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posted by janrinok on Friday December 08 2017, @08:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the invest-in-sunblock dept.

A new study in Nature [Ed-Abstract only for non-subscribers, but see below.] predicts that climate warming will be 15% greater than previous high estimates have predicted. This new study suggests that humans need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than previously expected and more than the Paris Agreement calls for. This study was based on analyzing the earth's "energy budget" (absorption and re-emission of radiation) and inputting that into a number of different climate models.

Also covered in more detail in Phys.org and in the Guardian.

The researchers focused on comparing model projections and observations of the spatial and seasonal patterns of how energy flows from Earth to space. Interestingly, the models that best simulate the recent past of these energy exchanges between the planet and its surroundings tend to project greater-than-average warming in the future.

"Our results suggest that it doesn't make sense to dismiss the most-severe global warming projections based on the fact that climate models are imperfect in their simulation of the current climate," Brown said. "On the contrary, if anything, we are showing that model shortcomings can be used to dismiss the least-severe projections."


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Friday December 08 2017, @11:00AM (11 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Friday December 08 2017, @11:00AM (#607151) Homepage

    That's fabulous.
    Amazing.
    Brilliant.
    I trust you guys implicitly.
    I believe you to be taking all reasonable steps to be as accurate as possible and therefore that's our best guess at what will happen.

    Now... what do you want us to do about it?

    Specifically, by applying the same kind of science, diligence and predictive models:

    - If we do nothing, are the consequences better or worse than if we do something?
    - What should we do?
    - Who needs to do that?
    - How do we do that?
    - What's the knock-on effect of doing that?
    - How much worse is that knock-on effect that just doing nothing?

    For instance, if we have to never touch oil again, how many people die from lack of medicines, fuel, warmth, etc. than if the world's oceans rise by X metres?
    Could we just abandon the coast, and still live without serious detrimental population effects?

    And so on.

    Because, despite this being scientific consensus for the entirety of my life, I've still yet to see what it is that we're proposing to do about actually fixing it beyond "reduce usage slightly", and no actual studies of whether that's literally a waste of our time at this stage or would even hurt us further. Sure, there are lots of ideas, but we seem to be ignoring the biggies (stop burning stuff, start using nuclear to cover the gap) in favour of stupidity (generate an unreliable and varying pittance of energy using plastics in high-maintenance areas like remote deserts or the middle of the sea) and not actually evaluating.

    I'm much more interested in: Is it too late to do anything (i.e. then we're dead anyway, so why ruin people's lives in the meantime)? What can I do that isn't literally lip-service to combating billions of tons of atmosphere heating up (hey, me being legally unable to purchase CFC aerosols actually fixed the hole in the ozone... what's the equivalent now, because I own no land, don't have permission to install anything on the building I'm in, live in a poor area for things like solar, wind, etc., I'm legally required to recycle everything that my local council CAN recycle - which isn't much - and I already reduce my usage to the minimum I can while still getting to work enough to live), what if whatever we do is wrong, how wrong could we be and how worse could we make it?

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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday December 08 2017, @11:31AM

    by inertnet (4071) on Friday December 08 2017, @11:31AM (#607154) Journal

    I can predict the most certain outcome from all of this: we're going to have to pay for whatever they come up with.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday December 08 2017, @04:37PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday December 08 2017, @04:37PM (#607257)

    You don't have to stop all technology. We already have energy technologies which don't involve fossil fuels, namely hydro, wind, and of course solar, plus nuclear. We have electric vehicles that are already quite viable as commuter cars. In short, we already have the technology to stop using almost all coal and oil, we just have to start using those technologies. We just don't want to do that because the incumbent industry players don't want to do that, and convince the idiots among us that it would mean the end of civilization.

    Tear down all the coal power plants, and steadily replace all capacity with non-fossil-fuel sources (hydro is tapped out, but there's still wind, solar, and nuclear if you can use some safer and more modern designs), then ban non-hybrid vehicles and push everyone to get EVs instead, and the problem will go away. There's no all-new technology that even needs to be developed, but as a society you have to be willing to kill some old industries.

