Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Sea-level rise is probably the least-bad part of climate change. Unless you live directly on a low beach, you probably have 50-75 years before that's something that will require individual action (governments in like New York or Venice need to act sooner, obviously).
And if you do have oceanfront property, you're rich enough to not care.
What? No. I was living on the beach when I was broke as fuck. (Yes, in a building)
To say nothing of the people who don't live on the shores but do earn their living there, or drive over causeways, or live in places where storm surge is a threat.
Sea level status quo is not a "rich people" problem.
To illustrate this point, I can see ocean from my apartment.
I am most definitely not rich.
Any distinct rise in sea level, like anywhere near a foot would likely destroy my home town.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Some pushback against Trump's EO about not worrying about climate change from the Navy.
They had an interview with a navy captain I think who measures sea level rise in Norfolk this morning on NPR. He is saying that they kept watch on it from 1920, and sea level is up 15" at that point from 1920. He says that the new buildings are built higher up, but the base as a whole would likely be lost if nothing is done. He states that the slow moving nature of the issue is the main problem, people feel like they can procrastinate and that is going to leave the pentagon dealing with a crisis instead of a challenge.
Back in 2016, Siberia’s amusingly named Bely Island made headlines around the world after sections of its grassy landscape became somewhat bouncy.
As it turned out, the island was leaking greenhouse gases at a remarkable rate. In fact, the air escaping from the ground there contained 100 times more methane and 25 times more carbon dioxide – the two most potent greenhouse gases by far – than the surrounding atmosphere.
This time last year, just 15 of these near-surface, water-coated methane bubbles had been identified. Now, as reported by the Siberian Times, there are 7,000 of them. Considering that methane is incredibly flammable, it’s also likely that some of these bubbles will dramatically explode without much of a warning.
In sum, this, ladies and gentlemen, is not good.
I watched that video again, because it is interesting. I just noticed the guy had a rifle. Is he hunting on a a methane bounce house?
I'm not sure I'd feel totally comfortable shooting a rifle where a flammable gas is leaking out and mixing with the air.
Methane is only flammable at 5-15% concentration. He's likely fine regardless
Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Here in the EU people want to partner up with China to mitigate climate change. China is actually making big investment s in green energy, Tesla, etc
I would be very leery about relying on China to mitigate climate change. China may be making big investments in green energy but they are a major (I think the largest) producer and consumer of coal. 75% of their energy production is still coming from coal (US is about 50%) and they are going to need massive power supply increases in they want to keep their GNP growth coming along. Since the communist's party legitimacy depends on ever increasing economic prosperity, they don't have an option of allowing growth to slow or reverse itself.
Maybe green energy will be able to full this demand but if given the choice between political unrest and long term environmental damage, I am not confident that Chinese political leaders will sacrifice themselves for the sake of the environment. Communist governments in eastern Europe did some horrible environmental damage while trying to prop up their failing economies and while every case is different, it is certainly possible that history will repeat itself.
Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Here in the EU people want to partner up with China to mitigate climate change. China is actually making big investment s in green energy, Tesla, etc
I would be very leery about relying on China to mitigate climate change. China may be making big investments in green energy but they are a major (I think the largest) producer and consumer of coal. 75% of their energy production is still coming from coal (US is about 50%) and they are going to need massive power supply increases in they want to keep their GNP growth coming along. Since the communist's party legitimacy depends on ever increasing economic prosperity, they don't have an option of allowing growth to slow or reverse itself.
Maybe green energy will be able to full this demand but if given the choice between political unrest and long term environmental damage, I am not confident that Chinese political leaders will sacrifice themselves for the sake of the environment. Communist governments in eastern Europe did some horrible environmental damage while trying to prop up their failing economies and while every case is different, it is certainly possible that history will repeat itself.
The problem is it's not as binary of a choice in China's case, with a larger population but less arable land than a country like the United States, they need to avert climate change or else they'll face a starvation scenario. They certainly don't want to derail growth, but they need to mitigate the effects more acutely than the US, and they have more state power to enforce rapid change at need.
Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Here in the EU people want to partner up with China to mitigate climate change. China is actually making big investment s in green energy, Tesla, etc
I would be very leery about relying on China to mitigate climate change. China may be making big investments in green energy but they are a major (I think the largest) producer and consumer of coal. 75% of their energy production is still coming from coal (US is about 50%) and they are going to need massive power supply increases in they want to keep their GNP growth coming along. Since the communist's party legitimacy depends on ever increasing economic prosperity, they don't have an option of allowing growth to slow or reverse itself.
Maybe green energy will be able to full this demand but if given the choice between political unrest and long term environmental damage, I am not confident that Chinese political leaders will sacrifice themselves for the sake of the environment. Communist governments in eastern Europe did some horrible environmental damage while trying to prop up their failing economies and while every case is different, it is certainly possible that history will repeat itself.
The problem is it's not as binary of a choice in China's case, with a larger population but less arable land than a country like the United States, they need to avert climate change or else they'll face a starvation scenario. They certainly don't want to derail growth, but they need to mitigate the effects more acutely than the US, and they have more state power to enforce rapid change at need.
Maybe, but it takes exceptional political courage to do something very unpopular now so that it benefits whoever is in charge 40-50 years from now and whoever is in charge is going to need to make some very unpopular moves if they want to actually reduce CO2 output. I read somewhere that China is planing to reduce the percentage of energy generated by coal down to 65% down from 75% which sounds good until you realize that their energy demands have been massively increasing every year. Decreasing the percentage doesn't mean much if the total is increasing faster.
This leaves China in a bad spot if they want to decrease their CO2 emissions. They can:
1) Keep coal production where is it is and try to meet energy demand with natural gas/oil/solar. China doesn't have reserves of natural gas/oil on a similar scale to coal. They'd have to scale up imports to meet demand and find someway to pay for it and while oil/gas is cleaner than coal, it's still going to produce CO2. Solar wouldn't require import but it's only around 5% of power generation right now. China may be the largest producer of solar power but they're producing it so that they can sell the equipment to other people rather than for internal use.
2) Cut power consumption and endure the recession that follows. I'm not a expert on China but I would imagine this would cause some unrest and it's sort of unfair to them in general. It's hard for the rest of the world to say, sorry you can't raise your standard of living to our levels because we produced too much CO2 ourselves.
3) Fudge the figures and pass off the problem to the next generation while making the right sort of comments about eventually reducing CO2 emissions.
*note: all percentages are pretty rough and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Edit: I don't want to be all doom and gloom so will I point out there's a way this all ends happily. A gradual slowdown of the Chinese economy may already be happening which will reduce the power demands. In that case, China already has a strong desire to move away from coal for air pollution reasons and without increasing demand will probably end up reducing CO2 emissions. That will give solar and nuclear power time to become more cost efficient which means that when demand increases again it will be cheaper to meet it that way and CO2 emissions won't go back up.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Isn't China also building/planning to build several more nuclear power plants to help offset coal plants?
At least the Chinese leadership recognize the problem and are working to fix it. And their people are actually mostly on board, because air pollution is actively lowering QoL in many areas of China. Not that the Chinese government cares that much about whether their people are on board with it or not, given that the Chinese state controls many of the most polluting industrial sectors anyways.
I agree that India remains much more concerning in the long-term. Their federal government does not seem on board the climate change boat yet, but more importantly, India's federal government is a lot less powerful and the various, fractious state governments and sectarian divisions in India will likely hamper long-term plans to move off of fossil fuels. China's taking flak now, but that's because China's industrialized "properly", whereas Indian industrialization remains scattershot: i.e. China's electrification rate is now at 100% whereas India's remains at 79% according to the World Bank. If India ever fully industrializes, they will likely produce just as much CO2 emissions as China, if not more due to climate concerns (more A/C units), unless they somehow skip industrialization entirely or bypass cheaper, dirtier technologies to new, cleaner ones (that may or may not be invented yet).
Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Sea-level rise is probably the least-bad part of climate change. Unless you live directly on a low beach, you probably have 50-75 years before that's something that will require individual action (governments in like New York or Venice need to act sooner, obviously).
And if you do have oceanfront property, you're rich enough to not care.
What? No. I was living on the beach when I was broke as fuck. (Yes, in a building)
To say nothing of the people who don't live on the shores but do earn their living there, or drive over causeways, or live in places where storm surge is a threat.
Sea level status quo is not a "rich people" problem.
