'Sleeping Giant' Arctic Methane Deposits Starting To Release, Scientists Find (theguardian.com) 280
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean -- known as the "sleeping giants of the carbon cycle" -- have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal. High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 meters in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating.
The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases -- known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilization as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change. The international team onboard the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh said most of the bubbles were currently dissolving in the water but methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected and this was venting into the atmosphere. The scientists -- who are part of a multi-year International Shelf Study Expedition -- stressed their findings were preliminary. The scale of methane releases will not be confirmed until they return, analyze the data and have their studies published in a peer-reviewed journal. But the discovery of potentially destabilized slope frozen methane raises concerns that a new tipping point has been reached that could increase the speed of global heating.
The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases -- known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilization as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change. The international team onboard the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh said most of the bubbles were currently dissolving in the water but methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected and this was venting into the atmosphere. The scientists -- who are part of a multi-year International Shelf Study Expedition -- stressed their findings were preliminary. The scale of methane releases will not be confirmed until they return, analyze the data and have their studies published in a peer-reviewed journal. But the discovery of potentially destabilized slope frozen methane raises concerns that a new tipping point has been reached that could increase the speed of global heating.
OK, who's the joker up there? Gag gittin old (Score:3, Funny)
What fucker set the timer to leak in 2020?
That is really bad (Score:4, Insightful)
If not completely unexpected. It is one of the accelerators.
Re:That is really bad (Score:5, Insightful)
tl;dr: We're fucked
Re:That is really bad (Score:4, Informative)
Back when I was working w/ Forestry Department, that was the general consensus of most of the Climate Scientists. Unfortunately "Its probably too late, best we can hope to do is minimize the horribleness of what our species has done" tends to get your paper squashed by the conservative government in charge of the department.
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Thus making the problem worse. My take is that civilization is already reliably done for, the only question is will the human race survive and what will it still be able to do after if it survives. Does not look good.
Re:That is really bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure the human race will survive. Just not billions of us. Clearly we are overpopulated but that's a really unpopular idea so we don't like to talk about it.
Also, our government doesn't understand sustainability, just growth, so we constantly need to increase population to keep all the schemes going. If we focused on sustainability instead of growth, it would be perfectly fine to have a low birth rate but when you constantly need growth you run into these problems.
This is why, despite middle class America having a low birthrate, we make it up with all the immigration the republicans pretend is a problem. See, business (both parties) love cheap labor and both parties love to use the immigrant as a talking point. Dems like to go on about the poor immigrants and the republicans like to talk about those murdering job stealers that don't pay taxes.
It's all a bunch of shit.
The world clearly cannot sustain 7 billion people and growing.
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All of the decent models should already include this as a factor. What this is clarifying is the timing.
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tl;dr: We're fucked
Pretty much. And this has been reliably known for a decade or two. This installment of the human race does really not deserve to survive.
Re:This might be a good thing (Score:4, Informative)
A sudden increase in temperatures due to methane, which eventually goes away when it converts to CO2.
There are trillions of tonnes of methane hydrates in the ocean and in the arctic permafrost.
It isn't going to be one quick burst and over. It is going to be a feedback loop as warming begets more warming.
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Maybe it is good time to invest in Siberian farm land, at least after the exploding tundra [interestin...eering.com] subsides
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"When methane is released chronically, over decades, the concentration in the atmosphere will rise to a new equilibrium value. It won’t keep rising indefinitely, like CO2 would, because methane degrades while CO2 essentially just accumulates."
This is from 2012, but they go on to note: "so far, the sources of methane from high latitudes are small, relative to the big player, which is wetlands
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The big problem with methane apologism is that methane breaks down into [mostly] CO2. So you get a month of intense warming effect from the methane, followed by years of warming from the CO2 the methane breaks down into.
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The bigger issue is that if it has a half-life of, I think it was around 15 years, but you quadruple the amount being released every 15 years, you still end up with an increase.
Depending on the figures for how much is in the ground, I could easily see increases sustaining for a century or more. Plenty enough time to do damage. The lingering warming from the CO2 breakdown product is negligible compared to that initial burst, since the warming effect per mol is an order of magnitude less.