    What can I do that isn't literally lip-service

    Simple: stop voting for politicians who don't believe there's a problem.

    what if whatever we do is wrong

    Switching to non-fossil-fuel energy sources isn't "wrong", no matter how accurate or inaccurate these climate predictions are. Fossil fuels are dirty and polluting; every other source is better, to some extent. We should have weaned ourselves off these things ages ago. Other sources have their downsides, like everything, but are still better than fossil fuels, especially coal.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2017, @05:56PM (4 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday December 08 2017, @05:56PM (#607296)

    - If we do nothing, are the consequences better or worse than if we do something?

    Easily much worse:
    1. There are positive feedback loops in play: For instance, if the Arctic gets too warm, then the the permafrost melts, and in the permafrost is a lot of methane. The methane, in turn, is far worse of a greenhouse gas than CO2.
    2. The kinds of problems doing basically nothing are already causing: more severe hurricanes, loss of arable land, etc.
    3. The loss of arable land alone will do very bad things to food supplies. Which causes wars and crime as starving people take desperate actions.

    - What should we do?

    In approximate order of ease:
    1. Conserve: Travel less (e.g. replace commuting with telecommuting where possible). Buy less non-essential stuff, so eventually less stuff is produced and shipped from faraway places. Turn the lights off when you're not in the room. Set the A/C warmer and the heating system cooler.
    2. Improve: If you own a building, check and fix as necessary the insulation. When you replace a vehicle, get something with higher gas mileage. When replacing appliances, get low-energy usage models. Use LED and CFL light bulbs rather than incandescent.
    3. Build Alternatives: Put solar panels and/or windmills on/next to your home. Try out tools like solar cookers. Start a garden and/or buy from local farms that don't have to ship as much from as far. Improve public transit systems.

    - Who needs to do that?

    Americans more than anybody else. Businesses as well as individuals.

    - How do we do that?

    A lot of this can be pushed by adding the projected cost of the damage of global warming into carbon-emitting products using techniques like cap-and-trade or taxation. Cap-and-trade worked well for SO2, which is one reason a lot of people like that idea for CO2. Outright regulation could also work well: Banning certain refrigerants turned around the ozone layer problem.

    - What's the knock-on effect of doing that?

    Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but there's likely a lot of both positive and negative consequences of some of the measures I mentioned, like:
    1. The price of gas, heating oil, natural gas, and electricity would definitely go up. On the other hand, your conservation efforts might mean you need less of it.
    2. People whose jobs are tied to industries relying heavily on fossil fuels would have to change jobs towards doing this kind of work. For instance, going from being a coal miner to building wind farms.
    3. Increased telecommuting would mean more Internet congestion, but a significant increase in highway safety and speeds for those that do actually have to be in a particular place to work.
    4. Better public transit systems would substantially improve urban life, and also reduce road traffic.
    5. Alternative electric systems will cost money up-front and cost carbon to create the materials. On the other hand, it will also make it so the electric grid is far less of a vulnerable point of modern life by effectively turning blackouts into brownouts.

    - How much worse is that knock-on effect that just doing nothing?

    As mentioned, it's a mixed bag and very hard to predict either way. We don't have spare Earth's lying around to do a controlled experiment.

    Could we just abandon the coast, and still live without serious detrimental population effects?

    Much easier said than done. How exactly are you proposing, say, convincing the entire city of New York to pack up and move inland? How about the entire population of Florida? What do you do about island nations where there is no "inland" (e.g. the Maldives, much of Indonesia)? How about areas that are below sea level like the Netherlands?

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday December 08 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)

      by ledow (5567) on Friday December 08 2017, @08:32PM (#607395) Homepage

      Okay, I'll bite despite the fact that you're parroting the same argument I always get back and haven't read my post.

      "If we do nothing, are the consequences better or worse than if we do something?
      Easily much worse:"

      Proof? We have no evidence of those that I can see. This is just one of my problems with the research here.

