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Planet At Risk of Heading Towards Irreversible 'Hothouse Earth' State (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: What we do in the next 10-20 years will determine whether our planet remains hospitable to human life or slides down an irreversible path to what scientists in a major new study call "Hothouse Earth" conditions. Hothouse Earth is an apocalyptic nightmare where the global average temperatures is 4 to 5 degrees Celsius higher (with regions like the Arctic averaging 10 degrees C higher) than today, according to the study, "Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene," published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sea levels would eventually be 10-60 meters higher as much of the world's ice melts. In these conditions, large parts of the Earth would be uninhabitable. Cutting carbon emissions to limit climate change to 2 degrees C, as proposed in the Paris climate agreement, won't be enough to avoid a "Hothouse Earth," said co-author Johan Rockstrom, executive director of Stockholm Resilience Centre. The reality is that global temperatures aren't driven by human emissions of carbon alone, says Rockstrom -- natural systems such as forests and oceans also play a major role. If global warming reaches 2 degrees C it could trigger a feedback, or "tipping element," in one or more of our natural systems and drive further warming, Rockstrom told Motherboard. To put that into perspective, the recent heat waves and wildfires are being linked to climate change that has raised the global average temperature 1 degree C. The researchers conclude the study on a more uplifting note, saying: "We have the knowledge and ability to act. This is within our control." There are three main areas of action that need to be taken within the next two decades. "The top priority in the coming decade is to aggressively cut carbon emissions and decarbonize our energy systems as quickly as possible," reports Motherboard. "The second priority is to halt deforestation and conversion of nature areas into agricultural production. Forests and other natural areas currently absorb 25 percent of our carbon emissions and this needs to grow." The third action is "to continue to develop technologies to pull carbon from the atmosphere and safely store it for thousands of years." While this last action can be costly, we're starting to see some companies give it a try. A startup called Climeworks recently inaugurated the first system that captures CO2 from the air and converts the emissions into stone, thus ensuring they don't escape back into the atmosphere for the next millions of years.
US emissions are down whilst EU - and China, and India - emissions are up. I'm sure this will get down-modded since it doesn't pay homage to the proper models, but facts are facts: and when facts and beliefs/models collide - facts win.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
you have to take care of their basic needs first. In America 80% of us live paycheck to paycheck. When you're living hand to mouth you don't really care about 20 years from now.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
US emissions are down whilst EU - and China, and India - emissions are up.
Not sure about China and India but the USA is not exactly clean with respect to the EU. We have doubled our coals sales to various EU nations. Of course, this is in part due to their hysterical reaction to nuclear power.
US emissions are down whilst EU - and China, and India - emissions are up.
I'll believe the politicians believe global warming is a serious threat (rather than an opportunity for power-grabbing and graft) when they stop pro-natalist policies.
Especially the open-border migration of large numbers of people from cultures with high birthrates and low incomes into countries with high standards of living.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That so-called "apocalyptic nightmare" is actually the warm, wet, and mild conditions that existed through most of the past 50 million years, the climate that led to the spectacular success of mammals and primates. Not only is it "hospitable" to human life, it is more hospitable than the cold and dry climate we have had over the last million years and that climate activists want to perpetuate.
Short of global thermonuclear war, there is nothing we can do over the next 10-20 years that will have any appreciable impact on long term climate: there is no conceivable political or economic way that China, India, or African nations would agree to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, developed nations are already eliminating dependence on fossil fuels as fast as possible for economic reasons.
There is literally zero scientific basis for this prediction. It’s nothing but pure fear mongering.
When I get an infection with a nasty pathogen, I get a fever to kill it off, and get healthy again.
I see the planet as merely doing the same.
Seems a bit Malthusian, and Malthus loses over and over to science and engineering.
Do not misunderstand, I am in favor of conservation, alternative sources, etc. However "irreversible" seems a bit alarmist and BS'ish. Human activity pushed the climate in one direction, it can push it in the other direction as well via science and engineering. Again, it would be best not to have to resort to climate engineering, but climate engineering can make things reversible.
in which the interior is as hot as molten lava
US emissions includes much of Chinas emissions. You just outsourced thw dirty parts.
And in reality, US emissions are UP anyway. What's down is actually EU emissions! (Althoug also partially due to outsourcing to China.)
It was much warmer than this before. Then it cooled. Therefore the "irreversible" claim has already been falsified.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Yeah, I know it's a cartoon and not precise scale but it's pretty blatant at the end of it, bad things are coming.
Combine this, with the recent discussion of methane finally escaping in siberia.
https://www.google.com.au/sear...
It's only a matter of time, we're well past the point of no return. I can't really fathom a good analogy, perhaps the titanic? Except 10,000 times larger and moving much, much slower but we're only 6 feet from the ice burg. We're gonna take a little bit to hit it, but rest assured we absoloutely will be hitting that ice burg.
Don't breed, having kids in the future that's coming is only more depressing.
they are the ones who did this ever since industrial revolution, and governments are just puppets for those very same corporations and the olygarchs behind them. Capitalism have destroyed millions of lives and the whole global ecosystem and this was evident almost a century ago just remember what cocteau had to say about global destruction of sea habitats.
anyway we are all already death so good luck
The upside is it will be so obvious that Republicans cannot deny it's happening.
However, they'll probably blame it on Democrats somehow, maybe claiming that catering to LGBTQ made God angry, who then baked Earth as punishment. You think I'm joking, don't you?
Table-ized A.I.
Your treason and fear of the truth are why you truly are deplorable faggots and will hang - TRUMP shall be the first, not the last. You are cowardly traitors divorced from reality. It's a shame, this planet evolved without you so well.
If making the earth hot makes the next 10-20 years better for me, then I am all for it.
If we actually are responsible for getting ourselves here, then we can definitely get ourselves out of it.
So tell us, which one of your doomsday scenarios have come truth yet? Ice Caps should have been melted like two times over, a couple of cities are supposed to be under water by now, and little baby seals should be clubbing themselves due to going nuts from all the extra heat they have to experience.
I can accept that there might be a climate problem and that we might have some hand in it, but this constant doomsday mealy mouthing is damaging the cause and driving wedges. And since they can't get their predictions right, there is no reason to trust their conclusions about the evidence either! If you were actually about saving the planet you would stop with the garbage.
This all smells like the same pseudo-science against fat and cholesterol from teh 1950's where a politician made a final decision to say its all bad, caused food mfg's to make fat free garbage and to begin substituting it all with sugars, corn syrups, and alternative food science calling milk bad and eggs death sentences in a bite!
Bigger cars and bigger houses with powerful air-conditioning on one side (which caused global warming in the first place), tropical heat on the other side of the divide.
Just more propaganda.
I don't believe a word of it. They have not proven themselves trustworthy nor capable of making such predictions with any level of confidence. I won't vote for anyone or any thing that is based on or gives credence to such unproven, unmitigated horseshit. I will combat this lunacy in every way I can.
It's horseshit because none of this crap is based on real science. It's political/ideological theater and propaganda with a "science-y" theme and window-dressing. It's no more hard science than the old TV toothpaste ads that had an actor wearing a lab coat and stethoscope saying "nine out of ten dentists agree".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The sky is falling!!! Another 10 year line in the sand...
Talking to us is like talking to a brick wall
Do you have the courage to meet in person and talk your bullshit to my face ?
I didn't think so.
The dinosaurs said the same thing about the Ice Age and they were just as wrong. Sure it wiped the dinosaurs out but the Ice Age eventually ended didn't it?!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
US outsources not only production but also polution.
Temperature == Solar irradiation * CO2 levels
People only seem to think about one variable in this relationship, but forget that we can *right now* build and launch solar reflectors with enough net surface area to lower the total solar irradiation hitting the Earth in the first place. Enough to make a difference.
