Alaska's Permafrost Is Thawing (cnbc.com) 324
Henry Fountain reports via The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages. But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state. Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter -- plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities. In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state's biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
Time to plant trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to plant trees. Lots of trees.
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You could cover the entire planet surface with trees and it still wouldn't be enough. It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:5, Informative)
You could cover the entire planet surface with trees and it still wouldn't be enough. It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
Okay. But until we have such machines, the most readily available carbon-sink, cost-effective and easily deployed with unskilled labour, is the tree.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:4)
But until we have such machines...
Actually, we have already invented the machines we need to capture CO2. We have the machines we need, we just need to build them.
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Actually, we have already invented the machines we need to capture CO2. We have the machines we need, we just need to build them.
And power them. That's going to remain a sticking point unless and until we have fusion.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:4, Insightful)
And power them. That's going to remain a sticking point unless and until we have fusion.
We have plenty of power from the sun and the wind, dummy. Worst case scenario, we power them with nuclear.
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If we have plenty of solar and wind energy, then why are we still burning fossil fuels and amplifying the problem in the first place?
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If we have plenty of solar and wind energy, then why are we still burning fossil fuels and amplifying the problem in the first place?
Because we aren't taxing polluters to clean up their pollution. Change that and everyone will be switching power sources ASAP.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like when I discovered the house I was renting had blackberry bushes outside. "Great!" I thought, "Free blackberries!" And when the blackberries ripened I went outside to pick them. An hour later I had a small bowl of blackberries, but I still had to wash them and my fingers were sore from numerous thorn pricks. The next day I just went to the store and bought a box of blackberries for a couple dollars. It was a much more efficient use of my time and resources to get the same end product.
When I was a kid living in Aptos, I used to go with my mother to pick blackberries along the railroad tracks. We'd get backpacks full of berries for a couple hours' work tops. Later, we moved to Capitola, and we used to pick berries in a big open field on 41st Ave, out behind the KFC. Again, backpacks full. Even at the time a small container of ripe berries was regularly $2; today it's typically around $5. Then we'd take them home and make cobblers out of them. We couldn't actually afford to go out and eat cobbler in restaurants, but we could afford to go pick fifty to a hundred dollars' worth of berries.
Maybe you're a shitty berry-picker, maybe your berry patch isn't very good, or maybe your story is just bullshit.
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Worst case scenario, we power them with nuclear.
That pretty much is the worst case. It also makes zero sense because wind is cheaper.
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If wind was cheaper then we should be able to do without wind subsidies. Every time the possibility of removing those subsidies is mentioned though the tree huggers scream. Wind power as it is now cannot survive without subsidies, subsidies from a coal and nuclear powered economy.
Just add a tax based on the amount money needed to clean up the pollution from each energy source. Wind will thrive because energy from fossil fuel would actually cost companies money. When we do that, we can strip all subsidies from the energy sector.
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Well, until we have fission, at any rate. If you're anti-fission now, what makes you think you'll be pro-fusion when it is possible? You'll just have some other thing that we need to shoot for that conveniently lets fossil fuel companies keep operating "in the meantime" as always.
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We're using our fission power. Even if it's scaled up as rapidly as can be done with reasonable safety margins, demand will expand to use it all -- not that this is a bad thing, as many problems (like fossil fueled vehicles, and the shortage of fresh water) can be solved. I'm definitely not anti-fission and don't see why you think I would be. It's just that the sheer quantity of power available from fusion will mean no longer having to choose which power-intensive needs top the list: making fertilizer for f
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Okay. But until we have such machines, the most readily available carbon-sink, cost-effective and easily deployed with unskilled labour, is the tree.
That depends on where it's going. If the area is very dry, it won't support trees. You have to work your way up from scrub, kudzu, something hardy like that. If it is moist, bamboo is better. It grows biomass faster than trees, and there are several varieties useful as building materials. Cutting the bamboo down and building stuff out of it means carbon sequestration, just like trees except faster.
