Belz...
Fiend God
The problem is that the alternative is worse still.
Oh, it can. It won't be a Venus clone, but too-hot-for-life is quite possible.
Now there are only 12 years left -- Global Climate Change.
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The problem is that the alternative is worse still.
Oh, it can. It won't be a Venus clone, but too-hot-for-life is quite possible.
Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
Which alternative? Lets not make false dichotomies here. Just because I am pessimistic regarding the flawed IPPC mitigation plan, doesn't mean I think do nothing is an option either. We could fix this. Not the way the IPPC proposes. But it could be done.
I am not a physicist, but I did take a climate science course. That is not even suggested as a worse case scenario. Even if we magically put every bit of all the fossil fuels in the atmosphere as CO2 all tomorrow, the planet would heat and eventually even the poles would melt completely...but... Never reaching venus like temps. That's not a real scenario.
lomiller
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I tend to agree. I honestly think what ultimately puts the breaks on warming is the economic implosion triggered by the ecological impacts of the warming itself.
lomiller
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As long as there is liquid water on the planet it won’t be “too hot for life” P-T type event with very limited oxygen and an a lot of sulfur dioxide is probably the worst case. Life would recover after a few million years but most complex life would be extinct.
There are likely places that would be too warm for mammalian life before that happened, if that’s, what you are referring to.
The IPCC could set a good example by stopping flying long haul (South Korea this time) to hold their conferences. They should teleconference or similar. It's not only the delegates that fly to these conferences but also hundreds of other people - support staff, hangers on, media people, etc.
Sure, the emissions due to the conference are a drop in a bucket compared to global emissions, but it's about setting an example: they are advocating eliminating burning fossil fuels entirely, and there's no current nor foreseeable way for long haul flights without burning fossil fuels. If we are to cut emissions to zero, long and medium haul flying will probably need to stop.
Of course, I don't expect that long haul flying will stop. Politicians will bang on about everyone switching to electric cars while ignoring the fact that a return long haul flight generates more CO2 emissions, per passenger, than an average year of driving does. The airline industry are a powerful lobby and don't want people to be reminded of this inconvenient fact. The car industry is also a powerful lobby but they can see the chance of selling everyone new electric cars.
Unfortunately, there is no foreseeable way of making zero-emissions long haul aircraft - batteries can power light aircraft for short journeys, but to fly across oceans we'd need batteries one or two orders of magnitude better than the best currently available. No one expects that will happen.
Sure, the emissions due to the conference are a drop in a bucket compared to global emissions, but it's about setting an example: they are advocating eliminating burning fossil fuels entirely, and there's no current nor foreseeable way for long haul flights without burning fossil fuels. If we are to cut emissions to zero, long and medium haul flying will probably need to stop.
Of course, I don't expect that long haul flying will stop. Politicians will bang on about everyone switching to electric cars while ignoring the fact that a return long haul flight generates more CO2 emissions, per passenger, than an average year of driving does. The airline industry are a powerful lobby and don't want people to be reminded of this inconvenient fact. The car industry is also a powerful lobby but they can see the chance of selling everyone new electric cars.
Unfortunately, there is no foreseeable way of making zero-emissions long haul aircraft - batteries can power light aircraft for short journeys, but to fly across oceans we'd need batteries one or two orders of magnitude better than the best currently available. No one expects that will happen.
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Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
There is a foreseeable way, just not possible due to perception/politics
The Great Zaganza
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Carbon capture is feasible and affordable - and not just in the form of more trees.
lomiller
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Yeah “setting an example” is more important than actually documenting the problem.
It makes about as much sense as saying you can solve the problem by sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “I can’t hear you” over and over.
Belz...
Fiend God
Not eliminating fossil fuels. You know, the inverse of what you said.
It absolutely is. If you melt the poles completely? I have no idea how much methane's in there, but that reduces the planet's albedo considerably, and the added methane and water vapor might result in a feedback loop. Feedback loop may mean the oceans evaporate and, eventually, boil away once the temperature hits 100C. Then it's death for everything, permanently.
Again I stress that the scenario is not certain, but it's certainly possible, and for now the science on this is not done yet, so we can't say either way but... do you want to take that chance?
Belz...
Fiend God
That's exactly what I expect will happen: warming will hurt us to the point where we are no longer able to contribute to it.
Yeah but trees are cooler, and we kind of need to replace a whole bunch of them.
lomiller
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It’s a real scenario but it’s doubtful there are is enough fossil fuel to make it happen. Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, with enough CO2 in the atmosphere you can hit a tipping point where you get runaway ocean evaporation. Once the moderating effect of the oceans are gone temperatures can get high enough that carbonate rock breaks down, and there is enough carbon stored there to create a Venus like climate.
