From a story out of Princeton University:
As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.
The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.
[...] "The silver lining is that the future isn't written in stone," said first author Justin Penn, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geosciences. "The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon dioxide [CO2] we emit moving forward. There's still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction."
[...] The researchers report that the pattern of extinction their model projected — with a greater global extinction of species at the poles compared to the tropics — mirrors the pattern of past mass extinctions.
[...] The model also helps resolve an ongoing puzzle in the geographic pattern of marine biodiversity. Marine biodiversity increases steadily from the poles towards the tropics, but drops off at the equator. This equatorial dip has long been a mystery; researchers have been unsure about what causes it and some have even wondered whether it is real. Deutsch and Penn's model provides a plausible explanation for the drop in equatorial marine biodiversity: the oxygen supply is too low in these warm waters for some species to tolerate.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @10:05AM (17 children)
once the acidity of the ocean is high enough, algae and other green plankton dies.
and then everything in the ocean dies.
and yet western society is concerned with how their hair looks or whether they can fly to their favorite ski lodge over the weekend.
well. putin decided for all of us: co2 emissions will not go down, because we'll all be to busy fighting for our lives. if we're careful, we may avoid nuclear war, but existing ecosystems are almost certain to collapse. in his ignorance, maybe he thinks that siberia will be a great place to live once global warming sets in properly. it's not like he's going to be around to see how wrong that is.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:02PM (7 children)
Russia sells gas, oil and coal, as far as I'm aware, green energy isn't really their export thing. So the west no longer wanting to buy Russia's gas, oil and coal should have the exact opposite effect of what you are saying... The west's emissions should come down from this. Blaming Putin for everything is of course the current mantra, has been for several years already. Easier than looking at yourself and the problems you created. Although to your credit, earlier in your post you did correctly identify some of those problems.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:21PM (4 children)
> the west no longer wanting to buy Russia's gas, oil and coal should have the exact opposite effect
Quite right - the excellent news is that there is now hard reasons to build out renewable and nuclear infrastructure. Maybe Germany will decide to go back to nuclear?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:58PM
if we can't want to work together we need nuclear. one massive golden calve with wires hangin out? better then the carbon polluting burning bush? "oh my, the skies on fire"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:24PM (2 children)
if you do the calculations, it actually turns out wind power is, at the moment, cheaper than nuclear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k [youtube.com]
I was surprised too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:56PM (1 child)
It's cheaper in isolation, but you need a storage system in addition to the actual wind generators. And you can't build it everywhere -- Some places just aren't very windy.
A mixed strategy is the only one practical right now. Fission for baseload. Wind+Solar for cheap power. Something like Pumped Hydro for storing Wind + Solar. And dump all the research money into fusion. Hopefully the next generation of Fission plants will also be the last. The pollute way less than fossil fuel plants, but obviously there are issues with the waste. In ~25 years, we could easily be ready to start building mass fusion plants which are much cleaner than Fission both in terms of waste and the fuel source. We just need a generation of fission plants to get us off fossil fuels. A mandate in building codes that every building needs wind or solar on-site would do wonders for the energy supply pretty much instantly.
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Wednesday May 04 2022, @11:21PM
Now it's 25 years to fusion? That's a step back. Since about 1960 it's been only 20 years to fusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:55PM
um... russia will give all that oil and gas to china, who will happily get it at a discount and burn all of it. and then invade russia themselves, or something like that.
and the russians themselves will burn their oil and gas for inefficient industry and house heating, with no thought of insulation or "other american hippy nonsense".
and nato itself will burn oil and gas moving their troops around, because "it's war and and it's an emergency, I don't have money to throw into renewables now!".
yes, it's reasonable to use this moment to shift to other energy systems.
but governments are not reasonable.
it would have been a lot more reasonable to talk to China 30 years ago about their power stations, point them to clean energy.
but it wasn't done --- it was so much better to just get cheap stuff from them no matter the consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:26PM
As is blaming everything in Russia on the Americans and "their satellites".....
Needless to say, the mindbogglingly pointless war in Ukraine is going to reduce climate efforts for number of reasons, but first and foremost is that everything is now less efficient doing same things. Like you need to fly around Russia because of it. Or buy gas that was liquefied somewhere vs. direct pipeline. All adds pointless costs. So yes, maybe Europe can reduce CO2 emissions in medium term, but in short term it just adds to waste and increases CO2 emissions for no reason.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:05PM (3 children)
and yet western society is concerned with how their hair looks or whether they can fly to their favorite ski lodge over the weekend.
