Are even people who trust the science of climate change in denial of its seriousness?

[dcwolf]

In fact global cooling is probably worse than global warming.

The scientific history of Earth indicates the opposite. Four of the five largest mass extinctions in the planet's history have occurred due to global warming.

That is the result we're faced with. Not just in the animal kingdom but also whole foods...

Where did you get such a nonsensical

Still quite the attacker after all these years?

I was a bit careless in how I phrased my response. But the general theme is the same. Increased CO2, which causes warming, ocean acidification and euxinic events, has probably been the driver for most mass extinctions.
From this paper

the 23 most conspicuous mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic (including the late Ediacaran), 4 are associated with ice-volume-related regressions, and 3 are problematic. We suggest that the other 16 mass extinctions occurred when Greenhouse climate was forced to Hothouse climate.

One they don't mention, but is shown in Figure 1, is the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum, which resulted from a large igneous province (Columbia River Basalts). It was a smaller LIP, and the extinction event was smaller, but the mechanism was the same with increased CO2 levels, temperatures, and ocean acidification.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains the rammifications of increased ocean acidity in this video

From Veron 2008

Fig. 3 Atmospheric CO2 in parts per million (ppm) over the time of the existence of reefs. The vertical bars are the intervals of reef gaps following the five great mass extinction events. Broken lines indicate doubtful reconstructions. All reef gaps, with the exception of the Late Devonian, are probably associated with rapidly increasing or high CO2 levels (after Veron 2008)

The reef gaps all coincide with the five largest mass extinctions.

Ultimately—and here we are looking at centuries rather than millennia—the ocean pH will drop to a point at which a host of other chemical changes, including anoxia, would be expected. If this happens, the state of the oceans at the end of K/T, or something like it, will become a reality and the Earth will enter the sixth mass extinction. Another 1–3 decades like our last will see the Earth committed to a
trajectory from which there will be no escape.

The author explains that another couple of decades with greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of the previous couple decades will seal our fate from which there will be no recourse.

In paleoclimate science, yes, there is rarely cut-and-dry evidence for a culprit. But the evidence weighs much more in favor of increasing CO2 than decreasing as the culprit the majority of the time. To suggest that cooling would be worse than warming simply is not based in scientific reality.

 

[lpetrich]

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

But with the way that wind and solar electricity generation have been coming along, one can avoid nuclear energy outright. They also have much greater intrinsic safety and they require less maintenance and essentially no resupply. Their well-known intermittency is a problem, however, but one could adjust by running the desalination facilities only when the wind is blowing or the Sun is shining.

 

[bilby]

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

But with the way that wind and solar electricity generation have been coming along, one can avoid nuclear energy outright. They also have much greater intrinsic safety and they require less maintenance and essentially no resupply. Their well-known intermittency is a problem, however, but one could adjust by running the desalination facilities only when the wind is blowing or the Sun is shining.

Their actual safety is lower; nuclear power is currently a safer option and is much more practical for base load generation. Solar is particularly good in hot climates, where power demand goes up as temperatures rise. Wind is nice and cheap, when it is available.

Any energy strategy that doesn't include a large nuclear component is going to either be hugely more expensive than it needs to be; or will include continuing the environmentally disastrous burning of coal, oil and gas. The only reason nuclear is not far more widely used is that the environmentalists nailed their colours to the wrong mast back in the '60s and '70s, when they engineered a false perception of nuclear fission as an environmental threat, as part of a political campaign against nuclear weapons. The road to a global warming disaster was paved with good intentions.

'Avoiding nuclear outright' is not a laudable or desirable objective. It is a recommendation to fight with one hand tied behind our backs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

But with the way that wind and solar electricity generation have been coming along, one can avoid nuclear energy outright. They also have much greater intrinsic safety and they require less maintenance and essentially no resupply. Their well-known intermittency is a problem, however, but one could adjust by running the desalination facilities only when the wind is blowing or the Sun is shining.

Their actual safety is lower; nuclear power is currently a safer option and is much more practical for base load generation. Solar is particularly good in hot climates, where power demand goes up as temperatures rise. Wind is nice and cheap, when it is available.