To illustrate this point, I can see ocean from my apartment.
I am most definitely not rich.
Any distinct rise in sea level, like anywhere near a foot would likely destroy my home town.
Midrange of an RCP2.6 scenario, which seems better than best case at this point, gets you that around 2060.
themightypuck on
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
The problem is it's not as binary of a choice in China's case, with a larger population but less arable land than a country like the United States, they need to avert climate change or else they'll face a starvation scenario.
Whelp, we're fucked. If the US won't lead the fight against climate change, no one will. If you live anywhere near the coast, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE ASAP.
Sea-level rise is probably the least-bad part of climate change. Unless you live directly on a low beach, you probably have 50-75 years before that's something that will require individual action (governments in like New York or Venice need to act sooner, obviously).
And if you do have oceanfront property, you're rich enough to not care.
What? No. I was living on the beach when I was broke as fuck. (Yes, in a building)
To say nothing of the people who don't live on the shores but do earn their living there, or drive over causeways, or live in places where storm surge is a threat.
Sea level status quo is not a "rich people" problem.
To illustrate this point, I can see ocean from my apartment.
I am most definitely not rich.
Any distinct rise in sea level, like anywhere near a foot would likely destroy my home town.
Midrange of an RCP2.6 scenario, which seems better than best case at this point, gets you that around 2060.
I really am wondering if I'll get to watch it happen before I die
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The problem is it's not as binary of a choice in China's case, with a larger population but less arable land than a country like the United States, they need to avert climate change or else they'll face a starvation scenario.
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited April 2017
This thread is understandably mostly negative, so here's some positive news:
The UK was able to go a work day without burning coal for the first time ever.
Some countries have already left coal behind in power generation. In Switzerland, Belgium and Norway, “every day is a coal-free day,” Carlos Fernández Alvarez, a coal analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, pointed out.
This thread is understandably mostly negative, so here's some positive news:
The UK was able to go a work day without burning coal for the first time ever.
Some countries have already left coal behind in power generation. In Switzerland, Belgium and Norway, “every day is a coal-free day,” Carlos Fernández Alvarez, a coal analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, pointed out.
UK is over twice the size of those three put together though, not far off three times. Plus we're barely using the potential renewables that we have, it's definitely something that could make up partly for the loss of the finance sector post-Brexit if we wanted to get serious about it. Though obviously that's harder now, but still - surely we've got to be better than Russia to deal with in this regard.
Edit I've now spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to post one of those graphs here using my phone. Because damn. Suffice to say you should check out those graphs
Especially the one that tracks cumulative degree days below freezing since it's both an awesome metric that makes total sense and also it makes me think the arctic is seriously doomed
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
Yeah, evolution doesn't work that quickly. It's not just 50 years later and hey-presto, dozens of new species have evolved to the new climate. It works on the scale of many generations, with slow changes.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
This isn't how evolution works. Life doesn't adapt that quickly.
Some kind of life will go on. Multicellular? Probably. Human life? Eh...
This is the Sixth Mass Extinction unless something changes very rapidly. We knock the bottom out of the food chain via ocean acidification and we're pretty done.
I got a little ahead of myself implying that we'd see things that can be classed as a new species within a human generation, but there can definitely be changes in population density and species dominance within a human generation or two.
And I did just mean life in general, in the broadest sense. Things change, species and environments come and go, thanks to us the changes are just happening pretty quickly. It doesn't bother me that humans might not be along for the long haul.
It might bother those kids you're talking to though.
I expect that, in Meister's scenario, the kids and the adult are too busy surviving to wonder about what a reef or whale is.
Previous extinction level events happened on a timescale of millions of years. In simple terms, over 25 million years in the late Devonian era carbon was buried in the ground causing rising levels of O2 and massive die off, and in the course of around 7 thousand years* humanity has managed to unbury a fair amount of that trapped carbon, burn a large chunk of it, and store the rest for economic reasons.