      Because if, say, we have to tone down fertiliser usage, or food becomes more expensive because of reduced air and road haulage, quite how is that going to be any different to losing a small portion of usable farmland?

      "1. Conserve: Travel less (e.g. replace commuting with telecommuting where possible). Buy less non-essential stuff, so eventually less stuff is produced and shipped from faraway places. Turn the lights off when you're not in the room. Set the A/C warmer and the heating system cooler."

      No A/C in my country. Heating set to reasonable temperatures. The rest contributes precisely ZIP in comparison to those, which is precisely ZIP in comparison to industry. And is energy usage even that much of a hog if you're suggesting solar or I'm suggesting nuclear? Seriously, we can make electricity zero-emission nationwide in a decade or less, it wouldn't take much at all. Nobody is doing that. Or fighting for that. Or claiming it would solve the problem.

      "2. Improve: If you own a building, check and fix as necessary the insulation. When you replace a vehicle, get something with higher gas mileage. When replacing appliances, get low-energy usage models. Use LED and CFL light bulbs rather than incandescent."

      Same as above, but really into piss-takes of energy when you talk about extra gas mileage (I'm in the EU, our cars have been tinier than yours for decades without any ill effects). Everything else you mention is really so small as to come under margin-of-error.

      "3. Build Alternatives: Put solar panels and/or windmills on/next to your home. Try out tools like solar cookers. Start a garden and/or buy from local farms that don't have to ship as much from as far. Improve public transit systems."
      As mentioned... solar/wind generates precisely ZIP local to me, and most people don't own any kind of land that would allow them to try anything even approaching self-sufficiency with such tech where I live. The school I work for has serious, huge solar panels on a pro install that will NEVER last until profitability even, let alone generate "free" electricity. Hell, for the last three months, they have literally read 0.0KW on the display.

      "- Who needs to do that?
      Americans more than anybody else. Businesses as well as individuals."

      There I will agree. Maybe the US should start picking up the tab, taxing oil more (like other countries do to discourage use) and sign up to the climate-control accords, no?

      Your listed "downsides" are really toys. I'm thinking more that the scale required is quite literally into "people can't commute" levels of expense / rarity, not to mention massive food prices rises, healthcare problems being unaffordable, etc. and things like "people literally not being able to heat their homes, let alone afford A/C". Reversing a global trend caused by immense amounts of energy has to take away similarly immense amounts of energy to "stop", let alone reverse.

      "- How much worse is that knock-on effect that just doing nothing?
      Much easier said than done. How exactly are you proposing, say, convincing the entire city of New York to pack up and move inland? How about the entire population of Florida? What do you do about island nations where there is no "inland" (e.g. the Maldives, much of Indonesia)? How about areas that are below sea level like the Netherlands?"

      I'd use the argument "See that water coming in? Yeah, your house is going to be worthless in a year." I reckon they'd pack up pretty damn fast once it starts. Florida is easy by comparison. Island nations would be GONE. The Netherlands is already technically underwater, more places would be like that. We're talking a global crisis on the scale of tens or hundreds of millions of people displaced (not just affected, but actually being made to change their entire way of life). Hence why knowing WHAT we're suggesting those people should do and/or what would happen if they don't, and planning for that is actually far more serious than the "Is that one degree or two?" argument that's been going on for decades.

      Sea-level rises on the orders of 10's of metres are INCREDIBLY SERIOUS. That's what we're being told. And yet you think switching off a 40W bulb when you leave the room will somehow magically fix that or even come close to a significant digit of doing so if even the whole world population did exactly as instructed?

      Honestly, your argument and suggestions are what I see every time and honestly don't cover a pittance of a fragment of a morsel of a percentage of the amount of energy that would have to be dialled back to make any visible difference, let alone reversal. And it took the entire industrial age to change this far, there's nothing to suggest it would take any less time to slow, stop, reverse and then undo those changes. We're talking 100 years of sea level rises, obliterating entire nations, (and that's just the least scare-mongering position) and the solution is stick a solar panel on your house and turn down the AC a bit? That's just incredulously poor thinking, you yourself mention things like feedback loops etc.

