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Earth has been trapping heat at an alarming new rate, study finds:
The amount of heat trapped by Earth's land, ocean, and atmosphere doubled over the course of just 14 years, a new study shows.
To figure out how much heat the earth was trapping, researchers looked at NASA satellite measurements that tracked how much of the Sun's energy was entering Earth's atmosphere and how much was being bounced back into space. They compared this with data from NOAA buoys that tracked ocean temperatures — which gives them an idea of how much heat is getting absorbed into the ocean.
The difference between the amount of heat absorbed by Earth, and the amount reflected back into space is called an energy imbalance. In this case, they found that from 2005 to 2019, the amount of heat absorbed by Earth was going up.
[...] The researchers think that the reason the Earth is holding on to more heat comes down to a few different factors. One is human-caused climate change. Among other problems, the more greenhouse gases we emit, the more heat they trap. It gets worse when you take into account that increasing heat also melts ice and snow. Ice and snow can help the planet reflect heat back into space — as they disappear, more heat can be absorbed by the land and oceans underneath.
There's another factor at play too — natural changes to a climate pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Between 2014 and 2019, the pattern was in a 'warm phase' which caused fewer clouds to form. That also meant more heat could be absorbed by the oceans.
Journal Reference:
Norman G. Loeb, Gregory C. Johnson, Tyler J. Thorsen, et al. Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth's Heating Rate, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2021GL093047)
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:25PM (18 children)
Sound the alarms! Read more newspapers and magazines! Buy more carbon credits from Al Gore!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:28PM
Calling Khallow: according to this, poverty should be ending any day now, right?
(Score: 5, Touché) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:14PM (16 children)
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:38PM (15 children)
Ignore the extreme winter that nearly froze your bits off! Applaud the raised energy prices in your bills! ONLY THE HOLY MEDIA TELL THE TRUTH!!!11 Your mundane eyes and (frozen) ears are NOTHING!!! REPENT YE INFIDELS!!!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:56PM (10 children)
Time out: Is this a rebuttal or a satire that's too spot-on?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:05PM (9 children)
Are you a believer so true that you really buy the "the freeze is the warming" line, or merely at work?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:12PM (7 children)
We understand how averages work.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:22PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday June 25 2021, @04:36AM
I sense a new business opportunity...
Lose Weight Fast! Move to the Desert!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:59PM (4 children)
We understand that too. You claim a different extreme certainly happened in some unobservable places on another side of the planet, and scream a lot at top of your voice.
Creative uses of statistics are totally familiar to anyone who worked in sciences, and aiming them at ignorant populace allows for very sloppy work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:07PM (2 children)
So you're an idiot that likes to say "no u!" Got it. Think I'll go with the 99% of climate scientists on this one, but you do you. No need to bring up the herd mentality talking point, might as well head that excuse now.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:14PM (1 child)
Wonder what bodypart you use to think up such a thing?
The 99% of climate scientists go to the nice houses they bought on their nice research grants. I totally doubt you'll be welcome in any of those, no matter how many hours a day you waste playing tagalong over teh Intarwebs.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:35PM
Heh. Gotta love when people project personal greed and lack of ethics onto scientists of all people when they say something inconvenient. You do realize that many from your area of the venn diagram decided to follow a scientist who thinks cysts are caused by people fucking demons last year, right?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:24PM
Damn I wish somebody had warned me not to sip my coffee while reading this.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:13PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:59PM
It was Republican policy that nearly froze those bits off and then a couple months later nearly cooked them off too.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:31PM (2 children)
In other news, world hunger is solved because a local Florida man just ate a burrito.
...fucking moron. You just did the exact same thing that Republican waterhead did by bringing a snowball into the Senate and claiming that was proof against global warming. If there were any justice in this world anyone who did or said something that stupid would be summarily strangled from within by his own intestines, for reciting the scientific equivalent of Vogon poetry.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:07PM (1 child)
We know "fucking moron" is the proof of every claim in LeftieScience™. No need to exert the nodule you use as brain to string out nonsensical words to pad your Very Smart Statement.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:29PM
Hi. The 'non-sensical' words you skipped over to criticize her actually countered the point you're trying to make. In simpler terms her use of the phrase "Fucking moron" apparently attracts other fucking morons like a flame to a moth.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Funny) by looorg on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:37PM (13 children)
So we need some kind of giant ventilation hole in the ozone layer? Hey didn't we have one of those, whatever happened to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:29PM
It was in the Antarctic so all the cool air was sinking out the bottom. If we can turn the Earth the other way up the hot air will float out the top, as needed.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:52PM (8 children)
Some Twitter guy hidden behind a Bit.ly link says the Earth is not a closed system.
So problem solved!
(Score: 3, Touché) by pe1rxq on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:58PM
He is right.... that is exactly how the extra heat is getting in....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:09PM (6 children)
How could you ever think the earth was a closed system? All you have to do is look up!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:41PM (5 children)
His job is not to think, it is to spread propaganda.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:17PM (4 children)
Has anyone noticed that to a Trump supporter, "Propaganda" means "Truth that goes against my narrative and makes me cry" and "Truth" means "Lies spread by QAnon or Trump's glorious lawyer Rudi Guiliani"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:33PM
Yes. Yes we have. Since 2015. We've been saying as much too but the son of a bitch still won 2016 and came uncomfortable close (i.e., *anyone* voted for him at all) in 2020.
