The thing about global warming that I don't know and would like some answers on is how bad is it going to get? Is the worst case scenario mass-extinction? It doesn't seem like we're getting anywhere with reducing carbon emissions and I'm pretty pessimistic on the politics since it involves international cooperation, which there isn't much of between the big polluters. Does the worst case seem as likely as I think it is?
So far we have been tracking the worst case scenario models. If feedback loops like the release of the methane stored in the arctic permafrost begin to run away from us, it could get pretty bad. We haven't seen most of the warming yet - most of it has been going into the oceans, but now they are reaching their capacity.
The earth's climate is a complex system that is incredibly tricky to predict. But the more we know about it, the worse things seem to be. :(
That doesn't mean that the climate will return to where it was before the release. It could find a new stable point at a higher temperature than it is now due to changes in the Earth's albedo, among other things.
Also, "disappeared": what it ends up breaking down into is carbon dioxide and water vapour, both greenhouse gases in their own right.
> most of it has been going into the oceans, but now they are reaching their capacity
Huh? The oceans can absorb a lot more heat. If you run the numbers, the heat that's been added to the oceans in the last half century (according to the IPCC, whose numbers I'm not sure I believe because up until the Argo buoys started being deployed in the last ten years or so, the data was very sparse, but that's a separate question) has raised their temperature by about a tenth of a degree Celsius.
Yes, the worst case is pretty bad, both for us and life on earth. We're currently in the middle of a large extinction event, so the biosphere is probably pretty fragile even without the ongoing global warming.
The tldr is that many scientists do believe that a significant % of species will go extinct at the current rate of global warming. But there is the standard uncertainty, as there always is in complex topics like this.
>There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5 °C (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5 °C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.
The only honest answer is, nobody knows. Which means that we should not be making plans based on the belief that we can predict what's going to happen; instead, we should be planning to be adaptable, so that we can deal with whatever happens.
It means, for example, that we should not be emasculating the world's economy in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Instead, we should be concentrating on making the world's economy stronger, so that it will be easier and cheaper to cope with whatever happens to the climate in the future. If it gets warmer, we'll be able to deal; if it doesn't get warmer, we won't have made everybody poor.
You are making the assumption that there is no point beyond which we can no longer cope with the problem no matter how much money we throw at it. Can you justify that assumption?
Yes, the worst is mass extinction because the worst greenhouse-effect gas is water vapor. The risk with human-generated chemicals is that they bootstrap a transfer of ocean water into the atmosphere in a vicious circle: more heat => more evaporation => more heat. The Earth could become as hot as Venus. I don't think scientists have enough informations to tell if the Earth would have ways to stop this circle. Even if it did, the event would be bad for humans.
Water vapour has a very short life cycle in the atmosphere, so while it's theoretically the worst, it's not actually particularly bad in the long term, and it's not likely to change by much. There's also some question as to the cooling effect of clouds.
CO2 on the other hand, stays in the atmosphere for quite a few years (30-95 according to wikipedia), so it's far worse in the long term.
Many thanks for the link. Thanks, I needed that. So, the link has not only temperature data but the IPCC predictions. Terrific. I put the link where I can find it easily and won't lose it. I'd been hoping for just some such article. Terrific.
I don't think that's cherry picked; it looks like an outright fabrication to me. What are the odds that a line of regression on a graph like that would come out to exactly +0.00C?
Out of a sufficiently noisy continuous dataset, you can actually do that quite easily simply by moving the start position until you hit exactly +0.00C. Which is what I suspect he did. If you move it forwards a few months, you get negatives until you leave that one anomalous spike out, and if you move it backwards, you start to get positives very quickly.
I didn't pay much attention to the fitted line. To take such a line seriously, need a lot of mathematical assumptions in practice nearly always impractical or impossible to get.
I did pay attention to what I said, the temperature data and the IPCC projections. I was glad to see both.
So, let's see: The link to skeptical science says that there is a lot of warming but it is in the oceans and that their work considering the 'energy' (i.e., temperature?) in the first 700 or 3000 meters shows that. And that warming is supposed to have been caused by warming of the atmosphere by the greenhouse effect of human generated CO2 in the atmosphere. So, we can't see the warming in the atmosphere, but somehow the atmosphere is supposed to be warming the oceans. Hmm. But, pursuing that point, or such points, of which there are many, to be productive needs much more in data, etc. than we have.
Again, I was happy just seeing the basic temperature data and the IPCC predictions. That's better than pictures of polar bears and icebergs and claims that each hot period, cold period, wet period, dry period, change in wildlife population, blizzard, tornado, hurricane, etc. is evidence of 'climate change' caused by human use of CO2.
For 'climate change theory', I like the one, "follow the money".
I guess if I were running a news company with revenue from ads from eyeballs, then I'd take any excuse I could to write stories to get people up on their hind legs. Old standards were scandal from sinful, evil humans, danger, i.e., the sky is falling. Better yet is the sky is falling caused sinful/evil humans. Better yet is a 'theme' that each day can turn into yet another eyeball grabbing headline and news 'story'.