It’s pretty well accepted that this not only can, but will happen at some point ~1billion years in the Earths future because the Sun get progressively hotter over time.
Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
Again, it's not trees. Wrong biome.
Forests don’t cool the planet, grasslands do.
Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling
Global Cooling by Grassland Soils of the Geological Past and Near Future
So first ask if? you are using the right biological tool, before asking why not? just plant more trees. Standard rule of thumb.
Now there are a few reasons why Rainforests don’t cool the planet. First is that rainforests humidify the air with water vapor, which is an even stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. This because their particular form of photosynthesis is inefficient and uses a lot of water, which is released by transpiration.
Another reason Rainforests are poor choices to cool the planet is the decreased albedo. In other words their leaves are dark green and deep canopies and very little of the sun’s rays reflect back skyward. Grasses reflect much more back skyward. [7]
A third reason is the forest releases almost as much CO2 as it captures. There is some locked in biomass, but that amount saturates quickly. Then it becomes near net zero in the carbon cycle.[8]
A fourth reason is that Rainforest soils typically are very poor and low carbon.[9] Temporate forests are a bit better than tropical rainforests in soil carbon, but still no where near the soil carbon found in grassland soils. [10] So even though they appear to have more stored carbon because it is very visible, actually when you count the soil too, it’s the grasslands that are a much much larger carbon sink. In fact the soil sink for carbon is larger than all the atmospheric carbon and all the biomass carbon combined.[11]
This is why the IPPC fails. They are looking at the wrong tool to optimise long term sequestration of carbon. It's not forests. It's grasslands. Restoring any lost biome will benefit the carbon cycle. So nothing wrong with replanting a lost tropical rainforest somewhere. But simply stop growing too much corn and soy and replacing those fields with restored tallgrass prairies and grasslands instead, not only increases biomass, but also restores the ecosystem service of pumping carbon deep into the soil where it is far more stable than any biomass found at the surface.
Seriously? I am discussing man made global warming here, not billions of years in the future a dying sun! Please keep in context. We can't burn enough fossil fuels to vaporize the oceans, thus we have no capability to set off a runaway global warming that doesn't stop until Earth becomes Venus like. Too many stabilizing feedbacks for this to happen.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Right. Let's plant grass!
casebro
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Yeah dat. The Earth has been hotter than this, it's had higher Co2 than this. It got better all by it self. It's in the fossil record. Whatever negative fed back loop that kicked in then will kick back in again.
So the question is- How hot was it ever? That would be the highest it will get. Anybody got that number at their fingertips?
One solution is much lower human population than at present, and certainly an end to human population growth. Most politicians are afraid to discuss this solution.
It would help with not only anthropomorphic climate change (though we're already perhaps too late for that) but it would also reduce the rate of depletion of natural resources, and would give other animals on Earth more room to live so the current huge extinction rate would lessen.
It would help with not only anthropomorphic climate change (though we're already perhaps too late for that) but it would also reduce the rate of depletion of natural resources, and would give other animals on Earth more room to live so the current huge extinction rate would lessen.
Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
I hear the sarcasm, but it is nothing but a logic fallacy argument from incredulity.
Grasslands in US Great Plains are being destroyed at “alarming rate”
10 times more productive than your forests and 99% gone. Might as well say all gone because the remnants are not supporting bison and antelope and wolves etc that they once did.
You can cry about rainforest destruction all you want, but be sure a whole lot more than 1% of the Amazon is left. And we certainly need grassland biomes restored far far more importantly than rainforests. And one reason why...to mitigate AGW. That's its' ecosystem function, to cool the planet! Rainforests don't cool the planet, they warm it. Grasslands cool the planet. again please come back with science instead of fallacious arguments from ignorance. This is a skeptics science Mathematics and Technology forum!
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The Sparrow
Graduate Poster
Not nearly enough will be done because it is expensive, inconvenient, and involves sacrifice. Instead the planet will be run into the ground. Those with lots of money may last longer than others.
The end.
The end.
fagin
Philosopher
Plant enough, and everyone can get too stoned to drive.
Bit of a bugger when you get the munchies though.
Belz...
Fiend God
I hear the sarcasm, but it is nothing but a logic fallacy argument from incredulity.
Maybe you should tone down your sarcasm detector, then.
Say, how much % of it is left? And we kind of need rainforests, too.
