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MrSmokes posted:This last page has made me pour a few stiff drinks. What, if anything, can we do at this point? We've started something that can't possibly be stopped even if we magically make all our emissions vanish tomorrow.
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Aug 7, 2012 07:09
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Mr Chips posted:You may find some consolation in the thought that, if you're posting on SA, you're probably rich enough not to suffer like the global poor will, and you'll probably be senile or dead before the worst of it. That's not comforting though--that's just the same thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. It's like heaping a serving of guilt on top of your apocalypse pie.
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Aug 7, 2012 13:36
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faxmaster posted:That's not comforting though--that's just the same thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. It's like heaping a serving of guilt on top of your apocalypse pie. I'm not sure there is any comfort to be taken from any of it. There's no political will to enact change, because the money says "more fossil fuels", and the will of the politicians is bought by the money. Without some sort of miracle, there's only one ending, and it ain't happy. Just a matter of how fast these things occur at this point, not if. Do your best to enjoy life, and be prepared for the worst. Educate those that are willing to listen, and at least try with those that are not. Pray if that's your thing. Think long and hard about what the future of this planet will look like before you consider having children. In my opinion (and plenty will disagree I'm sure), comfort is denial. We've had too much denial already, and it serves no purpose. I accept it, and I do the best I can to educate those around me, and to enjoy life while I can. The climate will probably not get me in the end, but it will certainly change my life if I live long enough to see 2 degrees of warming. Or heck, 1.5 degrees. MrSmokes: We'd still probably be able to stop the warming trend (though maybe not reverse any of the effects that have taken place thusfar) if we quit cold turkey today. Perhaps that's a little comforting, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:57
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MrSmokes posted:This last page has made me pour a few stiff drinks. What, if anything, can we do at this point? We've started something that can't possibly be stopped even if we magically make all our emissions vanish tomorrow. Geoengineering will be a stop-gap we'll use in desperation to buy us some time. It's never going to be a permanent solution; we need to get our emissions down. We may still have broken some of the systems that regulated the planet's environment and climate by the time we get the temperature under control and may have to take a more active role in managing the planet's mechanisms. And we'll probably screw that up before we get it right, too, if we survive the century. But if the international community fails to develop a global geoengineering strategy to deal with the problems then you can expect small countries that are already under threat - like Bangladesh - to throw its GDP at the problem regardless of the consequences to its neighbours. And that's going to cause wars.
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Aug 7, 2012 17:20
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19161799BBC news posted:US criticised on 2C climate 'flexibility' call I hope that the analyst's perception of the U.S. trying to back out on the 2 C target is incorrect, because if that's the case then we can consider the moribund emissions reduction initiatives sponsored by the UNFCCC permanently stalled...
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Aug 7, 2012 17:37
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Dreylad posted:Geoengineering will be a stop-gap we'll use in desperation to buy us some time. It's never going to be a permanent solution; we need to get our emissions down. We may still have broken some of the systems that regulated the planet's environment and climate by the time we get the temperature under control and may have to take a more active role in managing the planet's mechanisms. And we'll probably screw that up before we get it right, too, if we survive the century. Yeah I think we're more likely to see attempts at geoengineering than any sort of large-scale transition to renewables by mid-century, and from a governance perspective it's just a huge clusterfuck waiting to happen. This Royal Society report covers pretty much all the current options, and aerosol dispersion looks like the most likely, and the most problematic - in a few decades it'll probably be technically and economically accessible to just about any developing nation that's desperate enough. Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty quote:Delivering between 1 and 5 MtS/yr to the stratosphere is feasible. The mass involved is less than a tenth of the current annual payload of the global air transportation, and commercial transport aircraft already reach the lower stratosphere. Methods of delivering the required mass to the stratosphere depend on the required delivery altitude, assuming that the highest required altitude would be that needed to access the lower tropical stratosphere, about 20 km, then the most cost-effective delivery method would probably be a custom built fleet of aircraft, although rockets, aircraft/rocket combinations, artillery and balloons have all been suggested. Very rough cost estimates based on existing aircraft and artillery technology suggest that costs would be of the order of 3 to 30 $/kg putting the total annual cost at 10s of billion dollars (US National Academy of Science 1992; Keith 2000; Blackstock et al. 2009). The environmental impacts of the delivery system itself would of course also need to be carefully considered.
