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Earth Science

Sea Levels Will Rise For Centuries Even If Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goals Are Met 280

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Weather Channel: Sea levels will continue to rise for the next three centuries even if governments meet carbon emissions pledges for 2030 set in the Paris climate agreement, a new study indicates. Greenhouse gas emissions from 2016 to 2030 alone would cause sea levels to increase nearly 8 inches (20 cm) by 2300, research led by Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research showed. And that doesn't take into account the effects of already irreversible melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, according to a news release about the study.

"Our results show that what we do today will have a huge effect in 2300. Twenty centimeters is very significant; it is basically as much sea-level rise as we've observed over the entire 20th century. To cause that with only 15 years of emissions is quite staggering," said Climate Analytics' Alexander Nauels, lead author of the study. The 8-inch increase is one-fifth of the nearly 40-inch total rise in sea levels expected by 2300, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More than half of the 8-inch increase can be attributed to emissions from the world's top five polluters: China, the United States, the European Union, India and Russia, the study found.
"Only stringent near-term emission reductions" aimed at preventing global temperatures from rising more than the Paris agreement goal would provide a chance of limiting long-term sea level rise to below 40 inches, the study said. Global greenhouse gas emissions, however, have not shown a sign of peaking since the adoption of the Paris agreement and the individual countries' pledges "are inadequate to put the global community on track to meet the Paris agreement Long-term Temperature Goal by the end of the 21st century."
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Sea Levels Will Rise For Centuries Even If Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goals Are Met

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    The 8 inches they're talking about is on additional to the 40 inches already predicted by prior research.
  • Key part (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @11:40PM (#59392874) Homepage Journal

    "Global greenhouse gas emissions, however, have not shown a sign of peaking since the adoption of the Paris agreement"
     
    Exactly. Lots of people talk about it, but action is non-existent. People like their manufactured stuff and modern life. No agreement is going to change that.

    • Re:Key part (Score:5, Informative)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @12:53AM (#59392964)

      Exactly. Lots of people talk about it, but action is non-existent. People like their manufactured stuff and modern life. No agreement is going to change that.

      Unfortunately for all of us, the laws of physics don't give a shit about shortsighted people.

    • which is funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @01:27AM (#59393008) Journal

      ... given that one mentally ill person thought he could build a shoe bomb and suddently we all have to take off our shoes to get on airplanes... I mean, this nation changes things radically on the slightest grounds but killing the planet at a global scale... no problem.

      I mean... by 2100 Manhattan and Florida will be under water. What I'm saying is, it's not ALL bad.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        ... given that one mentally ill person thought he could build a shoe bomb and suddently we all have to take off our shoes to get on airplanes... I mean, this nation changes things radically on the slightest grounds but killing the planet at a global scale... no problem.

        Of course, if this nation were to eliminate all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the emissions controlled by other nations (China, specifically) would mean we'd just delay the problem by a few decades.

        Of course, making plans based on conditions 300 y

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          ... given that one mentally ill person thought he could build a shoe bomb and suddently we all have to take off our shoes to get on airplanes... I mean, this nation changes things radically on the slightest grounds but killing the planet at a global scale... no problem.

          Of course, if this nation were to eliminate all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the emissions controlled by other nations (China, specifically) would mean we'd just delay the problem by a few decades.

          Yes, this is why it's a hard problem.

          If it were an easy problem, we wouldn't be debating it, we'd just solve it.

      • I mean... by 2100 Manhattan and Florida will be under water. What I'm saying is, it's not ALL bad.

        One really good tsunami coming in the right direction will put Florida under water much sooner. Not for very long, but possibly for long enough.

    • Re:Key part (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @08:18AM (#59393560) Homepage
      There's lots of action. There's been a massive movement towards using solar and wind power, there's a growing reliance on electric cars, and there's research into zero CO2 or low CO2 concretes. Unfortunately, even as that is massive, it is small in comparison to what we actually need to do. Worse, some people have taken an active ideological stance against actually acknowledging that there's a problem or doing anything to help with it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • irreversible melting of the Antarctic ice sheet

      "Irreversible" is a very strong word. Sounds like a challenge to me.