Not being alarmed abo
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It isn't going to be one quick burst and over. It is going to be a feedback loop as warming begets more warming.
I think the oft-repeated term for this is "tipping point". I come across this in electronics, where there is a phenomenon called thermal runaway. Something similar occurs in chemistry. The problem arises where a component draws more current when it gets hotter, and the extra current makes the component hotter still. I recently destroyed two prototype circuit boards before I realized what was happening. In the case of electronics, the temperature gradually rises, then BANG, there is a black crater in the boa
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Exactly. Pretty much like exponential growth.
Covid-19 nicely shows that most people have no clue how that works:
The ICUs are half empty? We have plenty of reserves! And just 2 weeks later people are dying because they cannot get treatment.
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Same applies to the stock market. Oh, yes. Companies have to give shareholders maximum short-term gains regardless of the effect on the long-term health of the company. Driving up stock prices is a fiduciary duty to the shareholder. Until it's not and the whole company goes bankrupt. With all the ups and downs, it's hard to see the slow boiling of the frog behind the scenes.
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The stock market is perhaps the most destructive economic force known to man.
I see. That must explain why countries without stock markets, like North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan, are beacons of prosperity.
Short-term planning cannot be sustainable. Yet it forces companies into doing it.
Yet shareholders funded Amazon, Tesla, and many other companies through decades of losses because of their strategy of long-term investment and growth.
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If not completely unexpected.
That's putting it mildly; I watched a documentary about the potential for this when I was still in school in the 80's.
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If not completely unexpected.
That's putting it mildly; I watched a documentary about the potential for this when I was still in school in the 80's.
Indeed. This has been known in the 1980's. What has not been known back then is that the human race would be completely incapable to even recognize the upcoming catastrophe, despite hard scientific evidence being available 30 years back. And look at all the idiots here that still do not get that it is now far too late to prevent giga-death and global collapse.
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Never underestimate the cruelty of rich people holding onto a income stream when faced with the resulting deaths of millions of people
The fossil fuel industries COULD have re-invested in nuclear power, spent their billions of propaganda dollar convincing people that it was safe and we would not be here now
Instead they decided to double down on fossil fuels, pay scientists to put forward false proposals to deny warming and pay of politicians to kil any proposals to reduce carbon emissions
They could have been
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Basically, fungus doesn't like heat (I guess, it's similar to how bacteria doesn't like antibiotics). This is why they think we evolved to be warm blooded - to keep away fungal infections. But if the atmospheric temperatures are increasing and naturally selecting for fungus that is more resistant to higher temperatures, we'll eventually get some that can handle our internal
But look at overlaps of absorbtion spectra (Score:2)
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Yeah, I am sure we will be all right, lets just ignore the problem a while longer! So far the human race has always survived, after all.
Problem is, it just takes one extinction event. You cannot acquire experience with them. Either you predict them and do something effective or that was it. The human race seems to collectively have opted for the second choice.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unfortunately, in the US practically all successful politicians are controlled by some lobby. This is less true in the smaller states, but not that much less true. When more people are acquainted with the candidates, they make decision on their personal knowledge. When they're dependent on mass communication, PR rules...and that's not free. There are exceptions, but they are rare.
Democrats tend to be owned by the RIAA, the MPAA, etc. Republicans are more tied into financial interests. Neither is devot
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We've got 80 years, probably more but that's the extent of living memory, of American exceptionalism to work against. The Republican party, along with half of the Democrats, believe, or nearly so, that the Founding Fathers were inspired by God to write the Third Testament, also known as the Constitution. If we wanted to change the electoral system, we'd have to strike out half the text of the document. Might as well just start from scratch. I think you can imagine how well "Get rid of the Constitution" woul
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Speaking as someone from the UK with old fashioned liberal views, I find it quite amusing to be called a "Marxist apologist" on Slashdot, which happened in another thread. Helping poor folks get a better life, that's just commie stuff, right?. Don't want none of that in these parts. Now where's my gun? No, not that one, that's just for rabbits. Gimme the one that cuts people in half.