*I'm being very generous with that since coal has been mined for a long time, but unburying trapped carbon didn't become catastrophically bad until the Industrial Revolution. So realistically we're really looking at us unburying vast amounts of trapped carbon over a period of a few hundred years.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Efforts to understand the influence of historical global warming on individual extreme climate events have increased over the past decade. However, despite substantial progress, events that are unprecedented in the local observational record remain a persistent challenge. Leveraging observations and a large climate model ensemble, we quantify uncertainty in the influence of global warming on the severity and probability of the historically hottest month, hottest day, driest year, and wettest 5-d period for different areas of the globe. We find that historical warming has increased the severity and probability of the hottest month and hottest day of the year at >80% of the available observational area. Our framework also suggests that the historical climate forcing has increased the probability of the driest year and wettest 5-d period at 57% and 41% of the observed area, respectively, although we note important caveats. For the most protracted hot and dry events, the strongest and most widespread contributions of anthropogenic climate forcing occur in the tropics, including increases in probability of at least a factor of 4 for the hottest month and at least a factor of 2 for the driest year. We also demonstrate the ability of our framework to systematically evaluate the role of dynamic and thermodynamic factors such as atmospheric circulation patterns and atmospheric water vapor, and find extremely high statistical confidence that anthropogenic forcing increased the probability of record-low Arctic sea ice extent.
Not surprising, but it would be kind of interesting to actually be able to pin (individual?) EWE's to AGW.
I got a little ahead of myself implying that we'd see things that can be classed as a new species within a human generation, but there can definitely be changes in population density and species dominance within a human generation or two.
And I did just mean life in general, in the broadest sense. Things change, species and environments come and go, thanks to us the changes are just happening pretty quickly. It doesn't bother me that humans might not be along for the long haul.
I mean, sure, life in the broadest sense will go on. But in the short (next several million years) term, biodiversity will be extremely poor.
Um...
I hate to break it to you, but the blue in the picture is from the LEDs that are emulating the sun in the experiment.
They wouldn't be placing the glowing blue bits on city buildings...
Um...
I hate to break it to you, but the blue in the picture is from the LEDs that are emulating the sun in the experiment.
They wouldn't be placing the glowing blue bits on city buildings...
"You should know we are taking the time to understand your concerns. We're not going to rush to make a decision. We're going to work to make the right decision for the United States," - Tillerson
Sheesh, a shame that the US is a covert Plutocracy and the only thing that is the right decision for the US is what makes the rich richer..
"You should know we are taking the time to understand your concerns. We're not going to rush to make a decision. We're going to work to make the right decision for the United States," - Tillerson
Sheesh, a shame that the US is a covert Plutocracy and the only thing that is the right decision for the US is what makes the rich richer..
We got a bit lost in the "A rising tide lifts all boats," metaphor, is all.
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
This isn't how evolution works. Life doesn't adapt that quickly.
Some kind of life will go on. Multicellular? Probably. Human life? Eh...
This is the Sixth Mass Extinction unless something changes very rapidly. We knock the bottom out of the food chain via ocean acidification and we're pretty done.
This is the danger of climate change. The sheer pace does not allow a natural adaptation. Factor in the havoc humanity is causing in other ways (loss of habitat to development. Infrastructure impeding migration) and you have countless species that will not be on this earth any longer in the coming decades.
I'm sitting here, backstage at the play I'm on stage crew for this semester at school. And I'm reading this article about climate change basically destroying the great barrier reef irreparably. And how it likely will never recover.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
This isn't how evolution works. Life doesn't adapt that quickly.
Some kind of life will go on. Multicellular? Probably. Human life? Eh...
This is the Sixth Mass Extinction unless something changes very rapidly. We knock the bottom out of the food chain via ocean acidification and we're pretty done.
This is the danger of climate change. The sheer pace does not allow a natural adaptation. Factor in the havoc humanity is causing in other ways (loss of habitat to development. Infrastructure impeding migration) and you have countless species that will not be on this earth any longer in the coming decades.
Dont forget the microplastics that are ending up in our food chain through plankton.
Trump's EPA head, Scott Pruitt, chose not to renew contracts for 9 scientists on the 18 member Board of Scientific Counselors. Pruitt instead plans to replace them with industry insiders.
Meanwhile the House passed a bill requiring that EPA Science Advisory Board (Different from the other board), be at least partially made up of industry officials from the industries being regulated.
Posts
To illustrate this point, I can see ocean from my apartment.
I am most definitely not rich.
Any distinct rise in sea level, like anywhere near a foot would likely destroy my home town.