Turns out telling a bunch of worthless mediocrities and grifters that all their problems are someone else's fault gets you to vote for them. Would make me lose faith in humanity if, y'know, I'd had any since the early 90s to lose.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:49PM (2 children)
Everyone noticed that to an orthodox leftie, "Truth" means "anything a leftie talking head said". No amount of directly observable facts can compete with gospel.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:00PM
Gaslight
Obstruct
Project
Remind me again which party has no platform except peddling outrage via lies and misinformation? Oh riiiight, the GOP! Which "news" network has the highest record of lies and misinformation? Oh riiiiight, Fox! Dealing with brainwashed Qultists is really obnoxious.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:44PM
Look up the term C'ake Sniffer'.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:00PM (2 children)
ofc! you can do the same with "climate" just like you do with nukes!
nukes run hot and by watching TV, charging your car, using a escalator to move your ass, fridging your beer you cool down the hot nuke.
by giving the nuke and it's turbine+generator a resistance (see before) it does work for you thus by some thermos-law cooling down the nuke.
(we assume that the nuke runs hot even BEFORE it ever reaches the generator-turbine ...)
if you replace the nuke w/ solar panels to do the same work, you are actually making the sun-rays work for you instead of having them "just warm up the climate and oceans".
by busying the sun rays with tv work, beer cooling work and car charging work they have no energy left to make the climate hot!
ah, also, solar panels don't melt!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 25 2021, @01:13PM (1 child)
A bit wrong there, as all energy use eventually degrades to heat. Still, nuclear reactors do add heat to the environment, and solar panels don't (after they've been made). Depending on the span of time you consider. Nuclear reactors speed up the release of heat from fissionable materials, but they don't actually increase it...measured over enough millennia.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @04:53PM
soooo... what about using solar energy to fuse two iron atoms or maybe simpler fuse iron with helium?
would that (assuming the resulting atom is stable) freeze heat ... errr... energy into a universal stable lego block that know can be used in the (lesser) universal rule "but..but.. everything turns to heat" game?
anyways, doing my part by poitin' my laser pointer straight up into the vast infinite void ... powered by my solar panel (i am getting daily emails from the sun complaining about this waste on my part of her life giving energies. my reply is that i cannot afford a co2 sucker and compressor.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:27PM (12 children)
I have to wonder if there is any explanation of why Earth is trapping so much more heat?
Could this correlate with any other data measurements of atmospheric gasses on Earth?
Is there anything that could be done about it?
Why didn't anyone foresee this?
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:31PM (1 child)
I CO2can't think of any CO2orrelation that might explain that, just like nobody CO2an explain the tides.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:48PM
The obvious correlation makes it obviously obvious to any idiot that the tides are the origin of and reason why we see the moon.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:53PM (2 children)
It's the pandemic. Reduction in jet travel also reduced con-trails which were reflecting significant heat.
Fund the airlines, keep Gaia clothed in white contrails again!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:47PM (1 child)
In the very first sentence of the post:
The pandemic does not go that far back.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:15PM
I feel like my tongue has perforated my cheek and is now sticking out, dripping blood.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:51PM
One large volcanic eruption and the apocalypts will be talking out of the other side off their boots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:57PM (5 children)
Research grants.
Occam's Razor: the only thing on the curst planet that really changed much over those years, is the set of fears the propaganda is blaring out. 14 years ago it was terrorism, wasn't it? Now it is nowhere to be heard, and new bogeythings replaced it in the rotation.
(Score: 5, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:14PM (3 children)
The terrorists are all white now so Fox stopped covering it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:36PM (2 children)
i don't believe that even you are that dumb. so you are just trolling.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:02PM (1 child)
Fox had nonstop coverage and demonization for BLM protests, yet for an actual insurrection attempting to subvery democracy they switch to defending the terrorists.
Sure pal, keep being a moron, and remember: NEVER go full Nazi!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @05:17AM
Several hundred people, 0 people murdered, negligible damage, timeline of less than a day.
vs
Millions of people, dozens of murders, billions of dollars in damage, timeline in months.
---
Which should receive more coverage? And thinking January 6th was an insurrection is about as realistic as thinking politicians are all brain sucking lizard people. The only reason you don't realize how absurd you sound is because you think that if "your" media and politicians (two entities so well known for their ethical and moral integrity) say something, then it must be true. You know, like Officer Sicknick being murdered by a fire extinguisher to the face.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 24 2021, @09:09PM
The 14 years is a MEASUREMENT. Not an Alternate Fact from Fox News.
The industrial activity of man which could change how much heat the Earth collects is little over a hundred years. That is the blink of an eye compared to geologic time when Earth did not trap this much heat nor have this much CO2.
Keep spinning. Put your fingers in your ears. Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Taxi Dudinous on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:01PM (27 children)
Natural temperature cycle for the planet is for there to be a strong upward trend right now anyway.
Plus the fact that there are too many humans already for us to not have an effect on the climate, given our use of fossil fuels and whatnot.
It's going to keep getting warmer for a while.
Rather than try to stop the planets "heartbeat" so to speak, with unnatural and untested methods, we need to be more practical.
Here's something that I don't hear about much.
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-retreat-reinvent-cities-climate-effects.html [phys.org]
From TFA
Yeah...
No.