Bonus points if you can then store that energy for future use.
That will buy us some much-needed time.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
We've had 5-10 years left to save the planet for the last 30 years or so... The numbers may change, but the — unsubstantiated — message is always the same...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Erhlich, Gore, Hansen, Barnum. Since the 80's alone we have passed at least 4 irreversible tipping points, and guess what? No tip. One more bullshit socialist who wants to tell other people how to live is not going to make any difference. Yes, I would like fries with that, and no, no tip for you.
Desalinization from melting ice, slowed currents, things up north and far south start freezing solid when the currents aren't carrying warm water from the center to them, earth slides into an ice age .... isn't that what they said just a few years ago?
Even President W liked the umbrella idea. Definitely better than Cheney's moon mirrors.
But what happens when hackers get in and hold the planet hostage? What if Bruce Willis is too old to pass the pre-launch physical and can't save the planet?
Forests end up returning the carbon they absorb back into the environment. This got me thinking of ways to prevent that return, possibly by burial.
Someone else thought of it first!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266747/
We already have an alternate power source to avoid this - nuclear power. But rather than use this pre-existing power technology which solves the problem, environmentalists insisted that we dismantle that existing solution, and roll the dice on hopefully developing new and untested power sources in time to avert disaster.
Nuclear power doesn't have to be the end-game. All we need to do is to replace our fossil fuel power plants with nuclear plants to arrest CO2 emissions and buy us more time. Then we can develop renewables at our leisure, and use those to phase out nuclear power as they (and battery technology) become capable of handling our base load requirements.
The low range of the time estimate (10 years) is coincidentally about the amount of time it takes to complete construction of a large nuclear plant. Let's see if environmentalists read this news about the coming doomsday scenario, and take it a a sign to drop opposition to nuclear power. Or if they'd rather let all life on Earth go extinct, than let renewable power temporarily take a back seat to nuclear power.
I hate that mouthbreather as much as the next guy, but you sure sound like neanderthal. It's ironic that you're bringing up evolution. Derp.
Okay. We're all gonna die! ... ...
What're we gonna do about it?
That DOESN'T involve destroying the world economy and killing 3/4th of the people on the planet...
Do we have any engineering solutions that might help?
Yeah...But those are HHHHARD!
Is that like "Hard"?
Yeah...but WORSE!
So why don't we get working on them NOW if they're that hard?
Because it's easier to scream "DOOOOM!" than actually do anything!
In short, i'm sick of hearing people continuously whine about this shit, yet be unable to forward a viable, if difficult, solution.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's only a matter of time, we're well past the point of no return.
Really? Well someone should have told that to the planet in the early Eocene then when temperatures were +12-14C above current levels . Somehow it reversed that trend and cooled down considerably.
Global warming is a serious problem and we absolutely do need to combat it because if we don't it will cause massive political destabilization as food production changes, populations move, water resources change, cities flood etc. However, claiming that it's the "end of the world" because it is irreversible and will make the planet inhospitable to human life is complete crap and counterproductive because it leads to dispair rather than action.
Even climate deniers should be listening this and figuring out ways to make lots of money off us, but for some reason they don't want to. Guess they don't care about their grandchildren.
The U.S. dollar is supported only by the requirement that oil producing countries sell their oil only for U.S. dollars. Without the requirement that oil purchases be made with U.S. dollars, the currency would inflate into worthlessness, given the trillions printed every year. This will continue as long as the corporations can bribe the government to support oil usage, supported by the televangelist overpopulation suicide-cult voters.
I've read that a human population with all modern technologies is fully sustainable to a limit of 500 million. How far past that sustainable limit are we now, and still living in denial of this 800-pound gorilla sitting on top of the solution to nearly all the problems of human civilization?
Good luck with that denial, people. The population reduction is coming one way or another....
The associated period of massive carbon injection into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted no longer than 20,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 C. The carbon dioxide was likely released in two pulses, the first lasting less than 2,000 years. Such a repeated carbon release is in line with current global warming. A main difference is that during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, the planet was essentially ice-free. However, the amount of released carbon, according to a recent study, suggest a modest 0.2 gigatonnes per year (at peaks 0.58 gigatonnes); humans today add about 10 gigatonnes per year. "Yeah we're screwed". Original article here
Fuck all you Nazis I love my truck! Make America Great Again. Go Trump!
... the more plausible scenario. The reverse albedo effect is already taking effect and we're still adding to the carbon circle big time. Trumpistan and the wider world is still blissfully unaware of what's happening, as are the idiots here in my country dragging their heels with solar and driving ever larger luxury Audi's and Porsches and Daimlers, each and everybody on his own, at the same time.
The current heatwave in Germany beats everything we've seen so far. It feels like I'm on the equator. Today they forecast 37ÂC, the highest temperature yet in my region and it's only going to get worse.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So lose a little, win a little. In the end, it works itself out. I happen to have 1000 acres that is just higher than that. My very own beach front property, AND IN MY LIFETIME! Wha? 10-20 years? Eggheads have been saying that for a lot of 10-20 years. I knew it was too good to be true.
This you'd be justified in imprisoning or even executing deniers in order to protect the greater good.
Too bad you can't work your IPHONE ya masterchump!
Just read the comments here and realize we have arrived at stage 3 of the 4-stages of climate disaster denial:
1: "Oh, there is no such thing as a climate change!"
2: "What you see there is just a variation in weather, not climate!"
3: "Well, yes, there is a change, but it's natural, nothing human makes."
4: "Ok, the change is real and we're fucked, but it's too late to do anything anyway."
The great thing about any of those 4 steps is that you needn't change anything in your behaviour. The only thing that kinda bugs me is how quickly we arrived at 3, I was hoping that I'd at least be on my way out before we arrive at "we're fucked", because back in stage 1, I did actually care about the planet. In the meantime I stopped caring. What for? I am old. I have no kids. And if you can't be assed to keep this planet able to sustain life so your kids can live, why the fuck should I care?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's nice nuclear power is your hobby. But just *wasting less* goes a much longer way.
It's exactly this kind of nutjobs with a tunnel vision like you who put us into this position in the first place.
I mean: nuclear power, by all means. Or burn coal. Or whatever. But only when *wasting resources has stopped being an option*. We are far from this, energy, for example is too cheap. By far. Because it's fueling this nonsensical mushroom economy. Change that first.
Nice try comrade, but Moose and Squirrel have foiled your comical plan to promote civil unrest once more. Americans are far too lazy and content to actually do anything beyond bitching and moaning a few hollow threats. Now go back to picking cabbage in fucking Russia.
Sorry to disappoint you, but temperature is proportional to fourth root of solar irradiation, space reflectors are about the most inefficient way to go about it imaginable.
Me too
Yes, we can do something to reduce solar irradiation but that doesn't do anything to slow down ocean acidification which may end up being as big a problem as global warming plus reducing solar irradiation will also reduce the amount of photosynthesis going on which doesn't help either.
The lowest CO2 per energy produced comes from nuclear power. If the threat is irreversible "hot house" Earth if we don't reduce our CO2 output now then we need nuclear power.
I've heard the complaints...
"But nuclear power is expensive!"
Is it more expensive than extinction? There's people standing in line at the US NRC for licenses to build more nuclear power plants. They've been there for decades. They weren't asking for money, they were asking for permission.
"But nuclear power is not safe!"
Is it more dangerous than extinction? Nuclear power has been shown to be the safest energy source we have available to us. Claims of nuclear being unsafe are nonsense. Even if we were to render large areas of the planet uninhabitable for 1000 years because a nuclear power plant blew up that's still better than rendering the entire planet uninhabitable and killing off numerous species, possibly including humans.
"But wind and solar will save us!"
