The Climate thread

[Pato del Muerto 52,487]

If the best ways to get off of fossil fuels are nuclear, wind, and solar, why do we let NIMBYs of any flavor say no to nuclear and wind?  If nat gas is half as dirty as coal, why are we fighting it in favor of these other things, only to then refuse to have the others because people don’t like how wind farms or solar arrays look, or are scared of nuclear?

[GSU&UT 1,798]

As someone in Georgia, every single Georgia Power customer (afaik) has to pay an almost additional 10% on every monthly bill towards the Plant Vogtle expansion. I wish we could at the absolute very least get us off all coal plants in favor of nuclear, but this extremely long expansion should be a warning that it is nowhere near feasible for the US to get more nuclear heavy if we really want to curb our emissions. For all of you who are extremely ~* TAXES ARE THEFT *~, just try selling that to the public lol.

 

And this is after GP and Southern Company got billions in loans from the government like @elfenix said.

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by GSU&UT

[4th&Five 41,519]

 

[bolverk 29,656]

Listened to a story on NPR about the European heatwave migrating up to Greenland which is causing near unprecedented melting. According to the researcher they interviewed, the last big one was in 2012. Before that, you'd have to go back to 1889 for a similar one. Before that,  you'd need to travel back in time almost 700 years earlier.

A heat wave is turning Greenland’s ice to slush. That's bad news.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/greenland-melting-second-time-this-summer-bad/

ON THE GREENLAND ice sheet, high at the top of the planet, things are not well.

The heat wave that wreaked havoc on Europe in late July has now migrated northward, parking itself over Greenland. As air temperatures over the ice rise, the ice sheet is responding in the only way it knows how: by melting. By Tuesday, over half of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet had softened to slush.

This is the second major hot stretch to hit the ice sheet this season, and the second to cause melting across major swaths of the ice sheet. The heat waves were particularly impactful because they arrived after mild, dry winter and spring seasons that primed the ice sheet for melt. The result of this brutal setup is a summer melt season so intense that it’s on track to tie or break the record for the most water loss ever recorded.

Already, the melt extent is well outside the range of what’s normally observed at this time of year, said Ruth Mottram, a polar scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

“These are records we don’t want to see broken,” she says.

This will soon be unexceptional

So far, 2019 is shaping up to rival the worst melt year on record: 2012.

At its worst point, in July of 2012, 97 percent of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet was experiencing some sort of melt, scientists estimated—even the icy, more-than-mile-high interior of the ice sheet, which rarely had been seen to soften.

Melt coursing off the ice sheet caused rivers to gush so intensely that they blew out bridges in coastal towns. Scientists stepped outside their stations only to sink deep into the unexpectedly soft surface.

By the end of July 2012, the ice sheet had lost about 250 billion tons of melt, enough to tick global sea levels up by about eight tenths of a millimeter.

That’s pretty close to the estimated 248 billion tons that have been lost so far this year, according to observations made by Marco Tedesco, a polar scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

“We’re basically on pace. We’re in the ballpark of the 2012 record,” he says.

On Tuesday alone, the ice sheet shed about seven billion tons of melt. That’s enough water to fill almost three billion Olympic swimming pools, and about 1.75 times as much as it might lose per day in the average year.

That may not sound like a lot, but it adds up quickly. Global average sea levels have crept up by 7 to 8 inches over the past century, with about 40 percent of that rise occurring since 1993. Melting ice contributes more and more to that rise each year, and the rate of melt has potentially sextupled since 1979.

By 2100, accelerating ice loss and surface melting from Greenland’s ice could dump somewhere between about 2 to 13 inches of extra water into the seas. If the whole ice sheet were to melt away—not something likely to happen in the near future in any scientific projections—global sea levels would rise by about 23 feet.

This season alone won’t make or break global sea levels. But this season, on top of many others like it, will have an impact.

Spoiler

 

A self-reinforcing loop
Parts of the Greenland ice sheet melt every summer, as Earth tilts its northern face toward the sun. At the edges of the ice sheet, that translates to gushing rivers and limpid blue pools of meltwater dotting the ice’s surface.

