Slashdot Mirror
What They Don't Tell You About Climate Change (economist.com)
Countries are scrambling to limit the rise in the earth's temperature to just two degrees by the end of this century. But Slashdot reader dryriver shares an article titled "What They Don't Tell You About Climate Change."
No, it is not that Climate Change is a hoax or that the climate science gets it all wrong and Climate Change isn't happening. According to the Economist, it is rather that "Fully 101 of the 116 models the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses to chart what lies ahead assume that carbon will be taken out of the air in order for the world to have a good chance of meeting the 2C target."
In other words, reducing carbon emissions around the world, creating clean energy from wind farms, driving electrical cars and so forth is not going to suffice to meet agreed upon climate targets at all. Negative emissions are needed. The world is going to overshoot the "maximum 2 degrees of warming" target completely unless someone figures out how to suck as much as 810 Billion Tonnes of carbon out of Earth's atmosphere by 2100 using some kind of industrial scale process that currently does not exist.
That breaks down to 1,785,742,000,000,000 pounds of CO2, "as much as the world's economy produces in 20 years," according to the Economist.
"Putting in place carbon-removal schemes of this magnitude would be an epic endeavour even if tried-and-tested techniques existed. They do not."
In other words, reducing carbon emissions around the world, creating clean energy from wind farms, driving electrical cars and so forth is not going to suffice to meet agreed upon climate targets at all. Negative emissions are needed. The world is going to overshoot the "maximum 2 degrees of warming" target completely unless someone figures out how to suck as much as 810 Billion Tonnes of carbon out of Earth's atmosphere by 2100 using some kind of industrial scale process that currently does not exist.
That breaks down to 1,785,742,000,000,000 pounds of CO2, "as much as the world's economy produces in 20 years," according to the Economist.
"Putting in place carbon-removal schemes of this magnitude would be an epic endeavour even if tried-and-tested techniques existed. They do not."
guess what, trees are made out of carbon so when they die all the carbon they absorbed gets released back in to the environment, unless you cut them all down before they die and make lumber or paper or some other product out of them
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Except that when they die, the carbon is put back in the ground, not in the air. Which is fine.
You do know we are not CREATING new carbon, don't you?
morcego
The problem is that global warming will render large populated portions of the globe inhospitable to human life, and there will not be a comparable "expansion" as some imagine in fantasy. Those people don't just die, the become environmental refugees as everything in the environment gets disrupted. Diseases spread by new vectors, and spread to new areas. Think a lot more.
You seem to forget that there's this engine for replacing trees that die with other trees, thus keeping the carbon bound up on a larger scale. In the old days, we called them "forests".
The single best thing you can do to help prevent climate change (that doesn't involve murder / suicide) is to not have children.
More forests. Reforest what's been taken for other purposes.
Also, forests have this amazing ability to increase the amount of CO2 they sequester over time, as the forest floor grows deeper. Some of the carbon in mulch is released, but not all, which makes a positive and growing difference as a forest ages.
Problem is forests are net zero carbon sinks. Unless something stops it cold and buries it everything growing in a forest will be back in the air within 200 years.
Existing forests don't count either. you need all new forests reclaimed from land we currently use for other things. Forests aren't going to grow in a desert so you can't use the vast tracks of land in the south west. We cut down the North East forests centuries ago. The Amazon is turning into a net RELEASE of carbon due to it's clear cutting.
And that's just for a single year. You need to plant billions of trees per year, every year forever because they don't store CO2 permanently.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
We've put millions of years of CO2 into the air in 150 years. Delaying it's effect for 100 years isn't going to be at all more than a blip.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The problem with this idea should be evident if you look around and see who remains having children if the smart folks stop.
Stop eating cows.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Just because it is hard, or some would even say impossible to avoid the 2 C temperature increase, doesn't mean we should not try to do our best.
If it ends up the temperature raises by "only" 4 C instead of say, 7 C if we give up all efforts, it's still a big win.
If you chip them and bake the chips in a solar oven, you get stable charcoal.
assuming Roy Spencer is correct.
uh-huh. You get to assume that the lone wolf is correct, but if I argue that knowledgeable people, who have studied the problem are correct i'm engaging in some sort of "if all your friends jumped in a lake" argument.
"my friends" believe CAGW because knowledgeable people who have studied the problem believe it.
Make an argument on CAGW that is not an appeal to authority then I might believe you
Do you even know what "appeal to authority" as an argument means ?
if i tell you that quantum physics is real because a bunch of physicist think it's real, is that an appeal to authority ?
Description: Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument.
climate scientist are, in fact, an authority on the facts relevant to the argument.
Well, we can at least halfway agree here. I'll let you ponder on which half.
No we're not agreeing halfway on anything. You make false and disingenuos arguments. we have nothing to agree about. you're denying reality because of some bullshit worldview.
Absolute statements are never true
Go into an tropical jungle, e.g. Amazonas. The mulch is not even 30cm thick
30 cm times the area of the Amazon rain forests is a huge volume of bound carbon. And for many other types of forests, the layer is quite substantially thicker. And has a large impact too.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Quoting Wikipedia:
The peatland ecosystem is the most efficient carbon sink on the planet,[2] because peatland plants capture CO2 naturally released from the peat, maintaining an equilibrium. In natural peatlands, the "annual rate of biomass production is greater than the rate of decomposition", but it takes "thousands of years for peatlands to develop the deposits of 1.5 to 2.3 m [4.9 to 7.5 ft], which is the average depth of the boreal [northern] peatlands".[2]
[2]: Hugron, Sandrine; BussiÃres, Julie; Rochefort, Line (2013). Tree plantations within the context of ecological restoration of peatlands: practical guide (PDF) (Report). Laval, Québec, Canada: Peatland Ecology Research Group (PERG). Retrieved 22 February 2014.
You want to get rid of the nuclear power subsidies? So do I. The subsidies largely just pay for the costs imposed by the government anyway. Take away some of the government costs and nuclear won't be so expensive.
While we're at it let's get rid of the wind and solar subsidies too.
If the goal is low CO2 power and the government supporting it with regulation and subsidies then wind, solar, and nuclear should all be on an equal footing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I've heard this before. It's used often as an argument, and it works now with me just about as well as it worked on my parents when I was in high school. I don't care if all your friends believe in CAGW, that just makes a lot of people wrong, assuming Roy Spencer is correct.
Why would we assume that?
Make an argument on CAGW that is not an appeal to authority then I might believe you. What would help a lot to convince me is a focus on finding solutions.
That reeks of intellectual dishonesty. Do you also refuse to believe in diseases that don't have cures?
And whose problem is it, if you don't accept the reality of CO2 driven climate change? Because it sounds like you are trying to make it our problem: a classic burden of proof fallacy. If you have some better explanation as to what happens when the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are doubled, feel free to post that explanation, along with observational proof.
But that thickness is not increasing contrary to your claims.
That quote is simply wrong, sorry :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So let's fix the incentives by paying people not to have kids. The government would pay for the sterilization procedure, plus a monthly allowance if you stay sterile. Annual checkups would confirm it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.