Fuck yeah and you better hope it stays that way! Do you not realize that lifestyle amenities like the ones you mentioned is why people are immigrating from non-western countries to Western Countries at a rate of 100 million people a year?
Not too many Americans or Europeans of any color or race think "Hey, food is too scarce here and life is too difficult here. Know what we should do? Let's immigrate to Nigeria!"
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:26PM (2 children)
The problem isn't that we don't have a problem getting food on the table. The problem is that it's not, so we have to invent new problems, like that our armpits have to smell like a pine tree and our hair has to look perfect even in a storm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @04:02AM (1 child)
Remember when the sahara was green and lush 5,000 years ago? And is expected to be so again in another 15,000 years? These things happen, life adapts and goes on. No organism has evolved to micromanage CO2 levels, they evolved to adapt because that is an actual viable strategy.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 05 2022, @01:58PM
Yeah, of course, how could I forget? It was really hard to get a place in the holiday resorts there, those Goths had put down their towels in every fucking chair!
(Score: 5, Touché) by Opportunist on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:09PM
Well, to be fair, a nuclear war along with the nuclear winter and the reduction of CO2 production it entails, would probably be good for the climate in the long run.
Not so much for us, but hey, you gotta make a decision, humans or planet.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 04 2022, @04:25PM
Not all foodchains will collapse. Even if others fail. McDonalds and similar will remain. Twinkies and other items not made of food will remain.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @05:36PM (2 children)
Explain how it hadn't happened the previous times when CO2 concentrations were much higher than presently.
Why is it that "science believers" are totally acting like New Earth Creationists?
(Score: 3, Funny) by pe1rxq on Wednesday May 04 2022, @06:30PM (1 child)
Which times?
The ones where CO2 concentrations rised at such a slow pace life could adapt?
Or are you talking about the times you burnt to many strawmen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @09:13AM
Use Wikipedia stupid.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @10:28AM (22 children)
Ok then, so no worries, we have time?
Statements like this do nothing but derail any hope for change.
Cause we already know what humans will do with that time.
[ checks on the war ]
Yep, still raging and escalating.
We need more steel for pipes and military toys as the monkeys accelerate the use of Oil and Gas through global military spending.
Yep, no worries...we have lots and lots of time.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:05PM (21 children)
There's always 10 years before climate disaster, and there has been for at least 50 years. Just go back and review the predictions made at the first "Earth Day" (1970).
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:24PM (18 children)
Sure, it's easy to blame western society and their hair, but there's a track record of half a century of failure here. Why are these doomsday predictions at all credible? Because they're modeled rather than observed? /sarc
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:08PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:25PM (1 child)
The reason the predictions did not materialize is precisely because of their warmings prodded people to do things to prevent it. The world has always been just one step ahead of disaster, let's hope we don't stumble. https://europeansting.com/2022/05/03/47-million-people-in-the-world-are-on-the-edge-of-famine-what-can-be-done/ [europeansting.com]
The 1973 oil embargo was a blessing in disguise
https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2020/07/04/what-if-nuclear-power-had-taken-off-in-the-1970s [economist.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @06:37PM
Like further develop and expand that resource intensive modern world, right? Continued population growth? It's not the preventing that works here.
There's already been a lot of stumbling recently with both the covid pandemic and a major European war. The world is a bit more stable than the above narrative suggests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:34PM (3 children)
So you can observe the future rather than predict it like the rest of us mere mortals?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @06:40PM (2 children)
I can observe the past - there's half a century of failure there. And no indication that the Chicken Littles have figured out what went wrong. But plenty of fanciful excuses [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @09:17PM (1 child)
Any idiot can predict the past. Choosing and tuning the model to actually predict the future is the tough part.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 05 2022, @12:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:55PM (4 children)
Why we may see doomsday even if one does not exist.
We have a lot of unnecessary suffering right now in the present mostly due to human negligence and corruption.
Looks pretty hellish and history looks to repeat itself with utmost precision.
Ominousness comes from key elements like:
manufacturing weapons to "specifically" kill "humans",
not allowing peacefully protest and dialogue in the face of lies, hypocrisy, misinformation, exploitation, divide and manipulation.