Will it? We've been giving wind and solar just gobs of subsidies for decades now. All kinds of other incentives in the form of feed in tariffs, zoning laws, and so forth. We even had people suing their neighbors to cut down trees because the trees were casting shadows on a solar collector. That's just insane on many levels but that's where these laws in favor of wind and solar brought us. Did oil, gas, and nuclear get subsidies too? Of course. Even so wind and solar got subsidies far in excess of the energy they produced and they still don't produce even 10% of the electricity we use.
Here's an idea, as crazy as it might be I think it might just work. Let's do "all the above". That means we take the top five energy sources we know of that produce minimal CO2, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Let's put a lot of money into them and most of all allow people to invest their own money into it, by granting permission to build. That doesn't mean we throw out all the rules, but we take a real close look at what rules make sense and the ones that don't. The rules that don't make sense in light of such impending doom need to disappear.
Maybe, just maybe if we build enough nuclear power plants in the next few years we can survive. I suppose we could just stop burning coal and oil but that means mass starvation from food not being harvested and transported to stores. The goal should be to save the environment and society. We've been trying the wind and solar solutions and that hasn't been working out so well. It seems that the best estimates on moving from coal without nuclear will take decades of research, development, and constructing the infrastructure. We don't have that much time. Let's try nuclear power too. Doesn't seem like there's much to lose for trying now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I would take the climate alarmists more seriously if they would consider investigating climate engineering methods which could cheaply and quickly reduce world temperatures. But no, this is NEVER discussed. The only solution they ever suggest is the infinitely more expensive and painful "shiver in the dark". It makes you think their core motivation is for human beings to feel guilty for existing, not to actually solve the climate change problem.
Just kill half the planet's population whenever it breaks 5 billion. First round you just have to have one person vouch for you.
"Gas the left" on a story about how everyone is fucked if we dont get our shit together soon and start fixing this. What the fuck is the matter with you? Are you truly that enthusiastic of a Koch sucker?
It's almost Verbatim. "We're heading into a run away greenhouse gas scenario!" I get that it's important, but how many times do I need to suffer through my life time of hearing this same line? I bet 20 years from now this will still be used.
Bullshit. Runaway warming is a risk. Risk = Damage X Likelihood. If the damage is an unlivable planet not likelihood is acceptable.
Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room: politics. It's very easy for elites in the UK and elsewhere to come along and say "We need global warming countermeasures niw because Asia is growing too fast and that's not fair. We can't control Asians as easily".
This is just white people trying to prevent Asians from growing. That's all climate policy amounts to. If there is to be a real honest solution to the 3 problems quoted in the OP then:
We need the the rich elites unnrhe UK US and EU etc to back off and genuinely incentivise real economic growth exclusively targeted around hothouse.
I.e. we need to drive the while global economy towards those 3 goals with rich rewards for satisfying key goals. But alas, I fear we are doomed, globalists have to sacrifice poer and bring Putin to the table for that to happen. Power and greed of the elites is the impediment to safeguarding our planet.
Plant forest When grown, cut trees and Burry deep in earth...
Too many nations refuse to cut their coal. Infact, we 100s more coal plants coming over the next couple of years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
EU has gone down over the last 20 years. They have plateaued recently, but they are not growing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Either way, life will continue, adapt, and evolve.
If "risk of planet Earth getting destroyed" is part of the equation, every human activity must cease immediately, because each and every humand activity has a non-zero chance of causing that.
Even not doing anything has a non-zero risk of causing the apocalypse.
The destruction of the Earth has an unlimited amount of damage, so multiplying that damage with any non-zero value for likelihood is an unlimited risk. You are adding / multiplying positive infinity to your calculation and that will make any calculation completely irrelevant because it erases any meaning your risk assessment might produce.
Living and breathing has a small but non-zero risk of causing the apocalypse and so has jumping from the Golden Gate bridge, which I assume is an actual danger now for SJW leftists caught in the media-induced TDS frenzy. The world will not end because there is president you don't like. Please take a step back and try to notice the media stepping up the frenzy more and more and more and more and more. Imagine it might be true that the media is whipping it up. Try for 5 minutes to calmly find an argument for and against it despite your emotions telling you to run around screaming or jumping off a bridge or pushing someone off a bridge. Breathe and calm down.
IDGAF what happens after my lifetime.
Haven't 'they' been saying if we don't act now it's too late .. since 2000?
https://goo.gl/x3G2Cy
Sure. Think we'll get any wiser just 'cause Summers get insufferably hot, tornados and hurricanes going haywire and island nations cease to exist? Of course you'll still hear it, we'll just be talking at a higher level. Of water, not quality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really? Go study thermodynamics full time for four years, then see if you grok the bullshit you mushrooms are being fed. Sadly the average Joe doesn't have the skills to see through the bullshit. Atmospheric adiabatic compression of the atmosphere by gravity causes the warmth attributed to "greenhouse gasses". Global warming funding should go towards solving the worlds real problems, like plastic polluting the worlds oceans or improving water quality in third world countries.
Seriously, it's irrelevant what Republicans and Democrats do. People are not incentivized to leave a light footprint. That's how you know this is all a big potential climahoax. The way to solve this is clear - economic incentives / rewards for environmental friendliness. What's actually happening? Selling out to lobbying groups who want to make money in China....increasing pollution by rewarding China's massive fossil fuel is en vogue - the reverse. Do you really want to believe it's the fault of ordinary people. Do you know that Hillary took 10 X more lobbying money than Trump did.....
Do you know anything?
the DNC have a worse track record of being bought. They just sell to different buyers. The global economy is not set up to tackle his problem and by design makes it so that big companies can get away with excessive plastic use by lobbying money for China (DNC), the global economy is currently set up to point the finger, and that finger is only to be pointed at you.
So why does the us have the largest trade deficit in the world.
Where the fuck do you get that bullshit from?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, the earth had been warmer in the distant past. And yes, life did exist back then. No human life, but if that's not a requirement, you're absolutely right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, same here, but I had to realize that being 100m above sea level is just too high up to see the seaside come to my turf any time soon. Still, I think it's a good idea to get a shotgun to make sure those that are 5m above sea level stay where they are when the tide comes in...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's always been stage 4 for me. You see my problem is not with climate change. Instead of a global initiative to reward clean non polluting countries with better trade deals, it's a bait and switch to ramp up plastic production in China with their powerful lobbying, and blame American consumers for the products that should never have been pushed on them, which serve no purpose that is of any benefit to them, or the Earth.
You see we could fix all this right now. The globalists have no interest in the environment. They see you as the pollutant.
The world is always predicted to become hell in the lifetime of those who are making the predictions. You never hear about predictions that the world will go to hell in the next millennia and that we should prepare for it. It is like that anti-tiger rock in Simpsons that keeps tigers away. If you believe in it, when the world does not go to hell, you feel like the remedy worked, even though it might have cost you a trillion. Thus we averted skin cancers by closing ozone holes. We avoided a nuclear war which would have killed us for sure in the 70s. We postponed second coming of Jesus by repenting for our sins.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
George Carlin said it best. "Save the planet? The planet isn't going anywhere.....we are." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No, it's definitely the lack of pirates.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's almost Verbatim. "We're heading into a run away greenhouse gas scenario!" I get that it's important, but how many times do I need to suffer through my life time of hearing this same line? I bet 20 years from now this will still be used.
Giants fall slowly even after a mortal hit. Earth is quite the giant and is thinking in different time scales. Any changes even visible at human-life time scales are already like a bullet hit in slow motion. And that's what we are talking about. "Your life time" is a shit metric to be thinking in with regard to that issue, even though it is a natural one. Which is one reason that humans are as bad about environmental preservation as ebola viruses are about keeping humans healthy.
