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What They Don't Tell You About Climate Change (economist.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the seeing-the-CO2 dept.

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."

13 of 624 comments (clear)

  1. GMO trees... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Designed to grow quickly and fix carbon quickly ... but need something not found in nature to grow -- thus preventing them from becoming an invasive species.

    1. Re:GMO trees... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Biochar.

      Burn wood or other biomass in a very low-oxygen environment and you get charcoal. Dig the charcoal into the soil and you get more fertile soil, but the carbon acts as a "fertility catalyst" rather than a fertilizer - it's not consumed, and it doesn't decay. It'll be there for centuries (millenia?) unless you get the dirt hot enough to ignite the charcoal.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  2. Plant more trees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Seems lie a simple idea.

  3. Terra preta by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Humans have had the answer for 2500 years and counting.

  4. Re:Trump will save the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You joke about that, but in PA, we get a 50% discount on our property taxes buy upgrading our heating to coal. In 2014, I replaced both of my natural gas furnaces with coal-fired stoves. I save on heating costs and receive the property tax discount.

    The coal that I get is pre-washed, so doesn't throw up dust in my house. It's a very high quality source of heat and we're very happy with the upgrade.

  5. Carter by jmccue · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When Carter was president of the US (late 70's), he was trying to get Climate Change on the national radar, but then Regan got elected and he stopped any action that could have had a chance of making a significant impact.

    I remember as a kid him saying something like "We need to start now, otherwise we will not have enough time". Well I guess all young people can do now is try and live on high ground and I would say various coastal cities need to re-evaluate where to build new high-rises.

    Of course now it seems coastal real-estate is hotter then I have ever seen it. So, seems the future looks gloomy.

  6. I went to college with two climate scientists by Cyberpunk+Reality · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One is now a paleoclimatologist specializing in tree rings, the other a historical hydrologist. Between one thing and another, I still get together with them a couple times a year. When climate change/global warming comes up in the course of conversation, they have a lot to say, but one thing comes through quite clearly even when they don't say it outright. (And they have both said it outright to me at different times.) They're scared. And despite both being married, neither has any children. Make of my anecdote what you will.

    --
    Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
    1. Re:I went to college with two climate scientists by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When climate change/global warming comes up in the course of conversation, they have a lot to say, but one thing comes through quite clearly even when they don't say it outright. (And they have both said it outright to me at different times.) They're scared.

      My wife is a mathematician who works in coastal areas modeling waves and often works with climate scientists. I've gotten to know several of them over the years and you're right: they're scared. You get them talking about climate change and their eyes take on an almost desperate, haunted quality. When they hear someone try to say "it's all a hoax", they just get ineffably sad or angry as hell.

      We were at a barbecue some years ago and a fight almost broke out between a climate scientist and an economics major who had bought into some dienialist theory about how we should embrace climate change. I was one of the people who had to step in and calm it all down. Personally it was kind of a shame because it would have been satisfying to see the economics student get laid out by a guy twice his age, but my wife insisted and I was afraid they would knock over the table with all the liquor.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:I went to college with two climate scientists by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is nonsense.

      The countries with the biggest populations have the lowest carbon footprint per person.

      The biggest impact on climate change is if idiots like the US americans reduce their personal carbon emissions. Using 4 times as much energy per person as an European, and ten times as much as an African is not necessary, you can easily solve that, but you don't want to.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  7. Re:This strange stuff I heard of once... by ThosLives · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sadly it seems it doesn't matter; only money seems to matter. Around where I live, I've seen at least 100 acres of forest razed in the past year to put up shopping centers and subdivisions. And yes I mean forests - there is plenty of blighted urban area around, but instead of re-using that, they are razing forests...

    It's like there isn't even any consideration of how this will affect the overall environment - what happens is the city planners say "sweet, we'll get property tax revenue on 300 more housing units!" and forget about all the ancillary effects. They even gloss over the short term effects like massive increases in traffic (putting 300 new residential units in an already congested area is baffling), how can you expect them to consider effects on climate change that will manifest over 50-100 years?

    --
    "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
  8. Re:Another thing they don't tell you about the mod by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Einstein on consensus. Just takes one set of data to invalidate a model. The fact that so many work so hard to obfuscate that fact of science - by appealing to consensus - makes most skeptics dig in further. It's OK to say your models are wrong - and get to work making them better.

    And yes, Spencer's actual, measured data (NOT a model) starts from 1979 - a relatively short time! GIven that there is so much divergence between the model and actual measured data over such a short time, wouldn't that lead one to conclude that the errors in the model are not 2nd or 3rd order effects, but primary effects? If you can get factors of 2 or more divergence in a relatively short time - what confidence does that provide when extrapolating those models to 2, 3 or more times longer durations?

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    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  9. Re:This strange stuff I heard of once... by Roodvlees · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Nature produces and absorbs more than 10x the CO2 than that, even climate alarmists admit that: https://www.skepticalscience.c...
    The extra CO2 we produce is allowing plants to grow faster, causing the earth to become greener over the past 30 years (since we have sattelites measuring it): https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/1222...
    These are facts the establishment won't tell you because it disrupts their agenda for more government power. When you're only and always hearing about the negatives of one thing (fossil fuels) and only and always hearing about the positives of another (green energy), you're probably being bamboozled.

    --
    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
  10. Re:GMO trees... - Forages by pubwvj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually this is already very doable without any need for GMOing or patenting life. It's called pasture with managed rotational grazing. Trees pull about 1.4 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere a year. Managed rotationally grazed pasture pulls double that and produces a side benefit of natural, organic fertilizer spread on the land by the animals and meat to eat.

    Save the planet - eat more (pastured) meat.