Climates gotta change. Humans gotta adapt. Nature is a nasty totalitarian. No negotiating with that one.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:25PM (14 children)
> Natural temperature cycle for the planet
What is the mechanism?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:41PM (5 children)
They don't need a mechanism! They prefer their Alt-Science "theories" to have zero predictive power!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:11PM (4 children)
Which of your brand of climate "science" theories has any but NEGATIVE predictive power? (Having to adjust historical data to make it fit, and to ignore all the rest of climate history with all those pesky warmings, is worse than merely mispredicting the present.)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:16PM (3 children)
My theory predicts that if we keep increasing the GHG concentrations the average global temperature will rise. We keep increasing the concentrations and the temps keep rising.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:42PM (2 children)
How many years of observations contradicting your belief will you need to start doubting it?
At present, we apparently have something about five of it not growing:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202102 [noaa.gov]
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202105 [noaa.gov]
And apparently, from the graphs, nothing was growing anywhere for a couple decades before that, either, till some kind of jump in 2014; can you point to any explanation for that pattern?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:51PM
Using the law of "conservatives don't understand science" it is clear you do not understand those reports beyond "if you pay no attention to details then this cherry picked sentence says I'm right!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28 2021, @02:22PM
So I followed your first link and read down to about here:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202102#seasonal [noaa.gov]
Land +1.2*C +/-0.16
The charts not far below that also show a lot of red recently (rising temperatures) and plenty of blue in the past (pre 1940s or so).
Anyway, I am curious what part of that report was supposed to support your position, as it really seems to support the position that temperatures are on the rise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:09PM
What is the mechanism?
It's not the sun making all that heat. It's all those air conditioning units up there vibrating on the roof, causing the building to collapse
https://www.reuters.com/resizer/jXmP2fmPl888Mx1XQ0et8TDrXkg=/960x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/6NI427MOQZOPDDO2O3KM5TXT6U.jpg [reuters.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:33PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Friday June 25 2021, @05:08AM (5 children)
I think you're trying to be snarky, but you'd be wrong. The mechanism is known as Milankovitch cycles [wikipedia.org] which are driven by positional relationship of the Earth and the Sun. This is why when you look at the historic record, CO2 tends to follow [phys.org] temperature, rather than temperature following CO2. As the temperature increases a large number of natural factors increase the amount of CO2 being released, such as for instance the warming of previously frozen areas where rot had been trapped. These organisms then decay, release their CO2, and so on.
Of course CO2 is also a greenhouse gas and can contribute to warming itself which makes the entire system fabulously complex, but the main driver in our historic trends has been Milankovitch cycles.
This is really something I find so very frustrating about climate discussions. Everybody has an opinion, often an extremely radicalized one, on the topic - one way or the other. Yet very few people understand even the most fundamental basics of Earth's climate. Ultimately I think this is why politics and science mix about as well as oil and water.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @10:26AM (4 children)
> I think you're trying to be snarky
I prefer to be open minded. To persuade anyone, it is imperative to know why they hold their position. They might be right! But even if they are wrong, without knowing *why* they believe something, it is not possible to have a rational discussion (and it degenerates into flaming).
The historical natural temperature variations are quite interesting. Last time I looked, I managed to convince myself that without thinking about the modelling and mechanisms, the fastest natural change in temperature historically is comparable with what scientists claim today (1deg C per century or so). So, again, without thinking about the mechanism, one can just about attribute the current temperature variation to natural variation.
However, there is a strong correlation between the current rate of change of temperature and industrialisation, which is hard to ignore. In detail, it seems to fit well with the modelling that climate change is driven by carbon emissions, if you believe scientists.
> the main driver in our historic trends has been Milankovitch cycles.
Actually, I take issue with this - on longer time scales O(100 M years) the amount of carbon captured in rock and amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has changed dramatically. Your statement is only true over the last O(10 M years) or so. (It's a subject I recently got interested in...)
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday June 25 2021, @03:06PM (3 children)
You're shifting the goal posts. Somebody referenced the natural historical temperature cycle of the planet and our inability to change it, to which you asked him "What's the mechanism" - thinking it was human CO2 emissions which, by definition, would mean we could change it. But of course it's not. Human CO2 is likely magnifying the current trend, but it's not creating it. The planet would be warming rapidly right now, even if humans did not exist.
But let us indulge those shifted goalposts anyhow. Check out the historic record. [wikipedia.org] Those data are based on ice cores. In a nutshell, we can determine the temperature of a time by looking at the ratio of light to heavy oxygen. But the problem is that connecting the gas to a date is relatively imprecise and has a resolution granularity in the ballpark of ~1,000 years. So all we can say is that during the last interglacial (heating) period it heated up (peak to peak) about 18 degrees Celsius in an *extremely* brief period of time.
The same as now? Probably not. You can see a clear trend of increasing magnitudes in the heating ranges. And so even without humans, we'd probably be seeing the most extreme heating during this cycle. But of course we do exist and our CO2 is also contributing to the warming. However, were we in a glacial period right now, it's likely that our emissions would be having 0 effect. We're adding a very negligible amount of CO2 to the entire climate cycling system but such is the nature of systems in a tight equilibrium that a small input can have an unexpectedly large impact.
---
Also, you mistake my assumptions. I never try to convince anybody of anything on a topic where they almost certainly already have strong biases. I'm sure you've noticed we live in a world where people will convince themselves that 2+2=5 if that's what's necessary to confirm our biases. Though of course we all believe that's the "other guy" doing that. And media and politicians, both of whom know scarcely more than the public at large, are all so quick to say whatever they think will gain a click or a vote, respectively - including that 2+2=5.