While it is true that EU emission rose and US emission are slightly more down, per capita the US emission per capita ~16t are slightly more than double the one per capita in EU ~7t (2014 numbers sorry, difficult to come back to all country 2017/2018 nubmers https://data.worldbank.org/ind...). That is the ONE measure which is far more telling than absolute change from years to years. 2% up to 7t*500 million is still vastly less than16*300 million even if that country emit slightly less CO2 due to change from coal to natural gas. Both really should be massively going toward renewable or nuclear. Unfortunately this does not happen to go that way, so our grand children and their children gen screwed. But yes saying that emission is down for the US and up for the other hide the very inconvenient fact that per capita the US is still vastly ahead.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Umm... you do know that plants (you know, the stuff we, and that other stuff we eat, eat) need sunlight to grow, yes?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The outlook is grim, no doubt, but I don't think what the scietists are saying means that it will be total apocalypse. However, lilfe in a world where temperatures are 4.5 deg higher and sea levels are up by 70 - 100 meters, will of course be a lot different, and the transition period will be hard. It is hard to imagine how we can avoid colossal, social upheavals, as people are forced to migrate. It is also not easy to see how our current consumerist capitalism can continue, with it demand for never ending growth.
But humans, and life in general, are adaptable - it may be difficult for the younger generation to imagine a life without smartphones, computers, internet and loads of other gadgets, but people lived happily without not long ago; people can get used to not having what we now feel are essentials, and will find life quite bearable. I have no doubt that people, after the great crisis, will look back at this time and think "Why were they such idiots?". But before we get to that point, it will be very hard, mostly because of people who won't accept that the world is changing.
Ads are getting smarter
Lol you suck. Grandpa.
With the biggest one being that "climate change" is something we are responsible for, and that we should therefore throw shitloads of energy and money into keeping status quo.
The first is a farce: the climate changes. Full stop. We might be attributing to its change speed, but thats about it.
The second is a pipe dream: We know zilch about how our planet actually manages its climate, but the powers-that-be are arrogant enough to think they can stop such change from happening.
To put it in a few words: Its not at all about that we change the climate, but that the climate changes. That cannot be permitted, because some arrogant shit-for-brains have decided that the current temperature is (and water levels are) nice, and we should not be expected to adapt to anything else.
.
As a by-line: earthquakes. They show us that if a change is blocked for long enough (read: is not allowed to happen gradually) the end effect is a sudden big one, causing a shockwave which is way more destructive.
But hey, I will probably be long dead before the scientists & politicans have thought of something that will actually stop climate change (instead of being a(nother tax)money pit), and dead for quite a while after that before that (global!) climate shockwave will hit (likely obliterating most living beings, especially mamals).
All it cares about is how much each person produces. Because when it comes to blaming people for the problem, the ones doing most are most to blame. And that means you use per capita. Until CO2 respects national borders, per capital is the only measure that you can use.
Because you ONLY ever bring up the new builds, never count the number closed. Because that doesn't allow you to blame the nignogs and chinks who don't believe in white anglo saxon christian god, therefore are evil incarnate, nearly as much as the left wing.
So is the problem their science or your ignorance? It's the latter. Yes, I spoilered the answer for you 'cos you're too fucking stupid to get it otherwise.
Or maybe... get gently, hotter and hotter...
Downig CO from 20 Bazillion tons per year to 19 Bazillion tons per year is no big feat when other contients with similar population only do 10 bazillion tons. Yes, this is no time for finger-pointing and yes replacing nuclear with coal is nothing to brag about for Chief Mommy Angie of Germany, but there is no place for bragging either and definitely not for "following the US lead" in this camp. Seriously not.
The world as a whole needs to turn and do it fast, we're halfway into FUBAR territory on a global scale as it is. ... ... Stop it. There's a plan right there. Then you have my officlal permission to brag.
Are you still using a private car? Flying?
I'm not getting an ICE car, I'll keep using PT, carsharing (when I absolutely must) and my bike. Maybe an electric one some day. And I'll probalby use the bus to do my surfing vacation I had planned this year. Yes, it will be a 20 hour trip, but my eco balance will be lightyears above taking Ryanair to Southern Portugal.
Everyone should start thinking stuff like this and acting accordingly. Like, now.
My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yes Windy, why does America still to this very day use more coal powered electricity per capita than China?
Why are you pushing gas and not solar and wind?
I dare say we cannot do this "right now", we don't have the technology for it, nor the capacity to launch such a project.
That may happen. It however doesn't happen on a human time scale. Earth measures its birthdays per million years. So yeah, sure, in a million years we'll slide into an ice age. I'm glad that's a comforting thought to you.
What the US should be doing is building nuclear power plants
Won't happen. Politically it's just a non-starter for a variety of well understood reasons. People are scared of nuclear power regardless of whether or not they should be. I think you'll only see heavy use of nuclear fission in places where political dissent can be suppressed (like China) or where it is use of nuclear fission is already dominant (like France).
Get rid of fossil fool use for transport.
I think this will happen fairly naturally actually though perhaps not fast enough. I just bought a Chevy Bolt recently and it seems obvious to me that electrification of automobiles is inevitable. Just too many advantages in it. More power, better fuel economy, less maintenance, etc. We also already know how to electrify rail as well though I think diesel locomotives will be with us for quite a while yet. Ocean freight and air travel will be harder nuts to crack but fortunately are smaller nuts too. Solar and wind are already starting to displace fossil fuels on the grid though again perhaps not fast enough. Battery tech is finally getting to the point where they can compensate for the variability of solar and wind too.
##PoundMeToo
That's completely false. China alone generates almost twice what we do https://www.ucsusa.org/global-...
Now per capita they generate much less which is pretty scary given the rate they're developing at and the number of people they have.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Donâ(TM)t blame iPhone users for /. developer incompetence
While it is true that coal powered electricity generation is a substantial problem, a turn around will require a lot more drastic action than getting rid of coal powered energy plants, in my opinion.
Every single one of us needs to switch off our computers, go outside, plant some beans and chard, and start living off what we can produce through the expenditure of our own labour and energy, instead of by means of machines that use energy that never belonged to us in the first place and that we never paid for; not the real price of it, anyway, because that energy should be unaffordably expensive, that is how valuable it really is. Instead, the modern, developed world treats it like a human right.
And of course we need to hope and pray that every one else will do the same thing and switch off. I'm afraid that anything less than that will simply have too small a positive effect.
We're all guilty. Do you use an internal combustion engine daily? Guilty. Do you fly in aeroplanes with some regularity Guilty. Do you have electricity in your home? Guilty. And so on.
Members of developed societies are using more resources of every kind, especially energy, than they have a right to. They aren't paying the full price for it. Someone else is paying by NOT having access to the same technology and energy.
Switch off. Or don't. I doubt anyone else will.
The upside is it will be so obvious that Republicans cannot deny it's happening.
I suppose there is a first time for everything. To date they haven't had any problem denying blatantly obvious scientific evidence and in fact routinely try to suppress evidence they find inconvenient. Not to mention doing things like trying to put creationism in the science classroom and claiming that evolution is "just a theory". Honestly if it wasn't so damaging I'd laugh at the fact that the Republicans are doing a pretty good impression of Bagdad Bob.
However, they'll probably blame it on Democrats somehow
You don't need the word probably in there. They definitely will blame it on democrats no matter how stupid they look doing so.
You think I'm joking, don't you?
Nope.
Sorry but if it's true, we're just doomed.
There is already a lot of elements pushing on global warming that we can't control or stop. If there is a tipping point, we'll reach it even if we go 100% today.
So either they are just trying to scare people, or they are preparing us for a human race extinction in the next 10 years.
The published article reeks of confirmation bias. The Earth has been WAY hotter in the past than the paper even predicts, with CO2 levels 10 times what they are today, and it was not an "irreversible hothouse Earth."
