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CaptainFisby posted:It is odd that at times I hope the deniers are right and it is all just a big conspiracy borne of wild fantasy. Unfortunately, facts are indicating that we are entering a very dangerous period of time. Whereas before we were talking about major climate changes becoming gradually evident over decades, if the above story is as bad as it sounds we are entering the "it doesn't matter anymore" zone of how much we can mitigate the worst effects of Climate Change. Well, that is because the denialist train of thought is comforting. That's also why this isn't even on the front page of Google news. Should have known it would end like this. The only bright side I can see is the schadenfreude that will come with telling the denialists 'i told you so,' and that's pretty drat sad. They will have a few more comforting years of delusion before their petty, short sighted, insular worldview come crashing down. Meanwhile the informed rest of us can just sit and worry helplessly? global tetrahedron fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Dec 13, 2011 |
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Dec 13, 2011 20:17
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zachol posted:Stupid question: What are the practical consequences of all this? Things will get a few degrees warmer... doesn't that just mean that ecosystems will shift around a little, break apart, and then develop into new ones after a couple decades? Four degrees C of warming (current projections put us there between 2050 and 2100) will turn the tropics to barely habitable deserts, empty oceans of fish, and reduce the Earth's capacity to support human life to about a half-billion or so.
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Dec 13, 2011 20:33
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V. Illych L. posted:In the worst case we can simply lower global temperature by adding certain chemicals to the atmosphere. Problem is, that's going to have a bunch of unforeseen effects, so we really, really don't want to do that. However, if things get really desperate, climate modification is probably our last resort. There is absolutely no way this issue is going to be solved politically. There are at least a half-dozen HUGE political forces working against a solution and now that there are substantial feedback effects in play it's probably too late anyway. The only hope is the creation of technologies that could cool the planet.
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Dec 13, 2011 20:39
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The atmosphere is so complex that it's practically impossible to understand the long-term (or, hell, even mid-term) consequences of that approach, at least to my limited grasp of the situation (my brother's a climate economist, doing research on this type of action), and even then it'd be a temporary solution. Also, scientists do what they get funds to do, which is decided politically, either by governments or by whatever company's paying them. The ideal of the apolitical scientist is so firmly ingrained in most people these days that the whole cohort has been effectively neutered.
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Dec 13, 2011 20:50
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Jesus Christ  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQotE&feature=related
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Dec 13, 2011 21:00
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BaronVonOwn posted:It seems to me, that scientists need to stop trying to prove climate change and start investing their efforts into climate modification now. That discovery of huge amounts of methane rising up from the sea might as well be like discovering Cthulu it's so horrifying. Yea... it's all hosed. And it's kinda funny to think that there's jack poo poo that can be done to stop a thing like this or "modify climate". The sheer amount of power driving the systems is simply beyond anything mankind will be able to pull off. And toying with it (assuming something is dreamed up), when no one knows what the gently caress they are doing? So many unintended consequences, most of which would probably fall into the "unknown unknowns" category. Here's a better solution: start adapting, start preparing, because it's going to happen and there's nothing you can do to stop it at this point.
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Dec 13, 2011 21:38
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zachol posted:Stupid question: What are the practical consequences of all this? Things will get a few degrees warmer... doesn't that just mean that ecosystems will shift around a little, break apart, and then develop into new ones after a couple decades? Think of geography though. If you're a species whose range overlaps a solid northern barrier (top of a continent like Northern Europe, or Northern Africa) then you just can't shift northward period. That means your southern range contracts, and the more a species' range contracts the lower its population usually. Secondly, there is a great deal of variability around that 4 degree mean, which causes two problems. A) The hottest days are hotter, which can exceed the maximum heat tolerance for a species, and B) increased variability (another hallmark of climate change) means that divergence from the mean (e.g. excessively hot and cold days) diverge more, and more often than previously. Since everything's range size has contracted as well, there is less opportunity for individuals to seek out refugia. Ergo, extinction.
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Dec 13, 2011 22:35
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:You couldn't capture it, it's releaseing from a massive area the size of entire countries. You could try to cool it, but any kind of cooling mechanism apart from a giant sunshade would take energy to run and that energy would have to come either from a source that emits CO2 or a source that would take enormous amounts of CO2 emissions to build and maintain. I've been thinking about it all day, without having read your post, and yeah, I agree. Honestly, the only thing I can think of even half-working is trying to collect all the mentane clathrates off the sea floor as quickly as possible to prevent them from melting. But, then you immediately have a huge expenditure of fuel, pretty much no way to cover that much area so you won't get a significant enough percentage, ecosystem disruption and destruction anywhere you do collect them, and it doesn't address any of the permafrost deposits. And then, on top of that, people would just want to burn the stuff you collected as cheap fuel, and now we've solved basically nothing. This is depressing to think about, but it needs to be thought about, I guess.
