NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise
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Simultaneously, our political systems are gyrating wildly as they struggle to function in an ever faster and more interconnected and complex world.
No, I think we're going to see a lot of bad news over the next few years. The impacts of climate change don't need to be crippling to overtopple a fragile society - just pernicious and frequent.
Demolish metropolises in the gulf states a few times more - when do they stop rebuilding? When it's impractical, or when it's impossible? Flood rural areas of England a few more years in a row - do people remain there? Do insurers continue to offer coverage? Who pays to rehome these migrants? A political crisis grows rapidly. Cynically, I note in the U.K. that the devastating regional floods have only been reported regionally. They don't really want people to get the picture it's happening everywhere.
I do wonder if some of what's happening in the media and state around migrants is to harden us for a future where many or most are dispossessed and homeless.
The anticipation of all hell breaking loose can be as bad as the reality.
Global deaths from famine from 1900-2000: 80,000,000 [1]
Global deaths from malaria from 2000-2015: 9,000,000 [3]
Global deaths from WWII: 60,000,000
Global traffic deaths in 2013: 1,000,000 [2]
We've got most of those problems on the run now, and the future looks even more promising with medical and safety tech.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
[2] http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_...
The 70% nuclear arms reduction from the late 1980s [1] and the collapse of the Soviet Union are pretty definitive.
With respect to whether a war has ended or not, I'd rather look at the annual defense budget.
The US defense budget, as a fraction of GDP, has spiked four times, to 12%, 22%, 41%, and 15% for Civil War (does not include CSA spending), WW1, WW2, and Korean War.
Since then, the Vietnam War steadily consumed about 10% of GDP for several years. After it was declared over, spending dropped to 5.5% until the Cold War started. Then it popped back up to almost 7% in 1986 before dropping down to 3.5% in 2001. Then it went up to 5.7% in 2010 before starting to drop again. We're now at about 3.3% again.
Prior to WW2, peacetime defense spending was a consistent low level of 1% to 2% of GDP. The US has never reached such low levels of military spending since.
But the Cold War is a clearly visible bump in the chart around 1986. Similarly, the War on Terror seems to have peaked in 2010. The Cold War, specifically, ended in 2001. But the US has never gone back down to a peacetime economy since the end of WW2.
With my tinfoil hat on, the numbers almost look like the lizard-people are titrating to find the optimal intensity of continual war, to maximize their revenues from military spending.
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/cereal_yields...
Given the general staidness of the actual research, I think we need to worry a lot more about where climate science has underestimated the change than where they've overestimated it. The loss function will be brutal on that side.
Climate researchers have _not_ been implying that the bad effects are way out in the 21st century: they've made hundreds of testable predictions that catastrophe was at hand in the 80s, 90s, and aughts.
We were going to see the end of arctic ice, have a perpetual ozone hole necessitating sun screen when venturing outside and decimating wildlife from cataracts, see New York and other major cities drowned, etc. (Not to mention famine killing billions of people, etc.)
It is possible to think that climate research is useful and interesting even while acknowledging that they are often alarmist and full of nonsense in their predictions.
Sea Ice Extent Is Near Record Lows--South as Well as North: https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/sea-ice-extent...
> have a perpetual ozone hole necessitating sun screen when venturing outside and decimating wildlife from cataracts
Antarctic ozone hole beginning to heal: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/antarctic-ozone-hole-... (as mentioned elsewhere, this is thanks to the quick, decisive action taken in the Montreal protocol)
> see New York and other major cities drowned
Hurricane Sandy: http://www.weather.gov/okx/HurricaneSandy (6 ft of inundation in NYC due to storm surge)
> (Not to mention famine killing billions of people, etc.)
How Global Warming Helped Cause the Syrian War: https://www.wired.com/2015/03/global-warming-helped-cause-sy...
Sorry if some of these effects didn't occur in comically exaggerated "Day After Tomorrow" style, but that does not mean they aren't occurring.
This is embarrassing.
I agree that there's been a lot of over-exaggeration on both sides of the issue. If you listen only to pundits and talking heads, you're almost certainly getting the wrong information. The actual scientists, however, look at things a little differently.
For example, you cannot build a dam to handle any arbitrarily large amount of water. So what do you do? You look at the historic record and build your dam to survive a "1 in 500 year" flood. These sort of "1 in X year" events are all over climate science: "1 in 100 year hurricane", "1 in 500 year drought", "1 in 1000 year cold/warm streak". What I've seen most scientists say regarding climate change is that it will, essentially, shift X down for all of these. Of course, most of us are not going to live 100/500/1000 years, but if you look at all of these statistics in aggregate, you might notice that the globe would normally have, say, 3 "1 in 100 year" floods in any given year. If this year there are 5, and next year there are 4, that might be climate change.
Or it might not, because the aggregate statistics have their own statistics. For example, you might determine that a year with 5 "1 in 100 year" floods is, itself, a "1 in 500 years" phenomenon. Does that mean this year is that 1? Maybe...maybe not. But at some point, when you notice that all of the aggregations of aggregations of "1 in X" years events is a "1 in 1,000,000 year" phenomenon under non-climate change conditions, but a "1 in 10 year" or "1 in 50 year" phenomenon if climate change is occurring, then you might start thinking about attributing these events to climate change.