Political hacks, all of them.
That's too many times "wolf" has been cried.
20? The first "AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! THE WORLD WILL END IN 20 YEARS!!!!" predictions were made before I was born 40 years ago. There's at least one new one every decade I think. So far all seem to have been totally wrong, as we are not living in a Mad Max hellscape.
Irreversible? There's always nuclear winter.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We already have an alternate power source to avoid this - nuclear power.
Solves one problem but causes others. And it is a political non-starter. Fortunately solar and wind + batteries can take up most of the slack if we push them hard enough.
But rather than use this pre-existing power technology which solves the problem
Have you solved the nuclear waste problem? Do you have a reactor design that cannot render a large area uninhabitable in a serious failure? Have you figured out how to get the cost down to competitive levels without requiring government insurance guarantees? Have you figured out how to restore areas contaminated by the occasional but inevitable containment failures (ala Chernobyl and Fukishima)? Have you proven that new reactor designs are safer/cheaper/reliable? I'm just playing devil's advocate here but there are some serious issues with nuclear power which you can't just hand wave away.
You're quite right that nuclear in theory takes care of a good chuck of the carbon emissions problems but let's not pretend nuclear power doesn't bring it's own set of scary problems to the party. I actually agree that it's probably the least worst near term option but there are some pretty serious downsides to it which render it politically impossible in most places. And it isn't just environmentalists who have a problem with nuclear plants. Nobody really wants them nearby. NIMBY is pretty strong when it comes to something that carries even a small risk of catastrophic contamination.
roll the dice on hopefully developing new and untested power sources in time to avert disaster.
??? Any nuclear reactor design that improves on existing reactors is by definition new and untested because they haven't been deployed. Nuclear power in general is pretty well understood but new (and hopefully improved) reactor designs that we would likely want to use are still just past experimental. If you are referring to wind and solar those aren't new and untested so it's not clear what you are talking about.
Nuclear power doesn't have to be the end-game. All we need to do is to replace our fossil fuel power plants with nuclear plants to arrest CO2 emissions and buy us more time.
Nice theory. Probably even correct. But since it won't happen what is your next option?
Well obviously only per capita is a useful measure.
Otherwise global warming would be solved by splitting up the big countries into smaller countries.
What's the net loss? Presumably, as temperatures rise, some parts of the earth that are currently uninhabitable will be come habitable.
Quote from the click bait article: "If global warming reaches 2 degrees C it could trigger a feedback, or "tipping element,"
All you need to see is the weasel word, "could" No one KNOWS. So, fear mongers have been fear mongering for 50 years on this topic (after fear mongering for 30 years that the earth was headed towards an ice age, which would be 1000X worse than a heat age). Now all of this is rank speculation, based on models that have never accurately predicted anything (every IPCC model has massively over estimated warming trends since the first report).
In what other field of human endeavor, does one get to generate models that can't accurately predict anything, speculate disaster with no evidence, and still get listened too? I clearly need to change fields.
Meanwhile the left does nothing about the shootings in Chicago, since it is blacks being killed.
The don't care about violent criminals coming over illegally, since they usually attack hispanics in their neighborhoods.
They promote abortions, which is responsible for 61% of blacks being killed in the US.
The promote increasing taxes, which they know will put more blacks out of work and into poverty than any other group.
Now tell me again, who is the bigots? It sounds like you are based on what you want to do to minorities.
No one really wants to talk about or consider this, but the only way to limit this is for our population to dramatically reduce. Our efforts are futile if our population continues to explode, as it has since the late 1800s. Before then the human population was always under a billion.
Translation: we've spent decades demonizing and regulating nuclear to the point where it's too expensive to generate.
Well if you can figure out a way to reduce regulations on nuclear power without the cost cutting resulting in corner cutting and eventually a catastrophe then please share. Nuclear power is heavily regulated because it's really f***ing dangerous if you aren't watching it very carefully. The problem with fission reactors is that even the safest designs we know of require considerable oversight and regular expensive maintenance by very imperfect humans. While mostly they operate with good safety, when things go wrong they can go REALLY wrong. As long as there is a chance for a failure mode to occur, sooner or later it will. Not to mention the waste problem, the nuclear weapons problems, the insurance problems, etc. Nuclear has some great benefits but it has some serious problems too which cannot be easily dismissed.
We've made sure it can't be the answer.
Politics are partly to blame to be sure but in reality the flaws in the technology is what made it impossible to use as a long term solution.
Remember 20 years ago when Al Gore warned us we only had 5 years to act before all of this crap happened? Now, in another 50 years, I'm sure the Alarmist will be all about warning us that we only have another 10 years to act...
For a feature film, or just a TV Mini-Series?
Good point. The ass hats on top are the problem. A certain one in particular.
And his name is George Soros.
Frankly it's all based on bullshit pseudo-science. I'm not worried, and I'm not going to change.
We don't know that it's within our control, that is pure human arrogance. Though I have no doubt we have contributed to the situation, that doesn't necessarily mean we can reverse it. The earth will do what the earth will do. Our survival is inconsequential to it.
We can do it!!
Then we can get back to plantationalizng the planet, fishing out the oceans and completely subjugating what is left of Nature in peace and security.
Onwards to 20 billion!
is laughing at this article.
"The Polar Bears will be fine" - Freeman Dyson.
We are seeing mass extinctions.
Just because humans are so pervasive that you can't pin mass extinctions on climate vs habitat destruction, doesn't mean we aren't in a period of mass extinctions.
I may believe it's a crisis if those who say it's a crisis act like it's a crisis.
There IS NO SUCCESS RATE. FAIL!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...
MANY more here:
https://www.google.com/search?...
I heard a great point anyone might give some thought to. A paraphrase- "We can't control the weather, but we believe we can control the entire planet?" Consider the difference in scales that must exist between factors both known and unknown when comparing local/regonal events and a global system.
Have you met us? A large percentage of us are now obese. And there isn't a pro-obesity lobby with obesity deniers.
-12 monkeys
And remember global warming has caused many mass extinction events. During the Great Dying, 70% of terrestrial vertebrate went extinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not possible to delete carbon development economically without enough people who can afford the Tesla driven economy to make an impact. What makes it "Mission Impossible" are politicians driving oil, coal and gas field development.
ReForest while Old Growth trees burn in CA (US largest trees)...sounds too much like " all you have to do" politics. Maybe there could be a subsidy on burnt wood forest product development.
Carbon Mining (aka recapture) will payoff. Naturally and commercially its what capitalism does best. There's money to be made and a resource ripe for the picking. There's a reason the seat of Gov't is named ' The Capital' and it knows how to incentivize resource mining.
Every other phone, computer and other device that has the ability to post to Slashdot, can do it without causing issues.
I'm not a climate denier, but what kind of damage are we talking about here?
From the article
"If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies"
How serious? I mean , I guess I'm not all that bothered if I see the collapse of society any more then my own death ( All socieites collapse and all people die) If by end of my lifetime and we wind up being hunter gathers again, as I can tell there is zero I can do about it.
More to the point, what do these folks expect to be done about it and by who? Should we all advocate one government take over the whole world and fix the problem? Even if you had a single dictator in charge of the Globe ( aka won't happen) how would they maintain control and drop the carbon footprint quickly enough? nuke india and china to decrease it's population?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
this discussion is a waste of time. enjoy the planet while it lasts..
This would be an example of an engineer not thinking the issue all the way through. 'Cause you left out another formula.
Solar irradiation = food.
You reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth, then you reduce the rate that plants grow. Which means you reduce our food supply.
Earth is an incredibly complex system. Any time you're tempted to try to explain everything with one simple formula, you're going to be missing several other incredibly important "formulas".
So there is no way for us to change the climate?
