derdev789 wrote:
It’s my opinion and that of many scientists that human contribution to global warming is minimal at best. The earth itself produced toxic gases on a far larger scale than we as humans can hope to match. If this wasn’t the case we would still be in the ice age, as a global warming wouldn’t have melted the enlarged polar ice caps. The earths temperature flows through a several thousand year long cycle, we are just catching the hot part of the cycle. Think of it like the seasons, during certain parts of the year it’s really hot, and other parts of the year it’s cold, humans can change these conditions only so much. The earth is going into a global “summer”, personally I think this is a good thing, burning and hallowing out a lot of the useless crap on this planet.
Here’s a good point:
Carbon Dioxide has increased at something like 30% since 1750 and that is faster then any time in the last 20,000 years. The concentration that it’s at today is the highest it’s been in about 450,000 years.
Obviously that’s going to lead to warmer temperatures; but as for the question of whether or not that increase in CO2 is due to a human influence....
Well, 1750 just happens to be right at the beginning of the industrial revolution, funny coincidence eh? And like you said...the Earth goes through long-term cycles; thousands of years. So how come this big increase is only in a few hundred? In Earth terms that is a very short time for that kind of chemical change in the atmosphere.
Bingo. Treeplanter hit the nail on the head.
Of course the scientists have factored in planetary cycles; they aren’t stupid. The point is, they don’t explain why we’ve got such an extreme rate of warming.
On the contrary; our current 'position' within natural cycles means that any effect of warming is currently dampened. After 2009, the effects will greatly increase.
Also, you mention the last Ice Age, and the fact that we’re warming because of it. Not true. We’ve already reached a peak in the interglacial period, and we should be sliding back into an Ice Age.
That suggests that the warming we’re experiencing is extreme.
The first hydrogen powered car was released a while ago, but it is 500,000 bucks (american dollars) But once, more models from other companies are relesed, prices should go down. Once that happens, Global Warming might hault, or at least slow down.
DrumIntoTheNight wrote:
Hydrogen is unimaginably impractical, tbh.
It may seem like it, but we are really working on Hydrogen power. It is cheap, and easy. The only problem is to replace the gas stations with hydrogen stations, and to get hydrogen power cars at a cheaper price (500,000 bucks per car). I don’t know if it has been released yet, but if it would soon, other car companies will make more, and other hydrogen power cars will drop in price.
Dude, Hydrogen has some massive issues that need to be solved before it’s anywhere near viable as a fuel source. The biggest problem is it’s low energy density for it’s weight. Plus, you have to actually make Hydrogen gas, which is a pain in the ass to transport anywhere (needs to be cooled to 10 Kelvin) and the energy costs attributed to it’s extraction mean it’s a less than green energy source.
Dude, Hydrogen has some massive issues that need to be solved before it’s anywhere near viable as a fuel source. The biggest problem is it’s low energy density for it’s weight. Plus, you have to actually make Hydrogen gas, which is a pain in the ass to transport anywhere (needs to be cooled to 10 Kelvin) and the energy costs attributed to it’s extraction mean it’s a less than green energy source.
What I mean by cheap and easy is this: Instead of getting gas for cars, getting hydrogen will be a hell of a lot cheaper, because it can be made easily. I meant easy as in producing the gas.
petrofsky wrote:
DrumIntoTheNight, can you answer these qs? You would probably know the answers.
1. How hot will the earth get in global warming?
2. Will the warming ever stop?
3. Exactly, how “fucked” are we?
Mmm, I know I’m not DrumIntoThe Night, and he can provide you with stats if he wants (sorry..I’m assuming a “he”....
but I’d like to answer your questions anyway
those questions are the stuff that is most disputed. It’s really hard to figure out the future, especially when it comes to climate.
I think the scary part is that even if the entire human population stopped producing any amount of CO2 emissions, the earth would still continue to warm for years. -That’s how much crap we’ve got stored up there.
So.....my answers to those are:
1) depends on what kind of changes we make (good or bad) but you can expect a steady increase of at least 2 degrees warmer every 50 years (global average temperature...and yes, that is a big increase).
2)Er..well...I suppose it could eventually. But that could be a very very very long time (I don’t remember what the leading research has predicted on that).