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While it is critical to recognize the corruption in both of the parties, pretending they are identical is as wrong as pretending they are totally opposed. These are both shortcuts that stunt your understanding. These people have internalized their ideologies just as deeply as any idiot on Facebook, and that has real implications. They are also apt to gloss over the cognitive dissonance when their personal interests conflict with the ideology - but even that is tempered to varying degrees, depending on which
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Sorry to burst your narrative bubble but might I remind you that Obama opened up drilling [go.com] every time big oil picked up the phone
What Obama did was aid the bolstering of local supplies and make the USA less dependent on the shitshow on the other side of the world. It doesn't result in increased consumption. In fact it actually is a positive outcome since the USA has far more environmental restrictions on oil extraction than many of it's suppliers do.
On the flip side Trump was trying to bolster the consumption of coal to drive demand. A major fucking difference.
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Re:That is an opportunity. (Score:2)
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Hey let's change the narrative! It's fun!!!
Re:That is really bad (Score:5, Informative)
Conservatives are listening to the science. Maybe not climate science but economics and physics by calling for reliable, plentiful, inexpensive energy from onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission.
Conservatives elected a president promising to bring back coal.
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He didn't bring back coal though. Closest he got was going after some dubious Obama-era mercury control rules that were designed to destroy a coal industry already in a death spiral. Of course, people get confused here because the mercury control rules were strapped on to some other coal-related emission reduction regulations that were actually quite beneficial and (relatively) inexpensive to implement.
He also ran some rah-rah support on the talk circuit trying to support coal as "baseload power generation
Re:That is really bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservatives elected a president promising to bring back coal.
He didn't bring back coal though. Closest he got was...
Conservatives elected a president promising to bring back coal, but that's okay because he's incompetent?
You should pay me to kick you in the nuts because I have bad aim and will probably miss. Same logic.
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Conservatives elected a president promising to bring back coal.
This one did not.
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This one did not.
He promised to, but thankfully for the world he failed miserably.
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in 2010 we were around 25% power generation from coal now we're around 22%. Sounds like coal never left...
Re:Guardian is a super rich backed rag (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of those statements that is so far into the mirror world it's hard to know where to start.
Most UK print press is owned by the super rich: Rupert Murdoch owns the Sun, Times and Sunday Times; Barclay brothers own the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph; the oligarch Evgeny Lebedev and a Saudi billionaire own the "Independent".
Not on that list is The Guardian (and sister paper The Observer). The Guardian funds itself with small contributions (I pay £49 / $64 per year) from 655,000 regular monthly supporters. Hardly "super rich elite".
Their funding model is described here:
https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]
Re: That is really bad (Score:2)
Re: That is really bad (Score:5, Informative)
Actually there has been a shift in thinking about hydro. The effects on the river ecosystem can get messy and of course building a dam creates a lot of CO2 and submerges large areas of habitat so any sort of dam is frowned upon by many in the green movement.
Dams are generally being demolished in the US at the rate of about 200 per year, although I don't know the percentage of them that are hydro as opposed to being for irrigation control or water collection reasons.
So the picture is not as simple as it once was on Hydro.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
https://apnews.com/article/123... [apnews.com]
https://figshare.com/articles/... [figshare.com]
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*Bulding* a dam is a tiny issue compared to the methane emissions you get from *operating* one, at least in tropical regions (where the emissions can reach staggering 2000 g CO2 eq. per kWh).
What causes that?
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As well as anaerobic decomposition of the biomass already in the soil that's being flooded. Aerobic decomposition produces less CO2.
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That would decompose somewhere anyway, so it is a straw man.
And a dam, you can hardly describe the water behind it "shallow", rofl.
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True. Everyone is in favour of more beaver.
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I must have missed the anti hydro electric dam meetings. I guess that news didn't trickle down.
Hydro was the large-scale power source that liberals used to hate before there was nuclear. The reason we don't hear much about it today is that in the developed world there are no more good locations to apply it. Hence the need for a new baseload clean energy source.
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inexpensive energy from onshore wind
And give wind turbine cancer to the fish? No thanks, I will stick with "clean" coal.