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Aug 8, 2012 23:41
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I can't wait to see how people who believe in chemtrails will take that. 
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Aug 9, 2012 00:02
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Geoengineering would be an unmitigated disaster. If there is anything that CFCs, DDT, and carbon emissions prove, it's that we have a very hazy, shortsighted understanding of how our actions affect the environment. Has chaos theory taught us nothing? The fact that some complex systems can be both deterministic and unpredictable is pretty drat cool and the math behind it, from what little I understand of it, is pretty drat cool, too. We've got to start paying attention to the implications of our knowledge, though. If the planet-wide ecology is both deterministic and unpredictable (and I'm pretty sure it is), then we need to approach large-scale environmental fuckery with extreme caution, or even just write off that kind of action altogether. I mean, I hate to trot out the old "bull in a china closet" cliche, but really?
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Aug 9, 2012 00:22
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Geoengineering would be an unmitigated disaster. If there is anything that CFCs, DDT, and carbon emissions prove, it's that we have a very hazy, shortsighted understanding of how our actions affect the environment. Respectfully and good naturedly, given all of your posts and your perspective on this issue, do you honestly think that we (collective we) have learned anything and will actually address this issue fruitfully without huge downstream consequences? The geoengineering is probably gonna happen and the best we can hope for is that it will be a mitigated disaster.
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Aug 9, 2012 00:26
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Yeah, you're right. What you're describing is the most realistic outcome, but it's really frustrating and I just wanted to vent a little. There are so many dimensions to this tragedy. The environmental justice angle is one thing, but there's also the really sickening social justice angle - the fact that the global poor will have to pay for the extravagance of the global elite (including you and me), and will probably cause more damage in the process. The future generations of humans on this planet (if there are many beyond ours) are going to curse us, see us as bumbling, greedy, and malevolent. As damning and shameful as it is, it gives me a glimmer of hope. Perhaps they won't repeat our mistakes. Perhaps they'll avoid the siren song of material wealth.
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Aug 9, 2012 00:55
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SO2 is almost a guarantee at this point but the real question is who will be the first to take that step and what will those that disagree do about it? What if we figure out the consequences are even worse but the US, China, Russia, India, or another large country refuses to accept it? We've been geoengineering the planet for a long time, we're just going to continue to accelerate that process until it produces a consequence large enough to stop us. Also, if I'm not mistaken, SO2 has to be continuously applied so if it does stop for any reason, we're going to be looking at even faster warming, especially if you consider those that will use SO2 to justify increasing carbon emissions. I look forward to having corporations releasing SO2 into the atmosphere to "offset" their carbon emissions.
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Aug 9, 2012 02:03
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Geoengineering is a horrible idea as long as we are still primarily burning fossil fuels.
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Aug 9, 2012 02:12
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McDowell posted:Geoengineering is a horrible idea as long as we are still primarily burning fossil fuels. What makes you think this society will ever stop burning fossil fuels? I completely agree with you, I just see it as an inevitability and why would these energy companies NOT keep burning fossil fuels if they could justify it someway? That way when the fossil fuels run out, energy costs skyrocket, we can't afford to keep injecting SO2 into the atmosphere, we have rapid warming, and then the real fun starts.
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Aug 9, 2012 02:13
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a lovely poster posted:What makes you think this society will ever stop burning fossil fuels?
