Global Warming

Pogue Mahone

Clarkson the Helicopter Dad.
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Don't think there's a thread about this already but seeing as we're all shitting ourselves about Trump kicking of WWIII we might as discuss an even more permanent threat to civilisation.

Was just reading this article this morning and some of the facts and figures are genuinely terrifying. I'm sure we've all read that 2016 has been the hottest year ever but did anyone know that the temperatures over the Arctic Ocean are currently 20C warmer than normal? 20 fecking degrees!

We're all doomed, aren't we?

Or do any of you think the fears are being exagerrated?

*cracks knuckles and holds hands above keyboard*
 
I'm guessing deniers have stopped going on about the "pause" now?
 
The more I read about it, the more I get convinced that it might already be too late, unless drastic things are done. And it looks probable (now more than ever, after Drumpf won), that nothing will be done.

We're fecked!
 
Two extremely relevant XKCDs (1) (2)

We need a gloabal solution
 
The deniers are few are far between these days, the only problem is like 80% of them are in charge of America.

I noticed even the Daily Mail has cooled its stance somewhat.

We're fecked though. Its taken us 20 years to get to this point when we could've been doing something about it.
 
When Florida voted for Trump, I died a little inside. Half of them will be swimming to the polling stations in the not too distant future. UNtil more people accept that it's happening and it's our fault, we're in trouble.

I think watching Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson argue about it on American news shows and the like shows how we're banging our heads against a brick wall. It's rare to see either men frustrated when dicussing science, but when they can be utterly exasperated when discussing climate change with deniers.

It's the whole "I don't believe the science/facts" thing that gets me the most. Just because you can find one or two scientists that don't agree with it, it doesn't mean the science isn't conclusive.
 
We inhabited this planet, it isn't our property and it isn't obliged to provide habitable conditions forever. It was inhabitable for large parts of it's life-cycle and would be inhabitable again, we took advantage of the period in the middle and that's about as far as it goes. Not that we aren't going to discover more of these (I doubt forcibly shifting a planet to a star's Goldilocks zone yet is a possibility) but as far as this planet's timeline goes, we were never meant to be anything more than a mere footnote.

M1U7-Fig7.9-TimelineOfLife.png

Just hope this can sustain long enough and give us enough time to dump it and relocate, which it should.
 
As I'm sure I've waffled on about before... humans just haven't been designed to think long term enough to deal with it. Evolution cannot account for every eventuality and this is a flaw that is going to be very difficult to override.

I doubt any change happens before the results are so severe that they are impossible for the layman to miss. At which point any changes made will be unable to stop decades of further drastic changes and a lot more before any correction can be made.

My sister studies climate science. She lost her shit for a while and would regularly just suddenly lose the ability to cope, stop whatever she was doing, and just say 'we're fecked'. She subsequently accepted she can't do much to help and ran away to live a happy hippy existence in a yurt in Devon (whilst continuing to study but in a more distanced fashion).
 
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Revan said:
The more I read about it, the more I get convinced that it might already be too late, unless drastic things are done. And it looks probable (now more than ever, after Drumpf won), that nothing will be done.

We're fecked!
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Effectively it is already too late because we are not going to take that drastic action. It is near impossible.
 
Aldo said:
We inhabited this planet, it isn't our property and it isn't obliged to provide habitable conditions forever. It was inhabitable for large parts of it's life-cycle and would be inhabitable again, we took advantage of the period in the middle and that's about as far as it goes. Not that we aren't going to discover more of these (I doubt forcibly shifting a planet to a star's Goldilocks zone yet is a possibility) but as far as this planet's timeline goes, we were never meant to be anything more than a mere footnote.

M1U7-Fig7.9-TimelineOfLife.png

Just hope this can sustain long enough and give us enough time to dump it and relocate, which it should.
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We aren't going to be a footnote, we're going to be the cause of death.
 
Ubik said:
We aren't going to be a footnote, we're going to be the cause of death.
Click to expand...

