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Climate Change or: How I Stopped Worrying and Love Rising Sea Levels

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Posts

  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I know a solution. It's not going to be easy but it's probably going to have to happen in the next century. Orbiting space habitats. The first step will be to find a matialic near earth asteroid. There are literally hundreds to choose from. For example let's take 99942 Apophis. It's a Q-type NEO with a mass of around 6.1×10^10 kg. If you aren't in any particular hurry a gravity tractor would be the easiest way to tow it into a more favorable orbit. All that would be needed are one or more massive objects traveling alongside it to slowly alter its orbit to where ever you want. When it's in just the right place to make manned launches easiest you start sending people. Thanks to its high metallic content and close proximity to the sun, the energy provided by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator could produce all the energy needed to start manufacturing solar panels on site. Once you have enough solar panels you can start manufacturing modular rotating habitats. I'm picturing the end product being a 6km long O'Neal cylinder. It will have an outer drum and an inner drum. Between them will be enough water to absorb the majority of the radiation from space. You really wouldn't want to look out a window for any amount of time on one of these as the stars would be flying by beneath your feet at a rather unnerving pace. At first it will probably just be the super rich living there. Hoping to leverage their money to get away from the worst of what's happening back on Earth. If we continue doing nothing about climate change more and more people will be forced into these orbital habitats. I can't see us ever going "full gundam" and just expelling millions of poor people into space but I can see a sizable percentage of the human population ending up in space due to the instability of life down on earth.

    No?

    First of all RTGs are extremely low power density, in the single W/kg range. You can't mine ore, refine it and assemble solar panels on something that can barely power your computer. Larger RTGs are not favoured for the same reason we don't send nuclear waste into space, if your rocket carrying a large amount of radioactive material explodes that's a disaster

    Gravitational tractoring of that asteroid is far-fetched. Wiki has an example of an asteroid that is 2% of that size and it takes a 20-ton object 10 years to change it 0.1 m/s. You're talking about multiple m/s of dV on a 50x larger asteroid and we don't have hundreds of years to wait

    Orbital habitats are not really self-sustaining. Growing sufficient food, maintaining water, and atmospheric balance is difficult and you have to do it in a closed environment where there is no input. There's only so many carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc atoms. Anything you vent is gone forever.

    You can maybe get some stuff from processing your asteroid there's definitely oxides, lots of metals, but probably no nitrogen or hydrogen so making water or anything other than a pure O atmosphere is not possible. Without planetside infrastructure to back you getting anything from earth is infeasible, once down you won't have the dV to get back up

  • themightypuckthemightypuck MontanaRegistered User regular
    Even a worst case scenario isn't going to make earth a worse place than outer space for living.

    “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
    ― Marcus Aurelius

    Path of Exile: themightypuck
  • NotYouNotYou Registered User regular
    Even a worst case scenario isn't going to make earth a worse place than outer space for living.

    It might. A couple billion refugees could cause more chaos and war than we've ever seen before.

  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    NotYou wrote: »
    Even a worst case scenario isn't going to make earth a worse place than outer space for living.

    It might. A couple billion refugees could cause more chaos and war than we've ever seen before.

    Even after a full-on nuclear exchange the planet would *still* be more hospitable than space.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    EDIT: Might be better for the space thread

    Lanz on
    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • SorceSorce Not ThereRegistered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I know a solution. It's not going to be easy but it's probably going to have to happen in the next century. Orbiting space habitats. The first step will be to find a matialic near earth asteroid. There are literally hundreds to choose from. For example let's take 99942 Apophis. It's a Q-type NEO with a mass of around 6.1×10^10 kg. If you aren't in any particular hurry a gravity tractor would be the easiest way to tow it into a more favorable orbit. All that would be needed are one or more massive objects traveling alongside it to slowly alter its orbit to where ever you want. When it's in just the right place to make manned launches easiest you start sending people. Thanks to its high metallic content and close proximity to the sun, the energy provided by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator could produce all the energy needed to start manufacturing solar panels on site. Once you have enough solar panels you can start manufacturing modular rotating habitats. I'm picturing the end product being a 6km long O'Neal cylinder. It will have an outer drum and an inner drum. Between them will be enough water to absorb the majority of the radiation from space. You really wouldn't want to look out a window for any amount of time on one of these as the stars would be flying by beneath your feet at a rather unnerving pace. At first it will probably just be the super rich living there. Hoping to leverage their money to get away from the worst of what's happening back on Earth. If we continue doing nothing about climate change more and more people will be forced into these orbital habitats. I can't see us ever going "full gundam" and just expelling millions of poor people into space but I can see a sizable percentage of the human population ending up in space due to the instability of life down on earth.