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Dec 13, 2011 23:46
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BaronVonOwn posted:It seems to me, that scientists need to stop trying to prove climate change and start investing their efforts into climate modification now. That discovery of huge amounts of methane rising up from the sea might as well be like discovering Cthulu it's so horrifying. Yeah, geo-engineering is starting to get some serious consideration from some scientific circles. The problem is that people are freaking out because it can lead to unforeseen consequences. Never mind we've already been geo-engineering for the last 150 years. But, there point does still stand. Ideally we'd get our emissions down before we enter the point where we lose control over the global temperature and natural systems start to kick in and create a positive feedback loop. But it may already be too late. So we need to cheat, and get the temperature down artificially until we can our emissions under control. There are lots of ideas out there, imitating what a volcano on a global scale could work, but as was posted in the geo-engineering thread this can lead to catastrophic climatic change in its own right, and whenever we turn it "off" it could end up exacerbating the heating very quickly and hit us with intense heating over a few years rather than a few decades. Iron fertilization I think also has similar issues, not to mention loving with the oceans isn't a good idea right now anyway. There are other possibilities that are easier to control and easier to turn off with low environmental repercussions, but we need to figure out a system quickly so people cooperate on a global scale. If Bangladesh starts sinking into the ocean they aren't gonna give a poo poo if the western scientific community wants time to prepare a better solution, they're going to do whatever the hell they can to change the climate immediately, which could have disastrous consequences for other people.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:05
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Chantilly Say posted:turn the tropics to barely habitable deserts, empty oceans of fish, and reduce the Earth's capacity to support human life to about a half-billion or so. This seems awfully speculative, what are you basing this on?
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Dec 14, 2011 00:08
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Pipe Dreamer posted:This seems awfully speculative, what are you basing this on? Well the fish-free oceans are already happening. The desertification of the tropics and sub-tropics are already happening, and that's where we have the majority of our agriculture.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:16
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Pipe Dreamer posted:This seems awfully speculative, what are you basing this on? I'm on an iPad and can't give you the .PDF directly, but this link:http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2011/02/4-degrees-hotter-adaptation-trap.html talks about a report by the Climate Action Centre out of Australia about the effects of a four-degree-warmer world.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:26
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Dreylad posted:Well the fish-free oceans are already happening. That's largely from 100 years of straining the entire ocean with a fine sieve and eating everything that moves, no?
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Dec 14, 2011 00:30
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Welp, due to some permafrost thawing and other things I don't properly understand, the ocean has begun its attack upon life as we know it. Unprecedented amounts of methane ("over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide" -EPA) are bubbling up into the atmosphere from the ocean depths, and from the sound of things it is only going to get worse. lesbian baphomet fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Dec 14, 2011 |
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Dec 14, 2011 00:31
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Fatkraken posted:That's largely from 100 years of straining the entire ocean with a fine sieve and eating everything that moves, no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
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Dec 14, 2011 00:33
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Dreylad posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification Oh I'm well aware of that, just saying it's not right to blame the difficulty of catching fish right now on it; that's due mainly to decades of industrialized fishing.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:39
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Fatkraken posted:That's largely from 100 years of straining the entire ocean with a fine sieve and eating everything that moves, no? Pretty much. This isn't to say that the right sorts of climate change couldn't greatly impact marine life, as noted by the above link, but what's been seen so far is almost entirely overfishing with a side order of fertilizer runoff and such. Of course, that makes ocean ecosystems more vulnerable to climate changes, so it's not a total non sequitur either.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:42
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Fatkraken posted:Oh I'm well aware of that, just saying it's not right to blame the difficulty of catching fish right now on it; that's due mainly to decades of industrialized fishing. Honestly, overfishing isn't to blame. Fish stocks come back remarkably quickly if you ease off or shut down fisheries and try to help the environment recover. The acidification of the oceans is far more long-term and, uh, permanent.