I debate solely for my own enjoyment and also to put you to work. Because instead of relying on trite emotional appeals, hyperbole, ad hominem, partisanship, etc as most do - I try to lay out my views with facts, evidence, and data. And I trust that plenty of those who disagree with me will desperately try to find any crack in anything I've said, and I think that's great. Because if I have said something incorrect, it certainly was not for lack of energy directed towards research or learning. And so I can correct myself for the future. But I, in no way whatsoever, expect you to change your views - because people rarely do so on topics they have a substantial bias towards. If you do? Cool. If you don't? That's also cool - people should all be entitled to believe whatever they want.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @03:58PM
> thinking it was human CO2 emissions which, by definition, would mean we could change it.
No I wasn't.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @04:18PM (1 child)
> Check out the historic record. Those data are based on ice cores.
It's hard to see the data because of the fit line; but the greatest rate of change seems to be about 5-10 data points long, i.e. 5,000 to 10,000 years and about 20 deg C difference. That's about 1 deg C per few hundred years. So given a bit of squint factor/uncertainty in reading the plot, that is a bit less than the current rate of change of 1 deg C per 100 years, which is what we have now. That's consistent with my statement that
> the fastest natural change in temperature historically is comparable with what scientists claim today
Just to be clear: I'm agreeing with you!
> we'd probably be seeing the most extreme heating during this cycle.
Where maybe we deviate is in this statement. All I can do is look at plots showing the rate of change in the last few hundred years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#/media/File:Common_Era_Temperature.svg [wikipedia.org]
I note the strong upwards swing that is highly correlated with industrialisation. Then a person comes along who has done the detailed modelling and says "industrialisation caused this". So it sort of seems obvious and I believe the person.
If someone else came with a model/evidence that showed earth orbit has changed drastically in the last 100 years (or orbital precession, or axis of rotation), then I would listen to them. I never heard anyone say this with enough detail to support the argument - i.e. beyond "guy on the internet" level statements. Even just a dumb plot showing mean orbit radius or something would be evidence. Indeed, the plot you put out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#/media/File:MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png [wikipedia.org]
shows that we are probably at the peak of the cycle, where the *rate of change* is expected to be smallest. So sudden leap in "rate of change" in temperature is extraordinary and not really supported by the model. Again, someone could come with detailed model that says that these Milankovitch cycles are really causing things and I would at least listen. But I never saw anyone knowledgeable (i.e. not "guy on the internet") propose that.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Saturday June 26 2021, @01:37PM
If you want to seek out differing hypotheses on the latest 1 degree of increase then you can find them being espoused by people with the highest degree of credentialing you might seek. A typical one is precisely what's mentioned in this article and which the masses seem to have entirely glossed over. Cloud coverage is a dynamic system which has a tremendous effect on the level of warming. This has relatively little to do with what we were discussing, however - which was what causes the cyclical warming and cooling patterns of the Earth. And that is Milankovitch cycles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:43PM (8 children)
There is no adaptation for humans. Life on Earth can adapt by evolving into new species. Humans cannot. It takes millions of years. And some of the outcomes of a 3+ C warmer world are feedback loops which acidify and sterilize the oceans of most multicellular life. This leads to the air becoming unbreathable. All that sea life will die, rot, and release toxic gases. 3+ C is the minimum we are expecting if we do everything we can to avert climate change. It might already be too late for mammals. Life, in general, will survive. It has been through this--and worse--before.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:58PM (2 children)
That is the interesting question: what is "everything we can do?"
Make COVID-22 4x as transmissible and 2x as deadly as COVID-19, maybe tailor it to be most deadly to infants and children instead of old people... see what kinds of changes we are capable of then.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:07PM (1 child)
Without any changes, at least it would decrease one of the major sources of greenhouse gases.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:18PM
You know, I'm not advocating killing off a bunch of people.
I am advocating a significant reduction in daily commuting, large communal gatherings, frequent frivolous transcontinental travel for things that could have been done in e-mail.
The peri-lockdown images of pollution reduction in major cities around the globe should be an indicator of what we are actually capable of accomplishing, if we want to.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:26PM (1 child)
Umm......pretty sure humans are alive. And everything alive evolves.
Maybe you meant to switch those? Humans can ADAPT faster than other species can EVOLVE?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:20PM
Humans are very adaptable, they're just not good at caring about the distant future. For most humans the distant future starts in 24 hours, often less.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:27PM
How so, pray tell? Are you into creationism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution [wikipedia.org]
With humans having discovered genetics, they now can even direct the process.
If our own subspecies of couch potatoes really proves itself as much an evolutionary dead end as we look like, we won't be missed by our more capable successors.
(Score: 1) by Taxi Dudinous on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:38PM
Actually, I think it is SOCIETY that must adapt. We will have to change behaviour. We will have to move. Humans will adapt on a physical level at the normal pace, and to some degree, as a result of lifestyle and behaviour changes.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @06:04AM
Take a look at the historic climate record. [wikipedia.org] The climatic cycling is clear, but the thing I'd emphasize here is the scale and rapidity. During the latest warming trend of the planet (before the one we're currently in) the planet warmed up (from low to high) from temperatures about 12 degrees (Celsius) below modern, to about 6 degrees above them. That's a total warming of 18 degrees Celsius. And this happened in a time in the thousands of years.
And if you go even further back [wikipedia.org], you'll find the planet used to be dramatically hotter. And mammals, in particular, thrived. Having the ability to self regulate our temperature quite helped in a world that was 15 degrees Celsius hotter than today. Finally, all life already "dies, rots, and release 'toxic gases'". This happens constantly on a cycle proportional to the life expectancy of any given species. Suffice to say, life will be just fine even in the edge case scenarios. And this is before we even been speaking of technology.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:42PM (2 children)
Yeah, right.
