Forests and carbon capture

[classicdrogn]

The reason it went from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" is because it gives less room for denirs to point at things like the 2008 storms or this year's midwest deep freeze and say "Where's your global warming now?" In the particular case of this year, it's the arctic stratosphere being almost 100 degrees warmer than usual (from somewhere around -70 to +30 F from my memory of the article, which of course I can't find to link now dammit) and pushing that cold air out of place. See also the XKCD strip with the temperature graph showing how the global temperature has increased more since 1900 and the following wide-scale industrialization than in the previous 10,000 years.

[Dartz]

The fear of creeping socialism has led to a creeping anti-socialism, methinks. One drags you out of your house in the middle of the night and shoots you in the field. The other just sort of stands there and watches you die, even though it could save you at any time. And if it does anything, it just gently reassures you that it's your own fault and that starving is for your own good.

You can see why I hate both.

---

It's inescapable that something weird is going on

There's more energy in the atmosphere, more moisture, which means things are tending towards the extreme, rather than just 'hotter'. Australia and California are burning. We had a BBQ here it was so warm (for February). This time last year we had the worst blizzard in decades. Followed by the hottest summer in decades.

It's warping the climate in unpredictable ways.

This is inarguable.

It's as much a fact as the earth being round.

I've long since given up on being able to do anything about it mind. It's already fucked. If there's only, what, 8-10 years left before the tipping point has passed, effectively we've passed it already. There's no changing direction that quickly. Not unless someone figures out how to make a lot of money changing direction that quickly and they can pay for better lobbyists than Exxon.

I drive an utter pl;anetkiller of a car. It is fucking awful. It makes people's eyes water. It sets monoxide and gas alarms off. It doesn't even have a catalytic converter. I pay for it in fuel and road taxes that are painful. I'm keeping it going until it finally grinds to a halt because it's still cheaper than getting into debt to buy a new, cleaner, car. Can't afford a new car. Can't afford to replace it. Can't afford not to drive to work.

I don't know what that says. I'd rather not be taxed off the road. But on the other hand, those taxes pay for stuff like grants for electric and hybrid vehicles. And some of those aren't shit. I suppose I'll have to buy one of those, or a lighter, more effiicient MX-5 because I really and truly hate modern cars.

[Rajvik]

Drogn, you do realize we were in the process of coming out of a mini-ice age right, one that peaked in 1849 or so. Because of that of course global temperatures would rise through the early 1900's and even until now. Again we've only been keeping actual records of temp change since the 1840's or so, so of course, again, it would show a rise.

also, XKCD, seriously?

[Dartz]

Technically correct. A 'little ice age' is ending.

But what's happening is more like a lightswitch than an actual change. On geological terms, things are changing far more rapidly than they should be, when compared with what the earth and atmosphere are actually doing. It's more like it's lurching to a new state, rather than changing.

Previous climates can be inferred from other data, such as tree-growth, pollen levels and what people wore, drank and ate and what crops they grew - or what plants grew in a location along with their distributions. It's reasonably accurate.

[Labster]

And that right there is one of the best arguments I have ever heard to disprove the idea that global warming/climate change is man made. Forget the science for a minute and realize the arrogance that it takes to think that 200 years of activity could cause the planet to change that much.

How is it arrogance?  I don't understand this argument at all.  And if it is arrogant, how does that disprove any portion of any other argument?

I've seen it formulated as a religious argument, that God is in charge of the weather and the Sun.  But right there in Genesis 1 God gives us dominion over all the living creatures on Earth.  So I don't understand how we couldn't affect the thing we were specifically put in charge of, or how it would be arrogant to say that we exercised a power granted to us by God.

* Labster STILL WANTS AN ANSWER, RAJVIK.

I drive an utter pl;anetkiller of a car. It is fucking awful. It makes people's eyes water. It sets monoxide and gas alarms off. It doesn't even have a catalytic converter. I pay for it in fuel and road taxes that are painful. I'm keeping it going until it finally grinds to a halt because it's still cheaper than getting into debt to buy a new, cleaner, car. Can't afford a new car. Can't afford to replace it. Can't afford not to drive to work.

I don't know what that say.

Just a reminder that manufacturing and transporting a new car can use more energy than the fuel efficiency can save.  Cargo ship bunker fuel is really quite terrible stuff; lots of PM and sulfur emissions.  Sometimes the status quo is the best solution.

