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Carbon Pollution Touched 800,000 Year Record in 2016, WMO Says (bloomberg.com)
Carbon dioxide levels surged to their highest level in at least 800,000 years because of pollution caused by humans and a strong El Nino event, according to the World Meteorological Organization. From a report: Concentrations of the greenhouse gas increased at a record speed in 2016 to reach an average of 403.3 parts per million, up from 400 parts per million a year earlier, the WMO said in a statement on Monday warning of "severe ecological and economic disruptions." The WMO said the last time the Earth had a comparable concentration of CO2s, the temperature of the planet was 2 degrees to 3 degrees Celsius warmer and sea levels were 10 meters to 20 meters higher than now.
You will see real change when Al Gore gives up his private jet and three vacation homes.
At the same time, what exactly do we have to lose by finding cleaner and potentially more efficient ways to do things? Surely 100+ years later there are better alternatives.
Why did everything not die then?
Just a guess, but the lack of 7 billion people and their concomitant industrial output probably had something to do with it.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
But it does in reality. The only reason that "global warming" is being "addressed" is because there is a monetary reward in implementing "solutions" (carbon credits). It is not a coincidence that carbon credit schemes were implemented as soon a AGW was identified and became mainstream. There is no such incentive for addressing local pollution. If anything, solving local pollution has a financial disincentive. Global warming isn't going to kill you or your children, but local pollution might.
I remember when I was young we had a paper mill that every time the weather held the smell in you'd nearly gag on it. Huge polluter. Now it still runs, bigger than ever, and not a sniff from it. I see that all over. Cement company used to leave dust everywhere and now there's none. We've made great strides in the last 5 decades and will continue to make more. Electric cars will be here soon and more alternative energy is going it. Saying we're not doing anything is a lie. Maybe not enough to satisfy you but it is and will continue to improve.
There's lots of effects that you generally wouldn't think of. For example, as someone who's working on engineering a house to last many hundreds of years, one thing that's key to avoid is the key longevity limitation of traditional concrete: carbon dioxide slowly seeps into the concrete, turning calcium hydroxide to calcium carbonate (limestone) and thus lowering its pH; when the pH drops too much at the steel rebar, it no longer protects it, it rusts, increases greatly in volume, and the concrete spalls out. So I have to avoid steel rebar.
Now, most buildings aren't engineered for such long lifespans, and so they include steel rebar, with standard calculations on how long it will last relative to how deep it is within the concrete, local climactic conditions, and so forth, to meet a preset target lifespan. But as the CO2 level in the atmosphere rises, the rate at which CO2 reacts with concrete increases; this affects every concrete structure on Earth. The average building can expect its lifespan to be cut short 15-20 years in a "business as usual" CO2 scenario.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
What you are actually saying is:
we can still make a better world through government force and compulsion
That's what we are talking about here. And that premise is false: we can not make a better world through government force and compulsion. Both socialist and fascist states tried and failed miserably. In fact, fascists had nature conservation and environmental protection as major policy objectives.
The only way we can make a better world is through voluntary interactions, cooperation, and non-violence; that is, the antithesis of government force and compulsion.
"CO2 is plant food," a stupid argument to use in favor of global warming considering CO2's other negative effects - especially the reduction in arable land, isn't even right in itself.
More accurately, CO2 is plant junk food. Higher CO2 levels produce less nutritious crops:
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Economic burden is actually an important point.
Some people find they need the prospect of human extinction to motivate them to do something about pollution, but in truth that scenario is extremely unlikely. We are the most adaptable multi-cellular organism that four billion years of evolution has produced.
Climate change isn't going to kill us (at least collectively); it's going to cost us a lot of money. In fact it's going to cost some of us more than others, while causing it will benefit some of us more than others. If the costs and benefits of climate change were fairly distributed, then we'd automatically adopt a reasonable compromise. But people like you and me are going to pay a greater share of the costs than we received of the benefits, because things aren't run with our good in mind.
And it's going to cost us in ways that nobody's bothering to measure, but should be. I've been fishing for forty years now, and when I started people still remembered taking native, wild brook trout from streams in my state where they haven't been seen since the 1960s. Water pollution killed them off, but even though we've cleaned up those streams, the waters are too warm now to reestablish them. Streams where the average summertime temperature was 65 twenty years ago are pegging average temps in the 75 range now, and brook trout die at 68-77F depending on maturity. Even the brain-dead hatchery rainbow trout near-clones that are put out to replace the native brookies aren't surviving past June, and they were chosen because they're more heat-tolerant.
It's not just fishing; there have been declines in game species in the lower 48 due to temperature driven habitat stress and parasites. One study found a 75% mortality rate in moose calves due to parasite infection, and a 45% drop in adult population in the past fifteen years. During that time centuries old eastern hemlock groves where I used to hike went from having no sky visible overhead to being largely denuded because of the spread of parasites formerly kept in check. In a decade or two groves with trees predate the signing of the Declaration of Independence will be gone, replaced by alien Noway maples.
Can you put a price on that stuff? I suppose you can in terms of lost economic activity, but more to the point we're losing something you literally can't put a price on: tradition. Heritage. Our natural legacy. Maybe some people will be able to afford to take a month to go on safari, but for the average person these things are disappearing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the article you quoted:
"The world still has fewer trees than at any point in human history. "
And that's a problem
Lucky then that climate change causes increased evaporation and probably overall increased precipitation.
And, again, good thing that climate change is here to help.
The rose coloured glass effect in spades. The fly in the ointment with this belief is that the areas that are warming the most are not receiving increased rainfall and will not, unless the patterns of the jet stream and continental weather streams change drastically. The arid deserts are not about to change suddenly into agricultural land, neither will the areas with the greatest biomass in the form of peat bogs and a cold climate desert ecology. The territories in Canada and the northern sections of the provinces are not suitable for agriculture and will not suddenly become arable lands, the fools that spout off about the benefits of global warming are exactly that FOOLS. Yes we will be soon able to send oil tankers through the North West Passage and drill the hell out of areas of the Arctic. Yes there are huge areas of fertile prairie which is quickly losing the permafrost but most are are based upon an acidic top soil that will not produce our chosen food stuffs or support adequate grass for grazing animals for centuries until many cycles of grass fires can change the top soil ph. This is how our prairie grain lands are created and is how they will eventually be created in some more northernly areas of North America
Some of the areas just south of the permafrost have already been used for Northern agriculture in a very recent time frame. The Peace River region is one example, but these areas have had centuries to adjust to the loss of the permafrost.
Unless the arm chair scientists claiming that global warming will increase food production have a way to change the polar rotation of the earth there is absolutely no way to increase the growing seasons of the North which around the 60th parallel is 3-4 months of frost free temperatures and enough daylight to grow plants.
Even more importantly, FYI what it takes to raise a cow on grass and forage plants at the 60th and even down to Dawson creek at 55.7596 N is more in monetary terms of feed than the animal will bring at market. Most cattle grown there are stock produced first or trucked in then range fed, then trucked out to then be market fattened in the production feed lots in southern Alberta before going to market. Also the animals must be housed during the coldest months in a heated barns to avoid them losing too much fat and muscle mass to the cold. The range season there much shorter than in Montana even if the winters are not much colder they are much longer. The low cost of natural gas in Canada is the only thing that makes cattle ranching there possible.
Traditional agriculture does not work in most of Canada and Russia and the fools who believe it will are living with rose coloured glasses that blind them to the realities of the environment of the north and what it takes to live and work there. Productive prairies are slowly created by cycles fire and grass and the slow warming since the last ice age. Prairie agricultural lands will not and cannot be magically created by man made global warming.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call