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FourLeaf posted:This paper is what I've based this belief on: http://www.ippnw.org/pdf/nuclear-famine-two-billion-at-risk-2013.pdf I read that plus the 2007 study by Toon et al and another paper critical of that study a couple years ago. The immediate climatic effect of any nuclear conflict is determined primarily by the quantity of particulate matter released and its residency time in the atmosphere. The main point of contention is how much material is going to get injected into the stratosphere where it can persist for a long time and be dispersed throughout the atmosphere producing a strong cooling effect. This report reflects the most pessimistic assumptions regarding how much material could be injected into the stratosphere. Imagine you're feeding tinder into a small fire, sometimes a small spark or whatever will catch an updraft and fly up but it falls out quickly. Build a bonfire and the drafts can be strong enough to send sparks and burning leaves up over your head before they fall out. Sending material into the stratosphere on the other hand requires requires a firestorm, or a huge blaze covering an entire city with monster temperatures, lots of fuel burning for a long time. Crude estimates of particulate release in nuclear wars can be extrapolated from observations of WWII firebombing attacks like the one that destroyed Dresden. However modern cities aren't built like pre-war Germany or Japan and we can't expect them to burn the same way, which matters a lot. Some researchers believe its much more difficult to ignite a firestorm in modern cities greatly reducing how much particulate can be be released. Unfortunately until someone nukes a modern city there's no way to really know. It also matters where the bombs land. The worst case scenario requires detonations primarily over fuel rich targets like cities, if India executes a successful first strike and blows up the Pakistani missile silos in some featureless desert it won't produce the same cooling effect. I also remember there's some funny points in that report regarding predictions for global famine, in particular I don't think it accounted for changes in the demand for agricultural goods following a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, which I think would go a way to alleviate climate related supply reductions. So it probably isn't as dire as that report suggests, but we don't really know. Some serious researchers were terrified Saddam would unleash a petroleum-winter by firing the Kuwaiti oil fields, but it only ended up producing modest regional cooling around the Persian Gulf. That there was no clear consensus regarding the climatic consequences of that event should show you just how much uncertainty surrounds our predictions on these topics.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:17
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Evil_Greven posted:In good news, Arctic sea ice extent actually ended up in 2nd lowest a few days ago. In less good news, yesterday it dipped back down to record lowest again. I posted a quite long video from Hansen two pages ago where he discusses the findings in the paper. People preferred to continue discussing juvenile power fantasies and making hyperbolic statements about nuclear war and completely ignored it: Rime posted:This is a good channel, here's another sobering one:
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Jan 8, 2017 05:28
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Rime posted:I posted a quite long video from Hansen two pages ago where he discusses the findings in the paper. People preferred to continue discussing juvenile power fantasies and making hyperbolic statements about nuclear war and completely ignored it: You provided useful information and were completely ignored by the wider community. This thread is your personal climate scientist simulator.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:47
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Rime posted:I posted a quite long video from Hansen two pages ago where he discusses the findings in the paper. People preferred to continue discussing juvenile power fantasies and making hyperbolic statements about nuclear war and completely ignored it: Your video wasn't ignored, dude. Like you said, it's sobering. For those of us who aren't knowledgable enough to expand on or criticize it, there was really no other response than "welp, more bad news"  which gets old after the first two people saying it. Sorry we didn't fellate you enough for your video I guess?
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Jan 8, 2017 06:07
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Right, right, better to waste a couple pages jerking off about a nuclear exchange between China and India. I mean, yeah, it'd be fuckin' great if that happened and it cleared a couple billion worthless wretches off the carbon footprint, but that fantasy is old hat and more than a little bit worthless to the context of this thread compared to going over how Europe will go little ice-age in the next two decades thanks to meltwater from Greenland. The only difference being that Europe is full of rich white people, and we don't like to dream about millions dying in London. Like, that's kind of the loving problem with discussions of climate change: Bring up data which is likely to really really gently caress with our society in the near future and people just shy away, don't discuss it, and go "Well, poo poo" at best. Start talking about brown people getting nuked, or some other equally detached-from-reality scenario, and suddenly everyone is hopping to talk about millions turning to glass because it's unlikely to happen and provides a nice escape from the grimdark reality of what's really happening. Is it just not kosher to talk about lots of whiteys dying in here? Because everyone is going to die, drooling over mass war in the developing world isn't going to stop it from coming to your home town in time. 