3)Ha. Well, that’s a matter of opinion really. I kind of believe that in general the world is fucked right over...we are literally not living in a way that will ensure the survival of the human species...at least not in the way “westerners” currently live. Every part of the environment is fucked in someway and it’s pretty much only getting worse. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
However, there’s always hope (there are some absolutely amazing people out there) and I’d rather try to live in a way that meets my values and believes and try to make the world a better place as I would see it....or you can go for the whole head-in-the-sand approach; that works too
Oh...and if you’re wondering about the kind of “dooms-day” stuff that some global warming advocates preach about...I don’t really go for it. Yes sea levels are rising, and yes we are in for an increase of more frequent and more powerful storms and unpredictable weather...but it’s not The Day After Tomorrow stuff. That’s not to minimize the negative impacts that are happening...just talk to any African experiencing the increased flooding in some of the regions on that continent.
It sucks, and it is a big deal, but my advice is not to really give to much to extremists on either side (aka = global warming doesn’t exist vs. the world could end any day). Better yet, continue to look into the issue yourself and stay informed.
Oh man, do I always have to be so long-winded in these responses? Oh well!
petrofsky wrote:
DrumIntoTheNight, can you answer these qs? You would probably know the answers.
1. How hot will the earth get in global warming?
2. Will the warming ever stop?
3. Exactly, how “fucked” are we?
Well, it’s all up for debate, and I’m not exactly a world leading Climatologist. However, from what I’ve read over the years, the answers are pretty bleak.
How hot will we get?
The IPCC projects a 90% chance of a rise between 2 and 6.2 degrees by 2080. However, the IPCC has been, frankly, criminally ignorant of several key features of Climate Change, and their projections ignore completely all the positive (and the few negative) feedback loops that the earth commands. Once you factor in these features of the climate, we’re looking at a rise of at least 5 degrees by 2080. And I know for a fact that in 2005, the three main projections put forward at the Conference on Dangerous Climate Change, held at the Hadley Climate Centre, Exeter, all predicted a rise of 12 degrees celsius.
Problem is, these positive feedback loops are so prolific, they can cause these scales of warming in less than 3 years. They’ve done so before. It’s all a matter of crossing that threshold.
treeplanter wrote:
I think the scary part is that even if the entire human population stopped producing any amount of CO2 emissions, the earth would still continue to warm for years
Treeplanter hit the nail on the head again. The warming we’re experiencing is the by-product of carbon emissions from 50 years ago. Emissions have at least doubled in that time, so that’s a scary fucking thought.
Equally, the planet won’t reach a state of thermal equilibrium until the deep seas warm up, and this could take 40 or 50 years. So even if we stopped all emissions now, we’re still boned.
Will the warming ever stop?
There’s a tricky one. The earth has a way of regulating itself so that extreme warming is always counteracted by a negative feedback loop, and the main player in this appears to be the Atlantic Conveyor. It seems reasonably likely that a warming of 2 degrees will be enough to destabilise the Greenland Ice Sheet, shut down the conveyor and cool the planet. There are other feedbacks aswell that I forget the name of (there’s only a couple, disturbingly, compared with the dozens of positive feedbacks), which could all kick in and help reduce the temperature.
There is however a danger that the warming will continue indefinately. The feedbacks that, for instance, helped nullify the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum may not exist anymore, since the planet is so vastly different. For one thing, it’s far cooler than it was then (the planet’s been cooling since time began), and it might take a warming of 10-15 degrees to kick these systems back in again. There’s also the danger that anthropogenic interaction has damaged or destroyed these negative feedbacks (eg, one of the main negative feedbacks was the Oil, Coal and Gas fields - natures way of slowly removing carbon from the atmosphere/soil. 65 million years of carbon store we’ve managed to release in 150 years...).
It’s very, very hard to tell to be honest. My feeling is that, unless some of the most extreme positive feedback loops kicked in at once, we’d cool down again after a very, very long time. There’s another train of thought that says we might experience run away warming, and then a sudden shift to cold in the space of around 50-100 years. To be honest, no-one really knows. However, if warming got completely out of hand, we lost the ice caps, the thermokarst lakes all boiled, the Amazon turned to desert and the methane clathrates released, we genuinely could reach a point of no return. Hence the Metastable system.
How fucked are we?
I hate doomsday science as much as anyone else. There’s thousands of programmes on TV that say we’re all going to die if some unknown species of plankton in the Red Sea develops a cold. And most of it is crap.
But I genuinely think that Climate Change will bring about the end of civilisation in the next 50 years, and may even make the world uninhabitable.
The economic implications are insane. I’m doing a degree in Renewable Energy, and as such I study how human beings need to adapt to a world without oil. And it frankly can’t be done. I know that hasn’t got much to do with Climate Change, but Peak Oil is going to be an enourmous issue in 20 years and will dictate our response to Climate Change.