Resources are finite, humans use the threat of Doomsday to secure more of it.
Dooomsday empirical evidence percolates all around us in the form of war, trash and chemical pollution.
These make us feel more uncertain and thus insecure.
Finally, having to answer the following questions, you get a sense that things are really fucked up.
Do you care if Japan is about to dump millions of radioactive waste into the Pacific?
Do you care how much plastic Shanghai goes through in 1 day just on Covid admin?
Do you know where the word Bikini came from?
So we need to be a bit smart about the future.
And that means having a plan for the worst case scenario, Doomsday.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @06:52PM (2 children)
Japan already has - it turns out to not be very radiative water. I'll note that coal plants generate hundreds of millions of tons of coal ash which is also radioactive waste (with a fair portion of that probably ending up in the oceans). We somehow manage.
Nope. Because it's performing a high value operation - keeping people alive.
The bikini beachwear was named after the Bikini Atolls where a number of atomic bomb tests (23 according to Wikipedia) were performed.
And? I think a big part of being a bit smart about the future is highlighting when our speculation about the future turns out wrong and why. I think the doomsday predictions fail so hard because the predictor is merely telling an exciting story, detached from reality.
Not much point to having plans for unlikely scenarios - especially if you don't have a clue whether your plan will make that scenario worse rather than better. My take is that if we had listened to the Population Bomb people back in the 1970s, we would have had that die-off and resource depletion that they were warning about. Because in their haste to stave off impending collapse, they would have destroyed the flexibility that actually did that in real life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @12:24PM (1 child)
Do you care how much plastic Shanghai goes through in 1 day just on Covid admin?
Nope. Because it's performing a high value operation - keeping people alive.
If your version of alive is to coat the planet with plastic and bio hazard waste....no fucking thank you
Just keeping a human alive at the expense of everyone else's freedom...again, no fucking thank you.
By your logic, fucking for virginity and bombing for peace are A OK.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 08 2022, @03:25AM
It is not. You can't stop worrying now. But I do wonder how much plastic a human life is worth to you. It sounds like not much.
Again, not something you have to worry about from me. Maybe you should reexamine your assumptions rather than continue to worry about imaginary things?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 07 2022, @10:39PM
Meaningless without units.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 04 2022, @04:57PM
I can't comment on what you write above.
However, as a professional physical scientist, I find that a huge number of "not even wrong" scientific papers, mostly because the (huge) systematic errors are not accounted correctly. In my bias I claim that it is not usually the physical sciences that are at fault.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @06:45PM (2 children)
I noticed that almost all of our examples involve Paul Ehrlich, and almost all the rest were made in the late 60s and early 70s, before passage of the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws put in place to change the course of the future. I was never aware of his name 40 years ago, so I am surprised that you apparently hold him to be the pinnacle of scientific prognostication and grand leader of all that is science.
It is not worthwhile to go through and refute cherry-picked predictions, particularly ones made decades ago that did or didn't pan out because actions were or weren't taken. For instance, a lot of hay (disingenuously, I would add) was made about how "they were all saying that global cooling was a danger" by pointing to a Newsweek cover article (that most certainly wasn't saying "they were all saying"). And of course because of that Newsweek article, and the fact that all signs point to warming as a problem, well clearly nobody knows what they're talking about so we've all got license to keep dumping toxic chemicals in streams and cranking up the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But if you actually look at what "they were all saying" in that article, it was talking about the balance between dumping massive amounts of human-produced CO2 into the atmosphere leading to warming, offset by cooling due to dumping massive amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere via CFCs, and that it looked like the CFCs were going to win. So what happened since? They recognized that CFCs were a huge problem (where they also were killing the ozone layer) and they banned CFCs and passed other laws that has reduced the number of long lasting aerosols in the upper atmosphere. So what did that article say about balance? We've tipped the balance to warming by removing something that was helping to cool the atmosphere. And it is intellectually dishonest to now point back to that Newsweek article as proof that "they" don't know what they're doing. Many of your "excellent" examples are in that same package. The beauty of being able to stand back on 40 years is that you can look at the long term trends and unequivocally see the warming. You can ignore the selective choosing of data, the cherry-picking, and the chicanery and see the warming. You have unaffiliated groups all over the world measuring the warming, you have multiple satellite systems measuring the warming, that no matter how many "libertarian" prevaricators writing op-ed pieces to the contrary, the evidence is there.