I reckon the planet will recover just fine when we finally manage to end ourselves, which by the looks of it won't be much longer now
 
Honestly I'm more worried that Trump will kick the climate commitments the US has actually signed to the curb than him kicking off WWIII.

Shockingly enough a good friend of mine actually thinks that climate change is the only thing that Trump is actually right on and that it's basically not man made and there is nothing we can do about it anyways. :eek::(
 
Adebesi said:
20 degrees?

Shit.
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Scary, huh?

meanT_2016.png


Not only 20C above normal but in an upward trend!

Sea temperature also much hotter than normal.
Mark Serreze, who heads the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., agrees that something odd is going on. Not only are air temperatures unusually warm, but water temperatures are as well. “There are some areas in the Arctic Ocean that are as much as 25 degrees Fahrenheit above average now,” Serreze said. “It’s pretty crazy.” What’s happening, he explains, is sort of a “double whammy.” On the one hand, there is a “very warm underlying ocean” due to the lack of sea ice forming above it. But, at the same time, kinks in the jet stream have allowed warm air to flow northward and frigid Arctic air to descend over Siberia“ The sea ice is at a record low right now, for this time of year, that’s one thing,” Serreze said. “And why it’s so low — again, there’s so much heat in the upper ocean in these ice-free areas, the ice just can’t form right now. The ocean’s just got to get rid of this heat somehow, and it’s having a hard time doing so.”
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:(
 
I think we will crack alternative energy (nuclear fusion my bet) within the next 10 years and human influence will be reduced. Whether it will be too late by then is another matter.
 
I can't get in to consoling myself that the world will be better once we're gone.

I'm quite human oriented. I'm vegetarian, cause animals shouldn't suffer blah blah blah, but that's as far as I go when it comes to viewing our responsibilities to other species. I really care a lot more about people and I'm not sure I care what happens once we're gone.
 
Ubik said:
If it goes runaway, the planet. At the very least, millions of people.
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What exactly is the definition of the death of a planet?
You are confusing the death of a particular life-form and the death of the planet.
Life (as we know it) will not exist on Earth beyond a particular point, and existence of life isn't in any way gonna effect the existence of the planet.
As far as our efforts go, we can at best prolong our existence here by a negligible margin, nothing more.
 
Just read the article.

Yes, its scary.

The bottom line is, even if everyone actually delivered on the commitments they made in Paris, it is nowhere near enough. Its like there's the mother of all tsunamis coming and people are piling up sandbags on the beach.

What we have now is the world's second biggest polluter deciding we need that sand to build a massive coal-fired power station.

I dont want to sound complacent but I really feel like we are past the point of no return with this anyway. Of course what we do now determines the extremity of the changes that are coming. But we are going to have to get used to some really, really extreme consequences, in terms of drought and desertification in some places, rising sea levels and flooding in others, scarcity and resulting wars... all sorts of shit. Its going to get really ugly.
 
Aldo said:
What exactly is the definition of the death of a planet?
You are confusing the death of a particular life-form and the death of the planet.
Life (as we know it) will not exist on Earth beyond a particular point, and existence of life isn't in any way gonna effect the existence of the planet.
As far as our efforts go, we can at best prolong our existence here by a negligible margin, nothing more.
Click to expand...
Great, so your contribution is that there will be a husk of rock in space that we once called Earth and we should accept that. Wonderful.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
I can't get in to consoling myself that the world will be better once we're gone.