[classicdrogn]

Sigh, and I can't believe I bothered to reply when right on the previous page Raj specifically said arguing was useless because "everyone" was putting their fingers in their ears and ignoring the other side. Dagnabbit, where'd mah jimmies git off ta?

[Dartz]

Well, 5-sigma levels of certainty more or less make it fruitless to argue.

At that point, there's a 1 in a Million chance you're right.

[Labster]

Well, 5-sigma levels of certainty more or less make it fruitless to argue.

At that point, there's a 1 in a Million chance you're right.

It doesn't matter how many sigmas, if you're going to use Greek letters to prove things, you should look at how socialism ruined the Greek economy. </rajvik>

[classicdrogn]

Now now, getting personal about it isn't going to help anything.

[robkelk]

Yeah.

I know this won't be of much use north of 60, but down here where solar panels get sunlight for part of every day they might - what do people think of using current battery technology to even out the highs and lows of solar and wind power? Does it make enough of a difference to make a close-enough-not-to-matter steady supply of power?

[Labster]

The two main ways that chemical batteries are used at electrical grid-scale projects are for frequency control and for time-shifting. It turns out frequency control is quite profitable if you're early to market. And other energy storage can't perform quite as well as chemical batteries on that.

In terms of storing energy for later use, kind of an arbitrage thing, we're really not sure what the winning technology will be. Pumped hydro is great if you happen to have just the right geography to support it. But there are other things like molten salt, stacking bricks, or flywheels that could work as well. This market is still as wide open as the fin de siècle age of invention. It's going to be profitable though, because solar and wind prices are continuing to drop.

[Black Aeronaut]

And that right there is one of the best arguments I have ever heard to disprove the idea that global warming/climate change is man made. Forget the science for a minute and realize the arrogance that it takes to think that 200 years of activity could cause the planet to change that much.

A statement like that is arrogance in and of itself. To flat out refute the possibility is the very antithesis of the scientific process.

Do you know why a lot of what we know is called 'Theory' as opposed to 'Law'? Because there's a few aspects to these things that scientists are not quite certain about, and they do not want to say "This is absolutely the way this thing works" when there are still aspects of these things that are not understood.

Granted, there is a lot about meteorology that's not quite understood. Weather does some pretty damn interesting things that have flummoxed scientists the world over. Again, lots of Theories, but not a whole lot of Laws.

Denying the possibility that we are having a drastic effect on our climate is you trying to state that as a Law, and not a Theory. Even you yourself have used this argument against us, but the fact of the matter is that the blade cuts both ways: If you say that we cannot be entirely certain that we are not causing climate change, then we say that you can't be entirely certain that we are not causing climate change.

Thus, the question: Do you REALLY want to be wrong about this, Rajvic? Because I know you live in Florida, and I know it's a very flat land where it only takes one minor hurricane to wreak havoc. (Oh, I know you folks have adapted to this very well, just as we San Antonians have adapted to the utterly capricious rainfalls we get around here.) But the fact of the matter is that if things do heat up just enough, the polar ice caps WILL melt down.

That's not Theory. That's Law. And Law also dictates that when all that ice melts, the sea levels will rise.

We'll be okay here in San Antonio. It'll get damn hectic, for certain, as all our low-laying coastal regions will need to be evacuated and its peoples relocated. But Houston will be gone, and along with it all the oil refineries that we depend on. We got a taste of that with Hurricane Harvey. (Though I suspect that by that time, people will have moved to carbon-neutral processes for the most part.)

But Florida?

Florida is going to disappear. IF we are right about climate change.

And I'm pretty sure that's an IF that should be hanging over every Floridian's head like the Sword of Damocles.

You do not want to live with an IF like that. And pretending that it isn't an IF is like saying that it's perfectly safe to go about your business with a Hurricane coming at you.

Which, unfortunately, has become a trend lately.

One in which people have been paying for their hubris with their lives or the lives of their loved ones.

I recall one Sheriff visiting people in his coastal community very recently because of a massive hurricane that was barrelling towards them. I can't remember which one, there've been so many already. But he was warning people.

"You need to get out."

"Hell no, this is our land, and we're gonna stay right here."

"Then you better give me the phone numbers of your next of kin."

He made a lot of those phone calls after the hurricane cleared out.

The epitome of hubris and arrogance.

We are warning you, friend. This is not something we're trifling with. We strongly believe it's very real. And even IF it's not?