Re: Time to plant trees (Score:2)
Op probably meant biomass in its most technical sense: mass of biological material, as opposed to the vernacular sense of biomass conversion fuel.
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Correct. The word for that is "feedstock", not "biomass", although there are processes for which any biomass is a viable feedstock. The ABE process [wikipedia.org] springs to mind as being relevant here.
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Well, there actually are other geoengineering possibilities. One proposal is fertilizing the Antarctic Oceans with iron to generate massive algal blooms. The problem with that is that it has *other* consequences, like destroying the ecosystem in the part of the ocean where you do it. But the big advantage is that it's cheap, and it'd probably work, at the costs of turning large swathes of the oceans into toxic muck.
While planting an individual tree isn't expensive, planting enough trees to offset human ca
Or you could attack the heat directly. (Score:2)
Or you could attack the alleged problem - heat - directly.
Orbital sunshades can give you as much cooling as you want. But that's pretty high tech (thou
How many trees? (Score:2)
Time to plant trees. Lots of trees.
You could cover the entire planet surface with trees and it still wouldn't be enough. It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
Okay. But until we have such machines, the most readily available carbon-sink, cost-effective and easily deployed with unskilled labour, is the tree.
OK, let's calculate. Here's a source talking about CO2 absorption by trees: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk] , and here's a source saying "A tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and can sequester 1 ton of carbon dioxide by the time it reaches 40 years old.": https://projects.ncsu.edu/proj... [ncsu.edu]
This one says that trees absorb 40% of the 28 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted per year: World's forests absorb almost 40 per cent of man made CO2 [telegraph.co.uk]
If we take just that last figure, it'
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It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
Cool, but then you have to figure out how to power those machines. Presumably you'd need to use renewable (or at least nuclear) power for them, since otherwise they'd be putting more CO2 into the air, likely at a faster rate than they were taking it out of the air. How much power would such a machine require to remove a given amount of CO2? Are we currently capable of creating a CO2-removing machine that is more power-efficient than a tree? I have my doubts about that.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:4)
Cool, but then you have to figure out how to power those machines.
Solar and wind. This isn't rocket science.
Are we currently capable of creating a CO2-removing machine that is more power-efficient than a tree?
Trees don't permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If they did then there wouldn't be any CO2 for them. Also, please don't argue that animals are supplying the CO2 they need because animal-life is a recent development compared to plant-life.
What we have done is removed a fuckload of buried carbon and propelled it into the atmosphere. If we wanted to involve trees, it would be planting a huge amount of trees, uprooting them at their prime and then burying them deep underground. The better option is to use machines to capture CO2 and then use chemistry to split it into carbon and oxygen. We can make various things with these but the most space efficient would be to make diamonds and release the oxygen. Considering we've released over a trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, space should be a consideration.
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We can make various things with these but the most space efficient would be to make diamonds and release the oxygen.
...what? We have the ability to make gigatonnes of diamonds every year? Why has nobody told me?
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Trees don't permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If they did then there wouldn't be any CO2 for them.
A portion of the carbon that trees remove from the atmosphere is sequestered. That's a simple fact. Even in the rain forest, that's true. However, it's most true in evergreen forests, because the rate of falls determines (in part) whether decomposition is aerobic or not, and aerobic decomposition releases less of the stored carbon, returning more of it to the soil.
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Trees don't permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. .
Depends what happens to the leaves when they fall and the wood when the tree dies. If if gets locked up in peat bogs or permafrost (or eventually oil or coal) you are fine. If it burns or decays, not so good. I haven't done the sums, but I suspect growing plants (I can quite believe that bamboo or something is better than trees) harvesting them and dumping them into old oil wells or coal mines, or somewhere else where they won't decay for a few millenia (what happens to woodchip in deep ocean sediment (as
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I haven't done the sums, but I suspect growing plants...
Do the sums. Your argument is specious.
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:4)
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
A better first step would be to turn off the machines that actively add carbon to the air.
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That's like turning off the life support before the patient can breathe on their own.
Also, YOU are a machine that actively adds carbon into the air. So turn yourself off first.