Any energy strategy that doesn't include a large nuclear component is going to either be hugely more expensive than it needs to be; or will include continuing the environmentally disastrous burning of coal, oil and gas. The only reason nuclear is not far more widely used is that the environmentalists nailed their colours to the wrong mast back in the '60s and '70s, when they engineered a false perception of nuclear fission as an environmental threat, as part of a political campaign against nuclear weapons. The road to a global warming disaster was paved with good intentions.

'Avoiding nuclear outright' is not a laudable or desirable objective. It is a recommendation to fight with one hand tied behind our backs.

For running desalinators the main drawbacks of solar don't apply. You can run the desalinator when the sun shines. Storing power is hard, storing water is easy. It won't work too well in cloudy areas, though.

 

[barbos]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

 

[bilby]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

 

[barbos]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

 

[OLDMAN]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

Over the next one hundred years, over seven billion people will die even if they are provided all the food, clothing, and shelter they want and sea levels remain constant.

Even without AGW, sea levels will change. We are in an interstatial period of an ice age so glaciers have retreated, not vanished causing sea levels to rise about a hundred meters from their level during the last glaciatian period. From here one of two things will occur. Either we leave the interstatial period and return to a period of much greater glaciatian or we leave the ice age we are currently in and we loose the perminent ice caps completely (like a few million years ago). The first case will see sea levels drop about a hundred meters. The second case will see sea levels rise about a hundred meters.

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

 

[bilby]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

Over the next one hundred years, over seven billion people will die even if they are provided all the food, clothing, and shelter they want and sea levels remain constant.

Even without AGW, sea levels will change. We are in an interstatial period of an ice age so glaciers have retreated, not vanished causing sea levels to rise about a hundred meters from their level during the last glaciatian period. From here one of two things will occur. Either we leave the interstatial period and return to a period of much greater glaciatian or we leave the ice age we are currently in and we loose the perminent ice caps completely (like a few million years ago). The first case will see sea levels drop about a hundred meters. The second case will see sea levels rise about a hundred meters.

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Unless you anticipate a dramatic increase in lifespan, it is a certainty that very few of the more than seven billion alive today will still be alive in one hundred years.

Seven billion will die; and about ten billion will be born to replace them - unless something dramatic happens to the trends in birth and/or death rates.

 

[barbos]

In 500 million years Earth will be mars like desert

 

[OLDMAN]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

Over the next one hundred years, over seven billion people will die even if they are provided all the food, clothing, and shelter they want and sea levels remain constant.

Even without AGW, sea levels will change. We are in an interstatial period of an ice age so glaciers have retreated, not vanished causing sea levels to rise about a hundred meters from their level during the last glaciatian period. From here one of two things will occur. Either we leave the interstatial period and return to a period of much greater glaciatian or we leave the ice age we are currently in and we loose the perminent ice caps completely (like a few million years ago). The first case will see sea levels drop about a hundred meters. The second case will see sea levels rise about a hundred meters.

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Unless you anticipate a dramatic increase in lifespan, it is a certainty that very few of the more than seven billion alive today will still be alive in one hundred years.

Seven billion will die; and about ten billion will be born to replace them - unless something dramatic happens to the trends in birth and/or death rates.

Oh, didn't realize what Captain Obivious was stating. Just so we're on the same page, when they talk about sea levels rising, they mean shoreline, not actual water depth. Seems most cities should not be isssuing building permits within a hundred meters of water fronts, but I bet they still are....

 

[skepticalbip]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

Over the next one hundred years, over seven billion people will die even if they are provided all the food, clothing, and shelter they want and sea levels remain constant.

Even without AGW, sea levels will change. We are in an interstatial period of an ice age so glaciers have retreated, not vanished causing sea levels to rise about a hundred meters from their level during the last glaciatian period. From here one of two things will occur. Either we leave the interstatial period and return to a period of much greater glaciatian or we leave the ice age we are currently in and we loose the perminent ice caps completely (like a few million years ago). The first case will see sea levels drop about a hundred meters. The second case will see sea levels rise about a hundred meters.

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Unless you anticipate a dramatic increase in lifespan, it is a certainty that very few of the more than seven billion alive today will still be alive in one hundred years.

Seven billion will die; and about ten billion will be born to replace them - unless something dramatic happens to the trends in birth and/or death rates.