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Conservatives are listening to the science. Maybe not climate science but economics and physics by calling for reliable, plentiful, inexpensive energy from onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission. While being inexpensive and safe they are also lower in CO2 emissions than solar and biomass.
Aside from you already having been called out on your bullshit regarding what conservatives actually prefer, even if electricity generation emissions abruptly declined to zero, this would still leave us with something like 65% of current emissions, which in the long term is pretty much as unacceptable as 100% of them.
Re:That is really bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OMG! We need to shutdown the economy guys! (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, this again? We already tried shutting down the world economy for months due to COVID-19. Didn't work.
Um.... yes it did, go look at the graphs:
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
PS: What does "shutting down the economy" even mean? Is there a giant switch somewhere that we can turn the "economy" on and off? Oh, wait, it's just another meaningless phrase made up by Trump.
Re: That is really bad (Score:3)
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this is bad because many nations continue to grow their emissions. UNLESS you folks on the far left will FINALLY accept that we need ALL NATIONS to drop their emissions, this will continue to get worse.
Pretty much everybody on the left would agree that we need all nations to drop their emissions.
People on the right, however, think that we shouldn't decrease emissions until everybody else does.
methane production (Score:5, Informative)
This satellite map shows that China and India remains the massive methane production, however, unless northern nations are drilling and we do not know about it, there is a LOT of methane coming up in the arctic circle. This is NOT GOOD. And no doubt, the north pole, and perhaps the south pole, will end up over taking India and China as being the major methane.
This really should concern anybody that cares about AGW.
Re:methane production (Score:5, Insightful)
Kiss The Ground Hello!? (Score:2)
Tipping points (Score:4, Informative)
Does someone (Score:2)
Predicted this years ago here (Score:2)
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Welll.... (Score:2)
At least the Ice Age is finally over.
LOL. (Score:2)
ehhh (Score:2)
There are some serious credibility problems with this:
https://twitter.com/DoctorVive... [twitter.com]
Though the fact that climate scientists who are firm believers in anthropogenic climate change are willing to push back against claims, even when they could support their overall position, is good evidence that only one side of the climate change debate is operating in good faith. Meanwhile, climate change deniers will seize upon anything uncritically that they think supports their argument.
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the solutions mean you'll have to make sacrifices.
Not huge sacrifices that make any real difference to your life, just small ones.
Eat less meat
Drive a smaller, more economical car
Insulate your house, turn the heating/aircon down a degree or two
Turn off the lights when you leave a room
Buy locally produced foods, not foods from the other side of the world
etc.
TLDR version: Consume less in general. You don't need all that crap.
Would any of that kill anybody? Nope, but look at how difficult it is to even get people to wear face masks in the middle of a pandemic where people are literally dying.
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You left out having fewer kids. Fewer progeny for a USA resident has more impact than everything you listed combined, by far.
Go get that snip fellas.
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Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:4)
You left out having fewer kids. Fewer progeny for a USA resident has more impact than everything you listed combined, by far.
We left it out because developed nations have already done this, with declining birthrates. The US is at zero net birth rate, with a population growing only by immigration. Europe has a still lower birthrate, but erred by accepting swarms of fast-breeding "refugees" who are swiftly replacing the native population, and then some.
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TLDR version: Consume less in general. You don't need all that crap.
Better idea: Rather than foolishly relying on everyone to voluntarily reduce consumption (which would really only have a small effect, as blindseer pointed out), enact a stiff and increasing carbon tax. Market forces that harness peoples' innate greed are far more effective than virtue-signalling calls to voluntarily save the planet. Make greenhouse emissions expensive, and they'll fall off a cliff. Yes, carbon taxes would disproportionately harm the poor, so use the revenues to fund social programs to lift
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All of the solutions mean you'll have to make sacrifices.
You make it sound like some kind of sack cloth and ashes penance. It could actually be quite pleasant, doing without all the useless fripperies of modern technology. Do you really need a car so big and thirsty on petrol? Does it make you any happier? Do you really need to eat a vast slab of beef every day? Do you have some weird allergy to wearing woolly clothes in the winter? Believe it or not, people could have fun before all this modern technology and consumerism.