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Dec 14, 2011 00:44
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Dreylad posted:Honestly, overfishing isn't to blame. Fish stocks come back remarkably quickly if you ease off or shut down fisheries and try to help the environment recover. The acidification of the oceans is far more long-term and, uh, permanent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland#Fishing_methods_and_the_fishery_collapse Fishery was closed over a decade ago, stocks still haven't recovered and probably won't due to ecosystem shifts. This is a fairly pointless derail to be honest, I'm mostly arguing the toss. Whatever the cause of past collapses, acidification is a HUGE issue and one that will have ever greater impacts as time goes on.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:03
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Dreylad posted:Honestly, overfishing isn't to blame. Fish stocks come back remarkably quickly if you ease off or shut down fisheries and try to help the environment recover. The acidification of the oceans is far more long-term and, uh, permanent. Acidification is a problem we're not really seeing the effects of in fisheries (yet). The main cause of disappearing fish stocks is overfishing coupled with base-of-the-food-chain shifts due to various human activities. The most productive fisheries are those near the coasts where all the nutrients to support algae (fish food!) are. The open ocean is essentially a desert. A really loving big, wet desert. The coasts are also where we dump all our runoff and crap. Largely due to fertilizer and wastewater and other runoff, we've caused some very major changes to the base of the food chain. Example: California current. Fisheries off the California coast used to be incredibly productive. The base of the food chain was supported by large diatoms (a kind of phytoplankton which fish just fuckin love). Due to human impacts, the dominant phytoplankton species are now mostly dinoflagellates (which can cause toxic red/brown tides) instead of diatoms. Those big fat tasty diatoms are almost impossible to find nowadays. This is part of an ongoing shift in the marine food web away from diatoms, coccolithophores, microzooplankton (krill and tiny shrimp buddies), and fish towards picophytoplankton (cyanobacteria), dinoflagellates, and jellies.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:08
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global tetrahedron posted:Well, that is because the denialist train of thought is comforting. That's also why this isn't even on the front page of Google news. Should have known it would end like this. The only bright side I can see is the schadenfreude that will come with telling the denialists 'i told you so,' and that's pretty drat sad. They will have a few more comforting years of delusion before their petty, short sighted, insular worldview come crashing down. Meanwhile the informed rest of us can just sit and worry helplessly? They'll just say "How could we have known? The science wasn't there!" They'll absolve themselves of any responsibility when it happens. The denialists (i refuse to use the term "skeptic") will not accept any study that shows global warming, and some seriously do think this it is just a scam.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:18
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It's also funny that in the goal to make Clean Coal all civilization is succeeding in is removing a negative feedback from the burning of coal while retaining all the positive feedbacks. The reduction of particulate emissions in the burning of fossil fuels is assisting rather than preventing climate change.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:40
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Outrespective posted:It's also funny that in the goal to make Clean Coal all civilization is succeeding in is removing a negative feedback from the burning of coal while retaining all the positive feedbacks. the goal of TRULY clean coal is coal with CCS (carbon capture and storage). Calling anything short of that "clean" is bullshit corporate greenwashing, if there's still CO2 coming out of the stack, that coal is not clean.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:42
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CopywrightMMXI posted:They'll just say "How could we have known? The science wasn't there!" They'll absolve themselves of any responsibility when it happens. The denialists (i refuse to use the term "skeptic") will not accept any study that shows global warming, and some seriously do think this it is just a scam. I just don't understand how they can rationalize it, what possible motive would anyone have to pull a global warming hoax? And then they don't see the possible motive behind industry-backed scientists posing contrarian evidence.
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Dec 14, 2011 02:04
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global tetrahedron posted:I just don't understand how they can rationalize it, what possible motive would anyone have to pull a global warming hoax? And then they don't see the possible motive behind industry-backed scientists posing contrarian evidence. Well in a classic Karl Rove type move they explain that scientists and the green lobby have alot to gain financially by advocating the climate change "agenda" (just don't point out the fossil fuel industry has alot to lose if we phase out their products) But really we somehow just have to collectively say "gently caress fossil fuels" (It's not going to happen, I know)
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Dec 14, 2011 02:17
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Arabidopsis posted:Think of geography though. If you're a species whose range overlaps a solid northern barrier (top of a continent like Northern Europe, or Northern Africa) then you just can't shift northward period. That means your southern range contracts, and the more a species' range contracts the lower its population usually. In addition we've seen that many diseases and pests that previously posed little danger to their host species have become incredibly more dangerous with warmer temperatures. Bark beetles, although they have always threatened pines, have been obliterating billions of trees across the west coast and Canada's boreal forests, facilitated by milder winters.