Global Warmining Alarmists have become so annoying and shrill while having no proof, that I would honestly risk the entire planet be wiped clean than do anything they say.
But since they are alarmists, not scientists, and don't understand runaway warming was long ago disproven as being the result we will see, instead I can just laugh at them knowing all will be well.
if we don't it will cause massive political destabilization as food production changes
Why do you think more food production is a problem?
Because that is what you get with higher global temperatures. A vastly increased growing range and season. More CO2 helps plant life everywhere be more productive. Warming means more water vapor in the atmosphere from accelerated evaporation over the oceans which means more rain across the globe.
Why is it that you and other warming alarmists cannot understand these extremely simple facts of a warmer planet? The world will grow ever more prosperous even as you scream at every small variation in weather for a season, which in the end turns everyone away and you into a laughingstock. Is it any wonder voters and the masses no longer take you seriously nor care what new fresh hell you have imagined?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
WERE FUCKED /rip George Carlin
If we as a nation are capable of election Donald Trump as president. Then we are more than capable of completely ignoring this issue. I have little faith that humanity as a whole is up to this challenge either.
This.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
...
Conversely, Democrats consider pandering to and boosting LBGTQs to be so important they are willing to give up any chance to communicate any message to 30-50% of the US on climate change or really any other topic.
LBGTQs are more important to them than everyone else in the world put together — a strange value system that defies rational explanation.
All those sources of power are intermittent and unreliable.
You cannot run a semiconductor fab or steel mill with intermittent power.
Storage schemes drive the price way up, so all the "cheap" renewables are not cheap anymore.
That's why Germany's CO2 is not dropping much despite massive wind and solar efforts...you still need to back them up with coal plants for a reliable grid.
But rather than use this pre-existing power technology which solves the problem, environmentalists insisted that we dismantle that existing solution, and roll the dice on hopefully developing new and untested power sources in time to avert disaster.
We wish in our wet dreams we had that much power. If we did, Global Warming would never have happened. We'd all be driving solar powered EVs or bicycling right now to our tofu vegan restaurants and having soy milk lattes.
The things that kill nuke is pure and simple.
It's a huge capital outlay and the returns aren't that good. Then there's the permitting. They need a LOT of fresh water to cool and fresh water is an issue all over the country. (It doesn't help that rich bastards want their big thirsty golf course in deserts.)
Then there is waste disposal. Yeah yeah yeah, NIMBYism. Everyone is a NIMBY until it's your back yard where they want to build on or dispose waste.
We are just a whipping boy. The utilities don't want to admit that it's all about money. The NIMBYs don't want to admit that they don't want that shit near them. So, blame the environmentalists who are more concerned about insects than human health and well-being.
Umm... you DO know the law of entropy, yes?
Yes. You do know the problem with CO2? In help retain heat from the sun. You know what help counteracts this? Shade. As far as I know shade does not violate the law of entropy.
The malthusian failing has repeatedly been your concept of a symmetric steep hill from which there is no return. Through science and engineering we have repeatedly found that "steep hill" is quite flat on the other unseen side.
... but I expect some climate engineering will **also** be necessary. Best to get that on the radar earlier than later.
Malthus and his followers repeatedly fall into the trap of looking at one variable and *assuming* all other are held constant. Science and engineering often avoid malthusian disasters by operating on the other variables that are not really constants. With respect to climate engineering two such variables may be the solar energy reaching the earth and the amount of this energy that is reflected back into space. I suppose some might argue improvements in carbon capture and sequestration technology but I'm just going to stick with shade and reflection for now.
Again, to be clear, I'm all for conservation, increased efficiency, alternative energy (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, biofuels, etc)
Or, we could use cheaper power sources, like wind and solar.
That's what the EU thought. They shut down nuclear and now are importing twice as much coal from the US. Wind and solar need backup and without nuclear that will be natural gas and coal.
Intermittent power sources (wind and solar) are not cheaper because you need reliable fossil fuel (or nuclear) for base load power.
States and countries with more wind and solar have higher power prices.
If you add storage to solve the intermittent, then it is not cheaper.
4x the number of solar panels in the darkness or the shade doesn't really help. 4x the number of wind turbines in the still air doesn't really help. Storage would help but that's an evolving technology, its scalability unproven. The reality is that Europe has doubled their imports of coal from the US, and also increased natural gas imports from the Russian oligarchs/Putin, to help make up for the decommissioning of nuclear. A decommissioning that was largely driven by **politics** not economics.
And opponents of nuclear overlook a secondary benefit of modern reactors. They help clean up the mess left behind by the older reactors. We don't need to figure out how to safely store all our current nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years, much of it can be consumed as fuel in more modern reactor designs. That also needs to be part of the economic calculation of nuclear.
No, that isn't what they said.
So are they wrong for not considering alternatives? Or wrong for considering alternatives?
What you are inadvertently saying here is the deep truth - that "they" were considering alternatives to cast fear for profit, that "they" were not wrong to move to screaming we should fear cold to screaming we should fear warmth, despite the fact warmth is life...
Global cooling had a lot more going for it if you were trying to control people through fear, since it would actually be dangerous. You stupid warming alarmists can't even bring yourself to consider how lucky we are there is warming instead of cooling... reversion to another ice age (which is inevitable) is the thing to fear and if we have pushed that out by a hundred or so years we would be damn lucky as a species.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With superconductors, that problem is solved. Just build superconducting underground power transmission lines from the middle of nowhere to where the power is needed.
Transmission losses are not that big a deal even with superconductors. Plus you talk about high temp superconductors as if that is something we can suddenly waive into existence. We're certainly not going to use the sorts of superconductors available to us today.
After all, the United States has vast tracts of land with approximately zero people (with some small epsilon) living there, in states like Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, etc. Let's put our nuclear power plants there, so that if things go wrong, we can just bomb and bury them.
If the risk is so bad that locating them away from population centers is necessary then I think it's safe to say that using them is a bad idea. Either make it safe enough to be near to the plant or don't use it. We have other options after all.
Likely no one will see this post since I'm so late to the party (over 600 comments at this moment), but I'll write it up anyway.
Let's face the reality about ourselves: Humans are, on average, huge procrastinators. The chances of our entire civilization going full-stop and deciding to make the major changes necessary to head this off? Highly unlikely. As a species, at this point in our evolution, don't seem to be able to make ourselves look down the road 100 years (or even 50 years for that matter) and do what's necessary to attain a goal for that far in the future. 1 year, 5 years? Sure. 10 years? Maybe. 20 years? Highly unlikely. So what's going to happen is things will get so bad that people can't live normal lives anymore, the 'inconvenience' will reach a critical stage where people are starting to panic over it, then people will demand that 'something be done about this'. Day late, dollar short, as they say. So what we've got to do now, is come up with the 'just in time' solution, if such a thing can even exist.
What I propose, for starters, is something out of a science fiction short story (written by Brenda Cooper? Not 100% sure). In this story an alien race covertly placed a massive number of small mirrors, self-positioning and remotely controlled, to reflect sunlight away from a planet they wanted to colonize, but that had a nascent sentient race already evolving on it. They caused an ice age on that planet, killing the dominant species. I propose that, given steady progress in space operations, we could do something similar with the Earth, reflecting a high enough percentage of sunlight away from us that over the course of decades, the planet would cool, and reverse the damage done. Or some variation on this theme to reduce the energy input from the sun. Might be enough. We'd have to develop the technology to do this, of course.
In the meantime we need to keep 'fighting the good fight' against the greedy, who don't care about anything other than amassing profit while they're alive ("Global warming is someone else's problem!") and the nutjob Dominionist types who want the Earth destroyed because they think they'll bring about the Second Coming of Christ that way (no, I'm not kidding, these idiots exist), and try to get people to reverse the damage we've already done.