But usually, the melt is confined to those fringes, and the loss from melt is balanced—at least partially—by snowfall. Fresh snow also helps the ice sheet stay bright and reflective, bouncing away incoming solar radiation. Older snow, explains Mottram, loses the sharp snowflake edges and fluffy texture that help reflect away the light, instead congealing in a more solid, less-reflective mass that soaks up the sun’s heat.

Over the winter, very little snow fell across the western edge of the ice sheet. That meant that great swaths of the ice sheet were already darker than normal when the summer heat started to set in.

So when the first heat wave of the summer arrived in June, up to about 45 percent of the ice sheet hit a melting point—well above the 10 percent usually observed at that time of year. Air temperatures hovered some 10 to 15 degrees Celsius above normal. During that one hot nine-day stretch, the ice sheet lost about 80 billion tons of melt. By the time the heat passed, scientists were speculating that this season could break records.

And because partially melted ice is darker than fresh snow, that event meant that the ice sheet was vulnerable to any more heat waves that might come along.

“It’s like a kind of preconditioning for later melt,” says Mottram.

When the most recent heat wave started to move north, scientists were prepared to see massive melting start up again across the island. So far, the scenario is playing out how they predicted.

Is the future now?
Scientists already know that climate change has a hand in lengthening and intensifying the melt seasons in Greenland; in 2012, melting around the edges of the ice sheet started about a month earlier than it had three decades prior.

The big question, though, is whether this kind of extreme summer melt will soon become commonplace.

Some scientists, like Xavier Fettweis, an ice sheet modeler at the University of Liège, think so.

The volume and intensity of melting occurring today, he says, is on par with what models predict will occur nearly every summer by 2050. So record-breaking summers like this one, or 2012, will cease to be remarkable. We’re already on that path, he says.

“This is not just one hot summer among a lot of cool ones,” he said. “This kind of anomaly has been repeated this year, and similarly in 2016, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, and so on.”

The exact details of why melting is accelerating across the ice sheet are still being worked out. But part of the reason, some scientists think, has to do with the jet stream, the wavy band of air currents that snakes around the planet, locking into place weather patterns on either side of it.

The shape of the Northern Hemisphere jet stream is at least partly controlled by the difference in temperature between the equator and the Arctic. The Arctic has warmed much more rapidly than the rest of the planet—some 1.8 degrees Celsius in the last 20 years alone—and some scientists think that the result is a jet stream that is wavier and more sluggish than before.

That means that weather patterns—like the heat wave that baked Europe last week, or the devastating rains that flooded the U.S. Midwest in the spring—get stuck in place for longer, said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers.

And in turn, that means more opportunity for melting when the hot phases get stuck over Greenland.

“We’ve seen these records falling more rapidly as time goes on,” says Francis. “They’re very clearly connected to the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—they’re a very obvious symptom of climate change.”

 

 

[elfenix 34,227]

On 8/2/2019 at 10:33 AM, Axiom of Choice said:

burning dirt cheap, abundant fossil fuels is definitely the cheapest option when all costs are considered.

no, no it's not, as global warming fucking demonstrates.  that's a cost that's not internalized and is not considered.  talk about absurd posts.

 

look, we have to live in the real world, not in fantasy island where the world has the capability of opening more than a handful of nuclear plants in a decade.  there aren't enough nuclear engineers to go around and there aren't any places to put them where there isn't massive local resistance.  there are massive up front construction costs.  it's not going to happen in the time frame we need it to happen. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by elfenix

[elfenix 34,227]

well then you should have written "burning cheap fossil fuels is the cheapest option when people are allowed to shit in each others yards with no repercussions" since you're butthurt about leaving out things.