So: was the Syrian War caused by climate change? Maybe...maybe not. 3 years in a row of drought is probably a "1 in 500 year" type event. If climate change turns that into a "1 in 50 year" event, you still can't say for sure that climate change caused the drought...but you can say it's much more likely to have.
We'll know soon enough. If extreme weather events start causing more destabilization in more different parts of the world, we may find the long trend of decreasing incidence of conflict reverse itself...
Or maybe not, because maybe the decreasing trend will overpower the climate change induced increase, causing the overall trend to remain downward...just not as fast downward as it could have been. And really, that is what the problem with climate change is: the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something. (The Stern Report lays this out in 700 pages of painstaking detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review .) Climate change probably won't wipe out the human race, but it will depress the progress and/or potential progress we might have made in its absence.
I find it the highest kind of irony that the main argument people make against doing anything about climate change (it will cost money) is actually the best argument for doing something to prevent it.
Just to be clear, I am not asking for media reports of the scientific literature, but rather the original sources themselves, demonstrating that it is the climate scientists who have been making the kinds of predictions you mention.
I would also urge you to check any studies you do cite to make sure you are not misinterpreting stated uncertainties. It is disingenuous to claim that a study suggesting that extreme effects are possible but unlikely is "predicting" those extreme effects. One should either describe the uncertainty, or use standard summary statistics, such as the expected value.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarm...
Language in the article is quite similar to the language in the OP of this thread: "[L]ast year Prof Wadhams said such predictions failed to spot how quickly climate change is causing the ice to thin" vs. "NASA scientists suggest we've been underestimating..."
Climate science uses the West Antarctic as its poster child of global warming. Here's a scientific study that finds "an absence of regional warming since the late 1990s", and that instead "The annual mean temperature has decreased at a statistically significant rate... These circulation changes have also increased the advection of sea ice towards the east coast of the peninsula, amplifying their effects":
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v535/n7612/full/nature1...
Of course, we don't call it "global warming" anymore since we're not really sure that's what's happening. Now we just call it "climate change", because if there's one thing climates do, they change, and we don't even have to make specific predictions for that. If the temperature goes up, it's proof of anthropogenic climate change (global warming). If the temperature goes down, that's also proof of anthropogenic climate change (humans messing with nature makes world temperatures more unpredictible). If the temperature stays the same, it's just the calm before the storm, and nature will be back to mess us up in a big way to make up for lost time next year or next decade.
Most of our researchers are too savvy to make testable predictions based on this, at least not any closer than 50 or 100 years out. By the time it'd be time to test these, they'll be dead or retired. Meantime it's easy to excuse by saying "climate science is an inexact science." Then you can call it science and you don't even need testable predictions! But you get quicker tenure and better pay than you would with a degree in phrenology, parapsychology, or cryptozoology.
I'll close by saying priests and shaman have traditionally held similar sway over the masses to what our climate scientists do today by predicting things like solar and lunar eclipses (although, to their credit, their predictions were a bit more on-the-money than our climate scientists have mustered yet. Our moderns rely on confirmation bias and rejiggered data from NOAA instead). It's nice to know our old ways haven't left us.
Global warming is very real, and still happening, and the "climate change" models predict that we will continue get global warming as we have been. You ask for testable predictions, yes, there are testable predictions but climates are notoriously difficult to model accurately, but even with disagreements over models and problems with accuracy global warming still emerges as a clear prediction.
If you want to look for confirmation bias and "rejiggered data", then what you do is you cherry-pick specific time frames and regions where you can find cooling. That's always possible. Pick a hundred regions in the world and pick a hundred spans of time for each, and then take the few combinations that show cooling and you can paint a picture that hides the truth.
Looking online for other media reports I found this [1], which includes the choice quote from the original paper (which you can find here [2]):
"Given the estimated trend and the volume estimate for October–November of 2007 at less than 9,000 km3 (Kwok et al. 2009), one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover."
As expected, the paper describes a central estimate, an interval describing the uncertainty, and then provides further hedging ("nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer", and the whole second sentence). I must further emphasise that the paper, and Peter Wadhams, were saying that the Arctic ice would be melted during summer, rather than year-round - I don't feel that the phrase "Arctic sea ice may be completely melted as soon as 2015" captures that important distinction.
That serious consequences are found to be possible by some predictive model, is something worth paying attention to. Both you and tjic seem to by trying to imply that climate research has produced a range of models that are wildly inconsistent with reality, but that simply isn't the case (and certainly isn't here - yet).
If you have an interest in the subject then read the literature and understand the nuance of the claims being made. The are often large uncertainties involved, both because of difficult dynamics and poor observational coverage, and no-one in the field I have ever met has ever said otherwise.
[0] http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-earth-0...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/d...
[2] http://www.oc.nps.edu/NAME/Maslowski%20et%20al.%202012%20EPS...
edit: I meant to say, I'm afraid I don't have time to look at the second case.
You should be more careful with your information sources. I'm kind of familiar with the claims of ending arctic ice, but only from straw men claims from deniers of climate science. I have not been able to find any alarmist claims from climate scientists on arctic ice, only websites that misinterpret the claims for their own propaganda purposes.
The flooding of New York and shifting of agricultural zones are not predicted to already have happened. When climate scientists talk about these things, they do not use the alarmist language that you are using.
