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Science

Global CO2 Concentration Passes Threshold of 400 ppm -- and That's Bad for the Climate (time.com) 376

The average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hit the symbolic level of 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 2015 and has continued to surge in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization. From a report on Time:Scientists say humans may need to take some carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. The carbon dioxide concentration is unlikely to dip below the 400 ppm mark for at least several decades, even with aggressive efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, according to the WMO report, which confirms similar findings reported last month. Carbon dioxide can last in the atmosphere for thousands of years without efforts to remove it. "The year 2015 ushered in a new era of optimism and climate action," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, referring to the landmark Paris Agreement to address climate change. "The real elephant in the room is carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years and in the oceans for even longer."
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Global CO2 Concentration Passes Threshold of 400 ppm -- and That's Bad for the Climate

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  • by stwf ( 108002 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:48AM (#53146163)

    People need to realize that the effects of global warming are at this point unstoppable. No conservation effort and certainly no carbon dioxide removal program could possibly show an effect for decades. At which point the damage will already be done. Money would be much better spent preparing for sea level rise etc than trying to prevent it.
    Not to be a downer but the number of people killed by famine, drought, sea level rise, etc will probably be more effective at curbing CO2 output than any policy measures.

    • Agreed. The biggest problem is government subsidies to live in flood areas.

      As for "aggressively tackling" I have to ROFLMAO. Asia continues to build a new coal fire plant every week. I'm more concerned about the pollution they are spewing - there are advisories not to eat fish in USA lakes because of poisoning from Asia energy and manufacturing air pollution.

      • So you see the biggest problem is that people live in flood areas, not that the petroleum industry effectively is the most subsidized industry on the planet, and is insulated against the significant costs the use of fossil fuels is producing? Oh no, but we must punish people for living near sea level.

        • by khallow ( 566160 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @01:47PM (#53148427)

          So you see the biggest problem is that people live in flood areas, not that the petroleum industry effectively is the most subsidized industry on the planet, and is insulated against the significant costs the use of fossil fuels is producing?

          I agree with the grandparent. Most oil subsidies come from countries that produce oil. You're not going to guilt them into changing their ways. The second problem is that a good portion of the oil subsidies subsidize consumption. That means that it's not a subsidy for the industry, which usually takes a loss on the practice.

          But people who live in flood zones? We can simply just not pay when their stuff gets wet.

    • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:57AM (#53146237) Homepage

      Rising sea levels will be gradual and we have plenty of time to cope with them. Aside from the climate change aspect the more immediate problem is acidifcation and warming of the sea which has already killed off a quarter of the barrier reef and is having serious effects elsewhere with plankton. If the ocean food chain starts collapsing from the bottom up we're in deep deep shit and thats before you consider the reduction of fish stocks by overfishing and the destruction of the ocean floor by drag net trawling.

      • by kwiecmmm ( 1527631 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @12:27PM (#53147665)

        Some people think it is going to be gradual but there are people who think it could be sudden for a few reasons.

        Antartic [npr.org] ice sheets are melting at this time, but it is currently trapped by the ice there.

        Most people don't think these sorts of things happen regularly, but glacial floods [wikipedia.org] have been seen in the earth's history (as long as you believe the earth older than 6000 years).

        Also, the reason that ocean sea level rise has not been seen everywhere up to this point is because the Arctic ice was over water, which meant that no water was added to the ocean. Antarctica and Greenland's ice are not currently a part of the ocean, so when this makes it to the ocean, things are going to go bad around the world.

        Aside from the climate change aspect the more immediate problem is acidifcation and warming of the sea which has already killed off a quarter of the barrier reef and is having serious effects elsewhere with plankton.

        And this is the other point, we have no idea what effects we are having on plankton populations. But then again, why do we need plankton, it isn't like we need to breathe.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:58AM (#53146241) Journal

      I agree with you the time for conservation is past. We are at least if we want to continue to enjoy the standard of living we do beyond the natural carrying capacity of the globe. The answer is geo-engineering. I don't agree with your assessment we can remove carbon in sufficient quantities from the atmosphere. Do you have any evidence to site? I would argue the opposite, given we have been able to put a sufficient amount of carbon into the atmosphere to account for at least some of the temperature and ocean acidification changes we are seeing, it stands to reason we should be capable of removing it as well.

      Technologies exist to efficiently (in terms of volume) remove carbon from air today. It just requires lots of input energy. There are a sources that could provide such energy at hand. Fission as well as that big fusion ball we call the sun could provide a enough power. We just need to get serious about doing it. We should reallocate the resources currently being used on carbon reduction to carbon removal efforts. It would go a long way.

      • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:32AM (#53146575) Journal

        Oh for fuck's sake. We can still maintain a good standard of living and wean ourselves off of oil.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Really,

          Tell me how do you do enough concentrated agriculture to feed the 8B people without nitrogen fertilizer?

        • No, we can't. Airplanes aren't going to be solar powered, wind driven ships are extremely erratic, and delivering food to cities by horse-drawn carts is so last millennium.

        • So, up here in Canada, in today's news are some fisherman who (fortunately) failed to get an injunction against an experimental tidal power project, and a bunch of protesters who took over a hydroelectric dam under construction. Don't think that "cleaner" energy does not have huge amounts of opposition. Natural gas infrastructure expansion is undergoing major protests. Wind turbines are noisy and unsightly and subject to lawsuits, and solar thermal kills birds. Don't even mention the word nuclear and ex

    • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @11:19AM (#53146955) Journal

      At which point the damage will already be done. Money would be much better spent preparing for sea level rise etc than trying to prevent it.

      Much better to be thinking about buying an iron lung than to stop smoking.

  • Perspective (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:49AM (#53146175)
    Just going to note that here's what this means in terms of how the global average temperatures have been changing, and how rapidly so compared to the past:
    http://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
    • Just going to note that here's what this means in terms of how the global average temperatures have been changing, and how rapidly so compared to the past:

      http://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]

      Here's a link to the actual paper [sciencemag.org] the xkcd graph is derived from.

      Before drawing conclusions from the graph trend starting at the year 1900, read the journal article more closely. Specifically the part where it notes that the trend from 1900 onwards is graphing the instrumental record, while the period before 1900 is from their proxy reconstruction. As in, before leaping up and declaring human industrial era began at 1900, also note that the SOURCE OF DATA changed at 1900 too.

      • Specifically the part where it notes that the trend from 1900 onwards is graphing the instrumental record, while the period before 1900 is from their proxy reconstruction.

        They can graph the trend based on a proxy measurement of observations discovered on stone tablets for all I care. What's important is not the source of the measurement (despite what the anti AGW crowd like to claim) but rather the accuracy and repeatability.

        • What's important is not the source of the measurement (despite what the anti AGW crowd like to claim) but rather the accuracy and repeatability.

          What should be important is the precision. +1C +/- 0.1C is a lot more meaningful than +1C +/- 2C....

        • Specifically the part where it notes that the trend from 1900 onwards is graphing the instrumental record, while the period before 1900 is from their proxy reconstruction.

          They can graph the trend based on a proxy measurement of observations discovered on stone tablets for all I care. What's important is not the source of the measurement (despite what the anti AGW crowd like to claim) but rather the accuracy and repeatability.

          Amen on the accuracy. The original article has the graph data available here [sciencemag.org].

          The overall reconstructions show about a 0.4 to 0.5C change in temperature with an error margin +/- 0.2C, so an error margin that's nearly as large as the signal. And that's just for the statistical uncertainty, not any other unaccounted for factors. When the comparison between that and an instrumental record differ, it's a bit less shocking and perhaps that difference in precision is a factor and not solely human activity starting

      • Yup, we can't trust any reckoning of temperatures before the "instrumental" temperature record.

        Oh wait, they've moved the instrument due to construction on campus and now the temperatures need to be adjusted! OMG IT'S NOT RAW DATA!!!!eleven!!!11!!1!

        Now here comes satellite measurements! We can't trust any numbers before 1980-ish! Oh noes! We can't know anything about anything!

        Upside to not knowing anything about anything: when Florida sinks, can we just pretend it never existed?

        • Yup, we can't trust any reckoning of temperatures before the "instrumental" temperature record.

          Oh wait, they've moved the instrument due to construction on campus and now the temperatures need to be adjusted! OMG IT'S NOT RAW DATA!!!!eleven!!!11!!1!

          Now here comes satellite measurements! We can't trust any numbers before 1980-ish! Oh noes! We can't know anything about anything!

          Upside to not knowing anything about anything: when Florida sinks, can we just pretend it never existed?

          The flames from all the straw men makes it hard to hear you.

          Nowhere did I call into question any of the data sets. I provided a link to the actual journal article no less so anyone could fact check. What I DID point out is that we have two data sets on the graph, one that is the proxy record and one for the instrumental. That's not undermining, questioning or denying anything, it's a restating of the words of the author's themselves.