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Aug 9, 2012 04:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:Pardon me if this is too stupid a question, but aren't we going to run out of fossil fuels to burn, and THAT would constitute the drop-off in emissions, or is that point of hitting the bottom of the barrel too far off before the environment is permanently and irreversibly damaged (relative to how damaged it already is)? In the US we're sitting on tons and tons of natural gas and coal which haven't been fully extracted and which will allow us to keep driving a fossil fuel economy long after we've run past every tipping point in the environment. We may be passed peak oil and the crunch predicted by the US Joint Forces command may be emminent, but if things really get difficult in terms of fueling our vehicles with oil and gasoline we can liquify coal just like Germany did in WWII when they were short on oil. We can feasibly do that for a long time to power vehicles while using natural gas to power plants. Its going to take political will to not do that once oil prices really start to hurt. The sooner we move into nuclear the less likely we are to do that, but we're not doing anything right now to realistically address the inertia built into our oil based economy and we're not building nuclear plants on the scale which might begin to blunt said inertia.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Pardon me if this is too stupid a question, but aren't we going to run out of fossil fuels to burn, and THAT would constitute the drop-off in emissions, or is that point of hitting the bottom of the barrel too far off before the environment is permanently and irreversibly damaged (relative to how damaged it already is)? Whether or not we have enough fossil fuels is actually a moot point. It's more of a question of economics, where we get to the point where it's not profitable (not merely feasable) to keep extracting. The economists that matter are still externalizing the environment until they're lined up against the wall and shot (I can dream). At some point an energy conversion might take place or the privileged decide its for them and not for the rest of us, or we storm city hall and take the power back, who knows.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:40
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Yiggy posted:In the US we're sitting on tons and tons of natural gas and coal which haven't been fully extracted and which will allow us to keep driving a fossil fuel economy long after we've run past every tipping point in the environment. We may be passed peak oil and the crunch predicted by the US Joint Forces command may be emminent, but if things really get difficult in terms of fueling our vehicles with oil and gasoline we can liquify coal just like Germany did in WWII when they were short on oil. We can feasibly do that for a long time to power vehicles while using natural gas to power plants. Its going to take political will to not do that once oil prices really start to hurt. The sooner we move into nuclear the less likely we are to do that, but we're not doing anything right now to realistically address the inertia built into our oil based economy and we're not building nuclear plants on the scale which might begin to blunt said inertia. Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy?
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Aug 9, 2012 04:40
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Killin_Like_Bronson posted:Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy? Yes, unfortunately.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:53
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the kawaiiest posted:Yes, unfortunately. Oh, well thats kinda hosed.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:54
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Killin_Like_Bronson posted:Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy? If you attach the word "nuclear" to anything it will generate opposition based solely on that word. There is a very large number of people for whom nuclear-anything is inherently bad, despite how beneficial they may actually be. When they redid a nearby hospital they changed the "Nuclear Medicine" department to "Radiative Medicine" to keep people from freaking out.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:56
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Killin_Like_Bronson posted:Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy? There won't be any way to know til we're at that point, but the problem is I feel like you're only going to see nuclear plants built on the needed scale is if they're mandated from a federal level and thats politically toxic. I feel like as long as people can punish their elected representatives by voting them out of office, that they will punish those representatives for putting nuclear plants in their back yard. If we get to a point where there is a crunch it won't matter which is preferable, but which is feasible and possible In The Moment.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:58
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McDowell posted:Geoengineering is a horrible idea as long as we are still primarily burning fossil fuels. Engineering might not be such a bad idea since engineers were the ones that landed a rover on Mars recently. Why is opposition to the mere thought of studying every avenue in mitigating this disaster? This problem is something that is going to destroy the world, why not even explore some possibilities for God's sake?
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Aug 9, 2012 05:16
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Because there isn't much realistic to be done except put sulfur in the atmosphere, which isn't a good idea because then it adds another process which has to survive instability without sending the climate kareening even more out of control and because its only a bandaid which does nothing about the festering wound underneath. Anything that allows us to keep burning fossil fuels misses the point of the problem entirely. Holding out for engineers to save us like some sort of superman is wishful thinking. Especially if your basis is NASA fanboyism.
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Aug 9, 2012 05:30
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So we are doomed then, we have political 'scientists' trying to solve the world's most difficult problem. Oh well.