    I'm never quite sure where to fall on the "would space be the place a bunch of rich people flee to" or "is space where the Rich ship all the proles off to"

    The history of colonization so far leans toward the latter
    Elon Musk ain't going to Mars because he's poor.

    sig.gif
  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Phoenix-D wrote: »
    NotYou wrote: »
    Even a worst case scenario isn't going to make earth a worse place than outer space for living.

    It might. A couple billion refugees could cause more chaos and war than we've ever seen before.

    Even after a full-on nuclear exchange the planet would *still* be more hospitable than space.

    SevenEves basically centered around the only type of situation where space was a better option, and that was predicated on the moon blowing up. And even then, there were people pretty ready to live underground indefinitely, which didn't sound impossible...because the other option is fucking space.

    Doodmann on
    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Yeah even if the air is poison theres still gravity and atmosphere sooooo

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Living in space is not impossible, but, it will be hard and very unpleasant. We also just don't have the space based construction infrastructure to start building big programs there yet. We should build it, but that is the work of decades.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • KruiteKruite Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    So I'm kind of tired at the moment and my memory went to crap

    At the very least, Ocean Warming is going to lead to:
    - Ocean Life Die off increases
    - Acidification, which will bolster the first even further

    What else?

    increases in liquid temperature decrease the solubility of gases in said liquid. So more of the entrapped CO2 in the ocean will break out into the atmosphere.

  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Something I'm morbidly curious about: if the oceans heat/acidify to the point where a significant percent of the oxygen-producing plankton die, what would that look like on land? I assume large animals would be affected before small ones, and people with pre-existing respiratory issues would be hit before healthy people, but otherwise?

    (I know *someone* is going to make the obligatory Space Balls reference, so there, I did it.)

    edit: are large-scale O2 factories (O2 farms?) feasible? How would you accomplish distribution?

    Calica on
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Calica wrote: »
    Something I'm morbidly curious about: if the oceans heat/acidify to the point where a significant percent of the oxygen-producing plankton die, what would that look like on land? I assume large animals would be affected before small ones, and people with pre-existing respiratory issues would be hit before healthy people, but otherwise?

    (I know *someone* is going to make the obligatory Space Balls reference, so there, I did it.)

    edit: are large-scale O2 factories (O2 farms?) feasible? How would you accomplish distribution?

    It looks an awful lot like the Great Dying. The ocean does a LOT of photosynthesis. There's a reason why deforestation apologists pointed to the oceans - the Great Clearing of Europe and several centuries of chain fucking the Amazon didn't even move the oxygen needle for a reason.

    Oxygen levels start dropping, as CO2 rises even faster from the balance shift (like, a 100% immediate stop in emissions might not stop what's coming next at this point, there's just nowhere for most of the carbon to go anymore). This happens fastest and worst in the oceans, anoxic dead zones will be huge and widespread, mass extinction of everything in the water with some kind of aerobic respiration. Some things will thrive in the aftermath, but a lot of them will be nasty players who will only hasten the die-off of everything else, but some of it photosynthesizes... Cyanobacteria blooms *might* save the world, in a slimy, smelly, "Do you really still want to live here?" kind of way.