          The reconstructed data is going to have different accuracy, precision and sensitivity than the instrumental record. The authors of course did their best to account for that. None the less, it's pretty blasted important not to leave that out when analyzing an abrupt change in trend exactly coinciding with a change in data source.

  • Taking CO2 out?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:50AM (#53146183)

    What about not putting it there in the first place? THEN we can start thinking about removing it from the atmosphere. It takes far more energy to take CO2 out of the atmosphere than to not put it there.

    • by knightghost ( 861069 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:54AM (#53146209)

      That'd take nuclear - something that intelligent people understand and support, but unfortunately that's a tiny fraction of the voting population.

      • by bigpat ( 158134 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:11AM (#53146353)

        That'd take nuclear - something that intelligent people understand and support, but unfortunately that's a tiny fraction of the voting population.

        Anti-nuclear power = Climate Change Denier. Or might as well be. We simply do not have the technology to stop or even reduce CO2 emissions in the necessary time frame at the necessary scale without a massive investment in new nuclear power generating capacity. Really there isn't a meaningful benefit in investing in expensive solar and wind alternatives unless there is also a large scale investment in nuclear power right now.

        Well there is a benefit to solar and wind power, but it is mostly so rich limousine liberals can delude themselves into feeling good about their role as they change the planet and cause regional wars and famine and are really just as responsible for all that death and destruction like everyone else is.

        • Anti-nuclear power = Climate Change Denier.

          that may have been true in the past, but not for many many years. its the environmentalists, the global warming supporters who are the ones who have been anti nuke since the 70s

          • In the last ten years or so, many of the leading environmentalists have started to come to support nuclear power. They've realized that if it weren't for their opposition, nuclear would have replaced coal years ago.

            Some elder statesmen of the environmental movement from the 1970s have even acknowledged that they messed up when with they exaggerated risks of nuclear. They've admitted they purposely bred confusion long half-cycle waste, which releases a very small bit of energy each year and therefore lasts

            • and this is true, but saying anti nuke is the same as global warming denier is simply incorrect. maybe the people at the top, but many of the morons on the street never got the memo
      • Bringing a new nuclear plant online safely takes decades, and decomissioning one takes even longer if you include its nuclear waste. Nuclear is not an agile solution. This won't change in the near future, or perhaps not at all until "nuclear" becomes synonymous with fusion, not fission like today.

        Nuclear is also an extraordinarily expensive technology which limits its uptake to only the more afluent of nations. Furthermore it is highly regulated for very good reason, and the politics of nuclear power aga

    • Re:Taking CO2 out?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @09:59AM (#53146251)

      Dare I say it?

      Replace coal plants with nukes.

      Then replace natural gas plants with nukes.

      Then keep on building nukes till we have enough electricity being generated to replace all those gasoline/diesel automobiles (trucks, trains, etc) with electric versions.

      And while we're doing that, replace oil-burning ship power plants with nukes.

      Note that the steps after "coal plants" can be rearranged to taste. There are good arguments that we'd be better off getting the cars/trucks/trains replaced with all electric versions before we replace gas-fired power plants.

      As long as the people getting worried about AGW are chanting "no nukes, no nukes", I'm going to continue ignoring the AGW problem as "not very serious, really"....

      • Re:Taking CO2 out?? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:42AM (#53146659) Homepage Journal

        Actually, with excess nuclear power, we can produce eDiesel. We've got new catalysts and high-pressure processes making eDiesel highly-efficient, about 70%; that means pipelines fed from eDiesel plants placed near nuclear and geothermal power plants would come in slightly less-efficient than electric cars at 15% transmission loss and 85% charging efficiency.

        We can stockpile eDiesel; we can use it for airplanes (no way to make those battery-powered); we can generate eMethane or otherwise use eDiesel to run fuel cells, creating liquid fuel electric cars (possibly airplanes, but it's a tough job for an electric motor); we can use it to drive factories which need more power than the grid provides.

        Newer tweaks to battery technology are targeting high-surface-area electrodes. Lithium ion batteries grow tin whiskers internally, creating more surface area for reaction, thus higher and longer power output; current research targets new structures and new battery chemistries to maximize this, essentially attempting to create an activated-carbon-style surface as the battery consumes itself. The processes in eDiesel similarly use catalyzed hydrolysis, and it's non-consuming: if we can manufacture high-surface-area electrodes using current or improved catalysts, we can raise eDiesel efficiency. The two efforts are semi-parallel, in that efforts in one give insight to the other, yet they're distinct in significant ways and so can't directly translate.