They had an interview with a navy captain I think who measures sea level rise in Norfolk this morning on NPR. He is saying that they kept watch on it from 1920, and sea level is up 15" at that point from 1920. He says that the new buildings are built higher up, but the base as a whole would likely be lost if nothing is done. He states that the slow moving nature of the issue is the main problem, people feel like they can procrastinate and that is going to leave the pentagon dealing with a crisis instead of a challenge.
Methane is only flammable at 5-15% concentration. He's likely fine regardless
I would be very leery about relying on China to mitigate climate change. China may be making big investments in green energy but they are a major (I think the largest) producer and consumer of coal. 75% of their energy production is still coming from coal (US is about 50%) and they are going to need massive power supply increases in they want to keep their GNP growth coming along. Since the communist's party legitimacy depends on ever increasing economic prosperity, they don't have an option of allowing growth to slow or reverse itself.
Maybe green energy will be able to full this demand but if given the choice between political unrest and long term environmental damage, I am not confident that Chinese political leaders will sacrifice themselves for the sake of the environment. Communist governments in eastern Europe did some horrible environmental damage while trying to prop up their failing economies and while every case is different, it is certainly possible that history will repeat itself.
The problem is it's not as binary of a choice in China's case, with a larger population but less arable land than a country like the United States, they need to avert climate change or else they'll face a starvation scenario. They certainly don't want to derail growth, but they need to mitigate the effects more acutely than the US, and they have more state power to enforce rapid change at need.
Maybe, but it takes exceptional political courage to do something very unpopular now so that it benefits whoever is in charge 40-50 years from now and whoever is in charge is going to need to make some very unpopular moves if they want to actually reduce CO2 output. I read somewhere that China is planing to reduce the percentage of energy generated by coal down to 65% down from 75% which sounds good until you realize that their energy demands have been massively increasing every year. Decreasing the percentage doesn't mean much if the total is increasing faster.
This leaves China in a bad spot if they want to decrease their CO2 emissions. They can:
1) Keep coal production where is it is and try to meet energy demand with natural gas/oil/solar. China doesn't have reserves of natural gas/oil on a similar scale to coal. They'd have to scale up imports to meet demand and find someway to pay for it and while oil/gas is cleaner than coal, it's still going to produce CO2. Solar wouldn't require import but it's only around 5% of power generation right now. China may be the largest producer of solar power but they're producing it so that they can sell the equipment to other people rather than for internal use.
2) Cut power consumption and endure the recession that follows. I'm not a expert on China but I would imagine this would cause some unrest and it's sort of unfair to them in general. It's hard for the rest of the world to say, sorry you can't raise your standard of living to our levels because we produced too much CO2 ourselves.
3) Fudge the figures and pass off the problem to the next generation while making the right sort of comments about eventually reducing CO2 emissions.
*note: all percentages are pretty rough and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Edit: I don't want to be all doom and gloom so will I point out there's a way this all ends happily. A gradual slowdown of the Chinese economy may already be happening which will reduce the power demands. In that case, China already has a strong desire to move away from coal for air pollution reasons and without increasing demand will probably end up reducing CO2 emissions. That will give solar and nuclear power time to become more cost efficient which means that when demand increases again it will be cheaper to meet it that way and CO2 emissions won't go back up.
I agree that India remains much more concerning in the long-term. Their federal government does not seem on board the climate change boat yet, but more importantly, India's federal government is a lot less powerful and the various, fractious state governments and sectarian divisions in India will likely hamper long-term plans to move off of fossil fuels. China's taking flak now, but that's because China's industrialized "properly", whereas Indian industrialization remains scattershot: i.e. China's electrification rate is now at 100% whereas India's remains at 79% according to the World Bank. If India ever fully industrializes, they will likely produce just as much CO2 emissions as China, if not more due to climate concerns (more A/C units), unless they somehow skip industrialization entirely or bypass cheaper, dirtier technologies to new, cleaner ones (that may or may not be invented yet).
Midrange of an RCP2.6 scenario, which seems better than best case at this point, gets you that around 2060.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
I really am wondering if I'll get to watch it happen before I die
I hope they win.
And I think about my niece and my nephew. They're 7 years old.
And I think about how they may only read about things like coral reefs and polar bears and whales in history books.