      What motivational self help book did you find that in?

  • by Way Smarter Than You ( 6157664 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @12:10AM (#59392896)
    Obviously AGW is a click bait hot button topic. Whether you believe we're doomed to be the next Venus, you think the planet's climate never changes due to the influence of His Great Noodly Appendage, or anywhere in between.... Making a prediction 300 years out based on a few decades of current data on -anything- is pretty dumb. If they published a report that said, "in 300 years, WSTU will still be alive and worshipped by millions of hot women all over the planet" I'd take it with a grain of salt, not invest in a condom factory. 300+ year future predictions are simply not reliable or realistic. Fucking anything can happen in 300 years. Maybe we're all wiped out by a plague, or we go to the stars through our personal portable warp gates, or we learn to easily control the climate and terraform planets or aliens show up to serve man or well pretty much fucking any crazy thing can happen. If I had a 300+ year lifespan, I wouldn't bet either way on their prediction. It's just silly to go that far in to the future.
    • You mean to tell me that when Ben Franklin's parents watched ships unfurl their sails for the two-month journey to England, they weren't looking forward to the day when we'd have same-day drone delivery from Amazon?

      You might have a point.

    • by syn3rg ( 530741 )
      "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future"
      --Yogi Berra (attributed)
  • Scale (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gabest ( 852807 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @12:34AM (#59392938)
    20 cm volume of sea is about 10 cubic meter for every living person. I have already stored some in my freezer as ice cubes and in my bladder. Do your own part!
  • Carbon sequestration (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @12:54AM (#59392970)
    Switching our energy source from fossil fuels to nuclear and renewables is only half the battle. Even if we were to stop fossil fuel use completely, all that does is reduce the rate of extra CO2 entering the atmosphere to zero. It's like having perfect defense in a basketball game. If you're already losing the game, even if your defense prevents the other team from scoring, you'll still lose. To win the game requires reversing what we did when we burned fossil fuels. We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, strip the oxygen out of it (which requires adding energy), and bury the carbon back underground, in order to get atmospheric CO2 levels back down to pre-industrialization levels.

    The environmentalists are their own worst enemy here. The easiest, simplest, and cheapest way to do this is to stop recycling paper and wood products. Those should be throw away in the trash, so they'll end up in a landfill buried underground. Trees extract CO2 from the atmosphere, pay the energy cost (via solar power collected through photosynthesis) to strip off the oxygen, and store the carbon in the form of wood. They do all this at no cost to us. We then chop down the tree and convert it into wood products. If we throw those wood products away and bury them in landfills after a single use, we've sequestered the carbon underground, reversing the process of extracting coal and oil from underground and burning them releasing CO2.

    But the environmentalists don't want us chopping down trees, so they insist that we recycle paper, needlessly wasting energy to avoid sequestering that carbon underground. Recycling is usually good, but look at the big picture here. The harm of excess CO2 in the atmosphere exceeds the harm of chopping down more trees. So sequestering carbon is more important than preserving trees. That means recycling wood products is actually bad.

    To compensate for the increased rate of harvesting trees needed to create new wood products (since we're no longer recycling wood and paper), donate to the Arbor Day Foundation [arborday.org] so they can plant more trees.
    • Landfills are different than coal mines, though, the wood/paper still rots. There are landfills near here where they provide power by burning the methane released by the refuse. So I don't think we can quite solve it by throwing biomass down a well but you're not wrong that sequestration of some type will probably be required.
    • by Phillip2 ( 203612 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @08:26AM (#59393580)

      It depends how you do this. If you throw away the wood in the wrong way, it may end up decomposing anaerobically and release methane which is worse than Carbon Dioxide. If you have a functioning forest, incidentally, that also sequesters CO2, because the trees drop leaves, wood and eventually die. In a natural wood land with a biodiverse set of leaf litter insects, a lot of this ends up as soil which, as you say, locks away Carbon.

