Climate Change Question

[NobleSavage]

Is there a site like Talk Origins for climate change? I'd like to see a comprehensive list of all denialist claims debunked.

 

[Daisy]

RealClimate.org/StartHere is about the closest.

 

[Petrel]

That looks like a great resource. Thanks.

 

[repoman]

http://www.skepticalscience.com

Is very good as well. The claims debunked are indexed.

Mini-rant: the climate change reality (in the next few hundred years) is actually so much more dire (70+ feet of sea level rise for our current CO2 levels) than people want to deal with.

These denialists are keeping us from having this scarier truth dawn upon us. Kind of like someone debating whether you even have a migraine headache when you actually have a brain tumor.

 

[bilby]

 

[bilby]

Meanwhile, the brilliant minds that are running the State of Queensland have just re-opened a massive coal power unit at Tarong, because it is cheaper than using gas for power generation - they are selling the gas overseas instead.

This in the part of the world that is pretty much as good a place for nuclear or solar power as you could envisage, on pretty much every level. Lots of Uranium; Lots of sunshine; Lots of space; a small number of concentrated population centres, mostly on the coast; the most geologically stable land mass on the planet; The lowest cloud cover and lowest rainfall of any continent; a politically stable region, far removed from any military or terrorist threat; and a wealthy population with good engineering schools. And we burn brown coal for power.

 

[repoman]

For the very long term future, all nuclear power and waste storage should be 250 feet above current sea level. For when the huge amount of CO2 we will release melts Greenland and Antarctica completely.

But it won't happen.

 

[bilby]

For the very long term future, all nuclear power and waste storage should be 250 feet above current sea level. For when the huge amount of CO2 we will release melts Greenland and Antarctica completely.

But it won't happen.

Why? Is the sea level increase expected to happen overnight?

You are mixing time scales here. Sea level rise might be a big problem; but it doesn't threaten stuff that can, in principle, be put on trucks and shifted inland on time scales of a few years. It will happen quickly by geological standards; but your suggestion is like saying people shouldn't sit directly in front of you at the cinema, in case they are impaled when your fingernails grow.

Anyway, if we were smart enough to build sufficient nuclear power, there would be no need for us to release any more CO₂ at all, and the question wouldn't arise.

Oh, and even if a nuclear plant was to fall into the ocean while still up and running, the resulting problems would, quite literally, be a drop in the ocean. Particularly in the context of all the other problems a 250 foot rise in sea level would bring.

So in short, it needn't happen; if it did happen, it needn't cause any problem; and if it did cause a problem, the problem would be insignificant.

Honestly. You should be MUCH more concerned about the huge numbers of refineries making toxic chemicals on our coastlines - they are a far, far, bigger threat, although even there, the simple option of dismantling the plants and moving them inland over the course of a few years (or even decades) would mitigate that threat, so it shouldn't be a cause of insomnia.

By all means, let's stop the insanity of burning fossil fuels. But let's not pretend a bad situation is so much worse than it really is - all that does is make people think that we are crazy alarmists who can safely be ignored. We do ourselves no favours by over egging the pudding, it just weakens our case.

 

[repoman]

I guess you are right, I have so much stuff in my head about this topic, almost all of it very dire.

The huge distances we all travel and the energy we all use for food and heating and electronic devices pretty much doom us to using all of the fuels in the next couple hundred years. I just can't see a way out of it.

It would take space aliens with the threat of instant "death-rays" for us to relocalize (no cities larger than a million people - and all food supplies for them within a hundred miles) our infrastructure, drastically (90%+) lower energy requirements (abandon Phoenix) and reduce population to less than 2 billion. Also to transition to nearly completely recyclable and/or biodegradable materials.

Basically the DEMAND for resource consumption needs to be RADICALLY reduced to a point that seems like a fever dream parody of Greenpeace. It actually means that jobs as we know them will have to not exist anymore. Only a lower demand or energy will keep the fossil fuels in the ground. But reducing resource demand is anti-capitalist as it currently stands.

But the problem is that when we get hit (10-20 years or less) with the post peak-oil shocks coming up the effects will be very wrenching and it will cause a huge amount of political finger pointing, irrational conspiracies and reversion to mysticism. Few sensible responses will be implemented.