        That means more-efficient batteries and more-efficient eDiesel generation in the future. If the overall efficiency exceeds 85%, eDiesel will beat any electric vehicle: transmission loss is 15%. At the same time, low-cost eDiesel will immediately replace more-expensive petroleum, as it's compatible with current, unmodified gas turbine technology; and eDiesel can feed or be modified to feed hydrogen fuel cells, which provide electricity, giving a method of feeding electric vehicles with a liquid or heavy gas (not hydrogen, which has storage and transport issues) fuel tank rather than a battery.

        At the same time, plant and atmospheric petroleum (e.g. eDiesel) products such as polyester, rayon, plastic, and lubricating oil (PAO, Group-3) will sequester oil. Recycling carries costs and complexity; cheap atmospheric petroleum, once expended, can be incinerated for power or dumped into expended oil wells. Deep well dumping provides an attractive option: the expended liquid petroleum becomes a feed stock for later mining and refining, while effectively removing the carbon content from the atmosphere.

        This is all stuff that will happen naturally, eventually. eDiesel will scale; a reduction in cost of nuclear, geothermal, and solar will outcompete oil; and refining waste oil into recycled stock will be less-efficient than producing new oil at the point where atmospheric petroleum has become cheaper than oil. The only question is when.

      • by div_2n ( 525075 )

        Or just take the money you would have spent building all of those plants deploying solar and wind all over the place. Problem solved in far less time.

        • as has been noted time and time and again the energy is not there in solar or wind to replace everything else *at this point in time*
        • Or just take the money you would have spent building all of those plants deploying solar and wind all over the place. Problem solved in far less time.

          Except for the pesky problems of storage, transmission, capacity, and effects on the environment.

          The sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow at the right times in all the right places. There isn't enough acreage to lay solar farms to meet our energy needs without affecting the ecosystem, there is no way to efficiently get the energy from point A to point B when they are long distances apart, and lets not forget about how bird kills will affect the bird population if we put wind farms everywhere.

          One tec

      • Then keep on building nukes till we have enough electricity being generated to replace all those gasoline/diesel automobiles (trucks, trains, etc) with electric versions.

        When you look at the chemical properties of diesel it's really, really hard to beat. It doesn't explode. It doesn't even burn at room temp without a lot of coaxing. It carries 46 MJ/kg.

        If electricity really is free and plentiful we should have no problem making D2 out of thin air and trash. Fischer-Tropsch got the Germans through WWII. Just start using trash as feed stock and eat the inefficiencies.

        • Just start using trash as feed stock and eat the inefficiencies.

          Cows do love Styrofoam and packing peanuts.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:01AM (#53146263) Journal

      That *was* an option, now it isn't for two reasons.

      1) lots of distributed application depend on open circuit (in terms of carbon) power solutions. Its cost prohibitive to really fix that. By contrast carbon removal could be centralized at a comparative small number of points.

      2) We may be already in a positive feedback loop in terms of global temperatures and so you must break the loop, conservation will not achieve that.

  • by Mysund ( 60792 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:01AM (#53146265)

    We just see it as a round number because we use base 10.

    So it is actually nothing special.about 400. It is all numerology crap/superstition.

    If we instead of 10 fingers, only had 7 fingers, the number would be ... Oh crap ... 400 in base 7 is actually 1111.

    The world will end.

    • It's four hundred ppm.

      That's 400 ppm.

      That's as many as forty tens. And that's terrible.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Personally, I'm not going to worry until it reaches 2FF parts per F0000.

    • by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      we have researched thresholds for various effects, including irreversibility.
      the ppm level required to reach those thresholds was then back-calculated, and that's where the 400ppm comes from (no the calculation didn't result in precisely 400.000ppm).

  • by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:01AM (#53146281) Journal
    "The real elephant in the room is carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years and in the oceans for even longer." The REAL elephant(s) in the room is: 1. Are there any solutions that are REALISTIC. And what I mean by realistic is not hoping that everybody comes together holds hands and voluntarily gives up 5-10% of GDP. 2. Are there any solutions where people don't suspect that the solutions are merely a submarine attempt to consolidate power under aegis of power consolidation among elites. You have to solve these problems. There are MANY People who simply don't trust "authority" to do anything other than screw them over. Climate change is a real problem. Let's see some real solutions other than crossing your fingers that some international body of politicians is going to do the right thing (which means fixing it without a power grab), because if THAT is the solution we are all SCREWED.
    • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:11AM (#53146361) Journal

      Well why is that I wounder? Could it because because most of the leading authority figures and potential candidates are embroiled in scandal after scandal. Could it because by and large authority HAS screwed over the common man. Whatever your politics are at least in the USA the fact is there has been tremendous wealth consolidation over the past 40 years and it has occurred under both left wing and right wing administrations, under both left wing and right wing majority Congresses.