[elfenix 34,227]

1 hour ago, Axiom of Choice said:

I was talking about dollars per kwh with above poster.  That was what he brought up.  My point is that whatever clean energy we transition to, the price per kwh paid by the consumer (considering both direct billing and taxes) is going to be higher.  However, I believe the higher price is justified.  I don't even think we disagree on this point; you are reaching and creating strawmen for other reasons.  

says the guy who's been running around attacking me for the last several pages of this and the other similar topic because i didn't put "per year" on a calculation i did using sources that i gave in the post.

Edited August 5, 2019 by elfenix

[elfenix 34,227]

you figured it out a few posts later, and then used it as a post hoc justification for why you missed a pop culture reference. 

 

i don't think nuclear can play a significant roll in a goal with any immediacy to it because it takes a 8+ years to build a plant.  that's been the case since the 1960s.  1 nuke plant can take the place of two coal plants, but that won't occur until 2030 if someone gets started now.  meanwhile, those coal plants are continuing to operate.  how many nuke plants could we possibly build in a reasonable time frame?  5? at a cost of what, $125 billion+?  what else could that money be used for? 

[gmr548 16,576]

Also keep in mind that nuclear fuel, at its current use rate, has a lifespan of somewhere in the ballpark of 100 years based on known reserves. The more of it is utilized the less it will last, obviously. Ignoring any other issues raised against it, the kind of investment that would be required to expand nuclear capacity to the point that it takes over for coal and cuts into gas would be massively cost ineffective for two reasons:

1.) You have to turn around and pay for replacing it in a generation because it isn't renewable.

2.) Coal is already dying, despite the misguided efforts of the current administration. A massive intervention in favor of nuclear isn't needed. For a fraction of the cost, you could re-commit to incentives for renewable, wipe out coal faster, and strengthen the competitive position of wind, solar, geothermal, etc. relative to oil and gas and set the stage for a market oriented transition when the next price spike comes. Remember, these is less of the stuff and more demand with literally every second that goes by. Prices will not be low forever.

I am not saying number two is the only thing I support, but if the goal of the argument is a "pragmatic" approach, which is center-right code for capitalistic/market oriented, then a massive nuclear investment is far from it.

1 hour ago, Axiom of Choice said:

  My view is that the immediate goal is to transition off coal and crude oil as a source of power generation.  The best way to do this is via a combination of cleaner power sources such as nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas, etc.   Each of these power sources can play a useful role in achieving independence from coal and crude oil for power gen.  Long term goal is to get off natural gas as well and be completely reliant on zero greenhouse gas emissions power generation.  Do you disagree with any of this?   

 

Here, I think, is the fundamental disagreement. The data tells us that "get off natural gas" also needs to be in the short term column at this point. Your approach would have been reasonable in the 80s or 90s when a solution could have legitimately been a decades long process. That kind of time is no longer afforded, unfortunately, because the can has largely been kicked down the road (or in some cases kicked the opposite direction). Gradual solutions aren't going to get the job done anymore, and any analysis of cost that doesn't take into account the long-term cost of not making wholesale changes is not an objective evaluation of the situation.

Edited August 5, 2019 by gmr548

[RayDog 682]

To use nuclear in the time frame we want we cannot use the commercial reactor paradigm, but rather the naval nuclear reactor paradigm. Here are a few strategies to mitigate known problems.

a. Make them at a few locations and small enough that they can be easily transported. The 250 MW to 350 MW size range works well for naval reactors.

b. Lease them so that they are returned at the end of life and allowed to decay at a safe location for another 50 years or so before dismantling and reprocessing. 

c. To eliminate refueling outages and associated costs, design them to operate without refueling during their lifespan of 50 to 60 years. This will require using breeder technology to avoid using very high enrichment fuels.

d. Using breeder technology (U and Th) extends the fuel supply to potentially thousands of years. 

e. Make them pressurized water reactors and use mono-block steam generators that do not need to be routinely inspected nor have tubes plugged. The clean steam that leaves the reactor compartment is used to power the generators.

f. The generators can be built at central locations and transported and leased as well to minimize construction time and costs.

g. By minimizing access points for maintenance the design can be simplified and have with fewer weak structural and security points. They can be designed for only one-time dismantling at the end of life.   

h. Design them to operate automatically with only a small number of skilled operators and no safety overrides. It should go without saying that the reactor design must be intrinsically safe.

i. Make them watertight and mount them on barges to eliminate earthquake, environmental, and local construction concerns and problems. A body of water will still be needed for cooling so we might as well float the reactors and eliminate local construction as much as possible.