      This is my problem whenever it's mentioned... you need to undo what we're told is an inevitable global-scale catastrophe and nobody has any solution except "Well, we could get a couple of dozen watts out of this wind". The sides are completely unbalanced there. Either it's nowhere near as dangerous as is being made out, or the entire scientific community is literally ignoring the next step - a method or hypothesis on how to solve that huge problem.

      More accurately, I think the problem is "there's nothing we can do anyway". Which makes it all moot to discuss, really. And means there's absolutely no point in suffering in any one aspect of your life to try to prevent. It's like people on a planet that's heading into their sun being told to chill their drinks a few degrees more "to help out".

      Scientists - who I have utmost faith in, it's almost my "religion" - are saying "this is a disaster and will impact the world" but when asked what to do about it say "Er... virtually nothing" and look baffled. Either one of those two statements is either unfathomably wrong, or there is literally no point discussing it at all - like a black hole with the mass of a million suns hitting the Earth next Tuesday. What are we going to do? Shrug. Makes no difference really.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @10:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @10:27PM (#608082)

        Scientists - who I have utmost faith in, it's almost my "religion" - are saying "this is a disaster and will impact the world" but when asked what to do about it say "Er... virtually nothing" and look baffled. Either one of those two statements is either unfathomably wrong, or there is literally no point discussing it at all - like a black hole with the mass of a million suns hitting the Earth next Tuesday. What are we going to do? Shrug. Makes no difference really.

        WTF are you talking about?? It's very clear what has to be done - STOP BURNING FUCKING FOSSIL FUELS. It's not a black hole hitting the Earth. It's people fucking it up for themselves.

        Your idea is like dealing with drunken drivers. "well, can't do anything about it, so may as well drink and drive". Brilliant.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @07:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @07:48PM (#607766)

      The methane, in turn, is far worse of a greenhouse gas than CO2.

      Is it really? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
      If you're sure it is, could you explain the physics behind that conviction?

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @08:03PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @08:03PM (#609341)

        Yes, it is [acs.org].

        But you're not going to believe those scientists over at the American Chemical Society - I mean, they're only a bunch of chemists, what could they know about chemistry? So instead, I'm going to direct you to performing a variation of this experiment [carleton.edu], farting into one of the test bottles to supply it with some methane. That way, you don't have to believe those eggheads with PhD's, you can just see for yourself.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @07:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @07:07PM (#607349)

    We'd be doing lots better if we got rid of people.

    Considering the whole world, white people are a tiny minority. We need to protect them for diversity.

    So let's start with Asia and Africa. Kill them.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday December 08 2017, @07:26PM (2 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 08 2017, @07:26PM (#607361) Journal

    >> What can I do that isn't literally lip-service to combating billions of tons of atmosphere heating up?

    Are you in the US?

    If so, there is literally zero day-to-day lifestyle change that can make a meaningful difference. In the next 30 years the modernization of India and China will release five times more CO2 than the US. We have to find a technology to electrify those countries (not just the cities, but also the countrysides as well) with dirt-cheap zero carbon power.

    We can't turn the ship until we solve that problem.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 08 2017, @09:00PM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 08 2017, @09:00PM (#607420) Journal

      Thorium! Shitloads of modular thorium reactors, something as sealed and hermetic as a spaceborne RTG, one underground every 5 square city blocks or so, providing power. Replace entire unit every 20 years or so at worst.

      Meanwhile, concentrating solar plants in places that can provide the light demand, like, say, Saudi Arabia and the US southwest.

      We can do this. We lack the will.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday December 10 2017, @06:09AM

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 10 2017, @06:09AM (#607912) Journal

        I like Thorium reactors, but we live in a dirty bomb world. I don't see us being able to do largely distributed nuclear microgeneration because of that.

        InB4 Thorium reactors yield no dirty bombs, Thorium reactors have a number of radioactive decay products. The nice thing about them is they all have nice short half lives. They are still plenty long enough to cause havoc on a major metro, even if the actual threat is small.