How to Fathom Climate Change's Unfathomable Numbers
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The beauty of climate change is that it’ll be too late by then.
A perfect civilisation killer, designing a better one would be a tall order.
But it's really important to emphasize this: by the time things get bad enough to really notice, it will be far too late to stop them from getting much, much worse. Once the permafrost starts to melt and release it's methane, it's game over (and that process has already begun).
Sources?
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-o...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/driven-by-climate-chang...
"Under the surface, something else is active – and it is amplifying global warming. When the ground thaws, microbes begin feasting on organic matter in soils that have been frozen for millennia.
These microbes release carbon dioxide and methane, potent greenhouse gases. As those gases escape into the atmosphere, they further warm the climate, creating a feedback loop: Warmer temperatures thaw more soil, releasing more organic material for microbes to feast on and produce more greenhouse gases."
They're actually the least potent. They have GWPs of 1 and 20, respectively. Meanwhile Nitrous Oxide has 300 and CFCs have above 5000.
> they further warm the climate, creating a feedback loop
Possibly creating a feedback loop according to limited computer models focusing strictly on local conditions and explicitly ignoring global ones.
Doesn't much matter when we are releasing them by the gigaton.
> Possibly creating a feedback loop according to limited computer models focusing strictly on local conditions and explicitly ignoring global ones.
You don't need computer models to see that warming -> melting permafrost -> more methane -> more warming -> more melting permafrost -> more methane...
Are the arctic soils expected to release that amount?
> You don't need computer models to see that warming -> melting permafrost -> more methane -> more warming -> more melting permafrost -> more methane...
So, you don't see the need for any sort of scientific method, particularly when engaging in planet scale engineering? It's the same as the article, attempting to find the correct "emotional plea" in lieu of any actual work.
Another reference:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ticking-timebomb-s...
Hell of a qualification. The problem with these one-liner responses is that the system is obviously complicated. There is not an infinite source of methane beneath the permafrost, how much is there really? How much is really going to be released? What other feedback loops need to be invoked besides simple temperature rise? I'm not an idiot nor am I in perpetual doubt of the science. Instead I think good arguments need to be made and I think there you are lacking.
I'm familiar with the calthrate gun hypothesis and its implication in this thread but I'm also familiar with the nuclear winter hypothesis and its late subsequent debunking but prior to that its impact on national policy during the cold war.
The only way to really answer that to the satisfaction of every possible skeptic is to release it all. But that is a mighty risky experiment.
When you play Russian roulette, your odds of survival on the first round are pretty good, exactly 5 in 6. That doesn't mean playing Russian roulette is wise even for one round.
When playing russian roulette with a glock the chances of death are 1/1 in an idealized case. If the first round is a blank deposited by a would be saboteur then chances of death are 0/1 unless the percussion drops the first goer concussed. There are so many more non-linearities to discuss. But somehow you believe this obviously leads to doom and really offer no explanation for a path to redemption.
It is a fallacy to build skepticism opposed to poor argumentation so depending on your intentions you might cease.
Yes, that is the reason Russian roulette is played with a revolver and not a Glock.
> ... your poor arguments.
You might want to make an effort to actually understand the argument before you pass judgement, because you have very clearly missed the point.
As a side note, the CEO of Macy’s (Jeff Genette) said in one interview that his daughter refuses to buy new pants. Only second hand. That’s not the lifestyle I would imagine when thinking about the daughter of the CEO of a store worth multiple billions headquartered in New York.
What about all the potential New Yorks that are currently too cold to live in but could be thriving cities if they were just warmer?
More humans die every year of cold than of heat. Just due to the asymmetry of the numbers, there's a good chance that global temp increases will actually save lives, a fact that is rarely mentioned by articles like this.
It does mean that the poles warm more than the tropics--in other words, extreme cold decreases by more than extreme heat increases.
> Weather will just become more extreme
There is no data showing that extreme weather events are becoming more common with climate change. The cost of such events is going up, but that's because there is a lot more valuable property in areas where the events happen.
> there is a good chance that more people will die from harsher winters too.
No, there isn't. There is no data showing this and no models predict it.
That’s easy: those New Yorks will release hundreds of years worth of greenhouse gases when they plow the newly ice-free soil around them.
The result in the end is simple: It will be cheaper in the long run to mitigate the cause than the effects.
Turns out all it took to solve food production was inventing a process to extra Nitrogen from the air.
Even scientists are notoriously bad at predicting future tech breakthroughs.
What makes you think that?
I learnt something
Pretty common sense stuff. Personally, I think we need to have a lot more "climate change art". Nothing has driven the reality of how catastrophic climate change will be for me quite like the opening chapter of The Ministry of the Future - https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...
Climate change had never felt so real to me.
1. PG short story The Tamarisk Hunter audio and text. What if federalism broke down and California paid a water bounty to keep the Colorado river flowing to CA. https://escapepod.org/2013/02/21/ep384-the-tamarisk-hunter/ canonical author's link: https://windupstories.com/books/pump-six-and-other-stories/t...
2. PG novel The Water Knife expanding on The Tamarisk Hunter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23209924-the-water-knife...
3. KSR novel New York 2140. What if sea rise into the cities led to a financial market on real estate involving day trading on those values? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29570143-new-york-2140?r...
4. KSR novel Ministry for the Future. What if the UN had to put together a team to keep the earth habitable as heatwaves started causing mass casualty events particularly in the subcontinent? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-fo...