Those are a few ideas about how I would do it if I were in charge of the project. This is still only part of the solution, but it is possible to increase the percentage of nuclear power.

Edited August 5, 2019 by RayDog

[Mo Horn 8,831]

Idiots. Every last one of them. 

[Brisketexan 105,081]

1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Idiots. Every last one of them. 

Weather.  Not climate.  Morons.  All of them.  Too fucking stupid to have this planet.  But it's okay, in the long run....they won't.  Problem is, the rest of us will lose it along with them.

[WhatTheBuck 28,775]

Global warming doesn't mean it won't get cold during the winter anymore, dumbasses. If it ever gets to the point where it does mean that, we'll all be dead. 

[RomaVicta 29,902]

18 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Weather.  Not climate.  Morons.  All of them.  Too fucking stupid to have this planet.  But it's okay, in the long run....they won't.  Problem is, the rest of us will lose it along with them.

They're not all morons. They just don't care about anything that could alienate the market of morons that provides their daily bread. Dinesh in particular is a proven and imprisoned liar.

James Fallows in The Atlantic about ten years ago wrote an article about how the right was buying pundits through the think tanks. Fallows was offered six figures. He said no, but others didn't. 

That's a lot of money, and we don't really put much value in integrity around here. See Trump, Donald and GOP.

I've become concerned enough about climate that I'm no longer thinking about my next car as I used to. I love the aged, low-mileage Infiniti I got a few years ago. But I'm having serious conscience issues about the pollution. If the scientists are correct, cars will be gone in a few decades either by law to save the environment or failure of the same changing the world.

Thanks, GOP, for muddying the issue and forestalling action. 

[bolverk 29,656]

Blast furnace 2019 news for the politics board:

It's official: July was hottest month on record
Nine of the 10 hottest Julys on record have occurred since 2005. The last five have been the five hottest Julys ever.

It wasn't your imagination. July was in fact the hottest month ever.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that July was the hottest month on record, with global temperatures averaging 62.13 degrees, which is 1.71 degrees above the 20th century average.

This July bested July 2016 for the hottest month on record by .05 degrees. Records date to 1880.

The areas that had the most notable departures from their normal July temperatures were Alaska, central Europe, northern and southwestern parts of Asia, and parts of Africa and Australia.

The record-warmth shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows, according to NOAA.

Nine of the 10 hottest Julys have occurred since 2005, and the last five have been the hottest Julys ever.

Last month, the NOAA said that June was the hottest June on record, with average temperatures surpassing those of June 2016. This July was the 415th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures, according to NOAA.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/july-2019-officially-earth-s-hottest-month-record-ncna1042671

 

[bolverk 29,656]

Resisting the urge to cloak up the blast furnace thread where our surly weatherman dismisses the heat with his Cornyn-like "it's August" statements.

Quote

 

Austin Makes Top 10 List Of U.S. Cities With The Greatest Increase In Hot Days

The triple-digit heatwave hitting Austin is becoming one for the record books. On Wednesday, it became the fifth longest ever recorded in the city's history, and more hot days are expected.  

It’s part of a trend. Thanks to global warming and the heat island effect, Austin is getting much hotter. Now, a new report shows just how it ranks against other U.S. cities when it comes to rising temperatures.

Climate Central, a group that promotes awareness of global warming, took data from the National Weather Service on how often U.S. cities hit a heat index of 90 degrees or higher. It found that out of 239 cities, 198 have seen a jump in the average number of those days, called “extreme heat days,” annually since 1979.

Austin’s increase in extreme heat days was the ninth biggest among U.S. cities. The report says the city now has about 22 more days that feel like 90 degrees or higher each year than it did before 1979.