Having just been forced to get rid of my old diesel car for a petrol car that (consumes 150% more fuel and generates 20% more CO2) per distance travelled by our government! Wooo!
Solar is mostly a "feel-good" solution; capturing a significant fraction of the US energy market with solar is dubious at best.
That's demonstrably false. Germany TODAY gets about 6-7% of their energy from solar and it's clearly possible to do more. Would be much easier to do in many parts of the US which are far sunnier and further south. Hawaii currently gets close to 1/3 of it's electricity from rooftop and grid solar. If you think upwards of 10% (which is very realistic) is not a significant fraction then I don't know what to tell you.
If the US were to try to entirely use solar + batteries for power we would need to cover an area the size of West Virginia with solar panels
It would take roughly a tiny corner of Nevada to power the entire US. Less than 1% of the US landmass. You could capture a good fraction of that simply by using existing roof tops which is already utilized and wasted space anyway and has the bonus of being at point of use. If you're going to argue against solar you might try starting with actual facts instead of made up ones.
Wind is a much better option - centralized power (think MW or 10s of MW) from one turbine
Wind is a great solution in some places and solar is a better option in others. It depends entirely on the local geography. We need and will use both. Centralized power is not necessarily an advantage and in fact distributed power systems can be much more robust if done correctly. The biggest limitation to either of them is the fact that fossil fuels are not required to pay for much of the pollution they generate so economically they appear cheaper than they really are.
A realistic solution is a mix of wind, advancing nuclear, and a dash of solar for the long-term.
A realistic solution is a lot more wind, a lot more solar, keeping what nuke plants we can running for as long as practical (we aren't going to build more). Unfortunately there is no viable solution that doesn't involve substantial fossil fuel use for another half century even if politically we could agree to move on the matter. But as long as we have politicians in the pocket of big oil and coal companies that is going to be hard to do.
More fake news; so to speak. Data mined scientific climate data is fake news. Even though the debate is over and nonanthropogenic climate change is real, climate lemmings and agenda trolls are still hard at it.
Countries that are cutting back on nuclear power, particularly Germany and Japan, have largely escaped criticism. While both countries are making greater use of renewables, keeping nuclear plants running will eliminate CO2 emissions as long as they would otherwise burn some fossil fuels. If the situation is as grave as the report says, it's time for the green left, which has fought nuclear power relentlessly since the 1970s, to admit that maybe this was not such a good idea and push for nuclear in the mix.
1. Replace red meat (except bison) with mussels, clams, and other bivalves which store carbon in their shells, preferably grown amongst sea kelp or seagrass beds. Do this at least half of the time you would have eaten red meat.
2. Live in a city, close to your work.
3. Take high speed trains instead of flying, if you live in a First World Nation. (yes, that's what I said)
4. If you drive, get a plug-in electric truck or car and power it from solar, wind, or other renewables.
5. Put solar panels or wind turbines on your house. In a disaster, you can use those to provide enough power for essential things. Yes, even if you live in Canada. Or Alaska.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The real reason emissions are down in the US is that 22 states now require 10-50 percent of all new electricity comes from renewable energy, and require more efficient heating and cooling systems for commercial and industrial uses. Like the entire West.
We do. Everyone else whines and pays more for less efficient stuff because they like giving dollars to utilities instead of making money off of solar panels and more efficient electric vehicles.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Damn this must have been hard to admit. These are real scientists, before someone jumps in and claims otherwise?
Then realize why we can't have nice things, like fair, constructive moderation. Take comfort in that hundreds of millions of dollars go into the astroturfing industry.
It will, unless it doesn't. The nice thing about science is it's always changing so you're right even when you're wrong. You can look me up on Snopes to verify I am partially correct.
Thanks Slashdot, I needed a laugh. I look forward to seeing scientists in white lab coats on street corners holding signs proclaiming the coming apocalypse.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
You do realize we have the tech now via batteries, solar panels, windmills, and electric cars to reduce our carbon emissions to 0, right? Why shouldn't we spend the money to implement these solutions?
Deny science all you want, it will still tell you things you should hear.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
plant more trees? Greedy A-holes take more out of the ground than they put back in.
What's the evidence for this?
I keep hearing this term being used.
How can one conclude that technology will never reach a point where climates may be altered, created, or destroyed on purpose?
How many Slashdotters do you think will actually be old enough to get a R&B reference?
Climate Researchers Warn Only Hope For Humanity Now Lies In Possibility They Making All Of This Up
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But what happens when hackers get in and hold the planet hostage? What if Bruce Willis is too old to pass the pre-launch physical and can't save the planet?
You keep it crewed and don't design in any remote control capability. If the crew goes rogue, or some shit goes wrong and the mirror points at us, have Chairman Kim send a missile up.
Way to miss the point to go off into something tangentially related. For as long as I can remember, it's always, "if we don't make changes now, in x amount of years catastrophe will hit!" I've lived through most of those x amount of years so far, and catastrophe hasn't hit. Despite the environmentally friendly initiatives that have been done over the years, global green house gas has risen year after year. I don't think it's too much to ask to get people to stop scare mongering. You cry wolf enough times and people stop giving a shit.
First, CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is plant food and it is fertilizing the greening of the earth:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...
Most biologists will admit that if they haven't sold their soul for federally funded research grants.
Second, it is the best and most economically and readily available energy source, even when it is recycled.
So, recycle it.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
They said this 20 years ago.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/scienc...
I'll bet they'll say the same thing 20 years from now, no matter what happens with global average temperature :)
Sorry to disappoint you, but temperature is proportional to fourth root of solar irradiation, space reflectors are about the most inefficient way to go about it imaginable.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if the sun doubled its output and you think we'd only get 18.9% more Kelvins, u r dum.
Where do you think the extra radiation will go? Will it be deflected or reflected at a higher rate before it enters the atmosphere? Does every EM emission come with a tag that says "Xtra" for our Basic Bitches (magnetosphere, atmosphere, planet) to inspect and selective reject?
Because they are not.
.
We as humans can (try to) zero our influence out, but that does not mean that climate change stops.
And that is what those idiots are actually out for: Absolute stagnation in regard to the earths climate.
Minimizing our footprint would not be enough, we would need to go against nature to make that happen. In other words, we would need to force it.
Do you really think that that would be a good idea (I mentioned earthquakes for a reason) ?
Correct.
Maybe Beau will continue to suck msmash's cock for coke untill eternity.
At the tropics?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
is that none of these silly predictions are based on actual science. The scientific method is nowhere in sight, as the proponents of these chicken little theories will admit to no falsifiability criteria. Falsifiability is a requirement for any theory to be considered scientific. Without that, it's simply religion. The religion of some people needing to control all other people and willing to lie to do it.
For not turning off smart quotes on your own phone in 10 seconds worth of time? You are one lazy motherfucker.
I'll attack that stupid piece of shit's character AND points, and I'll call you a motherfucker while I'm at it, motherfucker.
All of the OP's "points" before thier respective colons are pure sterotypical conjecture. There is nothing to argue about because it's a blanket statement. Not all alarmists are leftists. You can't even say all the persons you're calling alarmists are alarmists. So now that that's out of the way, let's proceed, motherfucking bigots:
1) That is a reasonable possiblity. I've heard both positions argue this same point. The issue comes down to whether you care or not. OP apparently doesn't. I do. In this post, though I don't think it matters because of the other 2 points. This is a "reasonable" item on the list to setup credibility for the progressively worse talking points.