      By any reasonably account pretty much all post WWII authorities have 'screwed us over' I don't see why they should be trusted. Technocrats were running the financial centers during the global crisis. Technocrats have overseen what has been the slowest recovery in history. I think its abundantly clear these people ARE NOT in fact any more fit to lead than the usual poster here. Fancy degrees and acronyms don't change that.

  • The math (Score:5, Informative)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:06AM (#53146321) Homepage

    The math of climate change is fairly straightforward. CO2 and methane in the atmosphere cause more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. There's a certain amount of carbon that was stored underground over millions of years in the form of oil and coal. That carbon was slowly extracted from the atmosphere by plants over the course of 500 million years and stored underground. During that time, the planet's temperature went up and down for various reasons 1) Earth's orbit and distance from the sun 2) volcanic activity releasing CO2 3) aerosols reflecting light back into space 4) the reflectivity of the surface of the earth from accumulation of snow or melting of snow during those other changes 5) sudden die off or surge of plant life 6) other reasons.

    The rate of change for temperature and CO2 levels during all of those changes was gradual, with the changes taking place over thousands or millions of years. When CO2 was released in previous times, it was gradual. What's different about the current climate is that humans have raised the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 140% in 200 years (280ppm to 400pm). That rate is way faster than any natural change in the history of the planet. That rate is what is so significant about human caused release of CO2 into the atmosphere. There are simply no natural factors to compare the methodical migration of carbon from the ground into the atmosphere.

    So, yes this is significant.

    • What's different about the current climate is that humans have raised the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 140% in 200 years (280ppm to 400pm).

      So this is "the math?"

      Get back to us when you understand percentage increases.

    • The math of climate change is fairly straightforward. CO2 and methane in the atmosphere cause more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. There's a certain amount of carbon that was stored underground over millions of years in the form of oil and coal. That carbon was slowly extracted from the atmosphere by plants over the course of 500 million years and stored underground. During that time, the planet's temperature went up and down for various reasons 1) Earth's orbit and distance from the sun 2) volcanic activity releasing CO2 3) aerosols reflecting light back into space 4) the reflectivity of the surface of the earth from accumulation of snow or melting of snow during those other changes 5) sudden die off or surge of plant life 6) other reasons.

      The rate of change for temperature and CO2 levels during all of those changes was gradual, with the changes taking place over thousands or millions of years. When CO2 was released in previous times, it was gradual. What's different about the current climate is that humans have raised the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 140% in 200 years (280ppm to 400pm). That rate is way faster than any natural change in the history of the planet. That rate is what is so significant about human caused release of CO2 into the atmosphere. There are simply no natural factors to compare the methodical migration of carbon from the ground into the atmosphere.

      So, yes this is significant.

      Quick, tell the climate modelling teams how easy the problem is, they've been mistakenly making it much more complicated than required...

      Let's try an analogy. We're stuck in a bathtub over top a fire. The water's kind of warm, we aren't freezing and we aren't so hot we need to get out. Simple math does tell us that putting more fuel into the fire beneath us will make things warmer. Same goes for more CO2 in our atmosphere, we equally know that will make things warmer. The more important question is how much

  • There is no concentration of any particular gas in the atmosphere that is 'good' or 'bad' for the climate. The climate doesn't care one way or the other, it simply is. Good or bad for US, that's a different matter.
    • by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      Untrue.

      We have researched thresholds for various effects, including irreversibility.
      The ppm level required to reach those thresholds was then back-calculated.
      That's where the 400ppm comes from (no the calculation didn't result in precisely 400.000ppm), and why 400ppm is considered the threshold of irreversibility.

  • From the IPCC's first assessment report [www.ipcc.ch] from 25 years ago we were supposed to hit this point by 2010. Look for the graph in chapter 1 where CO2 concentrations are graphed for various scenarios. The scenario with human emissions increasing every year by 2% hits 400ppm in 2010.