The report also points out that “extreme heat now extends well beyond the summer months.” Austin, for example, had 126 such days on average over the last five years.

Three other Texas cities, McAllen, Tyler and Corpus Christi made the Top 10 list.

Austin also ranked ninth in the increase in dangerously hot days nationally. According to the report those occur “when the combination of heat and humidity makes it feel like it’s 105°F or hotter.”

Four other Texas cities made it to the Top 10 of that list: McAllen, Laredo, Victoria and Houston.

The report from Climate Central follows a study released by the Union of Concerned Scientists that looked at climate trends and found the heat in Austin could outpace science's ability to measure it by 2036.

That report found if nothing is done about climate change, Austin may average one day a year where the feels-like temperature hits 127 degrees by the middle part of the century – anywhere from 2036 to 2065. That would rise to 12 days, on average, by the end of the century – between 2070 and 2099.

Both these studies look at the heat index, or “feels like” temperature. But Austin is also seeing a dramatic increase in simple thermometer temperature.

When it comes to triple-digit days, last century Austin averaged about 13 annually. This century, we’re averaging 38 triple-digit days a year, according to Spectrum News Chief Meteorologist Burton Fitzsimmons.

He says the average annual temperature is 4 degrees warmer today than it was 40 years ago.

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28,775]

Good riddance, David Koch, you global warming denial-funding piece of shit. 

[Parliament 14,249]

.

[bolverk 29,656]

16 minutes ago, Parliament said:

.

Chuck Woolerly is a feckless moron.

[RomaVicta 29,902]

44 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Chuck Woolerly is a feckless moron.

Don't talk about our future GOP president that way. Show some respect! He just shed light on the climate scam. He knows more than the scientists and almost as much as Donald Trump.

[Brisketexan 105,081]

We were in Montreal this weekend.  It got pretty warm, and most places (of course) do not have A/C).  One of our conversations was about how long it was going to take till they have widespread A/C up there.  Our thinking is that they'll know they need it in 10 years, will actually have it in 15.

[4th&Five 41,519]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Chuck Woolerly is a feckless moron.

Can confirm because I've been around him a few times. He was pretty close with a good friends family until he became an insane Trumpkin.  He's the same in person as on Twitter.

[4th&Five 41,519]

 

[ryskey 447]

3 hours ago, Parliament said:

.

Topographic maps are pretty useful.  Pretty useful when assessing sea level rise risk.  The Obamas' house looks like it's around 35' above sea level.  Much higher than most of New York City.

[Biff Tannen 45,665]

Parliament and Woolery seem to have cracked the case!  Oh, it's all unraveling now!  Caught in my own web of lies!

[gmr548 16,576]

Topographic maps are pretty useful.  Pretty useful when assessing sea level rise risk.  The Obamas' house looks like it's around 35' above sea level.  Much higher than most of New York City.

The odds of a climate change denier bring able to read a topographic map, hell, even count to 35, are slim to none.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[TDunk 590]

1 hour ago, gmr548 said:

The odds of a climate change denier bring able to read a topographic map, hell, even count to 35, are slim to none.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 

Shit.  He can only count to 2 and has to repeat it.

[Pato del Muerto 52,487]

Or maybe they saw that the record is increasing by 0.05 degrees every 2 years and are ok with that trend lasting. 

[ChickenSandwich 9,829]

It’s all pandering until someone wants to address the elephant in the room. 

Population control. Politicians dare not mention it. 

1950- 2.5 billion humans

2019 - 7.5 billion humans 

Co2 + consumption of resources. No MPG limits would even scratch the surface. 

[Dahobbs 17,527]

13 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

It’s all pandering until someone wants to address the elephant in the room. 

Population control. Politicians dare not mention it. 

1950- 2.5 billion humans

2019 - 7.5 billion humans 

Co2 + consumption of resources. No MPG limits would even scratch the surface. 

Well, except for the fact that you're wrong, sure. It is absolutely feasible for us to address climate change with our population and with our current technology. 

[High Plains Drifter 11,034]

On 8/26/2019 at 8:26 AM, Parliament said:

.