    On land, slower happening. Plants might benefit slightly in the short term, but carbon is usually not the limiting factor in terrestrial plant growth. I can't find a whole lot of information on lethal CO2 poisoning in animals and don't like the kind of things I just added to my search history, but if I had to guess, large vertebrates would be first. Terrestrial invertebrates are the most resilient group of animals in terms of mass extinctions, but this is the one kind of event that tags them, literally nothing is safe.

    Fresh water faces a similar fate as land - acidification isn't great for freshwater, but most freshwater animals are fairly tolerant of pH changes as long as they're not too abrupt (they don't depend on the ionic content of the water like saltwater animals do), so it's the carbon that gets them, too. If water becomes CO2 saturated, the ion exchange process in gills fails and even if oxygen levels are at saturation fish suffocate.


    Edit: There's research that suggests it could also go bad in an additional way, in the form of a nitrogen disaster. Some of the oceanic bacteria that do most of the world's nitrogen fixing go haywire in acidic environments, and even fixing the environment doesn't switch them back to normal. They multiply out of control, fucking up atmospheric nitrogen and killing everything else in the water.

    Hevach on
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    It doesn't feel right to awesome that post, but thank you for the write-up.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    One bit I left out: the even faster CO2 build up means everything ELSE already happening goes faster, and it breaks the feedback loops that will be needed to recover. Recovery that would have happened in decades stretched into millennia, the world will literally need to let evolution do it's thing and hope against everything we know that it doesn't just establish a new normal and evolve life that's adapted to the apocalypse.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Sorce wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I know a solution. It's not going to be easy but it's probably going to have to happen in the next century. Orbiting space habitats. The first step will be to find a matialic near earth asteroid. There are literally hundreds to choose from. For example let's take 99942 Apophis. It's a Q-type NEO with a mass of around 6.1×10^10 kg. If you aren't in any particular hurry a gravity tractor would be the easiest way to tow it into a more favorable orbit. All that would be needed are one or more massive objects traveling alongside it to slowly alter its orbit to where ever you want. When it's in just the right place to make manned launches easiest you start sending people. Thanks to its high metallic content and close proximity to the sun, the energy provided by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator could produce all the energy needed to start manufacturing solar panels on site. Once you have enough solar panels you can start manufacturing modular rotating habitats. I'm picturing the end product being a 6km long O'Neal cylinder. It will have an outer drum and an inner drum. Between them will be enough water to absorb the majority of the radiation from space. You really wouldn't want to look out a window for any amount of time on one of these as the stars would be flying by beneath your feet at a rather unnerving pace. At first it will probably just be the super rich living there. Hoping to leverage their money to get away from the worst of what's happening back on Earth. If we continue doing nothing about climate change more and more people will be forced into these orbital habitats. I can't see us ever going "full gundam" and just expelling millions of poor people into space but I can see a sizable percentage of the human population ending up in space due to the instability of life down on earth.

    I'm never quite sure where to fall on the "would space be the place a bunch of rich people flee to" or "is space where the Rich ship all the proles off to"

    The history of colonization so far leans toward the latter
    Elon Musk ain't going to Mars because he's poor.

    Elon Musk's also a space fanboy, and not necessarily a good barometer of "Do the rich want to be spacenoids for the first generation of orbital and off-world settlement?"

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • ShivahnShivahn Unaware of her barrel shifter privilege Western coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderator mod
    Hevach wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Something I'm morbidly curious about: if the oceans heat/acidify to the point where a significant percent of the oxygen-producing plankton die, what would that look like on land? I assume large animals would be affected before small ones, and people with pre-existing respiratory issues would be hit before healthy people, but otherwise?

    (I know *someone* is going to make the obligatory Space Balls reference, so there, I did it.)

    edit: are large-scale O2 factories (O2 farms?) feasible? How would you accomplish distribution?

    It looks an awful lot like the Great Dying. The ocean does a LOT of photosynthesis. There's a reason why deforestation apologists pointed to the oceans - the Great Clearing of Europe and several centuries of chain fucking the Amazon didn't even move the oxygen needle for a reason.