Articles about him in legitimate media are [1][2]. Climate deniers get to say things like [3]. Other climate scientists think he is alarmist [4], and the 2013 IPCC report mentions his papers but is super dissmissive: See section 11.3.4 of the IPCC AR5, references to Maslwoski.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-w... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/18/ice-sc... [3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/07/experts-said-a... [4] http://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/arctic-will-be-ice-fre...
nitpick: it is actually antarctic ice we need to worry about. Arctic ice (except on Greenland) is floating and so it is already displacing its weight in water.
Thermal expansion of the ocean contributes almost half of total observed sea level rise. (1.1mm out of 2.8 mm total per year)
This was avoided the obvious way. Hardly an indictment of the prediction; the prediction was a necessary part of attacking the problem.
(Which I am as well. The bad news has had very little impact ON ME. Because I live in a part of the US with the best infrastructure. )
People are really bad at understanding nonlinear effects. For any kind of supra-linear system, "nothing" happens for a relatively long time, then "all the sudden" effects start piling up and people who say the above claim it's completely unexpected, out of the blue.
Then lets play with sea rise, the fear is always that some islands will wash away and port towns will be at further risk. Yet studies of the Marshall islands show the reverse, the islands continue to grow in the majority. What about changes leading to flooding, changes in rain fall patterns, and the like. Well the common trend is to over exaggerate unique events as if they were common place, ie Katrina leading to years of violent hurricanes wrecking the US (oops). Sixty years of studying rain falls in some central US states show no changes, the recent floods in Louisiana weren't even unusual. Even China has had an area in drought for centuries.
In other words, the climate does change but we don't know all the variables and people's whose very jobs depend on income from both studying it and "fixing it" (read : GE) will always push the numbers that support their side. Just like big oil will try to claim that oil isn't the leading cause; its cows btw.
So take it all with a grain of salt. Articles on Vice lean one direction and one direction only and tend to exaggerate . however those inclined to always believe this type of alarmism won't think otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...
The associated period of massive carbon injection into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted no longer than 20,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[3] The carbon dioxide was likely released in two pulses, the first lasting less than 2,000 years. Such a repeated carbon release is in line with current global warming.[2] A main difference is that during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, the planet was essentially ice-free.[4]
Today we talk about the temperature going up less than 1 degree °C in the last 1,400 years. This is talking about a period of warming that was 5-8 degrees and lasted over 20,000 years.
So when people start to talk about how rapidly things are changing over a few hundred or a thousand years, it's still a blip in the time frame of the planet's history. The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum happened over 55 million years ago and lasted more than 20,000 years. How can anybody say, "This is the warmest temps in the history of the planet!" when some of the cycles have happened over incredibly vast amounts of time and have been sustained for even longer?
And while I don't doubt some climate change is occurring, if you look at the scale in terms of millions of years, humans will be long gone before this planet really starts dying, and by then, it will reclaim, heal and move on from when we inhabited it. Truth is, the planet has been undergoing cooler and warming periods since it was born as a planet some 4 billion years ago.
I take no solace in thinking "humans will be long gone". Not if its global catastrophe in the next decades that trigger that.
People have talking about global catastrophe since the 1960's and some of the predictions from the first Earth day in 1970 were so alarmist it's funny to look back at those now:
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
- Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
- Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone."
- Paul Ehrlich
"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
- Kenneth Watt
source: http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/barbara-boland/13-worst-predic...
That was over 4 decades ago and we're still here.
So yea it seems funny or harmless if you ignore what's happened since.
2) What colors are picked for the background? We are in white now and going to red? What if the colors showed us in blue, and global warming moving us to white?
It is a total lie to say raw numbers don't lie. Every part about making an infograph lies. X axis. Y axis. Colors. Labels. We could take the same dataset and draw many different conclusions.
(Not that global warming isn't true, but that infographic isn't enough)
Potentially, not anymore!
http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/seaweed-livestock-methane-em...
And what's the projection, will it rise 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 100, 200 or 300 meters in the next 100 years? I have seen so many numbers, I don't know what the current estimation is. Anyway I tried to make sense of the article: " This number has hovered around 0.6 inches per decade since 1900...[]...Global sea level, the paper concluded, rose no less than 5.5 inches over the last century, and likely saw an increase of 6.7 inches."
lets see, 6.7 is likely. 6.7 / 10 = 0.67 inches per decade. and no less than 0.55 (lower than measured).
(p.s. we're hiring: http://genability.com)
What they say is approximately "1.5-1.9 with values near 1.7 being most likely", so in layspeak and round numbers, the chance that actual number is higher is 90% and that it's lower is 10%.
Would be nice if they had a theory why.
This gives you a sense of the absolutely huge amount of ice we're talking about. For example, if the West Antarctic Ice Shelf collapses we'll see about 10 metres of sea level rise, but mostly in the northern hemisphere. To underline just how much ice this is, this effect will slowly be counteracted as the ground below slowly rebounds (as it no longer has a huge amount of ice crushing it down from above).
I'd love to see a calculation of how much ice would have to melt for us to add another leap second.
Or to back it up, how would timekeeping bodies deal with that?
Would we actually remove a second because there would technically be less "time" (measured in days, meaning axial revolutions of the Earth) per year?
"rapid deglaciation promotes earthquakes ... rebound stress that is available to trigger earthquakes today is of the order of 1 MPa. This stress level is not large enough to rupture intact rocks but is large enough to reactivate pre-existing faults that are close to failure."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound#State_of_...
http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-melt
http://m.nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/why-our-intuition-abo...