 

 

Typical. Lies mixed with ignorance.

 

If Martha's vinyard is under water in ten years (which nobody has claimed will happen), we will have worse problems to deal with, like the end of civilization as we know it.  Martha's Vineyard being underwater in 10 years would be some Noah's Ark type shit.

 

 

There was never anything like a consensus (like there is now about global warming) regarding a coming ice age.

Acid rain problem was addressed by reducing air pollution through, wait for it, regulations.

Ozone layer problem was addressed (and pretty much solved- the hole is closing) with an international agreement that industry agreed to.

Global warming is melting glaciers. That is an undeniable fact.

[ChickenSandwich 9,829]

4 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

Well, except for the fact that you're wrong, sure. It is absolutely feasible for us to address climate change with our population and with our current technology. 

Show your work, and our “current population” is kind of a misnomer, eh?  As it is not a stagnant number and is only increasing.  

How much heat alone does 7.5 billion people create vs 2.5 billion. Humans a cooling factor?  Consuming less food and resources?  Not breathing CO2?

you seem positive on this topic and could surely point to some research towards your strongly held opinion. 

[ChickenSandwich 9,829]

3 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

Typical. Lies mixed with ignorance.

 

If Martha's vinyard is under water in ten years (which nobody has claimed will happen), we will have worse problems to deal with, like the end of civilization as we know it.  Martha's Vineyard being underwater in 10 years would be some Noah's Ark type shit.

 

 

There was never anything like a consensus (like there is now about global warming) regarding a coming ice age.

Acid rain problem was addressed by reducing air pollution through, wait for it, regulations.

Ozone layer problem was addressed (and pretty much solved- the hole is closing) with an international agreement that industry agreed to.

Global warming is melting glaciers. That is an undeniable fact.

Can’t wait for AOC to tell us this is evil, right after she goes after Hollywood and their salaries. 

[elfenix 34,227]

i'd be in favor of anyone with more than 3 of their own biological children being hauled in for questioning.  along with anyone over the age of 14 who has a reptile for a pet (special dispensation for that 70 year old lady who got a turtle when she was 10 and still has it), and white people who name their kids shit like "chasten" or "krystyn" or "josiah".

[Dirk X West 772]

6 minutes ago, elfenix said:

i'd be in favor of anyone with more than 3 of their own biological children being hauled in for questioning.  along with anyone over the age of 14 who has a reptile for a pet (special dispensation for that 70 year old lady who got a turtle when she was 10 and still has it), and white people who name their kids shit like "chasten" or "krystyn" or "josiah".

How about "Kadence"?

[Lurch 5,922]

“There’s no climate change.”

“There’s climate change, but humans have nothing to do with it.”

“There’s climate change, and it’s because there are too many humans.”

Who says conservatives don’t believe in evolution?

[WhatTheBuck 28,775]

Al Gore made a movie about global warming
Al Gore is a Democrat
I vote Republican
Therefore I don't believe in global warming

(It really is that simple.)

[Dahobbs 17,527]

1 hour ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Show your work, and our “current population” is kind of a misnomer, eh?  As it is not a stagnant number and is only increasing.  

How much heat alone does 7.5 billion people create vs 2.5 billion. Humans a cooling factor?  Consuming less food and resources?  Not breathing CO2?

you seem positive on this topic and could surely point to some research towards your strongly held opinion. 

What in the ever loving shit are you talking about? Let me make it simple for you:

We have to reduce our output of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Based on various models, we have a pretty good idea of how much we need to reduce in order to stave off catastrophic climate change. We have the technology and resources to do it that, now, without worrying about changing worldwide population patterns. 

All your other nonsense is based on extremely flawed premises:

(1) that CO2 exhaled from our lungs represents substantial part of the global increase within the last ~200 years. This is simply not true, it accounts for 0% of the global increase.  This is because everything that we inhale and exhale is already part of the carbon cycle for the planet. We (and other animals) consume plants (containing delicious carbon).  The carbon in the CO2 that we exhale comes from our food.  Plants absorb that CO2, adding the carbon to their biomass and releasing oxygen. We (and other animals) then consume the plants, starting the process anew. All that carbon was already accounted for, none of it is new. The current problem with CO2 build up is due to the NEW carbon that is being released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Maybe look at any fucking science at all for references on the above. 