Rime fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 06:46
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Uh do you really think it's about white vs brown rather than nuclear weapons are the most powerful thing in the consciousness of entire generations of people?
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Jan 8, 2017 07:12
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Rime posted:Right, right, better to waste a couple pages jerking off about a nuclear exchange between China and India. I mean, yeah, it'd be fuckin' great if that happened and it cleared a couple billion worthless wretches off the carbon footprint, but that fantasy is old hat and more than a little bit worthless to the context of this thread compared to going over how Europe will go little ice-age in the next two decades thanks to meltwater from Greenland. The only difference being that Europe is full of rich white people, and we don't like to dream about millions dying in London. EDIT: gently caress it, nevermind. I'm sorry this whole derail happened. FourLeaf fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Jan 12, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 07:34
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ChairMaster posted:Uh do you really think it's about white vs brown rather than nuclear weapons are the most powerful thing in the consciousness of entire generations of people? the cold war returning is sure scary, i agree. let's ignore it though and talk about what might happen if egypt destabilizes  
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Jan 8, 2017 08:00
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Personally, I'm opposed to climate change.
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Jan 8, 2017 08:20
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ChairMaster posted:The only real difference between a Trump or Clinton presidency as far as actual actions and results go is that with Trump we might lose access to some satellite data that shows us how hosed we are. BOTH SIDES THE SAME! stuff is going to get us killed. If we get into this, it'll be the fourth or fifth time in a 365 days this thread will have gotten entangled in the trap of 
Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 08:43
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Sorry, Clinton wasn't going to take the decisive action needed on climate change, so it's time to vote to pull out of the Paris agreement. --Some voters in this thread, apparently?
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Jan 8, 2017 08:49
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Rime posted:Right, right, better to waste a couple pages jerking off about a nuclear exchange between China and India. I mean, yeah, it'd be fuckin' great if that happened and it cleared a couple billion worthless wretches off the carbon footprint, but that fantasy is old hat and more than a little bit worthless to the context of this thread compared to going over how Europe will go little ice-age in the next two decades thanks to meltwater from Greenland. The only difference being that Europe is full of rich white people, and we don't like to dream about millions dying in London. Are you white
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Jan 8, 2017 09:52
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Squalid posted:Crude estimates of particulate release in nuclear wars can be extrapolated from observations of WWII firebombing attacks like the one that destroyed Dresden. However modern cities aren't built like pre-war Germany or Japan and we can't expect them to burn the same way, which matters a lot. Some researchers believe its much more difficult to ignite a firestorm in modern cities greatly reducing how much particulate can be be released. Unfortunately until someone nukes a modern city there's no way to really know. It also matters where the bombs land. The worst case scenario requires detonations primarily over fuel rich targets like cities, if India executes a successful first strike and blows up the Pakistani missile silos in some featureless desert it won't produce the same cooling effect. Rime posted:Right, right, better to waste a couple pages jerking off about a nuclear exchange between China and India. In any case, I'm not sure why the geopolitical effects of climate change should be ignored? Sure, a nuclear war between Pakistan and India is only a possibility, but it's not like people don't discuss a wide range of scenarios for how global warming will effect the world either, from the hopelessly optimistic to "We're dead". Based on that, I don't see why we shouldn't consider or discuss the more pessimistic sub-scenarios of the middle of the road global scenarios. I mean, "What is to be done?" can be more than just "What is to be done to prevent climate change?", it can also be "What is to be done to prevent the worst secondary/tertiary effects of climate change?"