From the last article:
"Three things happen. One is that you’re dumping all of this melt water into the ocean. So the mass of the entire ocean would definitely be going up if ice sheets were melting—as they are today. The second thing that happens is that this gravitational attraction that the ice sheet exerts on the surrounding water diminishes. As a consequence, water migrates away from the ice sheet. The third thing is, as the ice sheet melts, the land underneath the ice sheet pops up; it rebounds."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/carbon-pric...
Also, "bigger government" is a vague enough definition that it could easily apply to this initiative. It creates a new category of tax, and a new category of tax credit. It will probably reduce the government's revenue, but the legislature can and most likely will raise revenue in other places to plug the gaps rather than cutting necessary agencies.
What do you think the bigger barrier is?
If we don't bring the right along then they'll either block any action (America) or create a huge fear campaign and repeal the action (Australia).
The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago, nor do we know the measurements in the next 1,000.
An object is never the same when nature is applied over time.
I don't think anyone is suggesting or has suggested such a policy. Rather, the recommendation is "avoid changing things, especially when the outcomes are probably negative and their magnitude highly unknown".
> who are dependent on government funding
Plenty of scientists who are funded by non-government grants agree that climate change is real.
Plenty of non-climate scientists have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.
Plenty of non-scientists with training in a scientific discipline -- who have never received and will never receive a penny of grant money in their lives -- have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.
This particular ad hom is tired and unfounded.
> Why do scientist, who are dependent on government funding, use words like 'suggest', 'surprised', or 'consensus'?
Suggest: because this is one study/measurement, and others should repeat the measurement and/or come to the same conclusions by other methods.
Surprised: Because they're surprised.
Consensus: When 90+% of trained experts agree on something, that's pretty much as close to a consensus as you can get in a large population.
> Where did the water for the ice come from?... How do you calculate an energy output without knowing it's environment?... The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago nor do we know the measurements in the next 1,000. An object is never the same when nature is applied over time.
We engineer systems and make scientific measurements and predictions with high accuracy every day without knowing the exact origin and trajectory of everything in the universe.
This says nothing about science, and a lot about what stories get people's attention.
This applies to any issue that humanity is worrying about.
With all due respect, but melting sea ice doesn't raise sea level. It's a scientific fact the author should check carefully before publishing.
It also doesn't use the phrase "sea ice" which seems a confusing phrase.
However, your correction itself isn't strictly correct. Melting sea ic can change sea levels by changing the density of the water in the ocean. Also, by melting it changes the amount of sunlight that is reflected. The increase in sunlight reaching the oceans will cause thermal expansion of the water.
SCHWEIGER: “Melting sea ice has no impact on sea level rise because it’s already floating in the ocean.”
Like a glass of ice water. As it warms, the ice in the glass melts, but the total volume of water does not change. However, melting sea ice does contribute to climate change. That’s because white sea ice reflects the sun. So when it melts, the dark open ocean now absorbs sunlight and heats up, raising global temperatures, which in turn cause glaciers and ice sheets on land to melt further. Globally, sea levels have risen four to eight inches since the last century and will continue to rise as the ice melts, putting coastal communities worldwide at risk.
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/11/loss-of-land-i...
Take two situations:
1. A mass of sea water is replaced by the same mass of fresh water. Sea levels/volume would increase as the average density would be lowered. (this is not the case)
2. A volume of fresh water is added to the ocean. Then V_total = V_ocean + V_freshwater.
"Other main targets include: – reduction of emissions from coal burning industries and vehicles2 – boost cleaner and more efficient use of coal – promote the use of electricity and natural gas in place of coal – support for wind, solar and bio power sectors; increase in proportion of clean energy – encourage the use of waste straw as a resource – reduction in-field burning – implementation of control measures to deal with air pollution
...
By 2020, he said, the intensity of water use per unit of GDP will fall by 23%, energy intensity by a further 15%, and carbon intensity by 18%."
What about U.S.? It's people saying "as long China and India get a pass... Even if the US disappeared off the face of the map, its still to late... so let it happen."
You're the problem. Even if the rest of the world disappeared of the map, U.S.'s carbon emissions and pollution still exceed world's capacity to absorb it. Do you know how much of the world's environment is scorched to produce raw resources to produce goods for consumption in the U.S.? You're not taking it seriously.
It's going to be the story of this century: the people least responsible for climate change are going to disproportionately suffer for it. Meanwhile those most responsible will demonize them for their efforts to survive it.
I feel the better arguement is that per capital these countries are lower polluters and we need to all strive to reduce pollution to an acceptable per-capita level. And as a global population need to look at how we lift everyone lifestyle while reducing environmental harm. This 'you had your turn polluting the world and now it's mine' lacks logic and will not solve the problem.
Except the better tech tends to be more expensive and less labor intensive. A country with a huge cheap labor force would handicap itself by not using the most cost effective means to grow their economy, negative externalities notwithstanding.
Or in other words - it explains it, but doesn't justify it. We as mankind can do better
Have an example? I thought it was a war in Syria.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-...
Sadly people in this part of the world seem to only see said events in either the rosy "Arab Spring", or some version of "Islam is fundamentally evil/unstable" sense.
Syrias civil war began after billions of dollars where somewhat clandestinely spent on fomenting violent revolution there - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawma...