    Oxygen levels start dropping, as CO2 rises even faster from the balance shift (like, a 100% immediate stop in emissions might not stop what's coming next at this point, there's just nowhere for most of the carbon to go anymore). This happens fastest and worst in the oceans, anoxic dead zones will be huge and widespread, mass extinction of everything in the water with some kind of aerobic respiration. Some things will thrive in the aftermath, but a lot of them will be nasty players who will only hasten the die-off of everything else, but some of it photosynthesizes... Cyanobacteria blooms *might* save the world, in a slimy, smelly, "Do you really still want to live here?" kind of way.

    On land, slower happening. Plants might benefit slightly in the short term, but carbon is usually not the limiting factor in terrestrial plant growth. I can't find a whole lot of information on lethal CO2 poisoning in animals and don't like the kind of things I just added to my search history, but if I had to guess, large vertebrates would be first. Terrestrial invertebrates are the most resilient group of animals in terms of mass extinctions, but this is the one kind of event that tags them, literally nothing is safe.

    Fresh water faces a similar fate as land - acidification isn't great for freshwater, but most freshwater animals are fairly tolerant of pH changes as long as they're not too abrupt (they don't depend on the ionic content of the water like saltwater animals do), so it's the carbon that gets them, too. If water becomes CO2 saturated, the ion exchange process in gills fails and even if oxygen levels are at saturation fish suffocate.


    Edit: There's research that suggests it could also go bad in an additional way, in the form of a nitrogen disaster. Some of the oceanic bacteria that do most of the world's nitrogen fixing go haywire in acidic environments, and even fixing the environment doesn't switch them back to normal. They multiply out of control, fucking up atmospheric nitrogen and killing everything else in the water.

    CO2 isn't particularly toxic for vertebrates, it might as well be nitrogen (except you can sense it). It messes with pH, obviously, but it's not like carbon monoxide or anything, as far as I know.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    Shivahn wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Something I'm morbidly curious about: if the oceans heat/acidify to the point where a significant percent of the oxygen-producing plankton die, what would that look like on land? I assume large animals would be affected before small ones, and people with pre-existing respiratory issues would be hit before healthy people, but otherwise?

    (I know *someone* is going to make the obligatory Space Balls reference, so there, I did it.)

    edit: are large-scale O2 factories (O2 farms?) feasible? How would you accomplish distribution?

    It looks an awful lot like the Great Dying. The ocean does a LOT of photosynthesis. There's a reason why deforestation apologists pointed to the oceans - the Great Clearing of Europe and several centuries of chain fucking the Amazon didn't even move the oxygen needle for a reason.

    Oxygen levels start dropping, as CO2 rises even faster from the balance shift (like, a 100% immediate stop in emissions might not stop what's coming next at this point, there's just nowhere for most of the carbon to go anymore). This happens fastest and worst in the oceans, anoxic dead zones will be huge and widespread, mass extinction of everything in the water with some kind of aerobic respiration. Some things will thrive in the aftermath, but a lot of them will be nasty players who will only hasten the die-off of everything else, but some of it photosynthesizes... Cyanobacteria blooms *might* save the world, in a slimy, smelly, "Do you really still want to live here?" kind of way.

    On land, slower happening. Plants might benefit slightly in the short term, but carbon is usually not the limiting factor in terrestrial plant growth. I can't find a whole lot of information on lethal CO2 poisoning in animals and don't like the kind of things I just added to my search history, but if I had to guess, large vertebrates would be first. Terrestrial invertebrates are the most resilient group of animals in terms of mass extinctions, but this is the one kind of event that tags them, literally nothing is safe.

    Fresh water faces a similar fate as land - acidification isn't great for freshwater, but most freshwater animals are fairly tolerant of pH changes as long as they're not too abrupt (they don't depend on the ionic content of the water like saltwater animals do), so it's the carbon that gets them, too. If water becomes CO2 saturated, the ion exchange process in gills fails and even if oxygen levels are at saturation fish suffocate.


