Climate Change Thread

[Husar]

I like how they use "Before Christ Excelsior" and "Christian Era" for the timeline.

As for stopping emissions now causing issues, so will not stopping them. If the earth warms by about 4°C, large parts become uninhabitable and the people from there will have to go somewhere. Then we will get either far more immigrants than we already have or we will have to mass-murder them to prevent them from coming here...

There is another "small" issue with the warming scenario in that it will become uncontrollable beyond a certain point as the permafrost begins to melt and sets free enormous amounts of stored methane, which is a 17 times stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, add to that the methane under arctic ice the limited ability of warm water to store CO2, the increase of water in the air, which also has a greenhouse effect...
Surely it may reverse after a few thousand years, but what do we do until then?

I also agree that the number of humans overall is an issue. A lot of people say the planet can sustain even a lot more, but that argument forgets that they all also want to consume more and more... http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712

That's right, if all our current humans lived like Americans, we'd need a little over 4 earths to sustain that consumption ressource-wise...
Germany is somewhere close to France in the region of 2.5 earths, but then again I've criticized Europe plenty for taking away other peoples' resources.
And this probably doesn't even account for the use of resources that will end one day.

Keep in mind that oil for example is also a vital ingredient for many medications, then consider that they already found virii below the ice or in the permafrost that weren't around for some 20000 years or so, virii we might be almost helpless against...
Is it really clever to burn such a resource away within a few years just to not have to sit next to strangers on the way to work for example?
https://www.fastcoexist.com/1680136/...s-we-have-left

And to think that a lot of people view a shrinking population as bad because the economy can't grow (and use even more resources...)

[edyzmedieval]

Billions of people existing on this planet - CO2. Fine.

But having a ton of air pollutants. A ton of extra CO2. Not fine.

We either do something about it pretty quickly - adopt greener cars, and improve electric cars such as Teslas (although those pose environmental problems too, just not CO2 - we're not efficient at disposing of millions of big batteries yet), curtail emissions, more filters on polluting factories... and fast. Fine.

We don't do the above. Not fine.

Ok wait, that's not fine either. Not fine ^2. It's going to be horrific actually.

[Husar]

Here's a map for reference:


Source: https://universe-review.ca/F10-multicell18.htm

They also have some scenarios and so on on that site.
Now just imagine what happens if/when all the people from the yellow and brown areas are forced to move to the green areas...the immigration scares of today will seem small in comparison. And that's assuming they will just begin to migrate over time and not try to invade in force...

[Viking]

There is another "small" issue with the warming scenario in that it will become uncontrollable beyond a certain point as the permafrost begins to melt and sets free enormous amounts of stored methane, which is a 17 times stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, add to that the methane under arctic ice the limited ability of warm water to store CO2, the increase of water in the air, which also has a greenhouse effect...
Surely it may reverse after a few thousand years, but what do we do until then?

Methane is not stable in the atmosphere, and is converted into carbon dioxide in 8-9 years on average (it's also vulnerable to UV radiation, which is why its discovery on Mars is interesting):

In the lower part of the atmosphere, below about 10-12 km (the troposphere), the key cycles are mediated above all by the presence of what are called OH radicals — colloquially known as the atmospheric detergent. All hydrocarbon chemical species that are emitted can be eventually broken down (or oxidized) by these radicals to CO2 and H2O, and methane is no exception. An average molecule of CH4 lasts around eight to nine years before it gets oxidized. This is a long time compared to most atmospheric chemicals but is fast enough so that there can be significant year-to-year variability.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/fe...00409_methane/

Thus, the direct effect of this methane should not last long as it comes from a storage that will deplete.