Venom
Philosopher
If only there was a worldwide two-child policy.
Some tax imposed for more than two. But I'm sure there will be major social consequences, even assuming no initial backlash.
This could all be over in my lifetime. Very depressing.
Some tax imposed for more than two. But I'm sure there will be major social consequences, even assuming no initial backlash.
This could all be over in my lifetime. Very depressing.
Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
Sure we need rainforests too. The point being that the op reference states :
Too expensive.
and also states:
That's referring to CCS and BeCCS. In other words growing even more corn and soy for biofuels and biofuel CCS. In other words destroying even more rainforests and prairies to taked a doomed to failure strategy that is already too damned expensive to begin with.
It's a completely flawed approach as I mentioned several times so far here.
Especially considering there is an option that has negative cost (yes we spend less than even we do now, but also increase profits) and doesn't risk a massive ecosystem cascade effect on the whole damn planet by growing too much corn and soy, and actually is the only damn system proven by evolution and geological history to actually work as promised.
casebro
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http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
I was looking for per-historic high temps and found that. Is there something wrong with the interpretation that it has been hotter than this, and we didn't go all Venus? It's not a positive feedback loop, wherein it getting hotter means the increase accelarates, but there must be a negative feed back loop involved, naturally- It gets hotter, which causes a shift to cooling. Self limiting by natural phenomenon. All within a lot of noise on the graph, of which the last 150 years is a cricket chirping.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
I was looking for per-historic high temps and found that. Is there something wrong with the interpretation that it has been hotter than this, and we didn't go all Venus? It's not a positive feedback loop, wherein it getting hotter means the increase accelarates, but there must be a negative feed back loop involved, naturally- It gets hotter, which causes a shift to cooling. Self limiting by natural phenomenon. All within a lot of noise on the graph, of which the last 150 years is a cricket chirping.
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
On timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years the dominant climate forcing is the Milankovich cycles - that's what causes the cycle of glacial and interglacial periods - but on timescales of tens to hundreds of millions of years the dominant climate forcing is plate tectonics. How the continents are distributed affects the flow of ocean currents, whether there's land over a pole affects the build up of polar ice sheets, one supercontinent vs lots of individual ones creates different climates etc.
Then there are the natural positive feedbacks which amplify the effect of any climate forcing, so you can end up with either snowball earth or no ice sheets at all at the peaks and troughs. But something will always happen eventually - volcanism will break through the ice and add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the plates will continue to shift and the supercontinent will break up - and the planet will regress back to the mean.
Then there are the natural positive feedbacks which amplify the effect of any climate forcing, so you can end up with either snowball earth or no ice sheets at all at the peaks and troughs. But something will always happen eventually - volcanism will break through the ice and add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the plates will continue to shift and the supercontinent will break up - and the planet will regress back to the mean.
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
It's always a positive feedback loop, but it works in both directions. Positive feedbacks amplify both the peaks and the troughs in temperature caused by climate forcings.
The three main positive feedbacks are:
1. Ice albedo. The more ice there is the more of the sun's energy is reflected, which makes it colder, which causes the ice to spread ... But when the climate forcing reverses direction and the world warms that reduces the ice, which means less of the sun's energy is reflected, which makes it warmer ....
2. Water vapour. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, so the more there is in the atmosphere the warmer it gets, but the warmer it gets the more water vapour evaporates into the atmosphere ... likewise when the forcing reverses less water vapour evaporates as it gets cooler, which means there is less in the atmosphere ...
3. Carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which is soluble in water, but cold water absorbs more from the atmosphere than warm water. I'll let you work out the rest of that one for yourself.
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Dabop
Graduate Poster
Why are so many fixated on soy and corn as source fuels, they are possiblely the worst possible choices for sourcing biofuels (possibly one reason that so many 'studies' claim it takes more dino to produce biofuel than it makes?)
Crop litres oil/ha/yr
maize (corn) 172
soybean 446
locally we have growing here-
macadamia nuts 2246
oil palm 5950
Millettia pinnata 9000 + (this is actually classified as a noxious weed here!)
algae (open pond) 95000
(from wikipedia)
As an example, by using a noxious weed here, we would be getting 9000 plus litres of oil per hectare, against a puny 172 litres per hectare by using corn as the basis- That is a 50 fold increase in output straight away......
By using algae ponds (or a refinery style piped system for ease of collection???) you now increase it tenfold again...
So why, why, why are people talking about using corn as the basis for biofuel????