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Jan 8, 2017 10:24
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If you're white that's the most pathetic post I've read in this entire depressing thread and honestly there are probably a lot of other good threads for self-loathing whites to blame the ills of society on themselves on the something awful forums you could post in where white bashing might at least be a part of the thread title/subject. If you're not, you're a racist (yes, racist prior to like 2009 used to mean someone who is being a RACIST not a term exclusively used on white people to shame them into silence) who, like swaths of idiot SJWs, likely puts things like cat calling and unequal representation of minorities in video games ahead of climate change in your mental "important issues" column. I can't even fathom how someone reads the content of this thread and goes "well the real issue is that white people are fine with Bangladesh death but not London death". Ignoring the fact that in your own poo poo example there are literally millions of black/asian/minority people living in London, this is still the stupidest loving thing I've ever read in these threads. drat that post was so bad.
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Jan 8, 2017 10:25
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Potato Salad posted:BOTH SIDES THE SAME! stuff is going to get us killed. We already got killed is what we're getting at here.
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Jan 8, 2017 12:01
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cosmicprank posted:If you're white that's the most pathetic post I've read in this entire depressing thread and honestly there are probably a lot of other good threads for self-loathing whites to blame the ills of society on themselves on the something awful forums you could post in where white bashing might at least be a part of the thread title/subject. This ironically.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:09
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...epic.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:15
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Even if 6 billion are going to die, it's worth fighting to ensure it's not 6.001 billion.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:19
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ChairMaster posted:We already got killed is what we're getting at here. Fake edit - Actually, gently caress it, this is an insane carousel and I'm getting off this time.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:56
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I promise you I read this correctly:ChairMaster posted:The only real difference between a Trump or Clinton presidency as far as actual actions and results go is that with Trump we might lose access to some satellite data that shows us how hosed we are. Its just, Jesus, you do indeed truly think that. Still. Media is the greatest challenge. Ima go read the contents of AR5 for a bit to prepare for a conversation that comes back to reality.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:59
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Speaking of a lot of people potentially dying, I made something. And just to be clear, I don't think all these scenarios are equally likely. Given that a lot of these countries are vulnerable to instability, either internal or in their neighbors, the lower end of productivity increases is probably more likely than the medium one, due to such improvements requiring capital and good governance to actually bear fruit. Assuming a medium population growth scenario, that's around a billion people that will have to somehow "not be part of the equation" (either through immigration or early deaths), just to maintain the current per capita productivity level in Africa. For the high population growth scenario, it's around two billion people. If you're of a slightly positive outlook you might figure they could buy the rest from outside Africa, though that assumes they have some industry to pay for the in much higher demands agricultural products of the rest of the world. And that's in a "We figure out a way to create sustainable agriculture in the rest of the world" scenario probably, as otherwise even the richer parts of the world might have to be cutting back significantly in terms of their caloric intake, to offset productivity losses. Alternatively, they might go for even further degradation of our natural environment. This is of course assumed in the more positive scenarios for Africa, though the potential for that to backfire on agricultural productivity (due to changing rainfall patterns or erosion) has not been taken into account.  And yes, I know, the last map I posted probably wasn't the best way to make people take my posts seriously, but I hope you can all look past that.  Potato Salad posted:Its just, Jesus, you do indeed truly think that. Still. Media is the greatest challenge.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:29
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Potato Salad posted:Ima go read the contents of AR5 for a bit to prepare for a conversation that comes back to reality. What do you think Hillary Clinton could have done to reduce the impacts of climate change. Please use numbers and explain what the US could do to meaningfully impact the rate at which the climate is warming.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:52
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NewForumSoftware posted:What do you think Hillary Clinton could have done to reduce the impacts of climate change. Please use numbers and explain what the US could do to meaningfully impact the rate at which the climate is warming. You're just going to quibble over the meaning of "meaningfully" and dismiss everything posted anyway, so why bother?