Something you should consider: on my way home last night, I noticed that my gas tank was getting low, and my on board computer said that I had about 60 more miles to go. I became concerned about the rate of fuel consumption and that I would eventually run out of gas before making it to/from work the next day. However, this morning on my way to work, I filled up my gas tank. I'm not as daft to claim my on board computer doesn't know what its talking about. But climate warming "skeptics" ARE that daft, or they are that disingenuous, but what I don't get is what is in it for them. Just like "owning the libs," where does "owning the environmentalists" get you, because in both cases they are affected just as much as everyone else when you are tearing down democracy or killing the planet, but I guess in both cases they can enjoy an adolescent smirk of pulling something over someone, or getting under someone's skin.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @07:33PM (1 child)
6 out of 18 involved Ehrlich. And the point of the dates was that the environmental doomsaying game has been played for more than 50 years. As to your bit about the environment protecting regulation that the US and the rest of the developed world passed, keep in mind that the original poster was ranting about humans ignoring reality until it was too late. Didn't happen in this case.
There's a lot of these doomsday predictions and they won't get any more accurate no matter how you cherry pick them. I'll note that there are lists of failed climate change predictions from that Ehrlich to the near present.
Sorry, I don't care about them. What I care about is actual evidence. For example, this story made some interesting predictions about future climate. But it's based on a model not observation (though it gives the usual lip service to "mirrors the pattern of past [...]"). If the model is wrong, then the conclusion is wrong. Too often in these debates we get stuck on the crazy people on the other side.
It does provide testable hypotheses and the CO2 levels at which problems are said to occur (that is, from centuries of vigorous human activity) are consistent (at least within an order of magnitude) with estimates of CO2 levels from geological epochs where high CO2 levels are thought to have driven significant climate change (though not necessarily the degree of harm claimed here).
Moving on, I normally don't care much about Ehrlich as he is one of said crazy people. But every so often the Population Bomb narrative slithers out from under a rock and we have to chase it away again. My take is that what makes it so insidious is that if we had panicked back in 1970 and stunted most human progress, we'd probably be worse off than we are now. The Pop Bomb people ignore that human poverty is the driver for human fertility and that resource rationing and reducing human freedom to control fertility otherwise leads to a lot more poor people and their population growth issues. The cure becomes yet more disease.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 05 2022, @03:46AM
Has *any* doomsday prediction *ever* come true?
Or has there just not been a doomsday yet because no one has done it right??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @09:31PM (1 child)
I guess you're not familiar with the time the Reagan Administration changed the Economic Model so it delivered the result they wanted?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2022, @11:53PM
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:28PM (1 child)
You're better off talking to a tree than using evidence & logic on the members of the climate change cult. They will ignore it, just like the ignore natural climate changes-to them the dozens of ice ages Earth went through during the past 20 Million years doesn't count.
You know, the real upcoming ecological disaster that everyone knows is coming but is being completely ignored and never discussed-the massive an unprecedented population explosion occurring in Africa right now!
300M people 20 years ago.
1 Billion people today.
3-4 Billion people by 2100: On a continent that is 40% desert and dry arid savanna. Food has to come from somewhere so chop-chop and say goodbye to Africa's rainforests. Good bye Lake Victoria because your water can be diverted for irrigation and you'll turn into another Aral Sea. You think the CCC would care about that, but every religion has to limit their doctrine and dogma I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @10:14PM
Don't worry we feel the same about uneducated racists ;-D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @11:35AM (2 children)
by removing as many fish from the sea from any place their boats can sail to as fast as possible
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @04:16PM (1 child)
This is what happens when you bring a billion people out of poverty, let's hope Africa doesn't copy them
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @06:49AM
or India
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @08:25PM
i wonder if radioactif strontium fallout decaying in your teeth sounds like something fell on your roof?
(Score: 2, Redundant) by darkfeline on Wednesday May 04 2022, @09:08PM
We have too many people doing research telling us that we "need to do something" but nowhere enough people doing research telling us how to do it, at least without causing global disruption, mass unrest, death, etc.
They are the ideas guy ("I'm gonna build the next big thing, it's like Google and Twitter and Netflix, in the cloud, on the blockchain! Can you do it for me in a week? I'll pay you in exposure").
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday May 05 2022, @01:11AM
The equatorial oxygen supply is something that can be measured. See if it's already started.