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Science

Climate Change Could Cross Key Threshold in a Decade, Scientists Say (reuters.com) 357

Posted by msmash from the climate-control dept.
The planet could pass a key target on world temperature rise in about a decade, prompting accelerating loss of glaciers, steep declines in water availability, worsening land conflicts and deepening poverty, scientists said this week. But the planet is already two-thirds of the way to that lower and safer goal, and could begin to pass it in about a decade, according to Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre. Reuters reports: With world emissions unlikely to slow quickly enough to hit that target, it will probably be necessary to remove some carbon pollution from the atmosphere to stabilize the planet, scientists said. That could happen by planting forests or by capturing and then pumping underground emissions from power plants. But other changes -- such as reducing food waste and creating more sustainable diets, with less beef and fewer imported greenhouse vegetables -- could also play a big role in meeting the goal, without so many risks, he said.
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Climate Change Could Cross Key Threshold in a Decade, Scientists Say More

Climate Change Could Cross Key Threshold in a Decade, Scientists Say

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  • Pretty sure I read this story last decade. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And the decade before that too, come to think of it.

  • Is this the same "One Decade" we were promised... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jnaujok ( 804613 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:01PM (#53140895) Homepage Journal
    ...in 2006 by Al Gore? "...unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return", Gore said. [cbsnews.com]

    ...in 1999, by James Hansen, telling us that the 2000's would rival the 1930's for the highest ever... of course, then we went into a "hiatus" of global warming. Original article. [nasa.gov]

    ...in 2006, by this group, saying, Extinction is OUR choice, unless... .... within the next 8 years we have STOPPED using fossil fuels, PLANTED millions of trees, ended logging, and PREPARED our cities and agriculture for the inevitable sea rise. OTHERWISE OUR CHILDREN MAY NOT SURVIVE! [planetextinction.com]

    ...in 2006, by the Independent [independent.co.uk]?

    ...in late 2006, by Mother Jones [motherjones.com]?

    ..in 2004, by James Hansen? Article [eartheasy.com]

    Or maybe just google all this from 10+ years ago, telling us we'd all be dead in 10 years. google.com [google.com]

    Let's stop with the hysteria and stick to facts. I'm not against cutting CO2 emissions, I am against needless panic mongering.

    • Re:Is this the same "One Decade" we were promised. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:07PM (#53140937)

      @jnaujok - look at the years. They are all election years. This isn't about physical/environmental science, it is about the science of social engineering aka votes.

    • Re:Is this the same "One Decade" we were promised. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hardhead_7 ( 987030 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:16PM (#53141037)
      There is not "hiatus." Get your head out of your ass. http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-... [nasa.gov]

    • Re:Is this the same "One Decade" we were promised. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:31PM (#53141213)

      You're missing a main point - we can't magically undo 150 years of CO2 creation when we decide the effects are noticeable. There will be a time when actions are taken to reduce the effects, but that won't stop the effects from increasing for the foreseeable future. Will it cause our extinction? Doubtful. Will it cause extinctions and much harm? It's already happening. Even with the asteroid 65M years ago, it wasn't a dino free world the next day. The extinctions took several 1000s of years, IIRC, and then another 1.5 million or so before the biosphere started seriously diversifying again. So, to put that in perspective, recorded history only barely covers 5000 years.

      If scientists came and told the average couch potato that unless they stopped driving their gas-guzzler today, their great great great grandchildren might be living in an arid desert barely scratching out a living and dying of thirst, I'm sure exactly 0% would stop driving their gas guzzlers. The average couch potato can barely conceive of issues next week, much less several generations away. Look what it took to get chloro-flouro-carbons out of use.