    Edit: There's research that suggests it could also go bad in an additional way, in the form of a nitrogen disaster. Some of the oceanic bacteria that do most of the world's nitrogen fixing go haywire in acidic environments, and even fixing the environment doesn't switch them back to normal. They multiply out of control, fucking up atmospheric nitrogen and killing everything else in the water.

    CO2 isn't particularly toxic for vertebrates, it might as well be nitrogen (except you can sense it). It messes with pH, obviously, but it's not like carbon monoxide or anything, as far as I know.

    http://www.indsci.com/the-monitor-blog/carbon-monoxide-carbon-dioxide/

    It's extremely toxic at sufficient concentration, but before that it's an asphyxiant. If your blood can't release CO2 it can't take in oxygen. Symptoms include headaches, dizziness, drowsiness. At 80000ppm life threatening convulsions take over. That's higher than the point where you'll asphyxiate, but acute exposure like fire extinguisher release can get you there.

  • HacksawHacksaw J. Duggan Esq. Wrestler at LawRegistered User regular
    Reading this thread continuously enforces my relief at not having any children.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Can't fix problems if the people who recognize the problem don't teach the next generation.

  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    I think the contention is that we're the last generation who can* fix it.

    *for a particular value of "can"

  • KarozKaroz Registered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Can't fix problems if the people who recognize the problem don't teach the next generation.

    Nothing against teaching or knowing the truth of what needs to be done or even having kids, but it's a comfort I don't have to comfort my own personal next generation.

  • themightypuckthemightypuck MontanaRegistered User regular
    As a are reference , OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has set a CO2 exposure limit of 5,000ppm over an eight-hour period and 30,000 ppm over a 10-minute period.

    Current atmospheric ppm is around 410. If we get to 2,000 the knock on effects will likely be unpleasant but the direct effects won't be. CO2 will never be a direct threat to humans since there will no longer be humans long before we reach (if we even could reach) a directly dangerous concentration.

    “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
    ― Marcus Aurelius

    Path of Exile: themightypuck
  • OrcaOrca Also known as Espressosaurus WrexRegistered User regular
    As a are reference , OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has set a CO2 exposure limit of 5,000ppm over an eight-hour period and 30,000 ppm over a 10-minute period.

    Current atmospheric ppm is around 410. If we get to 2,000 the knock on effects will likely be unpleasant but the direct effects won't be. CO2 will never be a direct threat to humans since there will no longer be humans long before we reach (if we even could reach) a directly dangerous concentration.

    ...yay?

  • VeeveeVeevee WisconsinRegistered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Veevee on
  • DocshiftyDocshifty Registered User regular
    Veevee wrote: »
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Oh, you mean that place they used as an example to dismiss the dangers of high CO2 concentration?

  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Docshifty wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Oh, you mean that place they used as an example to dismiss the dangers of high CO2 concentration?

    The most hostile place in the solar system, including the vacuum of space? ( I think it sounds snazzy, so yes I will repeat myself)

    Fencingsax on
  • JacobyJacoby OHHHHH IT’S A SNAKE Creature - SnakeRegistered User regular
    Docshifty wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Oh, you mean that place they used as an example to dismiss the dangers of high CO2 concentration?

    Wait....



    What?

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  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    Jacoby wrote: »
    Docshifty wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Oh, you mean that place they used as an example to dismiss the dangers of high CO2 concentration?

    Wait....



    What?
    Just your standard technically correct deflection.
    "Runaway CO2 can't destroy a planet, just look at Venus" while completely ignoring that the planet itself isn't the concern, but all the stuff ON said planet.

    It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
    Warframe/Steam: NFyt
  • themightypuckthemightypuck MontanaRegistered User regular
    NEO|Phyte wrote: »
    Jacoby wrote: »
    Docshifty wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    Man, the atmosphere of a world that has CO2 concentration at 30,000 ppm would be insane. That's a full 3% of the atmosphere, or 3 CO2 molecules for every 100 molecules.

    Edit: Oops, forgot we have already have an extreme example of this. Venus has something like a 95% CO2 atmosphere.