Temperature [xkcd.com]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by Taxi Dudinous on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:55PM
I do like that cartoon, and it clearly shows the result of humans piling on to an already existing rise in global temperatures. After all, the title clearly states "SINCE THE LAST ICE AGE GLACIATION". We are emerging from an ice age and moving toward a hot box period. The best data I have seen shows that the earth has been in hot box for about 75% of its existence. During those periods, there was little to no ice at the poles.
It is all too popular to show a very short timeline to highlight humanities contribution to climate change.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/9/graphic-earths-temperature-record/ [nasa.gov]
Note that the graph only goes back 140 years. And humans have certainly contributed massively to the rise. The upward trend I refer to goes back tens of thousands of years, This is a part of a cycle that has existed since long before we had any influence on the planet. (I am not saying we are not making things worse.)
Modern humans have only existed on this planet during cooler times. It's what we know. It's what we like. We don't want to be inconvenienced by climate change. But the truth is nature is all about change. We do not get to pick and choose the rules of nature that we have to follow. And nature is not kind to the rule breakers. If we stop climate change, I am sure we will unwittingly start something else. No one can confidently say that disrupting a natural cycle will not have unforeseen detrimental effects. Don't be too quick to whip out some science and unleash it on the whole planet.
Oh wait.
Already too late.
Okay, so just keep that science under control. snort! Yeah, like that'll happen!
Oh screw it!
SAVE THE PLANET!
DESTROY ALL HUMANS!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @06:43AM
This [wikipedia.org] is a graph of temperatures for the past 800,000 years - and what people refer to when stating "the climate has changed before." Please do contrast those data against your comic which starts at 20,000 years ago. Why might they might have chosen such a date, or such a caption?
15 years ago I was a huge advocate for strongly responding to climate change. It's things like your comic that gradually pushed me to the 'dark side' - well that and a much greater understanding of climate change. Knowing what now know, how can you not believe that that comic is anything but literal disingenuous propaganda?
And this isn't limited to just that silly comic. As you learn more about climate, you'll also find that more and more of the messaging meant for low information people (who make up the majority of the voting population) engages in similarly disingenuous lying.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:59PM (16 children)
I wonder, I really do, if humanity is smart enough to accept that we have a lot of work to do to deal with Global Warming. And to get cracking. So many people just seem to want to stumble blindly ahead, and not have to think or plan, or change course, even a little bit, like the dumbest of dumb animals. Want to leave all such problems to God, and just be brainless jellyfish drifting wherever the current takes them.
I do what little I can on a personal level. My family is not cooperative. In the summertime, if I nudge the thermostat up to 80F, they're screaming bloody murder. But in any case, such measures feel like pissing into the wind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:15PM (1 child)
Yes humanity is smart, however it is controlled primarily by sociopaths that have forgotten they are merely human. The achievemens we've made with scientific research has convinced these power hungry turds that we'll be able to solve any crisis so they continue with the greed comfortable in their faith.
Oh, can't forget the minority of crazies that legit want the world to end in cataclysmic fire, but overall humanity knows what needs to be done. How do we overcome the systems in place to prevent democratic action? US voting has been rigged by the two party system, so not likely we'll be allowed to vote for a real progressive willing to make these hard choices, and even if we did then we'd have to plan for the millions of entitled jerks that will throw a hissy fit about having their modern conveniences limited so that we can maintain basic levels of service for all.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 25 2021, @01:31PM
Actually, there's probably no particular reason that the change would need to reduce standard of living...but different groups of people would be the most successful. It would take lots of work, and lots of investment and nobody can prove that a better way might not be available, but it could be done NOW with existing technology. There are lots of deserts that solar panels could fit on, though perhaps molten salt reactors heated by mirrors would be better, as they have intrinsic heat storage capability, so they can continue generating power for weeks of shade. It would be expensive, but that's just redistribution of accounting tokens The real cost is that lots of people would need to spend time building the stuff, and someone would need to support them while they did that. But we've got bigger expenses in the current system that don't return ANY measurable value for most of the population. But there wold be people who are currently in positions of power and highly recompensed that would have their funding diverted, and nobody like that.
The US *should* be spending a lot more on infrastructure than it does. It would be of net benefit to almost all the country. But it would need to be paid for. It's my opinion that schooling should be essentially free through graduate school. And I include trade schools, not just academic schools. (I'm not including room and board, just the instruction.) I'm convinced that it would be a long term net benefit to the country. But it *would* need to be paid for. (I consider that a part of paying for infrastructure in a more general sense that just bridges and highways.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @06:32AM (13 children)
I'm going to sidestep the issue of whether "getting cracking" would be smart, and instead focus on the cracking itself. Let's compare two ideas:
- Let's not kill or steal from each other.
- Let's join together, sacrifice our contemporary quality of life, and do it for the rest of time to fight an invisible enemy that may only show itself decades if not centuries into the future.
I'm sure it's obvious where I'm going with this. The effort required for #1 is pretty much zero, yet not only is not happening - it will probably never happen. The effort required for #2 is unimaginably vast.
You may appeal to governments, but in the end governments are ruled by their people and not vice versa. If people are not happy with their government, that government will be replaced or overthrown. The reason that (in the developed world) the latter is mostly a relic of the past is *not* because governments have better weapons or whatever, but simply because most people are comfortable and thus largely apathetic (except in rhetoric) towards whatever their governments want to do. Start interfering with that comfort and you start interfering with the apathy, and bad things happen.