    • We crossed the point of no return long ago (Score:5, Interesting)

      by scatbomb ( 1099255 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:38PM (#53141279)
      Look, the "point of no return" is completely arbitrary - how much CO2 do you want in the atmosphere? However much we put in there, it will remain for 10's of thousands of years. Today is a point of no return. So is tomorrow. So is the day after, and so on. The only thing that's been changing is how much CO2 is up there and will remain up there. In other words, this isn't evidence against the greenhouse effect (which is well-understood, tested, and resoundingly supported by the vast majority of scientists in the field). This is evidence that humans tend to move goalposts when they blow past a deadline. There is right now little doubt that the Earth's environment has been altered and will continue to be altered by the elevated CO2. People will die, cities will flood, animals will go extinct. This will all almost certainly happen, the only thing that remains to be seen is the extent to which we increase CO2 levels before switching to renewable energy sources and the extent to which our environment changes as a result of the greenhouse effect. Make no mistake, we have long-since crossed the line of no return and are moving further into dangerous territory with each passing day.

    • Re:Is this the same "One Decade" we were promised. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @04:21PM (#53141671) Journal
      There's more. In 1989, we only had ten years to fix the problem [slashdot.org].

      There are some people who are climate deniers, who say that humans can't affect the climate. Those people are fools.

      There are other people who refuse to believe that there is plenty of propaganda going on. Those people are also fools.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amiga3D ( 567632 )

        "Both parties are populated by people who believe the other party is entirely populated by insane people."

        They're both right.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      The "hiatus" in global warming was produced by choosing 1998 as the baseline year. Why was 1998 a good year to use as a baseline? Because it was, by far, the hottest year on record when it happened, shattering the previous record (1997) by 0.13C.

      Now this is a news for nerds site, so I don't have to explain why cherrypicking an outlier as your baseline is dishonest. People who swallowed that are either dishonest or mathematical ignoramuses.

      I will go out on a limb right now and say that since El Niño ha

      • Who cares about a single year ... the climate models overestimated warming by nearly 2x for the average for the last two decades and 4x for the last 15 years.

  • I once read (Score:5, Informative)

    by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:09PM (#53140967)

    And I dont remember where, that any prediction that gives a sufficiently large amount of time before it is to be affirmed (5 years?) will be forgotten by enough people or vague enough in anyone's memory that it doesn't have to be based on facts at all.

  • It doesn't matter (Score:3)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:37PM (#53141269)
    It really doesn't matter if this is true or not. Either way, it won't be fixed in time. The bottom line reality is that Russia, China, Brazil and India simply don't care. China does care a little but only a little. None of them are going to reduce emissions if it harms economic growth. They've all been clear that they think it's unfair that the more developed countries who got there faster got to pollute all they wanted to with no consequence in the past. So everybody should really hope that the climate change folks are mistaken because this is simply not solvable with those 4 at a minimum being unwilling to do anything about it.

    • The west wouldn't care either if it were playing catch-up, or if it were still heavily industrial.

      We care because we have the luxury of being able to care, and because it hurts us less for the world to go green.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The bottom line reality is that Russia, China, Brazil and India simply don't care.

      I beg your pardon, but Brazilian cars are fueled by a huge, country-wide, 8:1 EROI sugar-cane ethanol, and electricity is generated by hydro and Nuclear. Deforestation was cut by 30% in the last 5 years. Brazil is a global clean energy player, and an example of environmentally correct policies. So, please take Brazil out of your list [and try to act the same as them do - furthermore, some research wouldn't be a disadvantage for you].

    • Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @06:57PM (#53142677)

      China? The country with CO2 emissions of 7.6t/capita in 2014, the country which threw major breaks on CO2 emissions compared to any pre 2012 period? The country which is happily building nuclear power, reducing coal import, and which has less than half the emissions per capita of USA? Is that the China you're talking about?

      India? They're ranked 43rd in CO2 emissions per capita. It's nice of you to blame them for all of the world's problems (the USA is number 6 by the way, immediately behind the dirty shits that generate power just by pumping crude oil into furnaces and belching black smog in the air in the process. Congratulations!) Their rise has been tiny and gentle in comparison to the USA's

      I'm a bit more curious though about Russia, a country who's emission have reduced since 1990 by a larger factor than that of the USA.

      And Brazil... a country with 1/10th of the total emissions of the USA despite having 2/3rds of the people, who account less than 1% of CO2, and who's CO2 emissions also haven't increased by any appreciable amount in the past 5 years.