The upshot of running things at full-tilt after peak-oil means that the industrial society will be dismantled from lack of energy and not at all on our own terms. Basically, in the near future we will be living as "energy pensioners". We can prepare for this "retirement" or not.

Just for my own mental integrity, I want to know how we really stand even if a skeptic or corporate shill will use me as an example of the "loony environmental left".

 

[Jarhyn]

I guess you are right, I have so much stuff in my head about this topic, almost all of it very dire.

The huge distances we all travel and the energy we all use for food and heating and electronic devices pretty much doom us to using all of the fuels in the next couple hundred years. I just can't see a way out of it.

It would take space aliens with the threat of instant "death-rays" for us to relocalize (no cities larger than a million people - and all food supplies for them within a hundred miles) our infrastructure, drastically (90%+) lower energy requirements (abandon Phoenix) and reduce population to less than 2 billion. Also to transition to nearly completely recyclable and/or biodegradable materials.

Basically the DEMAND for resource consumption needs to be RADICALLY reduced to a point that seems like a fever dream parody of Greenpeace. It actually means that jobs as we know them will have to not exist anymore. Only a lower demand or energy will keep the fossil fuels in the ground. But reducing resource demand is anti-capitalist as it currently stands.

But the problem is that when we get hit (10-20 years or less) with the post peak-oil shocks coming up the effects will be very wrenching and it will cause a huge amount of political finger pointing, irrational conspiracies and reversion to mysticism. Few sensible responses will be implemented.

The upshot of running things at full-tilt after peak-oil means that the industrial society will be dismantled from lack of energy and not at all on our own terms. Basically, in the near future we will be living as "energy pensioners". We can prepare for this "retirement" or not.

Just for my own mental integrity, I want to know how we really stand even if a skeptic or corporate shill will use me as an example of the "loony environmental left".

Except none of that is true. The sky is not falling. We DO need to transition to a no-energy-use policy for fossil fuels other than methane and ban long range road travel, but that doesn't mean we need to go back to the Stone Age or live less well. Short range high efficiency individual transport supplemented by strong public transit infrastructure can work well. The problem is that thee are a lot of fearful hippie shits (not to mention oil company shills) who balk at the idea of going nuclear.

 

[Petrel]

There is another problem nobody wants to talk about: the "we" in any proposal. Climate-driven population shift. The people currently making plans in any given country in the temperate, cool and cold zones are making those plans based on the present population's ethnicity, numbers, requirements and lifestyle, all of which will change drastically in the next 50 years for sure and probably much sooner, in spite of increasingly right-wing, xenophobic governments.

 

[repoman]

This is funny and what we would better than Business As Usual (BAU), at least for driving. Wait for it.

 

[Underseer]

http://www.skepticalscience.com

Is very good as well. The claims debunked are indexed.

Mini-rant: the climate change reality (in the next few hundred years) is actually so much more dire (70+ feet of sea level rise for our current CO2 levels) than people want to deal with.

These denialists are keeping us from having this scarier truth dawn upon us. Kind of like someone debating whether you even have a migraine headache when you actually have a brain tumor.

If there is one thing conservatives/libertarians excel at, it's denying reality and demanding that everyone else live in the same propaganda-fueled fantasy world they do. After all, why should it matter? Once the new aristocracy is established and entrenches itself, they will fix everything and make everything better for us all.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For the very long term future, all nuclear power and waste storage should be 250 feet above current sea level. For when the huge amount of CO2 we will release melts Greenland and Antarctica completely.

But it won't happen.

Why? Is the sea level increase expected to happen overnight?

You are mixing time scales here. Sea level rise might be a big problem; but it doesn't threaten stuff that can, in principle, be put on trucks and shifted inland on time scales of a few years. It will happen quickly by geological standards; but your suggestion is like saying people shouldn't sit directly in front of you at the cinema, in case they are impaled when your fingernails grow.

Exactly.

What we should do is put the nuke plants and related facilities above the highest point a tsunami could get to. Pay no attention to the big-ones-don't-happen-here idea that lead to Fukushima.

Likewise, beware of earthquake faults.