Libyas security collapsed after its infrastructure, including its world class irrigation system was bombed out under the guise of implementing 'no fly zone'
No I am not the one making two sentence cryptic and insulting, dishonest accusations.
I'm done with this.
If we wont stop attacking people, we wont stop wrecking the environment.
Also, we have neither infrastructure for storing power at this level, nor would it be economically feasible.
Hydro and geo-thermal are better sources in this sense, but neither are abundant and have their own drawbacks.
'- promote the use of electricity and natural gas in place of coal' - Only valid if the electricity is produced by means other than burning fossil fuels, otherwise you are just moving the problem up the supply chain.
Same way with electric cars, if the electricity is still being produced by dirty means, it is not all that impressive a reduction in poluttion or emissions, it's just moving the problem up the chain.
Not trying to sound defeatist or anything, it's just not a complete solution, still seem like band aid attempts by themselves.
Technically feasible, yes, agreed. The simulations tell us this much, that at point T+x, we could have a green electricity grid, but you have to take into account the process of getting there and that means economics and politics. And there's a lot of half-measure that seem green, but just kick the can.
Ok, from the engineering side, the flexible, dispatchable sources will be required like I said, can't fully remove them. They can be hydro, which is clean and great, but it's not universally available and were it is, it's expensive to setup and tends to wreck local ecosystems. In most developing countries, the flexible source will remain what is already available most likely, at least in the short-medium term, and that is coal and gas. (this will be mostly for economic reasons)
... “renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the United States.” ... That's why the time frame is 30+ years and that's in the US. What about less developed countries ? What's the time frame there ?
What I'm saying is: we will get there eventually, we really need to, our survival as a race might well depend on it, but it's going to be one hell of a ride, it's going to take a while and it will occur at different paces in different places.
And that you need a combined approach in terms of policy as well: investments, direct grants or subsidies for large producers for new and existing renewable plants and transmission infrastructure / public-private partnership projects (depending on your countries economic preferences), incentivizing individuals to go green (ex: subsidies on solar panel purchases by homeowners in Germany, government backed buybacks of old cars, subsidies for electric cars), better environmental standards, incentives for green certifications and an actual independent third-party validation of the companies that receive/offer said certificates, increased power to government environmental agencies (don't overdue it, point is not to shrug Atlas through punitive measures, but to get them to work towards going green), tax-breaks for companies that can prove low-emission is an option, but would probably be a bureaucratic nightmare, carbon-tax and myriad of other tweaks and measures.
And the 'Free Market' doesn't like any of this. Politics and economics, not just the greatest engineering challenge we have undertaken to date.
Germany has had an interesting approach to solar, where they subsidized solar panels for homeowners. I think it is the smarter approach because you incentives individuals to go green, rather than trying to implement a top down solution.
And even so, we will need to keep power plants on call for redundancy and high load purposes.
There is a video about peak power usage in England which I found fascinating (though this is a rather unique case) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA
And, the defeatist attitude that no one takes it seriously, lets just do nothing and hope it works out is dangerous. As far as I can tell, the island nations will be the first affected, not to mention harsher weather, more storms, followed by massive shortages of food and water. I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to more wars than funding research and innovation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru_National_Sola...
I vote for politicians that take this seriously. I try to discuss the issue rationally and calmly with skeptical friends. I am trying to get involved with a project doing research on nuclear fusion. Beyond that, I try not to think about the fact that I could be one of the last human generations. Walking around every day feeling like the axe is over the neck of our species, and we are too divisive, petty, greedy and apathetic to do anything is just heart-rending. I truly envy people who don't believe (or care) this is real.
Wait, what? Is there any serious prediction of global warming causing collapsing civilization? How would that happen? Hordes of starving Americans abandoning their jobs and storming Canada? We've had big famines before and they were localized to the countries they happened in. Sea level rise won't swamp many places. We've got Syria wrecked by war and civilization is doing just fine in Europe despite refugees.
Population explosion used to be going to cause collapsing civilization. So was nuclear war. Global warming is the panic of our generation. Something else we haven't thought of yet will surely be gripping people's fear 2 generations down the line.
Civilization overall will grind on regardless, but you've got to admit that just the Syria refugees alone threw a massive kink in European politics. A lot of the countries that are predicted to suffer the most from climate change already are fairly poor. So the question is how much could climate change contribute to political unrest?
I agree that it does no good to talk about climate change in very strongly apocalyptic terms. That's part of the issue in the US -- the largely politicized hype tends to frame this issue in almost quasi religious terms. Either you believe in an Impending Apocalyptic Doom That Will Kill Us All, or you believe in A Vast Global Conspiracy Scam Designed To Enrich Crooked Elitist Climate Scientists. While I think there's plenty of evidence for concern, I do think the evidence points more towards a slow creeping collection of issues more than any sort of mass apocalypse.
For instance, the state where I live (Florida) is fairly vulnerable to sea level rises. What this means is that any infrastructure with a 50 to 100 year horizon has to now account for the potential that sea level could be much higher in the future if you want to really be safe (see http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/wp-content/upl...). I don't expect Florida to be wiped out by climate change related sea rise but consider how much of Florida civilization is by the sea, I certainly expect some pain points. For poorer countries with much less resources, the pain points might be a lot harsher.
I would be more worried about US & Europe - Germany is shutting down nuclear plants, opposition of nuclear is strong everywhere in Europe, US has been very reluctant to participate in climate deals and has a lot of climate-deniers in power.