Priapus fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Aug 9, 2012 |
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Aug 9, 2012 05:35
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You have to realise that as impressive a feat as getting a rover onto Mars is, it is really apples and oranges with geo engineering. I would contend that safely and effectively managing an entire planet's atmosphere is many orders of magnitude more complicated that putting a rover on mars. Our understanding requires data we just don't have, and will have great difficulty getting on the scale we need. The scientists are saying we need to slow down, it's a shame that when they're not inventing cool poo poo, but instead making recommendations for altering the status quo, they get ignored or vilified.
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Aug 9, 2012 05:48
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Priapus posted:So we are doomed then, we have political 'scientists' trying to solve the world's most difficult problem. Oh well.
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Aug 9, 2012 06:43
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Killin_Like_Bronson posted:Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy? Yep, not only are there still a few environmental lobbies pushing against nuclear energy, you've got pressure from the various groups it would displace - fossil fuels. The environmental groups may have a bit of money behind them, but fossil fuels is pretty much "gently caress you we own this place and if we give enough of a gently caress to want the public's support we will drat well buy it" financially.
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Aug 9, 2012 09:22
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Has anyone made the argument that in a destabilized and environmentally degraded future, having a ton of nuclear reactors all over the place could be a bit of a liability? How safe is a brilliantly engineered nuclear powerplant if someone bombs it? How many 1250kmē radioactive exclusion zones are you potentially ok with?
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Aug 9, 2012 10:41
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Has anyone made the argument that in a destabilized and environmentally degraded future, having a ton of nuclear reactors all over the place could be a bit of a liability? How safe is a brilliantly engineered nuclear powerplant if someone bombs it? How many 1250km² radioactive exclusion zones are you potentially ok with? I don't know if you're just being willfully obtuse but if someone bombs a modern-design reactor with something that breaks containment then I wholeheartedly assure you that at that time it will be among the least of our problems.
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Aug 9, 2012 10:53
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We're never going to see a nuclear future. Nuclear plants are unpopular and reprocessing never took off in the US so by global standards they're inefficient as hell. The real nail in the coffin, however, is wind is getting much cheaper over time, and according to the EIA is already cheaper than nuclear (and everything else, actually, except for some types of NG plants which are really drat cheap). Of course there's a lot of problems with wind and the EIA doesn't think we'll stop using coal/NG for power generation.
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Aug 9, 2012 10:58
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The Entire Universe posted:I don't know if you're just being willfully obtuse but if someone bombs a modern-design reactor with something that breaks containment then I wholeheartedly assure you that at that time it will be among the least of our problems. What do you mean? That you would need nuclear weapons to mess up a nuclear plant?
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Aug 9, 2012 11:09
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Ratios and Tendency posted:What do you mean? That you would need nuclear weapons to mess up a nuclear plant? First, if someone is bombing a nuclear plant, that implies there's either war or terrorism going on at a significant scale that's probably way worse then slight radioactivity. Any bomb big enough to threaten a nuclear plant (turns out the concrete containment dome designed to protect the outside from the reactor does a great job protecting the reactor from the outside too) would kill more people if it hit a city. The worst case scenario of radioactive release from, say, a light water reactor would be peanuts compared to that. Newer generations of reactors with passive safety features (which we would be using if there was a large scale switch to nuclear) would be even less vulnerable to bombs/etc.
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Aug 9, 2012 11:15
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Tulip posted:We're never going to see a nuclear future. Nuclear plants are unpopular and reprocessing never took off in the US so by global standards they're inefficient as hell. The real nail in the coffin, however, is wind is getting much cheaper over time, and according to the EIA is already cheaper than nuclear (and everything else, actually, except for some types of NG plants which are really drat cheap). I have a few bones to pick with that paper, such as the fact that the it totally ignores the costs associated with dealing with intermittent generation of wind such as backup power stations or storage, and are therefore based on a scenario with relatively low wind penetration. Another relevant point is that electricity generation currently represents only a portion of the overall primary energy expenditure, with heating , industry and transport representing a huge chunk. Even if we switched generation to renewables overnight and came up with some cheap and efficient method of storage , that would still reduce the US's emissions by less than half. Don't get me wrong, I think renewables have a role to play if we are to stave off climatological disaster, but are just one of the many actions and tech changes that needs to take place.