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Jan 8, 2017 17:29
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Evil_Greven posted:Almost forgot, EOY 2016 is out: Not surprisingly, months around minimum sea ice extent have seen the greatest departure over time. This has also been very closely coupled; Aug/Sep/Oct have always tracked very similarly (save for 1999). November has been reflective of these trends, but the fluctuations have diverged. Similarly, December had reflected November trends, but it too had diverged. January, like these months, has been reflective of its previous month. On the chart, this is the previous year's December, so you have to shift what you're looking at by a year. As far back as I can discern, January trends have reflected previous December trends; you might want to look at December 2016 to see how this month is going to end up. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 17:45
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A Buttery Pastry posted:
I'm not sure why this map is any better. Aren't the negative effects of warming actually expected to almost entirely offset whatever positive effects of carbon fertilization might exist for crops? Even the more recent studies that I can find show crop yields in Africa being reduced with carbon fertilization taken into account. I have no idea why you think overall increased crop yields are a possibility under any realistic scenario.
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Jan 8, 2017 18:28
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A Buttery Pastry posted:And yes, I know, the last map I posted probably wasn't the best way to make people take my posts seriously, but I hope you can all look past that. The map was just icing on the cake.
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Jan 8, 2017 18:38
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Agricultural productivity is expected to increase due to improvements in technology, increased capital, training, mechanization etc. Increased agricultural productivity is a safe assumption in the near term because it has been the norm for the last 100 years and in most of Africa it could be achieved through the application of existing methods.
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Jan 8, 2017 18:45
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Paradoxish posted:I'm not sure why this map is any better. Aren't the negative effects of warming actually expected to almost entirely offset whatever positive effects of carbon fertilization might exist for crops? Even the more recent studies that I can find show crop yields in Africa being reduced with carbon fertilization taken into account. I have no idea why you think overall increased crop yields are a possibility under any realistic scenario. The other option, as noted on the graphic, is an expansion of the land being cultivated. That's not increasing crop yields per hectare, that's just increasing the number of hectares used for agriculture. That of course has its own issues. Squalid posted:Agricultural productivity is expected to increase due to improvements in technology, increased capital, training, mechanization etc. Increased agricultural productivity is a safe assumption in the near term because it has been the norm for the last 100 years and in most of Africa it could be achieved through the application of existing methods. Hello Sailor posted:The map was just icing on the cake.
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Jan 8, 2017 18:55
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I'm halfway ready to kill you over climate change tbh
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Jan 8, 2017 23:32
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Same.
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Jan 9, 2017 00:53
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For everyone who is expecting agricultural produce to increase: Obviously any change in water supply, that's a thing that's going to happen. Too little water as well as too much can seriously gently caress up crops. Species are migrating to more amenable habitats. This includes pests that can destroy crops. Locusts are actually very serious business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Africa_locust_infestation Our continuing dependence on vast swathes of monoculture is making us especially vulnerable to catastrophic crop failures. This isn't just a third world issue (although obviously for them its an issue of life/death).
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Jan 9, 2017 02:44
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BattleMoose posted:For everyone who is expecting agricultural produce to increase: People seem to be taking the graphic as a highly positive one, but is it really? I mean, the middle map is saying that even if all of Africa either remains under as stable and functional rule (and has an overseas patron) as South Korea has been in the last 50 years, or starts clearing clearing large areas of rain forests and poo poo to increase available land to grow crops, 90% of the continent will only see marginal improvements in productivity at best. (And a lot of regions would be much worse off, even before you took into account a more variable food supply which would need strong governments and regional/continental cooperation to prevent from turning into famines and unrest.) Even the scenario where you accept significant environmental destruction on top of the assumption of good agricultural policy, you still have a lot of countries unable to lift themselves out of their current situation or worsening. If on the other hand you assume low productivity increase (before global warming is taken into account), which is probably the more likely result given the disruption caused by global warming, you might be talking a series of famines larger than the next ten or twenty largest famines in history put together, and basically a complete collapse of most states in the region into civil war, warlordism, and genocide.