Well, you've changed a few things. Nothing huge. Power comes from a different source. Probably solar panels on your roof, a small wind turbine, and a bank of batteries. Which will all pay for itself within just a few years of you not having to pay an electric bill. Your car is either hydrogen fueled, biofueled, electric, or a hybrid, but you will probably ride a bike or take the bus whenever its practical to do so. The electric-boosted bikes are looking like a great option now. I'm strongly considering getting my own bike retrofitted, even though it's a $1200 price tag.

We here in San Antonio don't mess with IF. We saw the signs. We've been proactive with our flood controls. A lot of it has been at grave fiscal expense - expense that you would probably balk at if it ever came up in a local referendum. But we didn't mess around. The very next year after our flood control tunnels were completed we were hit by the worst flooding in our recorded history. And the tunnels worked perfectly, diverting the flood waters away from our sensitive areas and preventing millions in damages to the shops, hotels, and restaurants that line our river.

We saw IF. We took action. And that action has repaid us handsomely in money saved in costly insurance claims and lowered premiums.

We see IF right now. We're doing our part here. In spite of the booming fracking industry, we're building huge solar and wind farms out here. We get plenty of sun and wind for it.

We're only asking people to consider other options - ones that can even provide dividends.

But IF it happens... Don't say we didn't warn you.

I don't say this out of spite or malice. I say this because I do care. Because I don't want to see people hurt or suffer. Yes, these changes can be inconvenient in the short term. But I strongly believe that the Big IF is too big to flat-out ignore.

Even if it doesn't come to pass, the changes are not going to be as hurtful. Sleepy coal mining towns can become manufacturing powerhouses of wind turbines and photovoltaics without displacing their populations - the production of such things are surprisingly labor intensive, and require a great deal of people to move. The infrastructure for that is in place, too. Rail that was used to ship coal out can be easily used to move massive turbine blades, tower structures, and intermodal containers packed with brand new photovoltaic cells. This is a sustainable industry as it is always pursuing the bleeding edge, and as they do so, localities will want to upgrade.

Petrochemical companies can shift to making fully synthetic polymers and solvents without a single drop of crude oil. Oil companies are already looking into algae farming for carbon-neutral solutions. There are jobs being made and these companies need people to fill those jobs. Better it be the miner who's been on unemployment for the last year than Gunther from Germany - he didn't need to come to the USA, but the money was too good to pass up, and he had a lot of experience with composite materials manufacturing.

Oh. Wait. Trump killed those retraining programs in an effort to 'drain the swamp'. He also killed subsidies for wind and solar energy despite the fact that the oil industry is doing just fine and the coal industry is going to die a slow death no matter what you do about it. He started a trade war with China.

Guess what we ship to China by the boatload?

Coal.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11791

[Labster]

Coal sales to China are limited by the fact that California and Washington state don't want to approve new facilities for coal shipping, nor do the cities around the ports.  As I said earlier in this thread, all politics is local.

When I think of all you poor suckers on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, lol.  I live only a mile and a half from the ocean, but I'm also a good 30m above sea level.  Worst case scenario is I'd move into tsunami range.  Have fun in flatand y'all.

At San Antonio in particular: enjoy all your concrete in the tunnels.  Concrete is 8% of global CO2 emissions.  I also learned from that article that Japan has the same amount of concrete as the United States, somehow brought to you by the nation that invented mono no aware.

[hazard]

Something like 1/3rd of the Netherlands is below sea level and habitable only due to extensive water handling infrastructure. If sea levels rise high enough we can't afford to raise the dykes higher this means that 50% of the population and something like 2/3rd (I think) of the economy gets permanently flooded.

This is a very real risk even with some of the less catastrophic estimates of sea level rise.

[Rajvik]

Labster, I apologize for not responding directly to you, when. I have a real keyboard I will give you a full answer. The short answer is that we have been industrializing for the last 200-250 years and it is the height of arrogance to think that we could cause such a drastic change over that short a time frame. It is also arrogance to think that the sacrifice of the first world's energy base will negate or reverse in 10-20 years what it took the previous 200 to cause.

BA, short answer to you is that I will take my damn chances on being wrong. The "Experts" have been telling us for 25-30 years that in. 10-20 years the polar ice caps are going to melt and all other kinds of doom and gloom predictions. I'm past done listening to their hippy bullshit that they have been pushing for the last 60 years. Don't believe me, look up Time Life cover titled "A New Ice Age?" from about 76. They have just changed, (repeatedly) how the end is coming.