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Eat less meat
Drive a smaller, more economical car
Insulate your house, turn the heating/aircon down a degree or two
Turn off the lights when you leave a room
Buy locally produced foods, not foods from the other side of the world
etc.
TLDR version: Consume less in general. You don't need all that crap.
Have fewer children. Promote smaller families globally. Most nations have seen population reductions amid greater stability and increased productivity.
Some projections show human population decreasing this century. Accelerate that trend and suddenly our impact decreases and all environmental problems become easier.
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:4, Insightful)
Eat less meat
Drive a smaller, more economical car
Insulate your house, turn the heating/aircon down a degree or two
Turn off the lights when you leave a room
Buy locally produced foods, not foods from the other side of the world etc.
If everyone did that then it would be a barely measurable reduction in our CO2 emissions. We cannot conserve our way to zero emissions.
If we did do those things it would make a big difference. Your error is thinking that reducing energy usage is pointless; we need to reduce our environmental impact now, not wait until emergent technologies become commonplace.
If we have the bulk of our electricity from onshore wind then my lights produce nest to nothing in CO2.
But we don't, at least not yet. That's why reducing energy usage is important now.
If we use synthesized hydrocarbon fuels instead of petroleum then an old V-8 muscle car has the same CO2 emissions as a new tiny electric "smart" car.
Even if we did produce synthetic fuel on a large scale (which we don't, as much as the corn lobby would love it), putting it into a wasteful engine is nonsensical. Play with antique vehicles if you like... I do, but at least I admit it for what it is.
If we build nuclear powered cargo ships then getting food from the other side of the world has the same CO2 emissions as those from other side of the county.
At least we can agree on something. Sort of.
Nuclear powered cargo ships are a great idea, but transporting food from one side of the globe to the other is just wasteful.
Again, we cannot conserve our way to zero emissions. We need to work on the big solutions with far more urgency than the little ones.
You're right; conservation doesn't solve the climate crisis, but it gives us more time to work with. Having an attitude of energy conservation also means that we can do more with what we have, which makes every innovation more useful than it would be if we devoted ourselves to the idea of "more, more, more".
Think about it
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:4, Insightful)
If we did do those things it would make a big difference.
How big? Do you have a number?
Your error is thinking that reducing energy usage is pointless
No, I didn't claim it was pointless, only that we can't conserve our way to zero.
We've been making energy conservation a priority in the civilized world since the first Earth Day, the oil crises, and air pollution scares in the 1970s. Just how much room do you think is left for conservation to lower our CO2 emissions?
Compare that margin to replacing a coal, oil, or natural gas power plant with onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, or nuclear fission. There simply is no comparison.
Nuclear powered cargo ships are a great idea, but transporting food from one side of the globe to the other is just wasteful.
It's also delicious. Coffee and tea only grow in so many places, and if people can't get caffeine then there will be riots.
we need to reduce our environmental impact now, not wait until emergent technologies become commonplace.
I agree. That's why I advocate for using already mature technology like onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission.
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How big? Do you have a number?
I found a few numbers:
There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein.
source: https://ourworldindata.org/glo... [ourworldindata.org]
OP proposes eating less animal-sourced products. At
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building new cities that are made for households that do not require 1 car per adult
And then Covid19 happened and now nobody understandably wants to take public transportation anymore.
We'll reach a new "car age"...
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OP proposes eating less animal-sourced products. At a large scale, this change could release land for other uses.
Such as? I've seen what these idiots think is a better use of the land. I saw people celebrate tobacco fields be covered with solar PV panels. That is lunacy to think this is improving the world.
I can agree that tobacco is bad but grow cotton, sunflowers, hemp, or anything but cover it in solar panels.
We might not get net zero emissions from conservation alone, but there are some major steps to be taken in replacing "legacy" infrastructure with some that will do a good enough job with less damage to water, land and air.
Livestock for meat isn't damaging the land, water, or air. What's damaging to the land, water, and air is solar power.
I'd like to know what they think "less meat" looks like. Is it a pound of beef per wee
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OP proposes eating less animal-sourced products. At a large scale, this change could release land for other uses.