If you doubt the notion of asymmetric weaponry, just consider Iraq. We have the world's most well funded military, by a landslide, using all resources, technology, and ability at their disposal. And after 20 years of fighting? We're still huddled into tiny little "green zones" daring to venture out only in well armored caravans with extensive support, because otherwise that trip out is going to be a one-way journey. To claim we "won" requires a dependence on technicalities over realities. And our defeat there was driven by mostly decentralized groups using WW2 era rifles and homemade explosives.
And Iraq is not an outlier. The exact same is true in Afghanistan and frankly just about every conflict we've been involved in since WW2. Governments and militaries are great at destroying other governments and militaries, but against persistent irregular forces - they're mostly helpless. This is why the precursor to oppressing a population is, invariably, to try to disarm that population. Stalin did it, Hitler did it, Mao did it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @10:31AM
> The effort required for #1 is pretty much zero, yet not only is not happening - it will probably never happen.
You are forgetting that most people, especially useful productive ones, find it much easier to *do* something than *not do* something.
What works better - telling kids to be quiet? Or giving them some toys to play with?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 25 2021, @04:52PM (11 children)
Lot of unwarranted assumptions in there.
> Let's join together
Yes.
> sacrifice our contemporary quality of life
No. How about, we identify those things, changes, that would actually improve our quality of life, and at the same time help stop Global Warming? There are many such. The way we live life now, in the West, is widely recognized as unhealthy in many ways. Why do we have an obesity epidemic? We have corporations constantly selling us loads of bull, creating a lot of extra work for us which leaves us less healthy, all so they can make a bit more profit. Another unhealthy custom is the daily commute. Do you want to be stuck in rush hour traffic every weekday morning and afternoon? I don't. I've done that crap, the 8 hour work day bookended by an hour long commute packed with aggressive and stressful driving, to make my work day 10 hours long. If it hadn't been for rush hour, the drive would have been 40 minutes, still too long, but better than a full hour. Been a nice silver lining that the pandemic poked a bunch of holes in that one. Until that, millions of us did it. That is a feature of contemporary life I think most people would be glad to leave behind.
But damn, what it takes to stop ourselves from the stupider of the customs we insist on practicing! The "American Dream" has a lot of bull. Owning your own home has a lot of downsides. Now you have a lawn to care for. And, no, you are not free to do as you like with your lawn. Some freedom that is. In an apartment, at least the lawn is someone else's problem.
Another bad one is the unhealthy fashion. Women particularly suffer from those. A century ago, some even had surgery to remove their bottom-most rib, so that their figure would be more of that then coveted hourglass shape. Cosmetic surgery has a long and controversial history, and rib removal is still an option today. I don't know how prevalent it is, but I hope it's not very. However, something such as hair removal is very common. Made Mr. Remington very wealthy, but what did it do for the women? Made them more vulnerable to infection and disease, that's what. Another one that just won't die is high heels. Make yourself seem 4 inches taller with platforms with heels, and never mind the foot problems you will develop.
Those are just a few examples. There are many things we could abandon to make our lives better and at the same time combat Global Warming.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Saturday June 26 2021, @02:08PM (10 children)
Three things.
1) You are projecting your own views, values, and opinions and asserting them as something that is universal. For instance many, including myself, would never want to live in an apartment [again]. So just because you're happy to give something up, does not mean others are.
2) These sort of sacrifices don't even begin to scratch the surface. Last year we engaged in persistent self destructive economic shutdowns, all but entirely killed international traffic and domestic wasn't far behind it, and so on. And the total emission decline was less than 6%. In other words everything we did last year barely even moved the needle. And that leads to #3.
3) The world is not in stasis. As countries develop, they use more energy. As new technologies develop, they use more energy. As populations grow, they use more energy *. The point of this all is that in the future we're going to be using vastly more energy meaning even greater sacrifices.
---
* = If you're not up to date with the latest on population projections [wikipedia.org] the whole 'declining population' stuff has been changed. Now the population is up, up, and away - at least for the next century. The decline hypothesis based on a correlation that, in my opinion, was always "obviously" spurious. It was the whole education + wealth => low fertility. That was not true in the past and so it made no sense why it would be true, as a causal factor, in modern times. Instead the correlation was likely just driven by shared social values in the countries that tended have high education + wealth.
So now all we're seeing is a demographic shift. Low fertility populations will effectively die out while high fertility populations will increase rapidly enough to make up for that decline and then some on top.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 26 2021, @06:53PM (9 children)
You're talking all sacrifice. Of course the right sorts of sacrifices will be very effective, but I'm saying there are things that are not sacrifices, that are good for both us and the problem of Global Warming. And we're not doing them. I gave a few examples, and you said hardly anything about any of them, just that you won't go back to living in an apartment. What is not to like about reducing rush hour traffic? Is it that you simply don't believe it can be done, without sacrifice? You don't think it's enough to make a difference?
> And the total emission decline was less than 6%.
Let's say it was 5%. If you aren't disappointed, you sure sound like it. What world do you live in that a 5% decline in the cause of a problem is disappointing? Especially when we were expecting it to be an increase?
> As countries develop, they use more energy.
Not necessarily. Developments can be improvements in efficiency that result in less energy use.