China has built huge numbers of hydroelectric dams, in fact this region is almost certainly the unmatched world center for hydroelectricity. It is also one of if not the most ancient center of large scale hydro-engineering, due to Dujiangyan.[0]
16 years ago when I arrived, there were very few such dams, and all at smaller scale, so the pace of change has been great. (IMHO Beijing has done an OK / not terrible job of balancing these energy/"national security" requirements with ecological protection efforts.) Also, foreigners are often unaware that e-bikes are the dominant form of personal transport throughout China already. In terms of long distance transport, China's ever-expanding railways (eg. permafost-floating railway to Tibet!) carry more freight than any other country's network, and they are lending assistance to neighboring countries (Laos, Myanmar) on similar hydro-electric and rail infrastructure projects.
Given these observations, I find it ridiculous to suggest that China is not doing its part. However, I do question the wisdom of allowing so many of its citizens to buy cars.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujiangyan_irrigation_system
It'd help if our governments didn't kept screwing up their maintenance, but the news from Belgium and Spain just don't provide much confidence.
Furthermore, if people didn't oppose new reactors as vehemently as they do, there would be less pressure to continue lifetime of the old ones
And considering that the first reactor was designed to work until 2005, it's only natural that more parts will start to fail until 2025.
Furthermore, if people didn't oppose new reactors as vehemently as they do, there would be less pressure to continue lifetime of the old ones.
You're just reinforcing my point. If a government can be pressured into running a nuclear plant beyond its safety limits because it refuses to take the popularity hit of telling its citizens to choose an alternative, then that government can't be trusted to run any nuclear plant at all.
That's a good point, yes, you are right - the correct action is to shutdown the plant as planned - and gain trust to build new ones by executing that plan.
Just because 100 people are dropping candy wrappers at the park doesn't make it okay for you to dump a bag of garbage.
Presumably you'll stop driving, give up home air con and electricity, never fly anywhere, etc. Because those things aren't related to your GDP production.
Morally, it matters who makes things. The countries with high GDP who are responsible for the current extra CO2 in the atmosphere could always (you know, in theoretical fantasy-land) help out to make sure others produce as efficiently but reap the benefits. Instead of using the argument you make to pull up the living-standard ladder behind them.
CO2 emissions per capita(metric tons): US 16.4 - 1.6 India [0]
I see numbers like this, and I am surprised that in 2016, in the face of evidence and danger, we still have arguments like I will not do anything because you didn't do enough according to me. Let it all burn down.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It's not like American's are just sitting there burning coal for the fun of it. It's being used to make stuff.
> There is nothing we can do, as long China and India get a pass, 3.2 billion people in 2 country doing nothing.
This is what the OP said. I honestly don't get it, then why is India's (and China's) responsibility for climate change dragged in whenever the topic of climate change is brought up. Is it because, as you mentioned India has ~16 times less CO2 emissions (per capita, but still way less than US) and ~15 times less GDP?
Isn't there a fair responsibility to spearhead dealing with climate change problem when you are polluting more and have more resources to deal with the problem. While India and China, having their own problems are making efforts in this direction and US is still dealing with denial, conveniently.
Apart from a very few things (cement, steel, ammonia), producing things does not directly release any C02. What we need to do is stop burning fossil fuels to produce and consume energy. And that is already happening now. The biggest question is how fast can we make the transition and how much have we already fucked up.
You are right, the biggest question is how fast we can make the transition. In considering that question, you can't dismiss lifestyle changes (=current overproduction and overconsumption) as a tool a priori, and say that only options that don't affect lifestyle can be considered.
Consider the lifestyle changes done by a population during a war. A lot of the production and consumption today happens so that people have a workplace to go to, not because it's actually needed, as in a physical necessity.
(I am not sure what you mean by direct vs indirect emission or why it matters; but the primary purpose of reducing production would of course be to reduce energy use, because one is not able to switch over to green fast enough.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
We need to apply system level thinking to this problem, what is a strategy that will lead to zero (acceptable) emissions? We need to focus 100% on that strategy. I believe lifestyle changes based on moral arguments are a distraction due to the following reasons:
1. Its completely unrealistic to change behaviour at that scale
2. Even if successful the effect is only a minor delay, not an actual solution. Any gains due to consumption reductions is more than offset by growth.
3. Focusing on such things may be counterproductive. First by creating opposition to the entire climate change agenda, telling people to change their way of life makes them oppose it any way they can, including denying the problem completely. Secondly we need to stimulate demand for zero emission technologies, reducing consumption is counterproductive to that.
The point about lifestyle changes wasn't moral BTW, point is they should not be dismissed if they buy time, in trying to make exponentially growing green energy overtake the exponentially growing problem with CO2 emissions. You are asserting such changes are unrealistic, in which case it is of course no point in arguing for them. (But if you look at WW2 and the oil crisis in the 70s there were large-scale lifestyle changes being made, once the crisis is easily visible and understandable.)
It seems like we need everything that can be thrown at the problem (and probably even then hopes are low). Do you believe any focus on reducing (or rather, stopping further increases of) energy consumption is actually hurting a move to clean energy?
Firstly, the number cited was ~10 times the CO2 output per capita, not ~16.