(2) Heat from biomass isn't causing global warming. It is frankly completely insignificant and doesn't cause the type of feed back loop that greenhouse gasses do. Further, the assumption that less humans means less heat generating biomass is highly questionable.  Less humans likely just means more other animals. 

The only way less humans solve our climate issue is to the extent less humans means less reliance on fossil fuels, and thus less additional carbon being poured into the atmosphere. But, less humans isn't by any means a requirement. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Dahobbs

[Anastasis 23,464]

Where did the fossil fuels get their carbon from? 

[Dahobbs 17,527]

8 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Where did the fossil fuels get their carbon from? 

Are you interested in living in the cretaceous?

[Hornius Emeritus 12,450]

8 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Are you interested in living in the cretaceous?

Depends. Would it mean that I would never have to read another Icono post?

[elfenix 34,227]

1 hour ago, Dirk X West said:

How about "Kadence"?

him too

[Anastasis 23,464]

22 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Are you interested in living in the cretaceous?

BBQ might be interesting. 

[RomaVicta 29,902]

2 hours ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Show your work, and our “current population” is kind of a misnomer, eh?  As it is not a stagnant number and is only increasing.  

How much heat alone does 7.5 billion people create vs 2.5 billion. Humans a cooling factor?  Consuming less food and resources?  Not breathing CO2?

you seem positive on this topic and could surely point to some research towards your strongly held opinion. 

Maybe you could do the same thing. Your post seems like surmise.

[Fondren & Main 6,703]

Ban private planes.  Let’s start there.

[WhatTheBuck 28,775]

35 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Ban private planes.  Let’s start there.

Like putting a band-aid on a severed limb. 

[Dahobbs 17,527]

18 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Where did the fossil fuels get their carbon from? 

I thought I'd follow up on this, because it seems a ripe issue for disinformation and confusion. Carbon from fossil fuels has been largely removed from the carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years. And it all came from a time when the Earth was hotter, had more plant life, and larger animals. It isn't new to the earth, but reinserting it into the carbon cycle now is going to change the current equilibrium. And doing so all at once (geologically speaking) is having/will have dramatic effects on planet. Over time the Earth will find a new equilibrium (well, unless the change is too dramatic and life can't adjust quickly enough). But getting there isn't going to be very nice for us at all. 

Edited August 29, 2019 by Dahobbs

[High Plains Drifter 11,034]

10 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I thought I'd follow up on this, because it seems a ripe issue for disinformation and confusion. Carbon from fossil fuels has been largely removed from the carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years. And it all came from a time when the Earth was hotter, had more plant life, and larger animals. It isn't new to the earth, but reinserting it into the carbon cycle now is going to change the current equilibrium. And doing so all at once (geologically speaking) is having/will have dramatic effects on planet. Over time the Earth will find a new equilibrium (well, unless the change is too dramatic and life can't adjust quickly enough). But getting there isn't going to be very nice for us at all. 

 

To add to this: the oceans were also much higher as there wasn't any water trapped in glaciers. Which means there was much less land area.

 

[bolverk 29,656]

11 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

To add to this: the oceans were also much higher as there wasn't any water trapped in glaciers. Which means there was much less land area.

 

And that's how the Permian Basin was formed from organic matter at the bottom of a large shallow sea a long, long time ago.

- The End

 

[elfenix 34,227]

More grabbing mother Earth by the pussy

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/29/trump-administration-reverse-limits-methane-powerful-greenhouse-gas/

 

“Methane is a valuable resource,” Idsal told reporters in a call Thursday. “There’s every incentive for industry to minimize any type of fugitive methane emissions, capture it, use it and sell it down the road.”

Anyone who has flown over west Texas at night knows that "every incentive" must not be much.