    Oh, you mean that place they used as an example to dismiss the dangers of high CO2 concentration?

    Wait....



    What?
    Just your standard technically correct deflection.
    "Runaway CO2 can't destroy a planet, just look at Venus" while completely ignoring that the planet itself isn't the concern, but all the stuff ON said planet.

    Venus (or Mars for that matter) are not useful if you want to know how CO2 is going to affect the Earth. The problem isn't that we are going to become Venus or Mars but that rapid climate change is not good for humans. The current consensus of climate sensitivity is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius. This takes the bog standard greenhouse number (somewhere around 1%C per test tubes in a laboratory) and adding in knock on effects. The problem with knock on effects is that they are hard to measure and the IPCC etc number is in the often seen uncertainty zone of 95%. Pray it is in that zone. It is extremely hard to model tipping points and if we hit one, all the numbers will change. A worst case "run 1980 in a straight line graph" scenario combined with a high climate sensitivity number still means most of us rich folk will be fine (living in buckyballs) but whoa betide us if the paradigm changes. The IPCC can talk about uncertainty but they can't address that. No one really knows. Just hope and pray climate sensitivity is on the low end and that no tipping points are hit. The reality is that we already have a lot of CO2 in the system and no ideas coming from acceptable political traditions are going to reduce that globally in a meaningful way. On the other hand, buckyballs might be fun.

    “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
    ― Marcus Aurelius

    Path of Exile: themightypuck
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    As a are reference , OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has set a CO2 exposure limit of 5,000ppm over an eight-hour period and 30,000 ppm over a 10-minute period.

    Current atmospheric ppm is around 410. If we get to 2,000 the knock on effects will likely be unpleasant but the direct effects won't be. CO2 will never be a direct threat to humans since there will no longer be humans long before we reach (if we even could reach) a directly dangerous concentration.

    Industrial society as we know it probably becomes infeasible around or before 1200ppm, which is around the level of the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum and well before Great dying level effects or carbon dioxide toxicity.

    The P-E thermal maximum had crocodiles living in greenland and full melting of antarctica, and generally had vast areas that would be considered uninhabitable by humans now, it didn't have massive land species die-off though. The oceans were pretty fucked but not catastrophically so.

    Great dying level effects would probably involve human factors combined with non-human factors to achieve, but woe be to us if there were some kind of massive volcanic activity in the next few thousand years.

    Venus levels of runaway greenhouse are most likely not directly possible on earth due to the earth receiving less thermal energy from the sun and having a less carbon-rich makeup in general. It may be possible that you could reach a boil-the oceans level of heat if you did crazy things like moving beyond fossil fuels and mining crust minerals for carbon and pumping it into the atmosphere but even then it is questionable. Even if you did you wouldn't reach venus levels of pressure and heat because there's just not that much carbon and there's not enough heat to keep it from reacting with crust minerals and sinking out of the atmosphere. Still since humans would tap out as a relevant factor long before reaching 100C atmospheric temperatures this is probably only relevant as some kind of theoretical terraforming project by sentient Venusians.

    Edit: If you go out a billion years or two, though, a venus-like scenario for earth is proabably inevitable as the sun grows bigger and brighter. The main trigger isn't really carbon but the atmosphere getting hot enough to boil the oceans, after which the temperature and atmospheric density rockets up in a feedback loop.

    Jealous Deva on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-part-of-antarctica-was-not-supposed-to-be-shrinkin-1831740968
    When scientists talk about Antarctic melting, they’re usually referring to West Antarctica, where giant coastal glaciers are shedding incredible amounts of water. But across the Transantarctic mountains to the east, there’s a much larger mantle of ice that’s generally thought to be keeping its chill. A new study, however, asserts that East Antarctica is also losing weight at a worrying clip.

    Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences points to a steady decline in the amount of ice covering East Antarctica since satellite record-keeping began in 1979. While the study finds mass loss from East Antarctica is still lagging behind its neighbor to the West—the former has recently lost some 50 billion tons of ice per year to the latter’s 160 billion—East Antarctica is still a “major contributor” to Antarctica’s slim-down. All told, the study estimates East Antarctica has added 4.4 millimeters to Earth’s global sea level since 1979, compared with 6.9 millimeters from the West. Worryingly, East Antarctica holds 52 of the 57 potential meters of sea level rise locked away in Antarctic ice.

    Close observers of what’s happening to the frozen continent will know that these are somewhat radical glaciological conclusions. In fact, a major analysis published last June—which most of the new study’s authors participated in—concluded that on the whole, East Antarctica hasn’t been losing ice at all. While that paper determined Antarctica has lost about 3 trillion tons of ice since the early 1990s, it didn’t resolve much of a trend for East Antarctica, which the authors concluded might even be gaining mass due to increased snowfall.

    Oh god dammit

    Lanz on
    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • VeeveeVeevee WisconsinRegistered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Oh man, there are other problems beyond just sea level rise awaiting us if the East Antarctic melts, and the quicker the melt the worse those problems are. Right now the East Antarctic sheet is a little larger than estimates of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at it's maximum extent during the Wisconsin glaciation. When the Laurentide melted, which took 1000 years or so to fully melt, it relieved so much pressure on the earths crust that the crust sprung up 100's of meters geologically instantly, and is still rising where the center of the sheet was in Northern Canada by as much as 2 cm a year. This of course produces earthquakes and it is thought it could alter the sea level without adding more water, alter the earths rotation, and other not good things for us.

    If the East Antarctic sheet melts anywhere near as quickly as feared, the Post-Glacial Rebound will be very bad. The entire antarctic plate possibly moving at once kind of bad

    Veevee on
  • OrcaOrca Also known as Espressosaurus WrexRegistered User regular
    Veevee wrote: »
    If the East Antarctic sheet melts anywhere near as quickly as feared, the Post-Glacial Rebound will be very bad. The entire antarctic plate possibly moving at once kind of bad

    Excuse me WHAT

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Are we sure the orbitals are worse to live on?

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    edited January 2019
    See, you're all freaking out, and my dumb brain is all "how do they decide which part is East Antarctica?"

    Fencingsax on
  • DirtmuncherDirtmuncher Registered User regular
    Orca wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    If the East Antarctic sheet melts anywhere near as quickly as feared, the Post-Glacial Rebound will be very bad. The entire antarctic plate possibly moving at once kind of bad

    Excuse me WHAT

    All that ice is pushing down on the Antarctic plate.
    If that weight is lifted to fast bad things will happen.
    Certain tectonic plates are still rebounding from the last iceage and that melt took ages.

    steam_sig.png
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    See, you're all freaking out, and my dumb brain is all "how do they decide which part is East Antarctica?"
    East Antarctica, also called Greater Antarctica, constitutes the majority (two-thirds) of the Antarctic continent, lying on the Indian Ocean side of the continent, separated from West Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains. It lies almost entirely within the Eastern Hemisphere and its name has been accepted for more than a century. It is generally higher than West Antarctica and includes the Gamburtsev Mountain Range in the centre.

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    See, you're all freaking out, and my dumb brain is all "how do they decide which part is East Antarctica?"
    East Antarctica, also called Greater Antarctica, constitutes the majority (two-thirds) of the Antarctic continent, lying on the Indian Ocean side of the continent, separated from West Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains. It lies almost entirely within the Eastern Hemisphere and its name has been accepted for more than a century. It is generally higher than West Antarctica and includes the Gamburtsev Mountain Range in the centre.

    And if you go south, and then North, you eventually hit West Antarctica

  • OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    Orca wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    If the East Antarctic sheet melts anywhere near as quickly as feared, the Post-Glacial Rebound will be very bad. The entire antarctic plate possibly moving at once kind of bad

    Excuse me WHAT

    Sounds like a lot of earthquakes

  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    Can we talk about the polar vortex? Is there any discussion to be had here? How it's more likely and possible now due to climate change? How the real effects of it can be felt? How this is a case study of the things to come?

This discussion has been closed.