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Also, YOU are a machine that actively adds carbon into the air. So turn yourself off first.
No, I need to be around to say "I told you so".
Political Science (Score:5, Interesting)
AGW was first proposed in 1896, and discredited for the next five decades. During the period 1950-1970 the growing body of evidence was sufficient to reverse the consensus, and since then all of the evidence is pointing towards, "Yes, this phenomenon is real and behaves as we expect." Denying this has become a symbol of ideological purity for a current political party, but there's only so far one can take that tactic.
The science is really pretty simple. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Originally, we did not think that it could build up in the atmosphere, and we thought that it could not contribute any more to warming than [a] what it was already doing, and [b] what water vapor was doing. After we became better able to observe the upper atmosphere, it was realized that, yes, there was a bit of a gap for CO2 in the H2O spectrum, but more importantly, the CO2-dense part of the atmosphere extends quite a bit higher than the tropopause. But what does that matter if it's already completely opaque at lower CO2 concentrations?
The effect of a higher partial pressure of CO2 is to push the CO2-dense region of the atmosphere further out into space, increasing the effective 'top-of-atmosphere'. This means that outgoing radiation must take a longer path out of the atmosphere, which effectively traps heat in the lower atmosphere. The "no-feedback forcing" can be relatively straightforwardly calculated to be ~3.7 W/m^2 per doubling of atmospheric CO2, which is equivalent to about 1 degree C of global temperature change.
Now, that in itself is not a huge deal. The issue is that H2O is a strong greenhouse gas and you may have noticed that there happens to be some rather large reservoirs of that stuff lying around just itching to be part of the atmosphere. We've spent quite a bit of time looking for ways that the H2O feedback won't end up being a huge issue. And I think that I'm maligning anyone to suggest that Dr. Lindzen has had the most credible alternate hypothesis in decades, which sadly he has not been able to find credible evidence for. Some major flaw in the physics of H2O is about all that would save us at this point.
AGW is a theory that we've been trying to disprove for more than a century. We've known for about 150 years that CO2 was a greenhouse gas and that many human activities release large amounts of this substance, but the initial assumption was that climate was cyclical and that warm years would balance out cold ones. The theories of AGW and climate change have at every step had to fight for acceptance among people who (reasonably enough) were not prepared to believe in them.
And then in more recent history there is a crowd of conservative voices who have -- being generous -- rejected empiricism in favor of a more rationalist epistemology. Truth is not what you measure -- measurements can be biased, measurers can lie -- truth is what you can prove with logic and reason. It's not like science can measure God, and those scientists are all leftist eggheads anyway. Those elitists don't have a monopoly on truth. Which is all well and good, and certainly an internally consistent philosophy, but if the tragedy of empiricism is never being sure of anything, the problem with non-empirical philosophies is that they are under no obligation to be consistent with observable reality. Politicians at the moment find it useful to take up an anti-empirical position, and rather sensibly they've picked a topic which to date has yet to make much meaningful impact on the lives of most Americans. (I'm from Alaska; the glaciers and permafrost melting has been fairly readily apparent there, since the bulk of these effects has been at the lower alpine/tidewater icefields and the edges of the permafrost fields -- the most visible and accessible areas.)
At this point the Republicans seem a bit screwed. Their constituency won't allow them to walk this one back -- supporting climate science has been a great way to lose Republican primaries in recent years. Symptoms of warming are (consistent with other conspiracy the
A better first step? (Score:2)
A better first step would be to turn off the machines that actively add carbon to the air.
So, you are gonna close your mouth hole? You are a carbon exhaust machine, maroon.
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A better first step would be to turn off the machines that actively add carbon to the air.
That would be ideal but we have to work within government capabilities without authoritarian rule. The better first step would be to add a pollution tax. It would be onerous enough that non-polluting solutions would become the more desirable solutions from a financial standpoint. The taxes should be used to help clean up the pollution and subsidize solutions for the poor (because they cannot afford the initial investment needed).
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"The better first step would be to add a pollution tax."
We have those, they are called "taxes". Everything we do produces "pollution" (if we include CO2 as pollution) and everything is taxed. Do you mean just raising tax rates?