So, I'd push 'global warming', oops, now 'climate change', too. And, I would have screamed about CFCs and the ozone and how happy I was to be ruining the air conditioners of millions of cars (including two of mine). I'd scream about anything I could, trash in the oceans, death of the oceans, death of the rain forests, loss of US farm land top soil, genetically modified crops, pictures of the arctic showing no ice (can get those in some areas, can vary from year to year, of the arctic during summers), etc.
For the climate change story, I'd show pictures of clouds of water vapor from the cooling towers of nuke electric generating plants and hint that the clouds of water were dangerous CO2 from sinful/evil humans. For any smokestack putting out anything visible, I'd hint that it was CO2. I'd get quotes from Tom Friedman that CO2 absorbs sunlight (of course, that's false; CO2 absorbs in just three narrow bands, all out in the infrared). I'd push anything I could that would get eyeballs.
It's a very old story: Claim that humans are sinful and/or evil. From that claim, a lot of churches long got a lot of revenue, and the old English morality plays got lots of eyeballs.
A big theme in story telling is transgression from sinful/evil humans, retribution from an angry god, and finally redemption from sacrifice. So, for the transgression of sinful/evil humans and their emissions of CO2, the retribution is 'climate change', right, with lots of coastal cities flooding, coral reefs being bleached, the tropics converted to deserts, the northern temperate zone pushed to the arctic circle, nearly all fauna extinct, etc., and the redemption is sacrifice, e.g., give up cars, air conditioning, washing machines, return to walking or bicycles, grow own food, get electric power, catch as catch can, from wind and solar, etc. So, more news stories, lots each day, on each little part of this old trilogy.
But, instead of such new blizzards of nonsense, I was happy to see the actual temperature record and the IPCC predictions.
There's a thing about predictions: People can remember them. While the science for predicting temperature is from grimly difficult up to too difficult to do accurately now, we are quite good at measuring temperature, actual temperature in degrees K, C, or F. Then when there is a prediction of temperature, after a decade or so we get to compare the prediction and the measurements. The link I responded to lets us do that.
It's a fun hypothetical exercise, but of course there are other factors. Post-glacial rebound means that Finland (for example) is rising at around 1cm per year. That would keep pace with quite a lot of ice melting.
Actually, no, the Mediterranean evaporates faster than rain fills it. In the past, when the Straits of Gibraltar have been closed, it has dried out completely, or nearly so [1], and it's 5 kilometres deep!
So let's say global warming gets really bad and a ton of methane gets dumped into the atmosphere.
Is there anything stopping us from engineering algae with methane as an input to their metabolic process (genes borrowed from Methylococcus capsulatus) and releasing them into the ocean?
Methane lasts about 8-12 years, after which it becomes CO2 and water. (Not sure if that is a half life, and average, a maximum or what, everyone just quotes the figure no one said where it comes from.)
The CO2 and water it makes are also greenhouse gases and are "billed" to methane when they calculate its impact. (So if you see crazy numbers for it see if they are doing that.)
This means the methane itself is not really a problem, or at least only a very short term problem. So there is no real need for us to actively remove methane from the atmosphere - it does that itself.
I can't comment on most of it. But about the Netherlands, this will not happen. Everybody knows that the Netherlands is currently already below sea level, and has been for over three hundred years. So if you made this kind of map for the Netherlands, for the sea level in 1901, nearly all of the Netherlands, and large pieces of Belgium and Germany would already be declared under water.
Most of Zeeland, North and West Flanders, Flevoland, and large parts of Utrecht and Noord Holland are reclaimed from the sea, starting in the 17th century (they won 3 wars by partially turning back reclaiming efforts during battles). There was a point in history when Brussels had a seaport. Ghent was built as a seaport, now it's 50km inland. When Ghent became unusable, they built Brughes as a seaport. That one is now 15-20km inland. Without constant effort, these would simply be reclaimed by the sea, not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, but in a month or two. The effort to prevent that has been a necessity for 2-3 centuries, and they obviously are not about to stop doing it.
So I would bet that these governments will continue to raise land (importing sand mostly from germany), dam rivers as required and control their elevation and coastal tides to compensate. Hell I've heard about a plan to put a dam in the channel, which would slow down the currents and make the land reclimation a lot easier and eventually create a continuous land area into the UK. The UK doesn't like this at all, but if national geographic is right, and it's either something like that, or lose London, I see that changing.
You imagine a wall but it'll be a dike. Very tall, probably very gently sloped inland to allow for fancy housing projects with height difference! (no hills in the Netherlands, so people would pay a lot to live on top of one)
Most likely only a fraction of globe could afford this massive earth engineering. Some places like Mediterranean/Baltic sea are easier will be easier to protect. Most aren't.
On the other hand, even in pessimistic scenarios the sea would rise very slowly, so we will have time to build this thing.
Even better and cheaper, stop putting that much CO2 into atmosphere.
This is a 5,000 year plan. It would be ridiculous to try to estimate what fraction of the globe could afford geoengineering in 2,000 years (if I'm taking a random guess, I'm saying either all of it or none of it).