      So, if what you say is done carefully, then yes, I think you would be right, especially if you are cutting down trees in areas prone to fire. And, of course the wood land needs to be sustainably managed.

    • Seems to me that it's a much more feasible solution than the massive changes being demanded to reduce emissions. Plus, I really like trees.

      People worry about methane being released from warming permafrost, but to me that just seems like incredibly rich soil becoming available for planting.

    • by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @11:37AM (#59394152) Homepage Journal

      Other opinions differ.
      https://recycled-papers.co.uk/... [recycled-papers.co.uk]

      Reducing CO2 and Greenhouse Gases

      Recycled Paper and Greenhouse Gases
      When it reaches the end of its life-cycle, paper that is sent to landfill or incinerated will produce further greenhouse gases as it degrades. Greenhouse gas emissions have caused a rapid increase in the Earth’s temperature which, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has risen by over 0.7C in Europe over the last century.

      That’s why it’s so important to recycle paper and give it a second life. In comparison:

      Manufacturing recycled paper produces less CO2 and Greenhouse gases than virgin fibre paper.
      Manufacturing one tonne of 100% recycled paper emits 38% less CO2* than paper produced from virgin fibres. The emissions saved is the equivalent to driving from Paris to Moscow in the average European car.
      *based on Eural figures

      Assessing our emissions
      Arjowiggins Graphic has chosen to have its greenhouse gas emissions assessed by a recognised independent body; Labelia Conseil. This ensures figures presented in the Environmental Benefit Statement and in our Environmental Declarations are accurate and definite.

      The inclusion of an ‘Environmental Declaration’ on every Arjowiggins Graphic product range provides the customer with clear information on the carbon footprint associated with their choice of paper.

      “WWF International works with best-in-class companies in order to effect change throughout the entire sector by pushing sector leaders to take on ever more ambitious CO2 reduction targets. The Arjowiggins Graphic agreement is an opportunity to demonstrate that low carbon solutions exist even within sectors that are generally considered difficult.”
      Bruce Haase, Head Climate and Business Engagement at WWF International:

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @01:15AM (#59392986)

    We really don’t need - or want - to hear about your gas emissions, BeauHD.

  • Advancing technology has been and will always be the only solution for sustainably maintaining a population of billions of humans.

    What is needed is an efficient industrial scale way to couple CO2 sequestration directly to power generation. The good news is that there is no physical obstacle to doing so. In fact, we already have a full-working proof-of-concept in biological photosynthesis. The main issue is to supplement the existing sunlight-water-nutrient driven process with one that can utilize addition

    • By a quick back of the envelope calculation (feel free to check me) I estimate it would take about 3600 years of a single typical nuclear power plant operating to completely convert the 6 billion tones of human contributed CO2 back into coal (at an unrealistic 100% efficiency, but this is ballpark). So an extra 100 nuclear power plants could completely fix the problem in a few decades of operation -- given the existence of a fairly efficient way of converting CO2 to raw carbon.

      Check your numbers. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] gives you a ballpark figure of 380 giga-tonnes of carbon (GtC), which is an estimate for the cumulative amount of carbon mankind put into the air during 1901 to 2013 (in the form of CO2, see note below). You can almost forget about years before that since it's a small number in comparison (about 12 GtC for 1751-1900 period). A good percentage of that CO2 may still be in the air.

      On top of that already-released amount, we're still busy pumping CO2 into the air. Same source: at

  • Once we figure out how to do that at rates the government can reasonably make major corporations fund, the problem will go away. It will have to be done by the corporations, because it is far easier to do where they release the carbon than elsewhere.

    Right now, Carbon capture is too expensive, even if done at the source. But it is not that unreasonable for us to figure out how to do carbon capture at scale cheap enough to be worth while.