We do not tax specifically for the volume of pollution something creates. That's what should be taxed. The tax also needs to be high enough to cover the cost of cleaning up the pollution.
At some point we need to recognize the diminishing returns on doing more.
When we reach the point where we're removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than we're putting out, that's when we can "go into maintenance mode".
That is we hit a wall of diminishing returns if we keep this NIMBY attitude on nuclear power.
Currently, nuclear power isn't very cost effective and it's very centralized which makes it a vulnerability. Distributed solar power is a better idea and reduces the amount of in
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:4, Insightful)
It's time to start preparing for the inevitable warming of the planet. We've got some time but I'd start by banning any new construction in Florida and other low lying areas. Even by the most optimistic view the Paris Accords aren't going to do much, if any, good. It'll keep warming gradually for decades.
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I'd start by just not providing government-funded flood insurnace in coastal areas known to have a high risk of flooding. If you want to build there, fine, but you insure your own shit or live with the cost of losing your property in the next big storm. We shouldn't have been subsidizing stupid real estate decisions like that all along.
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It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
You mean the machines also known as "trees"?
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It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.
You mean the machines also known as "trees"?
Trees are great things to have around the place. I'll always support planting them, and enjoy them. But at best, they are carbon neutral. Any carbon they might pull from the atmosphere is temporarily stored, then released back to the atmosphere after they die and decay. We might think of the standard rotting process as extreme slow burning, and some of the more wet decays as methane production.
Probably the best approach is to attempt to slow releasing of sequestered carbon from ages past, and call it a
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But at best, they are carbon neutral. Any carbon they might pull from the atmosphere is temporarily stored, then released back to the atmosphere after they die and decay.
Not if you take measures to prevent their decay after they die.
After all, that's how all this carbon got into the ground in the first place, so it's obviously not impossible.
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But at best, they are carbon neutral. Any carbon they might pull from the atmosphere is temporarily stored, then released back to the atmosphere after they die and decay.
Make biochar. You 1) sequester carbon and 2) improve agriculture. It's a win-win.
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You mean the machines also known as "trees"?
No.
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There is so much wasted space pointing upward, that could be used for solar energy collection or improved tree growth.
Cities have many square miles of ugly black tar roofs that could be collecting solar energy. They are fields that are laying fallow that could be reforested.
These are not things that are impossible for even modest governments, but we are lacking global leadership who is willing to say they will fund these projects and attack the problem on many angles.
Do you want to get Republicans involved
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Do you want to get Republicans involved. Well stop calling them uneducated hicks, start explaining how solar energy is a good way to be independent of these government controlled power plants and where you are responsible for your own energy.
I love how you make this attempt to say that non-republicans are causing republicans to rebel because non-republicans are so mean.
That is like arguing that you can get someone to kill themselves by telling them they are stupid, and that gravity is real, so they say No it isn't, and then jump off a cliff because you contradicted them.
You are going to have to explain why an apparent fatal flaw is a good thing, because your concept is a perfect way to take advantage of people. Regardless I've been called a
Re:Time to plant trees (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and its part of a natural cycle. The polar caps on Mars are also melting, but we seem to be peaking and cycling back into the cold half again for another 11 or 22 or 28 or 88 years. There are several cycles that sometimes harmonize to cause the extremes.
Solar cycle extremes as a seasonal predictor of Atlantic-Basin tropical cyclones [galegroup.com]
FTA:
Minimum sunspot years and the AMO index can combine to explain more than 54 percent of the variations in total tropical cyclones and nearly 46 percent of the variation in tropical cyclone days. Solar cycle extremes should be considered for more accurate seasonal tropical cyclone predictions.
So what does that have to do with the permafrost melting, or even global warming more generally?
Did you just find a peer reviewed article talking about sunspots and figured no one would realize it didn't support your argument?
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It has nothing to do with anything. It's just a string of sentences strung together, because pseudo-skeptics need to have some sort of response, no matter how idiotic or false the claim.
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PI IS EXACTLY THREE!