The single biggest issue with Climate Change is growing enough food to feed the world. Last year was the first time in 20 years that there actually wasn’t enough food on earth to feed everyone. And it’ll become a regular occurence.
The flooding, hurricanes, storms, etc, all take second place to the food issue, IMHO.
If you accept that the planet will experience run away Climate Change, then we’re talking about the sea and air turning acid, and 90% of life on earth being wiped out. It’s happened before.
So yeah, even with minor Climate Change, I think our lifestyle is utterly unsustainable.
Aaaanyway. If you’ve got an hour or so to trawl through some research, and you want to know more about why I came to these conclusions, I suggest you Google a few things;
Peak Oil
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Permian-Triassic Extinction Event
Ice Albedo Effect
Carbon Storage in the Amazon Rainforest
Desertification in the Amazon Rainforest
Thermokarst Lakes
And the truely scary one, Methane Clathrates.
petrofsky wrote:
DrumIntoTheNight, can you answer these qs? You would probably know the answers.
1. How hot will the earth get in global warming?
2. Will the warming ever stop?
3. Exactly, how “fucked” are we?
Well, it’s all up for debate, and I’m not exactly a world leading Climatologist. However, from what I’ve read over the years, the answers are pretty bleak.
How hot will we get?
The IPCC projects a 90% chance of a rise between 2 and 6.2 degrees by 2080. However, the IPCC has been, frankly, criminally ignorant of several key features of Climate Change, and their projections ignore completely all the positive (and the few negative) feedback loops that the earth commands. Once you factor in these features of the climate, we’re looking at a rise of at least 5 degrees by 2080. And I know for a fact that in 2005, the three main projections put forward at the Conference on Dangerous Climate Change, held at the Hadley Climate Centre, Exeter, all predicted a rise of 12 degrees celsius.
Problem is, these positive feedback loops are so prolific, they can cause these scales of warming in less than 3 years. They’ve done so before. It’s all a matter of crossing that threshold.
treeplanter wrote:
I think the scary part is that even if the entire human population stopped producing any amount of CO2 emissions, the earth would still continue to warm for years
Treeplanter hit the nail on the head again. The warming we’re experiencing is the by-product of carbon emissions from 50 years ago. Emissions have at least doubled in that time, so that’s a scary fucking thought.
Equally, the planet won’t reach a state of thermal equilibrium until the deep seas warm up, and this could take 40 or 50 years. So even if we stopped all emissions now, we’re still boned.
Will the warming ever stop?
There’s a tricky one. The earth has a way of regulating itself so that extreme warming is always counteracted by a negative feedback loop, and the main player in this appears to be the Atlantic Conveyor. It seems reasonably likely that a warming of 2 degrees will be enough to destabilise the Greenland Ice Sheet, shut down the conveyor and cool the planet. There are other feedbacks aswell that I forget the name of (there’s only a couple, disturbingly, compared with the dozens of positive feedbacks), which could all kick in and help reduce the temperature.
There is however a danger that the warming will continue indefinately. The feedbacks that, for instance, helped nullify the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum may not exist anymore, since the planet is so vastly different. For one thing, it’s far cooler than it was then (the planet’s been cooling since time began), and it might take a warming of 10-15 degrees to kick these systems back in again. There’s also the danger that anthropogenic interaction has damaged or destroyed these negative feedbacks (eg, one of the main negative feedbacks was the Oil, Coal and Gas fields - natures way of slowly removing carbon from the atmosphere/soil. 65 million years of carbon store we’ve managed to release in 150 years...).
It’s very, very hard to tell to be honest. My feeling is that, unless some of the most extreme positive feedback loops kicked in at once, we’d cool down again after a very, very long time. There’s another train of thought that says we might experience run away warming, and then a sudden shift to cold in the space of around 50-100 years. To be honest, no-one really knows. However, if warming got completely out of hand, we lost the ice caps, the thermokarst lakes all boiled, the Amazon turned to desert and the methane clathrates released, we genuinely could reach a point of no return. Hence the Metastable system.
How fucked are we?
I hate doomsday science as much as anyone else. There’s thousands of programmes on TV that say we’re all going to die if some unknown species of plankton in the Red Sea develops a cold. And most of it is crap.
But I genuinely think that Climate Change will bring about the end of civilisation in the next 50 years, and may even make the world uninhabitable.
The economic implications are insane. I’m doing a degree in Renewable Energy, and as such I study how human beings need to adapt to a world without oil. And it frankly can’t be done. I know that hasn’t got much to do with Climate Change, but Peak Oil is going to be an enourmous issue in 20 years and will dictate our response to Climate Change.