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Dec 14, 2011 02:21
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global tetrahedron posted:I just don't understand how they can rationalize it, what possible motive would anyone have to pull a global warming hoax? And then they don't see the possible motive behind industry-backed scientists posing contrarian evidence. That's the thing though, it's not like the other side of the debate is operating in from a disinterested/impartial stance either. If significant anti-carbon efforts are made a trillion dollar oil industry stands to lose significant portions of its revenue in coming decades, and that surely weighs heavily in the thoughts of anyone getting their paychecks from said industry. On the other hand, if those are enacted it instead opens trillion-dollar markets in alternative energy production, carbon trading, and other projects which might go up in smoke without sufficient political urgency to drive the funding and tax breaks. It's notable that some prominent individuals and groups have named necessary steps against climate change consisting largely of things they advocated even before becoming interested in climate science, or which happen to consist of the very technologies they've been developing for ages anyway. Even for those not actually invested in business the stakes are significant: if the climate crisis is severe, climatology is "Science that matters!" saving us from disaster and deserves more grant money and professional prestige. If it isn't a crisis, climatology goes back to being meteorology's less sexy cousin. Add onto it all a news media that has learned a crisis always gets better ratings even when it's manufactured, and it's not hard to see where skepticism (as opposed to flat denial) comes from. Take things back ten years: while there were people denying Al Qaeda was a threat or had anything to do with 9/11 in defiance of the evidence, even if you restricted to reasonable claims there were all sorts of opinions/claims on their future threat, on what governments they might have ties with, and importantly on just what steps needed to be taken to fight it, how much money would be needed, and how much we needed to change our lifestyles "in this era of global terror." Who would advocate sweeping policy changes leading to costly wars and disruptive domestic policies if the threat was not as bad as it's claimed? Hey, that expert on Afghanistan who I've never heard of is now making all the TV rounds and getting big consulting fees: he's saying ominous things, but he's an expert on the matter, right? Anyway, that said, climate change is not 9/11, but whenever you have trillion dollar stakes, sweeping government policies, and formerly niche fields of study coming into the public eye as related to a perceived crisis, everyone has motive to lie or at least exaggerate, and even those who don't have a tendency to get swept away in excitement. Further, no matter what happens, unless we all die next quarter, a lot of people are going to make a lot of money off the decisions made. Similarly, a lot of scientists who otherwise would be toiling unnoticed in underfunded university backrooms are going to get sweet grant money, professional prestige, and interviews in popular mainstream media because of their findings in highly visible fields of research. Finally, the longer the debate goes on, the more time/prestige/money all parties have sunk into the debate. The harder it is to back down regardless of evidence. To sum up, the idea that catastrophic climate change is some kind of scam being pushed by interested parties might be flat wrong, but it's not in itself a fantastic or impossible supposition and treating it as such actually makes it harder to debunk its claims.
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Dec 14, 2011 02:54
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I hate the quasi-conspiracy theory that "Big Green" is somehow at the same level as "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma" in terms of power. One of the assumptions in there is that the scientists studying climate change will get their fame/prestige/grant money if they only churn out results that confirm anthropogenic global warming. On the flip side if you're a scientist that sincerely believes we're not causing global warming, there is an entire industry (literally the world's richest) out there willing to pay for your research and send you around the world to visit conferences, think thanks, do various pundit circuits, etc. Basically if there are scientists out there with legitimate published research that goes against humans causing global warming, either they're staying silent because none of them are drawn to fame and fortune, or because there's no such research.
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Dec 14, 2011 03:53
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Dreylad posted:There are lots of ideas out there, imitating what a volcano on a global scale could work, but as was posted in the geo-engineering thread this can lead to catastrophic climatic change in its own right, and whenever we turn it "off" it could end up exacerbating the heating very quickly and hit us with intense heating over a few years rather than a few decades.