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You're supposed to use the re-usable cloth bags
Every generation is phenomenally stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every generation is phenomenally stupid about something that should be blindingly obvious.
The fact that we've dominated the environment to the degree we have should be obvious - we've gone from 2% of the land mammal biomass to 98% when you include our livestock.
We have evidence of multiple mass extinctions caused by exactly these same events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I agree with the thought that some of the established concepts can have some bullshit in it - but that's exactly why we need repeatable research done and confirmed, and USED TO IMPROVE THINGS before we basically repeat history and ruin the planet for millions of years again.
The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.
Unstable equilibrium (Score:4, Interesting)
Every generation is phenomenally stupid about something that should be blindingly obvious.
The fact that we've dominated the environment to the degree we have should be obvious - we've gone from 2% of the land mammal biomass to 98% when you include our livestock.
We have evidence of multiple mass extinctions caused by exactly these same events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I agree with the thought that some of the established concepts can have some bullshit in it - but that's exactly why we need repeatable research done and confirmed, and USED TO IMPROVE THINGS before we basically repeat history and ruin the planet for millions of years again.
The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.
Every generation is phenomenally stupid about something that should be blindingly obvious.
The fact that we've dominated the environment to the degree we have should be obvious - we've gone from 2% of the land mammal biomass to 98% when you include our livestock.
We have evidence of multiple mass extinctions caused by exactly these same events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I agree with the thought that some of the established concepts can have some bullshit in it - but that's exactly why we need repeatable research done and confirmed, and USED TO IMPROVE THINGS before we basically repeat history and ruin the planet for millions of years again.
The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.
It sounds like the permafrost melting thing is an unstable equilibrium: the more it melts, the more carbon and methane goes into the atmosphere, the warmer it gets, and the more it melts.
So, here's my question: if we are sitting on an unstable equilibrium like that, why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?
It would only take a degree or two of variation to trigger the runaway event, but that's never happened due to variations in sun activity?
The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.
Every morning I read Breitbart first, then MSM (via Google News). Breitbart to find out what happened, and MSM to find out why it was Trump's fault.
Re:Unstable equilibrium (Score:5, Informative)
"why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?"
End Permian, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost
Known as “the great dying”, this was by far the worst extinction event ever seen; it nearly ended life on Earth. The tabulate corals were lost in this period – today’s corals are an entirely different group. What caused it? A perfect storm of natural catastrophes. A cataclysmic eruption near Siberia blasted CO2 into the atmosphere. Methanogenic bacteria responded by belching out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Global temperatures surged while oceans acidified and stagnated, belching poisonous hydrogen sulfide. It set life back 300 million years.
Re:Unstable equilibrium (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like the permafrost melting thing is an unstable equilibrium: the more it melts, the more carbon and methane goes into the atmosphere, the warmer it gets, and the more it melts.
So, here's my question: if we are sitting on an unstable equilibrium like that, why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?
Why doesn't any positive feedback react that way? If I have a single beer that triggers a positive feedback loop where I want another beer, but it doesn't end up with me dead of alcohol poisoning, it ends up with me drunk and deciding I've had enough. An avalanche is another positive feedback, a single snowball might not do anything, but once there's enough sliding snow it starts to trigger more snow to slide.
But the result isn't snow sliding to the centre of the earth, the positive feedback of sliding snow gives out as the snow reaches the bottom of the mountain.
Global warming feedbacks aren't fundamentally different, positive feedbacks diminish in effectiveness as the system moves in their direction [skepticalscience.com]. The positive feedbacks of global warming are like two meta-stable states of the snow, top of the mountain and bottom of the mountain. Just like we went from an ice age to a modern climate, we're on our way from a modern climate to global warming. And that climate won't be stable either, eventually something else will happen, another set of positive feedback will kick in, and the earth will move to yet another equilibrium.
It would only take a degree or two of variation to trigger the runaway event, but that's never happened due to variations in sun activity?
I don't know how typical it is for the sun to cause a crazy hot year, but one really hot year doesn't do much. The permafrost doesn't melt in one hot year, it takes a lot of hot years in a row.