Secondly, it doesn't follow that GDP production in a primarily high tech, services, IP based economy should track the CO2 behavior of a different sort of economy. It's entirely possible that we're producing far and away more GDP and wasting CO2 production needlessly. (In fact, out GDP multiplier is 1.6 times higher than our CO2 multiplier, hinting that the two are at least partially decoupled.)
Google tells me 6.7M people work in tech out of 127M people with a full time job. Roughly 4%? Sure, the GDP per worker is higher, but suffice to say most of the GDP output of the US isn't due to sexy new low CO2 jobs.
Edit: Tech is ~7% of US GDP.
Similarly, industry-volume-for-industry-volume, the US should be more efficient in production, meaning that it should use lower CO2 even with the same level of industry.
Which is what we see: the US does use less CO2 to produce more GDP, precisely contrary to what the argument supposes (that they're exactly correlated).
I'm not saying that the US does make poor use of its CO2 emissions, merely that the argument I was responding to failed to show either direction -- the argument it made was fundamentally unrelated.
Ed: To put math on it -- the US is somewhere between about as efficient as India and less efficient than India, depending on how exactly that 40% aligns with actual CO2 production and how closely that 15% aligns with CO2 production. In the case of the 40%, the US is within rounding of not wasteful. In the case of 50%, the US is somewhat less efficient and probably is wasting CO2 production.
The problem with your analysis is that a) it was simply wrong about the numbers, and had a 1:1 CO2:GDP relationship, when the numbers don't bear that out (and hence didn't account for my objection) and b) it supposes a fact about comparing CO2 production to GDP that isn't true, because the composition of economies varies substantially.
I wasn't saying you were wrong. I was saying your argument was bullshit.
That is a sale that cannot be made. It looks like a transfer of (mythical) carbon credits from the US to other nations.
Do you have any number to show that developed nations cannot put a dent on global warming? Whatever I could gather in 5 minutes points otherwise [1]. Even if you believe so, they can still help by: (i) Using their technical expertise and money in helping developing countries develop and deploy green technology. (ii) They are the consumers of most of the manufacturing output. They can set stricter rules on ecological impact of produced goods. They can set local laws that will not allow companies to buy from polluting industries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
>> We're all human. Oh, we all do our duty when there's no cost to it. Honor comes easy then. Yet sooner or later in every man's life there comes a day when it's not easy. A day when he must choose.
People like to talk about human driven climate change but do not want to pay the price of stopping it. I have seen a demonstration against climate change in Germany. There weren't any banner with the text "I have thrown out my plasma screen and sold my car! Please do the same!" This lot of talking but no doing annoys me like hell.
I'm in the fortunate position that this is possible for me since I live in the city, have proper public transport, can walk to the supermarket and in a pinch have multiple car-sharing offers to pick from.
Still, I believe that action against climate change cannot be effective at an individual level. It's the classic tragedy of the commons - what I save in energy, the neighbor next door easily blows through the tailpipe of his SUV. Foregoing a car is not possible for large chunks of the population, those that live in areas with less good public transport, for those that regular need to travel long distances etc. So action needs to come at at least federal level, probably even at a EU level: Public transport (and long distances railway) needs to be a real alternative to private car ownership in at least most places in germany. Clean energy needs to be supported, dirty energy not (we're still paying subsidies for a lignite mine in brandenburg). So yes, demonstrations make sense, because they support the policies at a level that actually makes sense.
I can't approve. You've made the choice. You've paid for this choice. People keep claiming that I'm lucky to live close from my work and not have children. I was a choice, and blaming it on chance undervalues the effort we make (i.e. paying twice the price for housing and/or only choosing among jobs within a certain radius of public transports).
> I believe action against climate change cannot be effective at an individual level
Yes. After travelling the world, I've seen that there will always be another Mythbusters show to waste cars, another person who'll have an unfair advantge on me by using air conditioning and long-distance travel, and another child born in the world who deserves the same amoung of energy luxury I've lived in.
Unless all countries pass a tax on petrol usage (I mean a huge tax which will make cars, meat and heating too expensive for 95% of the population), we're doomed.
I made the choice, certainly. I'm fortunate that my family is well off enough that I could afford my flat when I bought it - mostly with my own earned money, but with backing (and the safety net) provided by my parents. No bank would have given any loan to me with a freshly started company. By now, that I could get a loan for the flat on my own, I could not afford the price, since prices have risen steeply. So yeah, graced by my birth and the hard works of my parents I was in a position to make that choice. Others are not. I was fortunate - not lucky.
Are you in California by chance? Because you seem to ignore the fact that large part of already-inhabitated world is unlivable without heating (and, possibly, meat). Canada, Scandinavian countries, Russia, even then Germany and Poland, and as south as Bosnia.
It's as if you were thinking that warm countries becoming unlivable is tragedy, but cold countries becoming unlivable is desired.
I don't know, let's analyze the facts. Do they emit carbon and participate to the destruction of civilization in 2150? Which one is a crime against humanity, staying in cold countries or moving those populations?
Why do we fear carbon emissions? Because climate change will make swaths of planet uninhabitable and/or underwater, forcing people there to move.
Don't tell me your solution is preventively moving half billion people. Isn't that the result you wanted to avoid? What's the principial difference anyway between land becoming uninhabitably hot and land becoming uninhabitably cold (due to lack of heating)? You lose land either way and have to move people from it, worsening situation everywhere else.