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Jan 9, 2017 08:57
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As my external temperature sensor in my European place records lows that it never had before on my usually nice weather place i just hope i get old and die before this gets worse
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Jan 9, 2017 17:01
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2016 Annual U.S. State of the Climate report released:quote:In 2016, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.9°F, 2.9°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year for the CONUS, behind 2012 when the annual average temperature was 55.3°F. NOAA also released its U.S. December 2016 report. It was nearer average than recent years, thanks to the Arctic coming to visit for awhile. Oh, something I wanted to point out too - in terms of RSS data, 1998 being ranked nearly the same is something of a fluke. See, the warmest 12 months of the 1997-1998 El Niño happened to be January 1998 - December 1998 at +0.55. The 2015-2016 El Niño was different; its warmest 12 months were actually Oct 2015 - Sep 2016 at +0.62 for the lower troposphere. In fact, there were 7 ranges that were warmer than Jan 2016 - Dec 2016, which was +0.57: Nov 2015 - Oct 2016 at +0.61 Sep 2015 - Aug 2016 at +0.60 Dec 2015 - Nov 2016 at +0.60 Aug 2015 - Jul 2016 at +0.60 Jul 2015 - Jun 2016 at +0.58 Jun 2015 - May 2016 at +0.58 Additionally, a 9th 12-month range fell between the 2016 & 1998 annual temperature: May 2015 - Apr 2016 at +0.56. Alas, we are consistent and arbitrary in our measurement for start and end date, so the crazy fuckers get to gloat a bit longer. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 04:13
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I know everyone in this thread really likes doom and gloom so I'm sorry to interrupt that, but here is a nice advance in carbon capture technology. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109125123.htm
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Jan 10, 2017 13:04
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Doom and gloom stems from the fact that, while we see fantastic capture tech demonstrated and iterated on a near-monthly basis, the answer to the question, "would you like to pay by card or check?" still produces <crickets>. It's not that nothing can be done to prevent carbon emission or eventually recapture it at much greater inconvenience, it's that not much is being done along these lines. To start using capture tech, someone has to pay for it, and it isn't going to be Mexico (alone, anyway). At what point, Zudge, do you think we will start capturing carbon faster than we are emitting it? As in, what would be the public awareness tipping point to get someone to start paying for capture in earnest?
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Jan 10, 2017 16:39
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Agricultural yield chat: Future rice yield losses due to climate change could be extreme
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Jan 10, 2017 17:14
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Fangz posted:Even if 6 billion are going to die, it's worth fighting to ensure it's not 6.001 billion. I'm at a huge transportation conference, possibly the hugest, and The buzzwords may change next year due to regime change, but it's kinda heartening.
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Jan 10, 2017 17:38
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Rastor posted:Agricultural yield chat: quote:The outlier among the analyses performed in this paper are the statistical models, which predict rice yield sensitivity to temperature changes based on observed year-to-year variability. Statistical crop models suggest a minimal impact of warming on rice yields, with a drop of only 0.8 ± 0.3 percent for each Kelvin of temperature change.
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Jan 10, 2017 17:45
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Zudgemud posted:I know everyone in this thread really likes doom and gloom so I'm sorry to interrupt that, but here is a nice advance in carbon capture technology. Why does carbon capture technology matter until we're nearing zero net carbon emissions in the first place? Will it ever be cheaper to capture a ton of carbon vs. prevent its emission in the first place? Fangz posted:Even if 6 billion are going to die, it's worth fighting to ensure it's not 6.001 billion. I couldn't possibly agree less. If the choice is 99.999% destruction if I fight and become an ascetic monk to reduce my carbon emissions, or 100% destruction if I chill and live a nice Western life, I'm gonna choose number two.
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Jan 10, 2017 18:19
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