Every morning I read Breitbart first, then MSM (via Google News). Breitbart to find out what happened, and MSM to find out why it was Trump's fault.
I read a lot of MSM and Trump's administration has gone more or less how I expected, as has the climate over the past couple decades.
Somehow I suspect you end up being either surprised the state of reality a lot more often than I do.
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Unfortunately, this isn't really certain. Venus started off not that different from Earth. And the sun has warmed over time.
The real truth is that we don't *KNOW* that we won't set off a run-away greenhouse effect which doesn't end up with the oceans boiling off into space (slowly, admittedly, but water vapor in the ionosphere tends to loose hydrogen under the influence of solar ultraviolet). We tend to *believe* that this won't happen, but our models aren't good enough to prove this outside of the range
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So, here's my question: if we are sitting on an unstable equilibrium like that, why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?
Well here is the thing, there have been runaways like that, in both directions and quite a few of them. There have been both snowball earth periods and periods with tropics at the poles. Cooling is also an runaway process, more snow means higher albedo means less heat means more snow. In fact if you look at temperatures over geological timescales then Earths climate tends to spend most of the time in one extreme or another. Current global temperatures are rather anomalous, because they are somewhere in the
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It sounds like the permafrost melting thing is an unstable equilibrium: the more it melts, the more carbon and methane goes into the atmosphere, the warmer it gets, and the more it melts.
So, here's my question: if we are sitting on an unstable equilibrium like that, why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?
Because there isn't an unlimited amount of CO2. methane, and the other so-called greenhouses. There have been times in the past when the CO2 levels were much higher, and the temperatures were higher as well. enough to more than compensate for the dimmer sun of the period.
So if all of the sequestered Methane was released, it would suck up energy, and given that it is a much stronger greenhouse gas, would affect temperatures quite a bit. It does dissipate more quickly than CO2, so it would not affect temps
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"if we are sitting on an unstable equilibrium like that, why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?"
There has been. We didn't exist yet so we didn't care. The carbon was sequestered by trees. It turned into oil and we burned it and now it isn't sequestered.
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-- The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett
And when that fails the next Pratchettian proviso kicks in:
In other words most people don't want to believe chan
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"In the animal kingdom, all animals are nomads. None of them farm."
"Ants farm, and so do beavers."
Second AC wins.
Re: Aren't land mammals rare though? (Score:2)
Over the last (roughly) 200,000 years, we have gone from 1% of the genus Homo to 100% of the genus Homo. Discuss, with particular emphasis on why we should think either measure is important.
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Over the last (roughly) 200,000 years, we have gone from 1% of the genus Homo to 100% of the genus Homo.
This is why republicans hate those homos.
Re: Every generation is phenomenally stupid... (Score:2)
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Oh, and your number is completely made up bullshit unless you're arguing that rats, mice and voles are still part of our feedstock.
Look up the word BIOMASS, ass.
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Trump was right about one thing. Both sides fucking suck.
This is why we cant take you serious, Trump isnt right about anything.
Back then (Score:2)
use some logic here (Score:2)
So, this carbon was captured only "centuries ago", yet its release back into the atmosphere is going to lead to unprecedented global warming that is going to destroy civilization, wipe out humanity, and maybe end higher life on the planet?
Somebody needs
Re: (Score:3)
So, this carbon was captured only "centuries ago",
Things captured millenia ago were also captured centuries ago, only more of them. But most importantly, more people know what a century is than a millenium.
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The article says "took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago" which I summarized as "captured centuries ago". Sorry, that's unambiguous and cannot refer to your interpretation.
Are you having a stroke? In any case, if you're trying to say that the term "centuries" can also refer to a small number of millennia, you are correct. Given climate hist
If permafrost is lost... (Score:2)
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And on the same day, he pardoned convicted ex-Sherriff Joe Arpaio, and banned transgendered people from serving in the military.
At least Bush managed to show up at a press conference for Katrina with his jacket taken off.
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I'm sure the good people of Texas don't want federal help. They are perfectly capable of helping themselves.