    Right now the best we have are "Empress Trees". They capture about 10

  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @03:44AM (#59393200) Journal

    Look at how quickly the ozone layer is fixing itself...

    Look, we have CO2 scrubbers. The tech exists, even though it is not commercially viable. Do you know what that means? We have the luxury of not wanting to pay for it. And that in turn means if we don't have the luxury anymore, we'll be VERY quick about building them. They'll pop up like fungus.

    The world is ever changing. Not all of it is human made. Having to adapt does not go away just because we're living "clean".

    That being said, I am all for not polluting the world if it is at all feasible.

    • by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @04:16AM (#59393254)

      Look at how quickly the ozone layer is fixing itself...

      Look, we have CO2 scrubbers. The tech exists, even though it is not commercially viable. Do you know what that means? We have the luxury of not wanting to pay for it. And that in turn means if we don't have the luxury anymore, we'll be VERY quick about building them. They'll pop up like fungus.

      The world is ever changing. Not all of it is human made. Having to adapt does not go away just because we're living "clean".

      That being said, I am all for not polluting the world if it is at all feasible.

      You are on a spherical space ship hurling through space with no escape pod available. Somebody is destroying the life support system and his buddies are cheering him along. Is it 'commercially viable', or 'at all feasible', to stop them? ... or is stopping them perhaps a matter of such urgency that it warrants revising our idea of the 'commercially viable' and 'at all feasible'?

      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        No, we're all not maintaining the life support system adequately. Not destroying it.

        You make it sound like someone on that ship is taking a wrench to the oxygen tanks. But that is not the case. We're just letting the system get worse.

        The important difference is this: While there certainly is a point where this becomes life threatening, we haven't reached that yet. This is a self-healing system too, so just leaving well enough alone might help it get better.

        There'll be decades of increasing discomfort before

        • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

          You make it sound like someone on that ship is taking a wrench to the oxygen tanks. But that is not the case. But that is not the case. We're just letting the system get worse.

          Ah, yes. The Amazon is spontaneously combusting, coal is leaping out of the ground into furnaces, and neonicitinoids are self-assembling on large areas of cultivated and adjacent lands. No "someone" actively doing something at all.

          While there certainly is a point where this becomes life threatening, we haven't reached that yet.

          Yep,

    • If the change is gradual enough, sure. If it is too fast and our crops fail, or the arthropods continue crashing too far, then society collapses and we can't really fix it because we're out playing Mad Max. Or we end up like the last Bladerunner film where there's synthetic or farmed life and not much else left.
  • Weirdly, not even once are inches mentioned in the study but they are all over the summary. Why?
    • Weirdly, not even once are inches mentioned in the study but they are all over the summary. Why?

      Because the readership of this site is primarily from the former English colonies in N-America and they prefer obsolete units of measurement.

  • From the report: "we also implement an alternative version for AIS [Antarctic Ice Sheet] loss (20) that captures the higher sensitivity to future global warming from additional nonlinear processes related to Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI) (21). We use the MICI version to identify the potential for risk from higher sea-level rise not covered by our main results, but emphasize that the understanding of MICI and its triggers is still limited"

    As usual, the actual scientists put in disclaimers that are m
  • As a reminder, every single person alive today will be dead by 2300.

    In the year 2300, every single person alive then will be dead within 200 years after that.

    Regardless of what is done about "Climate Change".

    This climate religion really should recognize what its limitations are. There is no "us" that is present or relevant in 2300, the strange secular notions of some "spirit of mankind" while explicitly denying such a thing notwithstanding.

    Incidentally, the same goes for the year 3000 in the space cult.

  • ...So long as one side keeps denying that there is a problem and the other side denies that there are solutions.

    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      There are solutions. We know what they are. Dramatically fewer humans. Dramatically less consumption. Clean energy production. Mass transit. Only problem is that too few people are interested in implementing those solutions.

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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