"Yeah, they used to live in the wild! Thousands of them. Now they're gone."
And I'm sitting here trying not to cry. And I don't see this getting any better.
This is equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking.
The UK was able to go a work day without burning coal for the first time ever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/britain-burning-coal-electricity.html?_r=0
UK is over twice the size of those three put together though, not far off three times. Plus we're barely using the potential renewables that we have, it's definitely something that could make up partly for the loss of the finance sector post-Brexit if we wanted to get serious about it. Though obviously that's harder now, but still - surely we've got to be better than Russia to deal with in this regard.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-arctic/
Edit I've now spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to post one of those graphs here using my phone. Because damn. Suffice to say you should check out those graphs
Especially the one that tracks cumulative degree days below freezing since it's both an awesome metric that makes total sense and also it makes me think the arctic is seriously doomed
The way I put it in perspective is that yes, times are going to get tough for most life on Earth in the relatively near future even if we can get back on track with reducing the impact of our climate changing activities. But there have been extinction events before, where the climate and general habitability of the Earth changed in more drastic ways than they likely will over the next millennium (can you imagine being a bacteria during the switch to an oxygen atmosphere?? Terrifying!) Life has always bounced back, in new and exciting ways. Your niece and nephew might not get to see a whale or coral reef, but they'll probably get to see a whole lot of lizards and insects that weren't common or perhaps didn't even exist when we were kids!
It's hard to look past all the bad that's going to happen, but I am honestly comforted by the fact that life is just going to keep on going, with or without us, and really in spite of us.
Yeah, evolution doesn't work that quickly. It's not just 50 years later and hey-presto, dozens of new species have evolved to the new climate. It works on the scale of many generations, with slow changes.
This isn't how evolution works. Life doesn't adapt that quickly.
Some kind of life will go on. Multicellular? Probably. Human life? Eh...
This is the Sixth Mass Extinction unless something changes very rapidly. We knock the bottom out of the food chain via ocean acidification and we're pretty done.
And I did just mean life in general, in the broadest sense. Things change, species and environments come and go, thanks to us the changes are just happening pretty quickly. It doesn't bother me that humans might not be along for the long haul.
I expect that, in Meister's scenario, the kids and the adult are too busy surviving to wonder about what a reef or whale is.
*I'm being very generous with that since coal has been mined for a long time, but unburying trapped carbon didn't become catastrophically bad until the Industrial Revolution. So realistically we're really looking at us unburying vast amounts of trapped carbon over a period of a few hundred years.
Not surprising, but it would be kind of interesting to actually be able to pin (individual?) EWE's to AGW.
I mean, sure, life in the broadest sense will go on. But in the short (next several million years) term, biodiversity will be extremely poor.
http://today.ucf.edu/ucf-invents-way-trigger-artificial-photosynthesis-clear-air-produce-energy-time/
If they put this all over city buildings, the added bonus is that they will look fucking lit.
Um...
I hate to break it to you, but the blue in the picture is from the LEDs that are emulating the sun in the experiment.
They wouldn't be placing the glowing blue bits on city buildings...
They could...
"You should know we are taking the time to understand your concerns. We're not going to rush to make a decision. We're going to work to make the right decision for the United States," - Tillerson
Sheesh, a shame that the US is a covert Plutocracy and the only thing that is the right decision for the US is what makes the rich richer..
We got a bit lost in the "A rising tide lifts all boats," metaphor, is all.
This is the danger of climate change. The sheer pace does not allow a natural adaptation. Factor in the havoc humanity is causing in other ways (loss of habitat to development. Infrastructure impeding migration) and you have countless species that will not be on this earth any longer in the coming decades.
Dont forget the microplastics that are ending up in our food chain through plankton.
This is late but
That's my alma mater! Hell yeah!
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-two-scientists-resign-to-protest-us-epa-dismissals-2017-5
Trump's EPA head, Scott Pruitt, chose not to renew contracts for 9 scientists on the 18 member Board of Scientific Counselors. Pruitt instead plans to replace them with industry insiders.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/326472-house-approves-epa-science-committee-overhaul
Meanwhile the House passed a bill requiring that EPA Science Advisory Board (Different from the other board), be at least partially made up of industry officials from the industries being regulated.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
This is the great filter, and we're about to run right into it.