Rockmeister
pfm Member
charts huh.
So that's the climate f****d then
- Thread starter avole
- Start date
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
Rock,
Graphs with atmospheric CO2 data that took truly Herculean effort to collect, which are much more useful than feelings, hunches, guesses and I reckons.
Joe
Graphs with atmospheric CO2 data that took truly Herculean effort to collect, which are much more useful than feelings, hunches, guesses and I reckons.
Joe
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have fluctuated in the past and the fluctuation does have a cyclicality. But that's not the situation today. In a couple of human lifetimes the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased well beyond any previous level in the past 800,000 years.
The graph above shows actual measurements, not speculation, guesses or hunches. The atmospheric concentration of C02, as determined by ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland, provide the data before 1958, direct atmospheric measurement of CO2 at Mauna Loa provides the data after 1958.
If you want to weird yourself out, you can monitor the real-time atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa. See https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html and https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/graph.html
I'm going to put this in ginormous red bold font so there's no misunderstanding —
There's absolutely nothing natural about the year-on-year increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. It's increasing because of human activities.
And if you're still doubtful that something other than CO2 is warming the Earth, have a look at this: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/
Joe
Let's nail it down: the difference now (last 300 years) is population growth. And that is predicted to grow by another 50% before levelling out. ie we're f****d and necessarily so.
Rockmeister
pfm Member
No I get that, my point is that I have a LOT of data showing current CO2 levels way down on the carboniferous or Jurassic eras. I know WHY, but the life, the essential life on this planet has survived higher levels of greenhouse gasses. The plants and animals just shift, they evolve, to adapt to the gasses they breathe. WE panic, because we think we are important. Luckily, we are not, except to be remembered as a catastrophic negative in the planets life, so it's all fine, but for the sake of our great grandchildren, it'll be a much nicer life if we act now.
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
Rock,
The situation we're creating is essentially without precedent and I don't mean relative to human timescales.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14845
Half a billion years ago life on Earth was simple and largely unicellular.
Joe
The situation we're creating is essentially without precedent and I don't mean relative to human timescales.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14845
Humanity’s fossil-fuel use, if unabated, risks taking us, by the middle of the twenty-first century, to values of CO2 not seen since the early Eocene (50 million years ago). If CO2 continues to rise further into the twenty-third century, then the associated large increase in radiative forcing, and how the Earth system would respond, would likely be without geological precedent in the last half a billion years.
Half a billion years ago life on Earth was simple and largely unicellular.
Joe
Swamp Thing
Remainiac Terrorist
Whereas now it is just simple.
It actually sounds quite appealing. Chill out in a pool of slime, kick back, bud off.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
True enough, but the problem is that the life currently evolved has developed to exploit niches in the ecosystem based on the climate as it would be without anthropogenic warming. Morally, we have no right to alter that ecosystem in ways they can't adapt to.
Secondly, as far as we know, we are the only life in the universe which has the potential to figure out how that universe works. That does make us important (until such time as we encounter another species at least as technologically advanced). We kinda have a duty to protect and preserve that knowledge, and the capability to progress that knowledge.
Swamp Thing
Remainiac Terrorist
Joe
Nature raw in tooth and claw, a long time before tooth or claw evolved.
Obviously I'd be pro any strategy that would get me inside algae-Alyon's cloroplasts.
That amoeba better be ready for a tussle, that's all I can say!
Swampy
davidsrsb
pfm Member
We know from the fossils that the sea level was far higher than now and that 10 degrees either side of the equator was probably a dead zone in the oceans.
Look how many people live below 50m or near the equator now.
Marky-Mark
pfm Member
I watch this thread go three pages back in no time flat week in and out. But no fear, millennial congresspersons will tax the wealthy and save us!
In the spirit of tl;dr -
"In late 2013, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch titled “Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?” Even then, it was already clear enough that we were indeed heading off that cliff. More than five years later, a sober reading of the latest climate change science indicates that we are now genuinely in free fall."
For those not averse to reading seriously important stuff:
https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-disaster-is-upon-us/
Given the current state of scientific knowledge, I agree with the author that it's time to think about learning to say goodbye. And so given the disinterest in the thread, how many here think that climate/societal disaster in 20 years or less is too extreme, and that given a choice to maximize one's connection to the earth & nature or go about BAU with distractions of hope most would choose hope?
In the spirit of tl;dr -
"In late 2013, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch titled “Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?” Even then, it was already clear enough that we were indeed heading off that cliff. More than five years later, a sober reading of the latest climate change science indicates that we are now genuinely in free fall."