> in the future we're going to be using vastly more energy meaning even greater sacrifices
What a gloomy outlook. Make it sound like we're helpless. What is your view of sacrifice? That it's a horrible, awful thing that is soooo unfair to ask, of anyone? That calls for it are being abused to trick people into depriving themselves? As for that Malthusian fear fest about population growth, life has had this problem ever since there has been life. Unrestrained growth that leads to catastrophic collapse is obviously bad. Life has evolved various means of restraint. They're not perfect and don't avert every tragedy, but they're a lot better than nothing.
Frankly, your whole tone sounds like childish helplessness. Despair. And it may be fake, having the disingenuous purpose of excusing yourselves from having to think, let alone do anything whatsoever, about the problem. What would you propose? I did not see any recommendations from you.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Saturday June 26 2021, @08:38PM (8 children)
The reason I didn't go much further into the other things you proposed is because of the point I was making, which was perhaps not clear. The lockdowns we carried out last year generally encompassed the breadth of your ideas (such as reducing road traffic), and vastly more such as all but entirely killing off air traffic for much of the year. These lockdowns were both extreme and economically/socially unsustainable, yet the entire outcome was indeed extremely disappointing. Bear in mind that 5% decline is not now an annual 5% decline, but a 1-off thing. If we repeated everything we did last we'd be right back to small increases due to the things mentioned (development, population growth, etc). And if we go back to the status quo? We'll undo that 5% and add some on top.
In other words unsustainable behavior did not even really scratch the surface of what's really needed to do anything. You need to do vastly more, it needs to be done on a global level, and it needs to be persist for the remainder of humanity's existence. And we live in a world where we still can't get people to abide really difficult requests like 'How about we not kill each other.' This isn't happening. This outlook is not gloomy, nor positive. It's realistic. Solutions? In my opinion the only practical one is atmospheric scrubbing. And the tech [harvard.edu] (among countless others) is already viable. It's just an economic question and the point that the urgency of resolving our emissions becomes balanced against our willingness to pay to make something happen, it will be done.
As for the motivations of those calling for more micro-level style change, I think, as always, it's mostly just a bunch of folks working for all sorts of different self interested motivations:
- Many well intentioned people just genuinely trying to do whatever they can to make the world a better place, often with a, perhaps subconscious, desire to find meaning in their life.
- Some politicians doing so because they like the benefits of such (higher taxes, greater government power/centralization, and a more globalist world which benefits corporate interests)
- The media doing so because fear generates clicks, '10 quick tricks to save the world' generates even more.
- Researchers live in a world of publish or perish. And if you go for these ideas, it leads to effectively infinite possibilities for relatively low-effort publishing, to say nothing of all the juicy grants.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 27 2021, @01:07AM (7 children)
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Alright, so you feel that taking a few steps will be ineffective. True enough, a few people turning off a few lights won't amount to much.
One thing that does matter is technological improvement. All through the 1980s and 1990s, I tried to reduce electricity usage at my parents' home, and made basically no progress. Used about 10,000 kWh a year no matter what. But in the 2000s, I finally made serious progress, thanks to technological improvements. CFL lighting is a lot, lot more efficient than incandescent, and now, LED lighting is even better. Fluorescent got better too, with the old 40W tubes replaced first with 32W, and then an even more efficient bulb, but now of course they've all been superseded by LED. The tube screens have all been replaced by flat screens. Tube screens take roughly 100W (varies greatly depending on brightness and resolution), flat screens are just 20W for the smaller ones, which at 24" are still larger than most tube screens were. Computer power supplies were horribly inefficient, so much so that 70% was actually something to brag about. Then came the 80plus program, and now, there's hardly any power supply that's below 80%. 90% efficiency is common now. A/C got much more efficient, with typical pre-1990s units having SEERs of 8 or even 6. The standard was bumped up to 13, and now I understand it is 16. These things mattered. They mattered a lot. The electricity usage of my parents' home dropped down to 5200 kWh by the 2010s. That kind of change across an entire nation will have a noticeable effect.
Cars have also advanced. While most of the gains have been poured into more performance and the devil with efficiency, they still are better. You don't have to do anything to reap these gains. Indeed, you have to work to avoid them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday June 27 2021, @01:35AM (1 child)
I agree with most of what you wrote, and I think Jevons paradox [wikipedia.org] is being subverted for electricity usage. But TV power consumption has rebounded [flatpanelshd.com], in part because of the ever-larger average sizes but also the move to higher resolutions like 4K/8K (made clear with laptop panels, same size + higher resolution = worse battery life). Oh, and increased brightness for HDR purposes, and families can afford to have 5 cheapo TVs around the house instead of 1-2. I think MicroLED will eventually bring it under control. Here's a source [ledinside.com] that claims the "average power consumption of [a] 55-inch Micro LED display can be below 5W". VR virtual displays would sip power.
You can get a decent computing performance from low-power SBCs or smartphones these days, and we could see further improvements if monolithic 3D improves performance but can't dissipate huge amounts of heat (no more 100+ Watt CPUs). That's just a guess.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 27 2021, @06:19PM
I am aware of the notion, though I didn't know it was called Jevon's paradox. It certainly holds with computing power. Tremendous advances in graphics and other capabilities, memory, speed, and storage have only served, it seems, to whet the appetite for more. I had guessed, wrongly, that because 24 bit True Color surpasses what our eyes can see, there'd be no appetite for even more depth, but there's 30 bit Deep Color, and on up to 48 bit. And it does make sense, as necessary for polished image processing work.