    On the whole, that's not a terrible estimation though given the limits folks were working under back then. Doesn't sound as scary though in the papers to declare that we are about 6 years behind early estimates of when we'd hit this poi

  • This was from a month ago.

    http://www.climatecentral.org/... [climatecentral.org]
  • by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:22AM (#53146447)

    Global CO2 Concentration Passes Threshold of 400 ppm -- and That's Bad for the Climate

    There is no "threshold" at 400ppm; it's just an arbitrary number. In terms of earth's climate history, global CO2 concentrations can go above 1000ppm and we're still fine; arguably, we'd actually be better off. None of that matters, though, because...

    The carbon dioxide concentration is unlikely to dip below the 400 ppm mark for at least several decades, even with aggressive efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, according to the WMO report

    It's not "unlikely to dip below the 400 ppm mark", it is impossible for it to dip below the 400 ppm mark for decades even if every human on the planet killed themselves tomorrow. No amount of mitigation or climate change policy or taxes or international treaties is going to change that. And the policies that are being negotiated and proposed are utterly useless; they won't even significantly slow the increase. That's why people who advocate governmental action on climate change are liars and crooks.

    Get used to it: the only option we have for dealing with climate change is that humans adapt to it. You can be an optimist about it (like myself) or a pessimist.

    But you are a climate change denier if you deny that climate change is inevitable at this point.

    • by bazorg ( 911295 )

      But you are a climate change denier if you deny that climate change is inevitable at this point.

      I guess this means that climate change deniers had a winning strategy and they will have a lot of money to show for it. Shareholders will be happy until there are important regional conflicts about water supplies. Then everyone will be unhappy because no amount of money will solve the problem.

      • Shareholders will be happy until there are important regional conflicts about water supplies.

        Why should there be conflicts about "water supplies"? Climate change generally leads to more precipitation and a greening of deserts.

        http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]

        • by bazorg ( 911295 )

          India and China get some of their water from rivers that go across their borders. If these rivers are affected, many millions of people will be affected.

    • by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      it is not arbitrary.

      We have researched thresholds for various effects, including irreversibility.
      The ppm level required to reach those thresholds was then back-calculated.
      That's where the 400ppm comes from (no the calculation didn't result in precisely 400.000ppm), and why 400ppm is considered the threshold of irreversibility.

      Nor would we necessarily fine, nor would we better off.
      We may biologically survive 1000ppm with only chronic nausea and headache, but there many other factors that would dramatically i

  • by johanw ( 1001493 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:30AM (#53146529)

    It's getting way too cold here - I like the (sub) tropical climate that is natural for this planet most of its life and I really hate this aftermath of the destructive ice age we are slowly leaving.

  • Quite some time ago, I took global warming to heart and had a vasectomy. I make the affirmative decision not to have children. So, how many of the eco-alarmists have done the same thing? The problem isn't "man-made CO2", the problem is that we have too many men/women on the planet, with no sign of slowing. But global warming isn't the only problem. Wait until the population outgrows the food supply.

    The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig

    • Your sacrifice is well appreciated, glad to have more resources available for my children. I also want to thank all the Prius drivers that help keep gas prices low for my truck.
  • by Tangential ( 266113 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2016 @10:53AM (#53146743) Homepage
    Its been interesting to watch the climate debate over the years. The talk has always been about reducing emissions and economic measures. If remediation (and clean energy) had been tackled with the kinds of efforts that won WW2 and put a man on the moon, this problem would be orders of magnitude less now (plus my cellphone charge would last weeks and I'd like that.) Instead "climate change" became all about economic rebalancing and geopolitical issues. We already have technologies that would deal with a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere but they typically need energy and without clean energy (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, etc) to power them, they don't do much. Now no one is willing to divert the massive amounts of money needed because that might interfere with the bread & circuses everyone wants.
  • Carbon dioxide can last in the atmosphere for thousands of years without efforts to remove it.

    What does that even mean? Besides being a handy quote to invoke panic in math and science illiterates.

    Carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere until some process removes it. The amount is based upon the difference in production vs consumption. Atmospheric CO2 varies seasonally due to differences in the amount of plant respiration between the northern and southern hemispheres. This is evident in the sawtooth [climatecentral.org] superimposed on the long term trend. This means that CO2 concentrations will respond quickly to c

  • It's bad for the living things that rely on the current climate.
  • What's most sad about the AGW propaganda is how CO2 is made out to be some kind of monster.

    A reminder that CO2 in excess causes plant life to flourish, which is beneficial to all life on earth.

    The whole point of claiming CO2 was bad was that it was supposed to cause runaway warming. But we know from decades now of high CO2 without correspondingly large temperature rise, that is simply not the case. The Earth's climate is a lot more complex than CO2 in a bell jar...

    Instead of being alarmed at the possibly o

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