2) Some leftists do argue for fewer people and a reduction in births. That, again, seems like a matter of opinion. We don't yet have a solid estimate of how many people is too many. It's the second part that's the sneaky fucker. At best, asking for a reduction in the standard is only technically correct and I argue you can't even say that. It depends on context. You nutty fucks think we are telling you to go dig a hole in the ground and live in a mud hut on a mountain. That's not even close. We ask that maybe you drive a CRV instead of a Hummer. Maybe stop belching diesel smoke out of your big ass trucks. Use solar instead of coal. Environmentalists want us to reduce our pollution. YOU consider that a reduction in your standard of living. It is a different standard of living not necessarily lower. That's why this is a sneaky fucker. It's disingenuous but truthy enough to keep credibility so AC can set up the ACTUAL point of his diatribe which is his disdain for immigration...
3) Both sentences are just outright lies. We never said where we needed immigrants from nor why we needed them. They're needed to work manual labor that you and AC won't bother doing. There is a labor shortage and it does not matter if it comes from Mexico, Norway, or Pakistan. If you like food, you need someone to harvest it. The statement has nothing to do with AGW, climate change, or whatever term-of-the-year we're calling it. It's a setup lie for the second sentence. The second sentence is fearmongering based on a falsehood. If the leftist's agenda was to improve living conditions in high-birth rate countries then they would have FEWER children. This is demonstrable in every first-world country. Education leads to fewer children which actually HELPS the first half of point 2. AC is the person wanting to claim both sides of the argument and has to lie to do it while claiming that it is us who are doing it. Fuck him. AC, and possibly your deplorable ass, want everyone to think millions of brown people are gonna swarm thier country like raiding Vikings. Why else would you claim we are attempting to raise birth rates when birth rates will actually lower? What part of the 3rd point is supposed to be the thing we're freaking out about?
You're talking to yourself in the mirror again. Hypocrisy be thy middle name. Your first name being Bigot, of course, ya racist cunts.
...and if we were talking about surviving a collision this would be relevant. The rate is what makes it hard to adapt to - if it occurred over 1,000 years we would not notice it much. However, having to adapt to rapid changes is something we can do. As I said it is going to cause a huge amount of disruption which is why we want to avoid it but that is nowhere near the same as claiming that human life will be impossible. Mammals very similar to us survived in the Eocene so there is no reason to suppose that we cannot survive a far smaller increase in temperature.
More Windy numbers pulled from his ass to further his lies.
Facts are facts, Americans are twice as wasteful as Chinese when it comes to CO2. Praise the lord that is only such a relatively small number of them.if America was as big as China you would be emitting more than the rest of the world combined, including China.
Apart from the fact it would be completely unworkable, a beurocratic nightmare, your fellow Americans would never vote for it.
It would also end up taxing Americans at the highest rate. Americans are what 4x world average. So their tax would also be 4x higher.
Atmospheric CO2 is determined by Henry's law. As we come out of the latest ice age the earth warms up, the deep oceans more slowly, and the vapor-liquid equilibrium slowly shifts towards more CO2 in the atmosphere. Due to the very high heat capacity and the low overall thermal conductivity from top to bottom of the oceans, this process acts very slowly, but steadily. Human contributions don't play any significant role with respect to the amount of what's in the atmosphere.
Watch one of the presentations, recorded and posted on youtube, by climate scientist Murray Salby who pointed parts of this out.
So did 20 million other internet users! And they were all snipers!
Huh. That was not meant to be a simple equation. It was meant to be an arrow to show the relationship, but was swallowed by the HTML tag parser.
Let's try again:
Temperature <== Solar irradiation * CO2 levels
Anyway, to address your concern - the blocking would likely be positioned to happen mostly near the equator - where solar irradiation is at its maximum and food is rarely grown. But something could also be done at the poles to slow down melting.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You really don't understand at all do you.
Start with one cent add a other cent every year. Also start with a million dollars and take away one cent every year.
How meaningful is the trend, an how long and at what level will they be in balance?
Or you're just trolling as usual.
What 50 year lie Windy?
Did people even bother measuring CO2 50 years ago?
Is this yet another lie to add to your constant stream of lies Windy?
And what measure are you using to compare yourself to those other countries? GDP ? Or per person, lol you fool, you know it's per person when it helps you? And per country when necessary because you know you have less people.
And they will rise even more, even if we stop today. Think of an oil tanker, even stopping the engines now means that it keeps moving a few thousand miles before it stops.
The initiatives are exactly why the shit didn't hit the fan. But then again, I'm done caring. Fuck up this world, I'm on the way out anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The initiatives are exactly why the shit didn't hit the fan. But then again, I'm done caring. Fuck up this world, I'm on the way out anyway.
I don't think that's true at all considering how we've exceeded those CO2 thresholds and global temperature thresholds that we should never get past. But please, tell me more.
Trends are for people like you and Windy to hide behind so you can pretend to be getting better without actually doing anything useful. looking at the level is also important, the trend is only a part of the story.
Perfect example is all the Tesla fanbois who think Tesla is doing good because they only lost 15k per car instead of 16k.
Look the trend is good. Is the situation good?
Or people who think the deficit isn't a problem because the budget trended from minus 2 trillion to only minus 1.99 trillion this year.
Trend means everything is ok right?You know it's not.
You need to look at the level not just the trend, otherwise you aren't really understanding the situation. (On purpose? )
Well, maybe we are already fucked and nobody tells us to avoid a panic. I really don't know. What I can see is that the climate gets less and less amiable every year, natural disasters get worse and worse every year, glaciers are melting and I need a new air condition 'cause the one I have can't really cool down my house anymore.
That's certainly just one data point and I doubt that it's gonna convince anyone else, but it sure convinced me that something's amiss.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I never mentioned high-temperature superconductors at all.
You didn't have to. Using current low temp superconductors is economically infeasible for long distances so the only way your suggestion would work is with some as yet undeveloped high temp superconductor. The cost of cooling the lines would be greater than the savings you'd get from current transmission losses over the kinds of distances we're talking about. You think it's cheap to cool and pump hundreds of miles of lines of liquid nitrogen or similar coolants? If it made economic sense then power companies would already be doing it today and they are not. You think the power companies haven't looked into this?
With normal cables, you're talking about 4–8% loss.
It's not about the energy loss. It's about economic efficiency. But that doesn't matter because you are missing the entire point. If operating a nuclear power station is so dangerous that we need to locate it away from population centers then we shouldn't be operating it at all.
Now whether the cost of the superconducting lines would exceed the cost of those losses is another question
It is definitely NOT a separate question. If it doesn't cost less then there is no point in doing it at all. The number of cases where currently available superconductors are economically more efficient is just a few corner cases today and likely to remain so until we can get high temp superconductors.
There are several superconducting transmission cables are in active use right now.
They are short lines right next to power plants. We're talking less than a kilometer. There are no long distance superconducting power lines in service today
of Heading Towards Irreversible 'A Thousand Morons' State
Cares
How about this one (box to the left, click to enlarge).
https://geology.utah.gov/map-p...
Note how much warmer the Earth has been in the past.
Now, repeat after me: Another horseshit article because someone is chasing a fresh funding grant.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So how come we aren't working hard to go other places? These politics are a waste of time, money, effort, etc. Let's put that into insuring that our species survives by colonization everywhere.
we will always have a last resort remedy - to actively fuck with the climate by pumping particulate matter into the atmosphere.
it may cause a lot of unforeseen problems but if worst comes to worst, we still have a remedy.
I did read the link Windy and it doesn't mention 50 years. You just lied and made up that bit.
In fact they specifically mentioned 'since 2000'. And the graph only shows a difference from about 2005.
You are a complete dumbfuck Windy. Why do you constantly lie in completely obvious and easily checked ways? Is it some kind of mental condition, or do you just hate China that much, all sense and reason goes out the window?
Do you still really think I don't check before calling you a liar? You must know by now.
I hope they did check the comments. They would have found this lie that you just doubled down on after I questioned the truth of it and gave you a chance to come clean. https://slashdot.org/thread/57...