My understanding that land used for livestock grazing is largely not suitable for other types of farming. Hay production is also a lot more "healthier" use of land than planting monoculture crops.
Basically, "eat less meat to save the planet" is only true in a very narrow set of circumstances.
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If everyone did that then it would be a barely measurable reduction in our CO2 emissions.
a) No it wouldn't.
b) We have to start somewhere, we can't go on as we are.
c) Even a small change in habits can lead to a big change in mentality.
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:5, Insightful)
a) No it wouldn't.
Do you have a number? I have one. I could replace my old 80% efficiency water heater with one that is 95% efficient. That's a 15% reduction in my summer natural gas bill. If I do that then I can't get another 15% reduction years later with another water heater. Even if I could then that next 15% is going to be far smaller than the first 15%
c) Even a small change in habits can lead to a big change in mentality.
Not in my experience. I've seen people just get apoplectic from suggesting the idea of using nuclear power. These are people that will bring cloth napkins with them to go out to eat so they aren't using paper napkins. These people haven't changed their mentality on solving the problem. They are living in the illusion of conserving energy to near zero, putting solar PV panels on everyone's roof, public transportation everywhere, and the nonsense of burning food for fuel.
These people will not "think big" because they grew up in a world of teachers and popular entertainment telling them that everything will be fine if we all reduce, recycle, and reuse. They get angry if someone brings up a need for windmills and hydroelectric dams. I don't know where they think we are supposed to get our energy from. We can't run an aluminum refinery or steel recycling plant on solar power and puppy dog kisses.
b) We have to start somewhere, we can't go on as we are.
We did start somewhere. We started on the path of energy conservation in earnest 50 years ago. There just isn't much room to conserve any more. What is frustrating as hell is knowing 40 years ago we effectively stopped building new nuclear power for the most bullshit of reasons. Had we not done that then maybe, perhaps, we would not be seeing this global warming panic right now.
Where's the "big change in mentality" now? Maybe I just saw it a few days ago. I found out the Democrats added support for new nuclear power to the party platform document last August. That's the big change we needed. Let's hope it's not too late.
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Where's the "big change in mentality" now?
It is being actively resisted by corporations that need people to consume more all the time, and by advertisers that try to make people buy stuff they do not need, and by governments that want economic "growth" to show they are successful.
Perhaps we would not be discussing the need for nuclear power, were it not for artificially fueled human greed.
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Eat less meat
Drive a smaller, more economical car
Insulate your house, turn the heating/aircon down a degree or two
Turn off the lights when you leave a room
Buy locally produced foods, not foods from the other side of the world
etc.
If everyone did that then it would be a barely measurable reduction in our CO2 emissions. We cannot conserve our way to zero emissions.
If we have the bulk of our electricity from onshore wind then my lights produce nest to nothing in CO2. If we use synthesized hydrocarbon fuels instead of petroleum then an old V-8 muscle car has the same CO2 emissions as a new tiny electric "smart" car. If we build nuclear powered cargo ships then getting food from the other side of the world has the same CO2 emissions as those from other side of the county.
Again, we cannot conserve our way to zero emissions. We need to work on the big solutions with far more urgency than the little ones.
Most environmentalists don't like that answer, and it's because climate change is not primarily a scientific problem, it is a desire to change human values.
If adoption of nuclear power meant people became less greedy and selfish and cut their materialistic desires and stopped having children and allowed more space for other species -- if it was a pious act -- then they'd love nuclear. But nuclear is presented as a way to carry on being the same awful humans we are, and so it's scientific merits will always
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If we have the bulk of our electricity from onshore wind then my lights produce nest to nothing in CO2. If we use synthesized hydrocarbon fuels instead of petroleum then an old V-8 muscle car has the same CO2 emissions as a new tiny electric "smart" car. If we build nuclear powered cargo ships then getting food from the other side of the world has the same CO2 emissions as those from other side of the county.
Seems to me like all your arguments have an "if" in them and all of them rely on somebody else doing something, not you.
I think we found the real problem.
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I think we found the real problem.
The real problem being we can't conserve our way to zero CO2 emissions.