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Aug 9, 2012 11:50
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Freezer posted:I have a few bones to pick with that paper, such as the fact that the it totally ignores the costs associated with dealing with intermittent generation of wind such as backup power stations or storage, and are therefore based on a scenario with relatively low wind penetration. I don't think the EIA or myself were implying that wind will fix any or all of our problems. It's not even a pro-wind paper or anything, it's an attempt to evaluate how much things cost, and i was using it to show that nuclear power plants are basically not going to see any investors since they can't compete with other green options, notably wind. EIA projections actually show us relying more on shale for power, which is to say getting more polluting.
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Aug 9, 2012 12:03
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It's sad but i think at this point a global nuclear war would help the planet more than anything we can do to stop this poo poo. And it needs to happen sooner than later. We have failed...we just need to go away. Of course you could never kill all of us so in a few hundred, maybe thousand years we would be at it again. Hopefully we wouldn't have enough fossil fuels to do it again though. We're never making it to space are we? 
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Aug 9, 2012 12:13
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Fragmented posted:It's sad but i think at this point a global nuclear war would help the planet more than anything we can do to stop this poo poo. And it needs to happen sooner than later. The planet and life in general will be fine. Life has survived snowball earth, toxic atmospheres (oxygen!), massive meteor impacts like the K-T, and 6C+ warming spikes (PETM). Life will be fine. The planet will be fine. Fighting climate change is, to me at least, about preserving humanity and minimizing human suffering first, and preserving the current ecosystems and species second. In no way does nuclear destruction help any of those goals and you need to snap the gently caress out of whatever crazy-rear end mental state you're in that makes you think a nuclear holocaust would be on any level better for anything--humans, life, whatever. I understand the pessimistic outlook on all of this. I get depressed about it all the time. But you then need to channel that sorrow into rage, and channel that rage into action. Humanity has not failed--not yet. Do what you can to build a better future. Join an activist group, protest, talk with people, run for office, lobby, work on changing the system that is causing this environmental crisis--anything. But if we all give up without even trying to fix climate change, then we will fail.
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Aug 9, 2012 12:58
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In my opinion climate change is unstoppable. Historically speaking the earth has always been a hot and tropical planet (see the dinosaurs). It just so happens that we're emerging from the tail end of a catastrophic ice age that wiped out 90% of life on earth and its going to get a lot hotter before the planet returns to its natural tropical state. Any reason why I'm wrong about that?
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Aug 9, 2012 13:53
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Twisted Perspective posted:In my opinion climate change is unstoppable. Historically speaking the earth has always been a hot and tropical planet (see the dinosaurs). It just so happens that we're emerging from the tail end of a catastrophic ice age that wiped out 90% of life on earth and its going to get a lot hotter before the planet returns to its natural tropical state. Current temperature is not dependent on historic temperature. You're also conflating man-made climate change with natural climate change. On time scales of hundreds of thousands and millions of years, Earth's climate changes. Due to solar cycles, continental drift, feedbacks, volcanism, etc. That stuff is unstoppable. The climate change everyone in this thread is talking about is man-made climate change, which is directly caused by the greenhouse gases humans are putting in the atmosphere, and that climate change is absolutely stoppable.
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Aug 9, 2012 13:58
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Thank you for your considered and polite reply. I'd like to address your points - Uranium Phoenix posted:Current temperature is not dependent on historic temperature. I never said that it was and this has nothing to do with the point I was making. quote:You're also conflating man-made climate change with natural climate change. On time scales of hundreds of thousands and millions of years, Earth's climate changes. Due to solar cycles, continental drift, feedbacks, volcanism, etc. That stuff is unstoppable. The climate change everyone in this thread is talking about is man-made climate change, which is directly caused by the greenhouse gases humans are putting in the atmosphere, and that climate change is absolutely stoppable. They are both happenening together. The ice age is not over yet - the ice is still melting. Antartica is supposed to be covered in rain forest. That's how hot the planet is supposed to be. Look at the historical record. The environment we live in today is not normal.
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Aug 9, 2012 14:07
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Twisted Perspective posted:
When was the earth as it is supposed to be?
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