Your solution is basically shooting yourself in the foot to avoid gangrene, and the amount of faith you have in such solution is disturbing. Your position is one big reason why climate change deniers exist: because you scare people with your misdirected zeal.
So we need to come back to emissions of 1990 (when they balanced natural absorption), emit a even less for a while, but with 7 billion people, everyone has to emit much less than in 1990.
To preempt any question... I still eat meat and I don't see how I could do without.
Personally I don't think "going back" is viable, we should probably be trying to engineer ourself a new climate. Better than we had pre-industrialization.
Our planet was pretty messed up even before humans came. It was going to snowball.
We had _some_ meat before petrol (when my parents were kids in the 1950s, sundays were special because they had meat, the 18th century won't have been better). And since the start of the industrial revolution, world population has increased about sevenfold.
For us colder northern countries, population didn't change that much since the coming of petrol. Maybe 1,5x increase in all. Definitely not sevenfold.
And I bet those colder northern countries import much of their meat these days, so it's not much use to make this about local matters only.
I believe it as well. Unfortunately on any other level you have players caring more about the own money / power than the well-being of the masses and players being deeply involved in the human driven climate change. Sometimes the latter pays the former. Sometimes?
It is a windmill fight.
EDIT: Okay, I checked the math and the square really doesn't weigh much at this ratio of sphere radius vs. sea level rise. I guess I should rely less on asymptotes in the real world ;)
Still, I remain largely unconcerned about sea level rises since even if it were to continue linearly, it's completely unproblematic except for some coastal/below sea regions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.sv...
Obviously, you're used to hearing similar words to what I said from those who don't know a thing. However, in order for you, yourself, to avoid become a hypocrite, you need to not make the mistake you accuse me of doing. So, perhaps you could present proof that what I shared is unsubstantiated. It's to your detriment to treat it badly without confirmation.
I am indeed interested in learning, but only if the thing to be learned is the truth. The burden of proof is not on me to disprove a collection of writings that boil down to "X and Y and Z are true because this guy said so".
So let me rephrase the original question, then: what sorts of things can an ordinary person such as myself independently observe to come to the same conclusions as your source material and thus "admit the truth" in which you seem to believe?
That there is something I learned from that man and is the answer to your question. The question now is whether you can understand, accept, and practice it.
If you can practice the above fact and you are able to ask real questions, you will realize every truth and obtain everything you want.
If you cannot, you will quickly change into a worse person as your decision there causes you to form a relationship in your consciousness with having discarded the most important opportunity in your life despite believing the lie that you did the right thing – and that relationship which comes to stay within your consciousness will continue to affect your life, causing you to repeat the same thing continuously.
By the way, everything he teaches indicates "don't believe what people say. don't believe your own thoughts. don't believe what you think you understood from me. confirm everything for yourself and don't believe it until after confirmation." He even says that very clearly in a few places.
Regardless of the fact that he was one man observing the things he observed, the source of his truth is facts, not his own words, thoughts, or ideas – which he never told others. If you checked before believing your thoughts about him, you would have been able to notice that.
As you said you are interested in truth, rather than wanting something else out of him like how to be successful, I will tell you one thing. If you have a lie in your consciousness – which you invariably believe without your realization – you will not be able to understand his words correctly at all. The reason is that things which lie latent in your consciousness combined with your ignorance of the matter will interfere with your ability to perceive the definitions of the words and cause you to reject what you didn't understand before you can confirm. So it's not possible to be able to learn things just by your own thoughts. It requires that you first abandon your existing knowledge and secondly confirm the facts.
So if you are actually interested (and you can confirm that you are interested instead of it being the narrative that you feel best telling yourself) and you put in a little effort you can confirm everything he says. He taught that when we tell others something that we haven't confirmed and which they can't realize/confirm, it becomes lying. And I challenge you to find even a single lie in anything he said. If you can I will give you everything of mine, including my head, if you would like, and I will not follow him anymore.
He traveled over 50 countries and met thousands upon thousands of extremely smart, top intellectuals, politicians, scientists, religious/spiritual leaders, etc. He confirmed his truth through his encounters with them and through their own knowledge and information. No one could answer his 10 questions but he was never unable to answer even a single person's questions. It would be a very silly mistake for you to think you know that there's just "one source" there.
Besides, I learned from him and I'm a great proof that I have obtained enough ability to not be defeated in debate by anyone alive today. Go ahead and ask me the hardest questions you want to – I will give you the correct, verifiable answer. Meanwhile I can ask you any number of questions and I know you won't be able to answer them. Like I said above, I am willing to bet my life. So I would advise you to re-check before you let yourself accept your initial assumption that you understood the situation correctly.
This "teaching" is dangerously similar to "Russell's teapot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).
> Meanwhile I can ask you any number of questions and I know you won't be able to answer them.
Unlike you, I do not pretend to have all of the answers to every question.
I don't "attempt to verify" this someone because there's nothing to verify, and because even if there was something to verify, there's very little tangible reason to do so compared to the hundreds of other extant (let alone extinct) spiritual belief systems in the world today.
So unless you can - in all your wisdom - tell me what I had for lunch today, I reckon our conversation here to not be worth continuing. Nothing against you specifically - I'm sure your belief in this particular prophet is sincere - but rather the notion that any sane person would follow a road that is clearly a dead-end.
Useless words and obviously self-contradictory. How do you know the benefit until you have verified the content? This is just getting silly...