I can buy LED lights to replace incandescent lights. I can get a more fuel efficient vehicle. What I can't do is build a hydroelectric dam. Someone else has to do that, and the government has to be willing to allow it.
That means I vote. That's probably going to be the most effective means to lower CO2 that I could ever do. With prominent Democrats calling for the tearing down of hydroelectric dams I'm not voting for Democrats.
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no great conspiracy against dams. Power generation is a for-profit enterprise. As with anything else run by capitalists, there is no progress where there is no profit to be had. All of the best dam sites are already dammed up. It also turns out dams aren't so great for the ecosystem, and it's not really cut-and-dry whether the CO2 saved is worth killing off a bunch of endangered yellow spotted flatnosed hoptoads.
Not supporting the party that at least acknowledges climate change is a problem, because you disagree over dams, is letting perfect be the enemy of good. But I know from your other posts the dam issue is really just a strawman, because there's a bunch of other stuff in the Democrats' platform you find unpalatable. People who are genuinely concerned about the environment have some connotative dissonance to resolve when voting for the Republican Party (you convince yourself "Well, the Democrats aren't so great for the environment either..."), but those who truly don't care (because they'll be dead before it affects them) aren't going to have any trouble sleeping at night.
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On technical grounds, I am in favour of hydro schemes as a way of storing energy from intermittent sources like wind power. When the wind blows, you pump water uphill. When there is peak demand, you drive turbines from the water in the dam. A major plus factor with hydro is that it is low-tech, compared to ideas like large-scale batteries. The potential hazards of dams are known, and can be dealt with.
Speaking as a UK resident, I do not see hydro energy storage being viable here, due to high population dens
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Masks help Doctors and Nurses for sure, but most masks people are wearing are more symbolic than effective. Same with these perspex barriers shops put up.
So why do it then? The answer is to make the virus visible, without the mask things seem normal, safe and that makes people careless.
How do you identify someone slacking off , easy they are not wearing the damn mask.
One antimask argument is the virus is so small it passes through but the virus usually travels via much larger water droplets. They can be ca
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If you don't believe a mask works then stay at home, no-one can dispute that if you don't come in contact with a person then you will not infect them.
Re:More solutions, less doom and gloom please (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the problem: Lowering CO2 emissions is not a solution. Lowering emissions decreases the rate at which additional CO2 is entering the atmosphere. That is, it slows down the rate at which CO2 levels are increasing, but it cannot reduce CO2 levels. We could update the Paris accords so everyone has zero CO2 emissions starting next year and every country could hit their goals, and we'd still have decades of warming ahead of us due to secondary positive feedback mechanisms like this methane release. It's like having perfect defense in a basketball game. As long as you're winning it can help stop you from losing the game, but once you start losing it doesn't let you win.
Solving this now seems to have shifted from preventing us from crossing the threshold level of CO2 where climate change starts continuing on its own (starting to lose the game), to getting us back below the threshold level of CO2 (winning the game). That means carbon sequestration - we need to figure out ways to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and lock it back up underground.
Unfortunately, the environmental movement has been actively working against this, automatically assuming any funding for carbon sequestration technology is just an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels. Between that and their opposition to commercial nuclear power, I fear they've doomed us just as much as the deniers claiming there is no problem and continuing to burn fossil fuels.
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For sequestration to do any good, it has to be applied massively and on a global scale. The green left automatically opposes geoengineering because it might mean human survival.
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It's a start.... enforcement could eventually come later through the use of sanctions. That requires that the agreement is in place first, however.
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The right would be more inclined to take climate science seriously if the left started taking large-scale solutions seriously.
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Correct. In fact, like Kyoto, Paris is absolutely WORTHLESS.
No it isn't, it gets politicians (and citizens) to actually admit there's a problem.
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Sadly, Europe, and others in the far left, simply want to blame America, while ignoring what is REALLY happening. Unless we all agree to DROP EMISSIONS, we are fucked.
On this issue... we are already fucked. Thinking otherwise is just denial.
The only way out is to have a good plan for the next 1000 years. That way we can survive once the UP of Michigan looks like the Sahara.
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I'm just curious to know what a Trump voter considers far left.
Genghis Khan, perhaps?