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."

Comments

Carter

[jmccue]

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.

I went to college with two climate scientists

[Cyberpunk Reality]

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.

Re:I went to college with two climate scientists

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Re:GMO trees...

[arth1]

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".

Re:Another thing they don't tell you about the mod

[cats-paw]

You mean this Roy Spencer

https://skepticalscience.com/R...

right ?

What is it with the slashdot crowd and the "lone wolf" saviour thing ? Is it just the usual right wing astro turfing, or do they really think that it's normal for lots and lots of scientists to be wrong AND lie about it, but that one person is the real purveyor of truth.

Roy Spencer is right but 95% of the climate scientists on the planet are wrong ? really?

We're dumping GIGA tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, a heat trapping gas, and it's doing NOTHING ?

oh wait, I forgot it's all natural variability. oh that's awesome, i'm glad you thought of that. before Roy Spencer came along nobody thought to check to see if maybe this warming is due to natural variability. wow- what a brilliant insight !

Well, all of those lying climate scientists on their big fat research paychecks showed that it isn't natural variability, but THEY'RE ALL WRONG. and they're liars. and Al Gore is fat.

Re:Another thing they don't tell you about the mod

[cats-paw]

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.

Re:GMO trees...

[silentcoder]

Nope. That's unlikely.
Coal was a result of the circumstances during the carboniferous period - when wood was a pretty new evolution and nothing had evolved that could eat it yet.
All that carbon that got trapped under ground instead of becoming CO2 again had some pretty weird results - one of which was that the O2 level of the atmosphere reached it's all-time high at over 40%.
In that environment insects and arachnids could grow way bigger than they can in our 21% oxygen atmosphere (book lungs are not very effective - so the size of insects and arachnids depend directly on how much oxygen the atmosphere holds). Hence the famous 1m long dragonfly and other giant invertebrates of the age.

Eventually, bacteria, fungi and insects evolved that could digest wood. Carbon stopped being trapped and, gradually, the atmosphere reverted to it's normal 21% oxygen level.

But new coal is extremely unlikely, even from mulch which isn't fully converted. The trees that became coal were just about 100% unconverted only the leaves got eaten. Mulch is nowhere near that resilient.