The single biggest issue with Climate Change is growing enough food to feed the world. Last year was the first time in 20 years that there actually wasn’t enough food on earth to feed everyone. And it’ll become a regular occurence.
The flooding, hurricanes, storms, etc, all take second place to the food issue, IMHO.
If you accept that the planet will experience run away Climate Change, then we’re talking about the sea and air turning acid, and 90% of life on earth being wiped out. It’s happened before.
So yeah, even with minor Climate Change, I think our lifestyle is utterly unsustainable.
Aaaanyway. If you’ve got an hour or so to trawl through some research, and you want to know more about why I came to these conclusions, I suggest you Google a few things;
Peak Oil
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Permian-Triassic Extinction Event
Ice Albedo Effect
Carbon Storage in the Amazon Rainforest
Desertification in the Amazon Rainforest
Thermokarst Lakes
And the truely scary one, Methane Clathrates.
Happy reading =]
So the human race will be extinct within 50 years? I would think that our air conditionaing would help, or we would come up with some way to keep the humans safe.
So the human race will be extinct within 50 years? I would think that our air conditionaing would help, or we would come up with some way to keep the humans safe.
Problem is even if we find some way to withstand the temperature, what will we do for food if plant and animal life pretty much dies out? I’m not saying we couldn’t find a way to adapt, but the challenges would be extreme.
So the human race will be extinct within 50 years? I would think that our air conditionaing would help, or we would come up with some way to keep the humans safe.
Problem is even if we find some way to withstand the temperature, what will we do for food if plant and animal life pretty much dies out? I’m not saying we couldn’t find a way to adapt, but the challenges would be extreme.
We could plant plants and raise animals indoors with artificial light.
treeplanter wrote:
I think the scary part is that even if the entire human population stopped producing any amount of CO2 emissions, the earth would still continue to warm for years
Treeplanter hit the nail on the head again. The warming we’re experiencing is the by-product of carbon emissions from 50 years ago. Emissions have at least doubled in that time, so that’s a scary fucking thought.
Oh, that poor nail, I’m really laying into it
DrumIntoTheNight wrote:
Peak Oil
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Permian-Triassic Extinction Event
Ice Albedo Effect
Carbon Storage in the Amazon Rainforest
Desertification in the Amazon Rainforest
Thermokarst Lakes
And the truely scary one, Methane Clathrates.
Happy reading =]
I had wanted to mention the oil crisis as well; it seems a little crazy to me how certain the end of oil is and yet how resilient we seem to accept the acual implications of that.
Anyway, I thought I might mention a perhaps less-daunting book (great references Drum, but other then “Peak Oil” the other books I believe would be a bit too technical for most of us; but I don’t really know that since I haven’t read any of them).
The Long Emergency is supposed to be a good read (I admit..I haven’t read it yet...started to but my university library doesn’t carry it)
Anyway, good conversation guys Although it has strayed away from the original intent which was mitigation options.
So the human race will be extinct within 50 years? I would think that our air conditionaing would help, or we would come up with some way to keep the humans safe.
Problem is even if we find some way to withstand the temperature, what will we do for food if plant and animal life pretty much dies out? I’m not saying we couldn’t find a way to adapt, but the challenges would be extreme.
We could plant plants and raise animals indoors with artificial light.
Actually, one of the most fantastic ideas I’ve heard so far is to create skyscrapers in which we grow our food hydroponically. No fertilizer (made from oil...), takes up vastly less space than farmland which can be reclaimed by nature, and the food can be grow right in the heart of the city; reducing CO2 from transport. In fact, it prevents there ever being bare soil during the process, which also limits CO2 emissions.
That’s an amazing idea, but I don’t know how far the idea is going.
i watched the vid al gore made about global warming and with al the rvidence he stated i pity those who deont beleive in global warming. and the goverment is thinking of making synthetic trees or somethin glike that.
What an interesting topic...
I don’t think anyone rejects the fact that the earth is warming up. The question is, what’s causing it. In my opinion, it is mostly humans which are causing it. However, it is NOT as big as most people make it out to sound. First of all, we are not going to die from Global Warming, we are going to die a different way (I would ellabrate on that, but I don’t want to get off-topic). Does that mean we shouldn’t do anything about it? Of course not. I don’t want to be closed minded in anyway, but I don’t think Global Warming is that big of a deal. Besides, if we are forced to ride bikes instead of driving cars, it would be better for us.
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