For those not averse to reading seriously important stuff:
https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-disaster-is-upon-us/
Given the current state of scientific knowledge, I agree with the author that it's time to think about learning to say goodbye. And so given the disinterest in the thread, how many here think that climate/societal disaster in 20 years or less is too extreme, and that given a choice to maximize one's connection to the earth & nature or go about BAU with distractions of hope most would choose hope?
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
The fact that AOC is even talking about taxing the extremely wealthy and investing in a greener economy separates her from pretty much every Republican, not to mention the president, who thinks business as usual or even less environmental regulation is where to head.
Joe
Joe
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
Indeed. Its poor science to take one set of figures but ignore many other and more complicated available information. For example the equilibrium constant for dissolved carbon dioxide decreases with rising temperature and is more than twice as soluble at 0 degrees than at 20. There is a hell of a lot of water so just a small temperature rise may release a large volume of carbon dioxide. Something else to bear in mind is the luminosity of the Sun. When the Earth first formed ~4.5 Billion years ago the Sun was a lot dimmer and today its luminosity is ~ 43% higher. Its thought that the Sun will as its natural process increase in luminosity by ~10% per billion years. Its not something that we can do anything about except leave home which in the not so distant future will become uninhabitable long before the Sun goes BOOM.
If we then apply Le Châtelier's principle and the Arrhenius equation to plant growth we see that rising carbon dioxide and temperature should result in an increase thus reducing carbon dioxide and replacing it with oxygen via photosynthesis. So perhaps the current trend to deforest this planet may be a serious contender towards carbon dioxide levels. I'm not saying this is the case but that an analysis is not so simple and many other factors need to be taken into consideration before jumping to conclusions such as that from Joe above from a single set of figures.
Cheers,
DV
Marky-Mark
pfm Member
Joe,
I couldn't help myself and dropped that little turd in the top of the post when I shouldn't have because that wasn't the reason for the post at all -- that's at the bottom.
But since you went to it, yes, I readily acknowledge that conservative ideology favors the status quo of fossil fuel energy and ignoring the problem and at least she broached it. But the broach was sophomoric, devoid of specifics and ignores a scientific consensus that we're cooked, and that events set in stone decades ago are just now becoming evident, and that unless the billions she intends to take from the 1% can wean the entire world from fossil fuels like starting now, suck carbon from the air, prevent permafrost from melting with all that entails, restore the oceans' ability to act as carbon/heat sinks, replant the rainforests, pull a Lazarus and reconstitute 60% of species lost to extinction in just the past 50 years, ... I'm exhausted from this! The point being there's nothing her foo tax plan can do, unless she's all about mitigation of the effect all of this will cause, hopefully in slow-motion, but with absolutely no guarantee of that due to feedbacks from the interconnectedness of our ecosystem. tl;dr, she's simply another tosser peddling Hopium in the face of an intractable and existential crisis. That tells me she's great for Twitter but shit for problem solving.
I'm talking about acceptance of the crisis of our lifetimes or continued denial. She offers me nothing for either. She put her finger in the air and took it up, mostly because - I'm betting - they aren't.
I couldn't help myself and dropped that little turd in the top of the post when I shouldn't have because that wasn't the reason for the post at all -- that's at the bottom.
But since you went to it, yes, I readily acknowledge that conservative ideology favors the status quo of fossil fuel energy and ignoring the problem and at least she broached it. But the broach was sophomoric, devoid of specifics and ignores a scientific consensus that we're cooked, and that events set in stone decades ago are just now becoming evident, and that unless the billions she intends to take from the 1% can wean the entire world from fossil fuels like starting now, suck carbon from the air, prevent permafrost from melting with all that entails, restore the oceans' ability to act as carbon/heat sinks, replant the rainforests, pull a Lazarus and reconstitute 60% of species lost to extinction in just the past 50 years, ... I'm exhausted from this! The point being there's nothing her foo tax plan can do, unless she's all about mitigation of the effect all of this will cause, hopefully in slow-motion, but with absolutely no guarantee of that due to feedbacks from the interconnectedness of our ecosystem. tl;dr, she's simply another tosser peddling Hopium in the face of an intractable and existential crisis. That tells me she's great for Twitter but shit for problem solving.
I'm talking about acceptance of the crisis of our lifetimes or continued denial. She offers me nothing for either. She put her finger in the air and took it up, mostly because - I'm betting - they aren't.
boneman
pfm Member
Well that sucks. Tears. In the midst of this the govt. is too busy fecking around with staying/leaving in the EU. Really the only way this gets addressed if if all govts in the world were to basically stop everything and formulate a 'disaster' plan now to address this. What are the chances of that....
martin clark
pinko bodger
Spoken like a true Swamp Thing; back when Primordial Ooze wasn't a Prog band.