I'm quite human oriented. I'm vegetarian, cause animals shouldn't suffer blah blah blah, but that's as far as I go when it comes to viewing our responsibilities to other species. I really care a lot more about people and I'm not sure I care what happens once we're gone.
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And it should be that way. Once we depart, whether it is due to extinction or rehabilitation, there's no reason whatsoever to give a flying feck about what happens to Earth.
Ubik said:
Great, so your contribution is that there will be a husk of rock in space that we once called Earth and we should accept that. Wonderful.
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It's not my contribution, it is what it is. It's nice to think we can do something about that, but the facts say otherwise.
 
we have only got 1000 years left anyway so lets all get shit faced and spend all our money on hookers
 
Aldo said:
What exactly is the definition of the death of a planet?
You are confusing the death of a particular life-form and the death of the planet.
Life (as we know it) will not exist on Earth beyond a particular point, and existence of life isn't in any way gonna effect the existence of the planet.
As far as our efforts go, we can at best prolong our existence here by a negligible margin, nothing more.
Click to expand...
I saw a documentary a while ago that said - I think, I am going from memory here - Venus used to be quite like Earth, in terms of climate. But a buildup of greenhouse gasses lead it to becoming the hottest planet in the solar system.

I just googled it and the first thing that came up was this. http://www.universetoday.com/22577/venus-greenhouse-effect/

One way of looking at this is it shows this can happen anyway, without human intervention. But that obviously does not mean we are not accelerating the process in this case. Neither does it mean it would necessarily have happened to Earth anyway, regardless (the idea that it was already happening, but we are speeding things up).

But it does show you what "the death of a planet" might mean. Earth may end up looking like Venus. Hard to imagine much life thriving in that kind of environment.
 
We need to look into launching particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the suns rays and algae into the ocean to absorb CO2..

The problem is, most countries don't care about global warming at all..

Russia - Why would they care about Global Warming? On a selfish level, it won't affect them very much and may actually make the environment nicer (locally)

China - Global Warming will effect them a lot more, but they need to not care about it to turn into 1st world country. This is also a country where 25% of their farmland is too polluted to grow crops (citation needed*).

USA - No appetite for any of this stuff.

*Yes I did write that
 
rcoobc said:
We need to look into launching particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the suns rays and algae into the ocean to absorb CO2.
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I saw something about this. I think it was in The Economist. Could be promising. No doubt there would be some unforeseen consequences that would cause some other problem, but we are definitely at the stage where we need to start thinking of these kinds of solutions. And if we get new problems down the line, we cross that bridge when we come to it.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Effectively it is already too late because we are not going to take that drastic action. It is near impossible.
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Unfortunately yes. It is why I support nuclear energy, despite its unpredictability (like in Japan a few years ago, or in Ukraine a few decades ago), it is still better than the fossil energy in long term.

We could really hope that Elon Musk manages quite fast to make efficient and economic solar panels. But the problem is that even if we completely stop using fossil energy in 2-3 decades, it might already be too late. Heck, it is possible that even if we stop it today, it might be too late.
 
Adebesi said:
I saw a documentary a while ago that said - I think, I am going from memory here - Venus used to be quite like Earth, in terms of climate. But a buildup of greenhouse gasses lead it to becoming the hottest planet in the solar system.

I just googled it and the first thing that came up was this. http://www.universetoday.com/22577/venus-greenhouse-effect/

One way of looking at this is it shows this can happen anyway, without human intention. But that obviously does not mean we are not accelerating the process in this case. Neither does it mean it would necessarily have happened to Earth anyway, regardless (the idea that it was already happening, but we are speeding things up).

But it does show you what "the death of a planet" might mean. Earth may end up looking like Venus. Hard to imagine much life thriving in that kind of environment.
Click to expand...
Earth won't end up looking like Venus. At least, not in the next 1000 years. We're talking, in the next 100 years, about doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to levels in the 1600s. Venus had a very different fate.

From wikipedia:
On the Earth, the IPCC states that "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities."[3]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environment
 
Adebesi said:
But it does show you what "the death of a planet" might mean. Earth may end up looking like Venus. Hard to imagine much life thriving in that kind of environment.
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And there's nothing to say that life cannot occur in Venus (or Mars) as both lie inside the Goldilocks zone of the Sun. It obviously will not be life as we know it, but life that is suitable to those conditions of course cannot be ruled out.

Every such discussion often gets held back due to anthropocentric views.
 
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