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Dec 14, 2011 04:04
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Stephen Harper posted:I hate the quasi-conspiracy theory that "Big Green" is somehow at the same level as "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma" in terms of power. One of the assumptions in there is that the scientists studying climate change will get their fame/prestige/grant money if they only churn out results that confirm anthropogenic global warming. On the flip side if you're a scientist that sincerely believes we're not causing global warming, there is an entire industry (literally the world's richest) out there willing to pay for your research and send you around the world to visit conferences, think thanks, do various pundit circuits, etc. Basically if there are scientists out there with legitimate published research that goes against humans causing global warming, either they're staying silent because none of them are drawn to fame and fortune, or because there's no such research. Well you see the scientific establishment censors facts, I recommend Ben Stein's Expelled  Wasn't there just the definitive , Koch-funded, Big Oil-approved, look-at-all-the-raw-Climategate data study, and it was like "Yep, it's real." And now we're back to the pedantic debate of "is it a naturally occurring warming trend (that we just happen to be accelerating*)?" The 20th century was like a really big, intimidating wooden roller coaster. The 21st is gonna be a 3000 ft drop cutting edge steel coaster with triple inverted loops, water effects, and magnetic acceleration. *Possibly Catastrophically
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Dec 14, 2011 04:12
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The idea of scientists conspiring with each other in hiding data or working for 'Big Green' is just astonishing to me. It is completely unscientific to the core. The comparison I make when trying to change the minds of deniers is that there were scientists stating that smoking cigarettes did not cause cancer even when the majority were showing a cause during the 50's and 60's. The tobacco industry helped those scientists out, and the oil industry is helping out the deniers today. Also, this idea goes against the basic tenets of science itself. If a scientist could come out with scientific proof and evidence that we are not causing problems to the Earth with our current CO2 output, it would be ground breaking. If someone could show this, they would be the greatest geological scientist in history with countless prizes, monetary awards, and fame. Instead, the deniers get a clown like Monckton and pat themselves on the back like they are intelligent and in the know of the secret and true way the world works. Pseudo science and pseudo intelligence at its best (worst).
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Dec 14, 2011 06:37
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global tetrahedron posted:Well, that is because the denialist train of thought is comforting. That's also why this isn't even on the front page of Google news. Should have known it would end like this. The only bright side I can see is the schadenfreude that will come with telling the denialists 'i told you so,' and that's pretty drat sad. They will have a few more comforting years of delusion before their petty, short sighted, insular worldview come crashing down. C'mon man, stop daydreaming, you know that will never happen. Their reply will either be: - all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again  Greenland used to be Green!!!or - this is all China and India's fault, there was nothing we could have done by ourselves so what was the point in ruining ourselves if the end result would have been the same? I like to think that in a few decades when poo poo really hits the fan we will go for the sunshades as a desperate last attempt and then after modern civilization collapses anyway all knowledge of the shade's existence and power to destroy it will vanish, locking our descendants in a permanent ice age. 
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Dec 14, 2011 09:20
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I personally think that the names and personal details of the major denialists and their funders, ought be recorded for posterity , so that the next generation knows who needs to be punished for their predicament. This is a ain that will be harshest on generations to come, whilst these rich old bastards will escape it. And they should be warned by people to expect to be hunted and punished by future generations for it. If this is as bad as some say it will get, then denialists potentially have our childrens blood on their hands, and our children thus deserve the right to exact revenge for it once it happens. I honestly believe this.
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Dec 14, 2011 09:26
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I just heard about the methane release event. I think at this point we're long past the point of no return so what difference would it make if we all suddenly stopped with harmful emissions? It sounds like the Earth is already in self destruct mode. Couple that with the fact that our sun is actually getting hotter and hotter and we have a serious problem on our hands.
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Dec 14, 2011 09:52
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duck monster posted:If this is as bad as some say it will get, then denialists potentially have our childrens blood on their hands, and our children thus deserve the right to exact revenge for it once it happens. They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren?
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Dec 14, 2011 09:52
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MeLKoR posted:They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren? Noone will subscribe to that black armband view of history  More likely the guilty will seek to be forgotten and will be, if recent history is anything to go by. It's remarkable how quickly people switch sides of an argument and the lengths they will go to backdate their switch.
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Dec 14, 2011 09:57
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Dumb question: Why is "climate change" being adopted as the contemporary scientific term for what's going on? Wasn't it coined by a conservative during the Bush years to diminish the seriousness of the warming to the public?
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Dec 14, 2011 10:14
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Alctel posted:http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html Feeling a little sick right now. dammit 
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Dec 14, 2011 10:19
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MeLKoR posted:C'mon man, stop daydreaming, you know that will never happen. Sounds like an interesting book! Maybe i'll call it The Light Shade. Then in a thousand years time I will be revered as a profit! Haha! No, but seriously, we're hosed. Venus here we come. 
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Dec 14, 2011 10:22
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MeLKoR posted:They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren? Their grandchildren (and to a lesser degree, almost all first worlders, and the middle and upper classes of pretty much every country) will be the main beneficiaries of the gains made at the expense of literally everyone else on the planet.
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Dec 14, 2011 10:27
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