Oh, didn't realize what Captain Obivious was stating. Just so we're on the same page, when they talk about sea levels rising, they mean shoreline, not actual water depth. Seems most cities should not be isssuing building permits within a hundred meters of water fronts, but I bet they still are....

I don't know who this "They" you speak of are. All the studies I have ever read mean ocean depth when they discuss sea level. For example; 15,000 years ago sea levels were about a hundred meters lower than today. This 100 meters lower sea level exposed the Bering land bridge between Asia and North America.


A hundred meter sea level rise would flood all of Florida (leaving only a couple islands), about half of Georgia, southern Alabama, southern Mississippi, southern Lousiana, a good chunk of Texas, most of Bangladish, a nice chunk of India, etc.

 

[lpetrich]

Safety of nuclear energy? As long as one can keep the radioactive materials involved from leaking into the environment, then one won't notice its radioactivity. Nuke-plant shielding is good enough to block all of it except neutrinos, and those particles interact too weakly to be any trouble.

I'll now try to estimate how much radioactivity a nuclear power plant produces in the course of its operation. From How much electricity does a typical nuclear power plant generate? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a typical electricity-generation rate is 1.3 gigawatts. That source also has estimates of the efficiency of converting heat energy into electrical energy: What is the efficiency of different types of power plants? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Coal: 34%, oil: 32%, natural gas: 44%, nuclear energy: 34%.

That means that an average reactor releases nuclear energy at a rate of 3.8 gigawatts. Nuclear fission releases energy at about 1 MeV per nucleon, so for uranium-235, that's about 1.0*10²⁰ fissions/second. So over a year, it would make about 3*10^{27[/sub] fissions. Let's now consider fission products. Light elements have about 1 neutron per proton, and this graduallly increases to what uranium and plutonium have, about 1.6 neutrons per proton. Fission products are halfway in the periodic table, and their stable isotopes have about 1.3 neutrons per proton. So fission products have an excess of neutrons, making them radioactive. A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 1016 decays/s. That's about 2.7*105 curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*108 lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.}

 

[lpetrich]

But with the way that wind and solar electricity generation have been coming along, one can avoid nuclear energy outright. They also have much greater intrinsic safety and they require less maintenance and essentially no resupply. Their well-known intermittency is a problem, however, but one could adjust by running the desalination facilities only when the wind is blowing or the Sun is shining.

Their actual safety is lower; nuclear power is currently a safer option and is much more practical for base load generation. Solar is particularly good in hot climates, where power demand goes up as temperatures rise. Wind is nice and cheap, when it is available.

Nuclear energy is safe as long as one can keep radioactive materials from leaking. Wind and solar generation have safety problems of their own, like wind-turbine blades coming off, but their worst cases are tiny compared to nuclear ones.

 

[skepticalbip]

But with the way that wind and solar electricity generation have been coming along, one can avoid nuclear energy outright. They also have much greater intrinsic safety and they require less maintenance and essentially no resupply. Their well-known intermittency is a problem, however, but one could adjust by running the desalination facilities only when the wind is blowing or the Sun is shining.

Their actual safety is lower; nuclear power is currently a safer option and is much more practical for base load generation. Solar is particularly good in hot climates, where power demand goes up as temperatures rise. Wind is nice and cheap, when it is available.

Nuclear energy is safe as long as one can keep radioactive materials from leaking. Wind and solar generation have safety problems of their own, like wind-turbine blades coming off, but their worst cases are tiny compared to nuclear ones.

But that U-235 is already in the environment radiating away because of natural decay. The death of an earlier star made it and sprayed it into space in a super-nova explosion then it later coalesced with other dust and gas to form the solar system and Earth. The Nuclear industry extracts it from the environment and puts it all in one place (shielded from the rest of the environment) and uses the results of its decay to generate power.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

Such power would be incredibly expensive. There's no battery technology that delivers power at anything like current market rates even if you don't consider buying the power in the first place.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh, didn't realize what Captain Obivious was stating. Just so we're on the same page, when they talk about sea levels rising, they mean shoreline, not actual water depth. Seems most cities should not be isssuing building permits within a hundred meters of water fronts, but I bet they still are....

No, they mean water depth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

Small changes in food production? My understanding, granted I'm no scientist, is that the weather will destabilize to the point that agriculture as we know it will be problematic.

So, along with all renewable energy, we need new food supplies.