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I happen to be in Texas, and the people down here can't even help themselves to a decent education.
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An education isn't that difficult to come by if everything you need to know is contained in one book.
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In a few days, we're moving to the Central Coast of California. Texas is a shithole (especially Houston, but the whole state is garbage). The people are great, but the actual state is as ugly as it gets and the climate is a steaming turd I can't get out of here fast enough. We're gonna be living near the ocean and I'm going to learn to surf and be insulated in the People's Republic of California, about as far away from Washington DC and Donald Trump as one can get in
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Thus Trump adds even more to global warming as CNN goes into a NOVA like meltdown. The permafrost is fucked.
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As usual, you are either uninformed or simply lying [npr.org]:
Long was confirmed as FEMA administrator by the Senate in June, just a few months ago, but he is not exactly a stranger to the agency. He was a regional manager there during the George W. Bush administration, and he went on to serve as Alabama's emergency manageme
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Elaine Duke is a placeholder. Who has Donald Trump nominated to be the head of DHS? Oh, that's rignt...nobody.
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As I was saying: As for DHS, Trump got both Kelly and Duke confirmed
Elaine Duke is the confirmed undersecretary, not a "placeholder".
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I don't know if you've ever worked in a place that had an "acting" director or manager, but if you did, you'd know that means "placeholder". Elaine Duke is a placeholder.
And what kind of a name is "Duke", anyway? Is she related to the famous Trump supporter and head of the KKK David Duke by any chance?
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I think we have firmly established that you have been lying, lying, and lying again.
You tell me: you're the fascist.
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Elaine Duke is only the acting head of DHS. They are awaiting Trump to nominate someone.
Re:In other climate news (Score:4, Informative)
Good try, but Trump hasn't even nominated anyone for the posts I listed.
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Good try, but Trump hasn't even nominated anyone for the posts I listed.
Look: you still don't get it. Trump hasn't nominated them and for the nominated ones the republicans control both houses, but it's still the democrat's fault.
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Really? Which one?
Hillary of course.
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No, we're not talking about nominations that aren't getting through. We're talking about nominations that haven't been MADE. Democrats can neither approve nor deny a nomination that hasn't been made. Democrats fought against some of Trump's nominees - and lost every battle. But the vast majority of posts he has never nominated anybody for at all. Because Don the Con has zero interest in doing the president's actual job. He occupies the job for one purpose only: to take a lot of taxpayer money for himself.
Al
Like Brock Long? (Score:4, Informative)
No, we're not talking about nominations that aren't getting through. We're talking about nominations that haven't been MADE.
You mean like Brock Long, head of FEMA?
The Brock Long that isn't incompetent [nymag.com]?
The Brock Long that was confirmed in June [npr.org]?
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Quit confusing the issue with facts.
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If Trump follows his usual pattern, he won't actually make it possible for Brock to do his job, no matter how competent he might be. I'd be glad to be proved wrong, but have no faith that it even can happen, let alone will.
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There's been a considerable effort in recent weeks to reign in some of the chaos in the White House, led by John Kelly, which I expect to be at least moderately successful in the near term. We're still operating under an Obama budget at least through September, and hopefully the Republicans learned their emergency response lesson from Katrina.
Most of all, Donald Trump wants to look good. This is true of all politicians, but it's rare to have this level of narcissism even in a politician. He also has too
Re:Like Brock Long? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how we've gotten to the point that a "gotcha" is that the president nominated someone for a post, and that the nominee isn't incompetent.
Trump managed to not fuck something up. Take that, libtards!
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Here is what is happening: Democrats are requiring that Republicans check all the procedural boxes on most nominees....
“The level of obstruction exhibited by Senate Democrats on these nominees is just breathtaking,” Mr. McConnell said...
Republicans engaged in similar procedural combat after Democrats made the 2013 change, tying up the Senate to slow President Barack Obama’s push to fill judicial vacancies.
So, you vindictive partisan fuck..... go to a library and beg them to get you into a class
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"The level of obstruction exhibited by Senate Democrats on these nominees is just breathtaking," Mr. McConnell said...