      Yes clearly all the countries you listed are the problem. Not the well established western countries which happily spew a shitton of CO2 into the air and continue to do so. It must be all those developing countries who somehow are demonstrating that they can develop without the meteoric rise in emissions of the USA and Europe. /slow clap.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      China does care a little but only a little

      China has spent more on windmills and pollution controls in the last few years than the rest of the world put together. Of course with the pollution controls they are playing catchup with a very long way to go before they get decent air and water quality.
      India and Brazil are not standing still either. Russia is Russia and oil oligarchs have probably more say in things than their equivalents in the USA.

  • Problem is effects now are from 20 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:43PM (#53141325) Homepage Journal

    What most people don't get is that CO2 takes about 100 years to cycle out of the atmosphere. And about 20 years to impact the cycles.

    The climate change you see today is from what we did from 1900 to 1990. It's already baked in. The changes we do today affect 2035 to 2135.

    However, planting trees or algae farms which we then store and don't use has an impact immeadiately.

    Seaweed is actually a great carbon store.

    In terms of immeadiate impacts, the best you can do is:

    1. stop eating beef, unless it's free range beefalo or beef in non-pastoral settings (yes, cow farts do impact the climate, but it's what they eat especially that matters). Side effect: healthier for you in terms of heart risk and diet, bonus points.

    2. stop flying on old inefficient airplanes except for turboprops. Use high speed rail where it exists, or boats.

    3. replace all your old inefficient money wasting appliances with new high efficient energy star appliances. As a personal example, I cut my utility bill in HALF by doing this, and the new stuff is WAY QUIETER and uses less hot water. And my clothes wear out half as fast. massive cost savings here. Fridge, washer, dryer.

    4. get a hybrid or plug in car or truck. In Canada they have 2017 model plug in trucks. Same goes for business. Saves TONS OF DOLLARS on fuel and maintenance. Plus, if you buy high end cars, the added electric power makes your car a speed demon! Ultra fast!

    • What most people don't get is that CO2 takes about 100 years to cycle out of the atmosphere. And about 20 years to impact the cycles. The climate change you see today is from what we did from 1900 to 1990. It's already baked in. The changes we do today affect 2035 to 2135.

      I think you're a little confused.....although the CO2 might persist in the atmosphere for a century, the affects of CO2 being released into the atmosphere are seen immediately (at least, as soon as the sun is shining). It takes a little while longer for the things like the ocean to warm up in response (exactly how long is unknown, but on the order of years, not decades).

      So the lag time is a few years, not a century.

    • the best you can do is:

      1. stop eating beef..

      You just lost me....

  • sustainable diets, with less beef

    Give it up Vegans, cattle eat grass. Grass is very sustainable.

  • My fellow Americans, we're screwed, blued, and tattooed.

  • Moving goal posts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Monday October 24, 2016 @03:59PM (#53141449)

    New York City was supposed to be under water by now. Same people are saying the same thing. Time appears to be very subjective to these people. Any prediction or statement involving time should be taken lightly.

    We've already crossed past arbitrary points of no return and whenever it happens... goal post is moved.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/20... [cbsnews.com]

    We're constantly being treated to this and when the prediction doesn't happen... no apology... no admission... nothing. Just a goal post move.

    Will they admit in 50 years what they haven't admitted over 20? Will they admit over 100 what they won't over 50?

    I suspect that only death by old age is going to resolve this because some people are going to keep this shit up to their graves.

  • I believe in general in Global Warming, however I've always been very uncomfortable with the dire tone of the weather predictions and the certainty in which they are stated. Here's how I would say it:

    1. Fact: We are producing increasingly more CO2 since the 1800s

    2. Fact: In a closed unchanging system this would create global warming.

    3. Fact: We know of no mechanism that would remove that much C02 from the atmosphere, however, we are a bit uncertain about how much exactly will be extracted by natural process

  • Seriously, we need to fix this.
    we need to punish the west, who emits less than 1/3 of emissions, and make them drop theirs.
    At the same time, we need to allow the rest of the world to grow MUCH faster than the west can drop theirs.
    And then we need to blame the west for all this.

    Oh wait, that is what the far left CURRENTLY DOES.

    Until the far left gets done giving China blow jobs, this will only get worse.

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