro and con sides. Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms, but I think it's a problem with signal to noise ratio being too low. Personally, I wish that people who say it's trivial to prove one way or the other on Google would actually site some reputable sources. The last time I asked a really smart, well-reasoned slashdotter for some good studies to read, he bit my head off and called me a troll just for asking.
I know that EDF is about 70% nuclear, so it seems the French have decided that it's worth it. But the case in America is not as clear.
Warming soil releases more CO2 only if you are talking about areas with permafrost thawing and releasing 10,000 plus year old vegetation that now decays.
The higher rate of decay in above freezing forests doesn't increase the carbon footprint but simply accelerates the processing of the natural cycle.
Releasing carbon bound up in the soil during earlier epochs raises the atmospheric carbon loading. Cycling what is already there does not. Basics, basics, basics.
NRRPT/RCT
hah, it feels as if you're almost deliberately misinterpreting my questions.
as far as i know, you can either believe that evolution works or doesn't. unless we're no longer using the definition of conservative that lies on the political spectrum. the only thing i can imagine you're saying is that the 'conservative position' on evolution is that it is intelligent design or creationist. i'm pretty sure the vast majority of conservatives, probably the preponderance of conservatives have a firm grasp of the mechanics of evolutionary biology.
i'm conservative in regards to quick social change because i'm risk averse. nothing more and nothing less.