[Matrix Dragon]

... modifying our energy sources and output won't reverse the changes of the past few centuries. It won't reverse the damage caused by global industrialisation and a population of over seven billion.

It's too late for that. The damage is done. The ice caps are melting, droughts are getting longer, weather at both ends of the temperature scale are getting worse. Hell, last month Australia had some of the worst flooding its ever had, while simultaneously fighting massive bushfires in the same damn state. It's no longer about reversing a documented downward spiral. It's about slowing it down and minimising the damage.

Or we could hide our heads in the sand and rant about socialist hippies coming to take our guns away.

[Mamorien]

The short answer is that we have been industrializing for the last 200-250 years and it is the height of arrogance to think that we could cause such a drastic change over that short a time frame.

"It is the height of arrogance to think that we could turn an entire mountain face into a national monument in just 14 years."
"It is the height of arrogance to think that we could create a 247-square-mile lake in 12 years or less."

[hazard]

Labster, I apologize for not responding directly to you, when. I have a real keyboard I will give you a full answer. The short answer is that we have been industrializing for the last 200-250 years and it is the height of arrogance to think that we could cause such a drastic change over that short a time frame. It is also arrogance to think that the sacrifice of the first world's energy base will negate or reverse in 10-20 years what it took the previous 200 to cause.

It is also amazingly stupid not to consider the correlation between humanity industrializing in that time and the corresponding, provable increase in atmospheric CO2, nor is it wise to discard any and all studies of the traits of various gasses, including their tendency to scatter and reflect certain frequencies of light.

We are seeing an increased retention of radiated infrared light because CO2 is pretty good at reflecting and scattering infrared light, and this means that the Earth is on the average not losing as much heat as it was at a given temperature compared to when CO2 values were lower. A new equilibrium will establish itself eventually, but that equilibrium will be notably higher than it was 200, 250 years ago.

[Rajvik]

Again, Hazard, I HAVE considered it, but after almost 30 years of doom and gloom predictions failing to come true I just look at them and basically say, "What's new?"

[Epsilon]

Labster, I apologize for not responding directly to you, when. I have a real keyboard I will give you a full answer. The short answer is that we have been industrializing for the last 200-250 years and it is the height of arrogance to think that we could cause such a drastic change over that short a time frame. 

How long should it take then?

Okay, here, let's start with the simple thing:

Do you or do you not believe in the laws of thermodynamics?

[classicdrogn]

I can understand the "boy who cried wolf" feeling, but in this case there's paw prints in the dirt and fur caught in the bushes around the meadow. Sure, the sheep haven't been eaten yet, but every day without action brings it one day closer.

[Bob Schroeck]

I have noticed, in many contexts of which this is just one, that people rarely want to hear warnings about a distant, avertable disaster. If it's not happening right now, preferably to someone they know, it's just not real. The only time they care is when it's too late to do anything, because that's the only time there's enough proof to move them to action. Until then it's crying wolf. Because obviously, if it hasn't happened before, it'll never happen.

EDIT: I suspect this is behind a lot of the dismissal of scientists' warnings about global warming. Few people can actually imagine being seriously worried about something that is going to happen as little as a year down the road, let alone ten years or a century, and grasp at the only reason that they can comprehend for someone who makes such warnings -- they're trolling us. Obviously. Or somehow there's money in it for them (Step 1: Warn of a disaster that's not actually coming. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!).

[Rajvik]

Step two, limit the amount of emissions that a company is allowed to produce and then set up an exchange where companies can buy and sell their wayward emission tonnage and charge a fee for brokering the deal.

Or did you forget about Al "I invented the internet" Gore and the "Carbon Emissions Exchange"

Edit: Sorry Epsilon, I forgot to answer your question. Yes, I believe in the laws of Thermodynamics. I also believe in this little thing called solar output. Want to go for another round?

[robkelk]

... Sure, the sheep haven't been eaten yet ...

At least two Danish scientists would disagree.

[Bob Schroeck]

Step two, limit the amount of emissions that a company is allowed to produce and then set up an exchange where companies can buy and sell their wayward emission tonnage and charge a fee for brokering the deal.

Or did you forget about Al "I invented the internet" Gore and the "Carbon Emissions Exchange"

I think you're confusing a politician with a clunky attempt at a solution with the scientists who found a problem.