...and yet it is still far, far better than what McConnell and the other bitch republicans did with Merrick Garland, a level of obstruction that had never been seen since at least 1992 thanks to then-Senator Joe Biden and the Democrats. And because you're an inbred little piece of shit hypocrite...
There. I fixed that for you. Here is a citation [youtube.com] in case you are unaware of what I am referring to.
Re: Blame Trump (Score:2)
Re:Blame Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Also, Democrats are slowing down the confirmation process [nytimes.com]
Conservatives sure do like being hypocritical little twats.
Republicans engaged in similar procedural combat after Democrats made the 2013 change, tying up the Senate to slow President Barack Obama’s push to fill judicial vacancies.
Here's some light reading for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] with highlights:
The Washington Post has identified 587 key positions requiring U.S. Senate confirmation. Of those key positions, As of August 17, 2017, 117 of Trump's nominees have been confirmed, 106 are awaiting confirmation, and 0 have been announced but not yet formally nominated.
So.... of the 587 key positions, Trump has nominated 223 as of a week ago. Then, there's this other side of things:
http://www.politico.com/story/... [politico.com]
At least 17 of Trump’s nominees took more than a month to be officially sent to the Senate, at which point the vetting by senators and aides can begin in earnest, according to a POLITICO analysis. (One of the 17 nominations, Jim Donovan to be Trump’s deputy Treasury secretary, has since been withdrawn).
I get it... i really do understand; you conservatives are fucking hypocrites who have to play the victim all the time because you can't govern worth a shit. When you do get in power, the only fucking thing you do is to try to stay in power, instead of help the country.... oh... and whine, a lot.
Re:Blame Trump (Score:5, Interesting)
Democrats are slowing down the confirmation process [nytimes.com] so that at the current rate, congress will get through all of Trump's nominations in 11 years (!).
That's the blowback from refusing to even hold hearings on a replacement for Scalia until "the right person" could make that appointment. Now that they've armed this loose cannon, they're going to be repeatedly shot with it -- and it serves them right. Always assume that your opponents will eventually get possession of the ball, and craft your rule changes accordingly. They didn't, this is what happens.
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That's the blowback from refusing to even hold hearings on a replacement for Scalia until "the right person" could make that appointment.
Well, no. Your very own article points out the fundamental difference: "Democrats are requiring that Republicans check all the procedural boxes on most nominees, even those they intend to eventually support ."
So they're not doing it because they think the appointees shouldn't be confirmed, and they have no expectation that their behavior is going to change the outcome. They're doing it purely to delay.
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Short memory Kiddo, The republicans learned this stunt from us 16 years ago.
I like how you talk shit but provide no citation. Classy! Thanks for helping make Slashdot grate! Lazy fuckhead.
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Short memory Kiddo, The republicans learned this stunt from us 16 years ago.
I like how you talk shit but provide no citation. Classy! Thanks for helping make Slashdot grate! Lazy fuckhead.
Here you go: courtesy of then-Senator Joe Biden [youtube.com]
It was rather aggressively reported by quite a number of media outlets, though I suppose the particular media outlets from which you consume news helpfully decided that this particular bit of information was not at all newsworthy.
Gentle response (Score:2)
I wish you'd call it a lie when Trump says it and acknowledge that people can be wrong without lying.
Whether Mr. Long is competent, or not, will be seen shortly, but I won't accuse you of lying if he isn't.
I'm sorry that my response offended you.
Next time I'll remember to be polite and gentle responding to a leftist post, because those posts always are.
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I'm doing my part to get rid of the damn cows. I've got 6 thick juicy ribeye steaks in my fridge now and set to go on the grill tomorrow. Join me and let's eat all those cows.
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You realize it will still get cold in the winter, don't you?
AGW's direct effects in high latitudes are confined to the summer, when there is solar radiation to trap.
Granted there are indirect effects caused by the trapping of thermal energy in the oceans and the exchange of air masses with lower latitudes, but on most winter days it will as cold as it ever was.