> Most likely only a fraction of globe could afford this massive earth engineering.
Do you have an estimate on the costs of such engineering, and better yet, a comparison against the estimated cost of preventing climate change enough that this engineering isn't necessary?
Given that raising land up to 8-10 meters was done with the economy of the 18th century, even back then mostly done as a for-profit venture, I'd say it's not all that much.
>>> Even better and cheaper, stop putting that much CO2 into atmosphere.
You might want to talk to China about that. At least the US has been actively trying to reduce emissions for some time now. China, India and other countries simply don't give a fuck and won't sign any treaties that attempt to reduce CO2 emissions.
Also, when alternative energies are actually affordable for more middle and lower income families, you'll probably get more buy-in. As it sits right now, unless you have a lot of cash laying around, affordable, renewable energy isn't likely:
$35,000 for a Prius?
$30,000 for a small solar array with a 10+ year ROI?
$63,000 for a Tesla (the actual overall cost environmentally speaking is actually higher CO2 wise than most current SUV's)
Maybe someday, but that day is so far off, I'm not sure its feasible.
USA emits 19 tons CO2 per capita, China only 5. As far as I understand, China refuses to sign any climate treaty that locks in a situation where US to emit so much more than other countries.
Btw, the EU average is 8, and Sweden (my country) at 5.5, so it's not like you'd have to give up your quality of life to reduce enissions.
Also, if you look at your home country of Sweden, your overall population is much smaller, you have a much smaller land mass and I would expect your carbon emissions to much lower.
Also, your country was smart to start phasing out fossil fuels, and has a ton of very environmentally friendly laws which are doing a lot of positive things for your country.
If we in the US actually adapted some of your laws and thinking, we'd probably be a lot further along in reducing our country's impact on the rest of the world.
I don't think the world works the way you think. You might want to seek out some facts on which country blocked the latest Copenhagen agreement, for example. And how large their current carbon emissions are.
The price for a Prius is completely irrelevant. Global warming is not helped by every family buying a new car.
A relevant price is the price of a mass transit system. You cannot have whole cities where people drive to work. It is not sustainable.
Another relevant thing to do is stop burning coal on a large scale. There are many investments that the US for example should do that most countries with a comparable standard of living did long ago.
These are investments that can be done today, and should have been done long ago. And before you say it's too expensive you should ask yourself how public acceptance for an order of magnitude larger military spending was jusitifed.
The ozone layer problem was solved with international agreements and investments, and although the naysayers kept parroting how our standard of living would plummet, it didn't.
You're off by 33% on the cost of a Prius. And even if that is beyond your means, there are plenty of small gasoline cars that would reduce most families' automobile emissions substantially, and they are cheap.
The problem isn't just reducing the emissions produced by people who already have cars (though that would of course help); it's limiting the future emissions of the huge numbers of people who don't yet have cars, but want them. Hence the reason China and India won't agree to limit their citizens to current per-capita levels of emissions that are a fraction of those in countries with higher levels of car ownership.
> Even better and cheaper, stop putting that much CO2 into atmosphere.
You're assuming that that will fix the problem. But the climate models that have enough positive feedback dialed in to amplify the effect of CO2 into something significant are overpredicting warming by a significant amount; so it may well be that stopping CO2 emissions won't help to stop climate change.
Gent and Brussels had connections to the Scheldt, but never were on the coast.
As to the building of 75m high dikes: problem would be how one would get rid of the water of the Rhine and Meuse. Pump it up 75m into the sea?
The Dutch would make an economical assessment at some time, and will likely give up polders as a result. That has happened on small scale already.
I think the most likely mid term scenario would be to get to a state where sea defenses are built not to keep the sea away, but to keep waves caused by storms away, and to have floating municipalities (floating, say, the center of Amsterdam would be a nice technical challenge)
Alternatively, one could slowly move the population to Germany (if the area of livable land diminishes, this likely will happen naturally). 5000 years is a long time.
> Gent and Brussels had connections to the Scheldt, but never were on the coast.
That's true. Both Ghent and Brussels had harbours that were on the coast though. The Brussels one was less than 20km from the city center, the Ghent one less than 5. And those harbors, were technically on the Schelde river, sure. But the Schelde is a river delta. Where does the coast start ? At the end of the river (which was a ~150km stretch of nothing but water), or where the waves stop (there were tides and waves in the Brussels harbour). So I see where the argument comes from, but let's be fair here : they were as much on the coast as, say, Rotterdam harbor is today. I think most people would agree that is on the coast.
Rotterdam on the coast? That is technically true (Hook of Holland is part of the municipality of Rotterdam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_of_Holland)), but I doubt you will find many Dutchmen who think so.
Also, 'where the waves stop' is not where the sea ends. That can easily be 100 km inland. Dordrecht used to have serious tides, and the tidal bore of the Amazon goes as much as 800 km inland (at least according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pororoca)
waps is talking about how the 216' rise would play out in real life, while you and National Geographic are assuming an instantaneous 216' rise as a visualization tool. I don't see why his reading the text should be questioned as a result of his raising an relevant and related consideration.