I'd say there's room for more nuance. Travel, for instance, costs time as well as energy. One of the things about our current society is that we've shrugged off this great expenditure of time. It used to be that traveling to the next county, 30 miles away, was thought a longish trip, not to be done regularly. Now though, that same trip, if it is within a great metropolis, seems more local. It's crazy how far people are expected and willing to commute to a job. Worse, I know people who were suckered into making house calls all over a large city, for no extra pay, because it didn't occur to them that all that travel was costly, they're so conditioned to driving long distances and thinking nothing of it. I pointed out that $30 per hour, with the employer paying only for time spent at the site, was a ripoff when the employee had to spend an unpaid hour in travel time for each paid hour. Lowered the effective pay rate to $15 per hour. Yeah, sure, the employee got to deduct travel expenses from his income tax, but that's no real compensation, that's merely an offset for all the fuel use and wear and tear on the employee's privately owned vehicle.
Anyway, no matter how cheap fuel gets, travel still takes time, and reductions in energy use will therefore not all be taken to increase consumption. Travel speed could be increased, of course, but there are many challenges towards making, say, 120 mph the new standard in ground travel speed.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Sunday June 27 2021, @04:01PM
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Now this cuts to the heart of our disagreement! A much more appropriate metaphor here would be a race. Because we're trying to catch up to a moving target, and any break we take - it moves (relatively speaking) even faster away, leaving us ever further behind. Last year we engaged in a colossal sprint giving it all we can had and then some. And we closed 5% of the distance. Except now as we're bent over trying to catch our breath, our target is racing away faster than ever. And that 5% will probably fall to around 2% this year, and by next year he'll be further away than ever.
I absolutely agree with you that technology can provide benefits in efficiency. Yet those benefits are overshadowed by our continuing monumental growth and consumption. Consider that the US population has increased by 32% since 1990. So even if we managed to drop our per capita emissions by 32%, there'd have been exactly 0 improvement. And alongside population growth is also increased consumption and development driving ever greater emissions.
And we're in a country with a best case scenario since we have low fertility, people who care, lots of money and some of the highest [wikipedia.org] per capita emissions in in the world. Think about somewhere like India or Africa. India has about 1/8th our emissions, [Sub-Saharan] Africa about 1/20th. As these regions develop, it's basically impossible for their emissions to go anywhere but up. And the development of these regions will have a dramatic impact on our global emissions due to their population: about 1.4 billion in India, 1.1 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This is not a problem you're going to socially solve or even make significant inroads into.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Sunday June 27 2021, @05:56PM (3 children)
I'm sure you've seen it already, but I found this [soylentnews.org] too appropriate given our conversation here.
Scotland is now deploying a CO2 capture factory capable of capturing up to a megaton of CO2 per year. Assuming that's a success you're looking at 33k of these plants would make human CO2 emissions = 0.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 28 2021, @04:28AM (2 children)
One of the nicknames for Economics is "the dismal science". And I see that name not as a complaint of economics, but as yet another way of saying that people just don't want to accept limits. Unfortunately, you are probably correct in thinking that there's just not enough will to address Global Warming, and consequently, we will do far too little too late to save our current coasts. Say goodbye to the Greenland ice sheet, and New Orleans, Miami, Venice, Calcutta (Kolkata), and many of the other coastal cities of the world.
While that is the most likely scenario, we owe it to ourselves to still try to stop it from happening. And a very strong reason to give it our best shot is that rapid sea level rise is going to displace an awful, awful lot of people. How on Earth we're going to manage such massive migration without war is a real poser. I feel very unsure that peace can be kept. Then, if war does break out, can we restrain ourselves from using nuclear weapons? We should strive to avoid ever sliding into such an awful fix. That's the smart thing to do.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Monday June 28 2021, @01:09PM (1 child)
I'm not sure what you're talking about or if I'm missing some sort of irony or whatever? 33k of these plant and human emissions = 0. That's like about 900 plants per country if we only consider OECD countries
Unless this plant doesn't work, and there's no reason to think it won't - then that's it, this is all over. Not only will you be able to undo human emissions, you could even bring CO2 levels arbitrarily low (or high) as desired. It will lead to an awesome scenario where we can actually remove all concern whatsoever about CO2 emissions which will also enable the rest of the world to rapidly accelerate their development and for us to more fully utilize our natural resources.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 28 2021, @04:02PM
33k sounded like an awful lot of plants. I just assumed it would be impossible to build that many. Not really impossible, but politically impossible. Upon further thought, 33k spread out over the nearly 150M km^2 land area isn't all that much, really, just 1 plant per 4500 km^2, which is very roughly 1 plant per 2 or 3 counties. That may be the way forward.
Still, there's a lot to be said for other moves, such as transitioning our transportation from internal combustion engines to electric motors, apart from the reduction in CO2 emissions that will make possible. The issues with energy storage-- like that if the Li-ion battery is the best we can do, it will take an awful lot of lithium to have a massive fleet of electric cars powered by them-- can be worked out, I'm confident.
If you want a bit of irony, it's that these CO2 scrubbing plants are called "plants", and seems they weren't even trying for any correspondence in name with those natural CO2 scrubbers, plants, as in those green, leafy naturally growing things that cows eat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:20PM
Looks like the models were conservative. Kind of like how complex systems are hard to model with lots of confounding factors, yet the general trends are clear. Instead of arguing about how bad things might get we should just focus on doing everything we can to mitigate and fix the problems. I know, switching to "climate change is real" was a big leap for you but it is time you stopped obstructing solutions with your pro-capitalist anti-regulations attitude.