Ironically (as they always say something along the lines of "people are afraid to say it"), someone always mentions population growth, even though it is a none issue, given that world population is set to level out in our lifetime to about 10-12 billion.
Population growth isn't the issue though, its economic growth. See here:
https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/
The wonderful Hans Gosling explains all on that issue.
10-12 billion is too high though - not enough habitat left for many wild animals. Species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate.
lomiller
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Think of it like falling. Falling velocity will not hurt you it’s the sudden change in velocity at the end that does the damage. The problem is the rate of change in temperature, which is at least 10X faster then anything seen outside the various mass extinctions in the earths climate history.
If an organism has millions of years to evolve it can adapt to different temperatures. Since we will reach temperatures not seen in ~5 million year most current life forms hare not evolved for those conditions, and those that have are not in the right place and there is no suitable ecosystem in the places where temperature matches what they are evolved to live in.
casebro
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Sure fine. But the point I was making, and that you side tracked, is that there are natural processes which limit how high the temp gets. We don't need no models for that, it shows in the glacial records. The glaciers were only ever about 4 degrees warmer. THAT IS AS HOT AS IT CAN GET. I think I can check that site for some proxies of air temps- how hot was the air while the glaciers were +4?
So the pertinent question for this thread is "What were those negative feedbacks? Can we enhance them?"
P.S: Positive vs negative feed backs- A 'positive feedback loop' is something that accelerates heating when we get hotter, like CO2. Hotter oceans give off more. A Negative feedback loop is the way the hotter oceans give up more water, which forms intro clouds with greater albedo, reflecting more heat, cooling things.
Belz...
Fiend God
"Never happened before so it can't ever happen"?
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
A positive feedback is when an increase in A causes an increase in B, but it so happens that an increase in B also causes an increase in A. A negative feedback is when an increase in A causes an increase in B, but it so happens that an increase in B causes a decrease in A. Positive feedbacks amplify both increases and decreases in global temperature, negative feedbacks reduce them. The climate system includes both positive and negative feedbacks. Cloud albedo is indeed an example of a negative feedback.
lomiller
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2 problems (well 3 it’s published by someone well known for pseudo sceince)
1) It’s presenting Greenland temperatures as Global temperatures.
2) It’s missing the last 100 years of extremely rapid warming which have wiped out 8000 years of cooling. Global temperatures are already above those of Holocene optimum and temperatures matching the Eemian maximum 125KYA are already locked in.
Here is what global temperatures have actually looked like in the last 10000 years.
lomiller
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Nonsense. There is no such “limit”. The Earths long term climate stability occurs because CO2, the main player in global temperatures, is held within certain bands by 2 competing geological forces. 1 is the near permanent sequestration of Carbon into carbonate rock, coal, etc. The second is the destruction of these deposits by continental drift at which point they are returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes.
Since we are playing with this equilibrium by digging up this carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere at a much greater rate than it would naturally all bets are off.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
The last 500 million years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg
The biggest peak was about 500 million years ago, when it was about 12 degrees warmer than it is now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg
The biggest peak was about 500 million years ago, when it was about 12 degrees warmer than it is now.
Belz...
Fiend God
Huh, right around the Cambian explosion, then.
casebro
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The graph proves my point- There is a limit to how hot it can get. Notice please that it peaked, and then cooled. The positive feedback loop is not so extreme we will turn into Venus.
casebro
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Are you blind? Look at that graph, or any other. IT HAS BEEN HOTTER THAN THIS BEFORE. It got better.
There must be a negative feedback that happens. Probably heat raises humidity, the clouds increase albedo. Meantime the rains water the grass lands, ... RedBaronFarms...
My question now is How hot will it get? Based on on those graphs, ummmm, not Venus, not the whole planet turning into a desert. NOT the end of civilization as we know it.
Belz...
Fiend God
First of all, now you're changing your claim, yes?
Second, "hotter" is not the only variable.
Are you a climate scientist?
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
I think what your missing is that the reasons are different this time. It's not getting hot for the same reasons or in the same way, so the negative feedbacks may not work the same way.
Especially since one of the major causes now (the release of CO2 from deep reservoirs) is one of the places that could prevent continued warning (carbon sequestration in the ground), and the rate of change now is far faster than some feedback loops can work.
Its about quantity as well as quality.
There's also the fact that the majority of experts in the field don't agree with your simplistic view of the matter. The same reasoning would lead one to assume that since a stock has never sold for more than $30 a share, it never will. You've not proven anything, you've simply assumed cause and effect for earlier temperature change and ignored the differences between those and this.