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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."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2017, @05:56PM (4 children)
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.
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.
Americans more than anybody else. Businesses as well as individuals.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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)
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
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.