ShakyWater
Vice Admiral
Stone age pre-humans deal with a million years of climate change. They should have enforced some sort of carbon credit scheme.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk5-ynRPfss
Bill Gates Backs Plan to Block out the Sun
- Thread starter Scape
- Start date
I think a big part of the issue is the rate of change and sustainability for the human race.
The food production systems on earth are where they are and what they are based on a climate that has previously changed over the course of thousands and thousands of years. Ditto for the water management systems. We might be able to change those systems to adapt to a warmer planet, but if that needs to be changed once every 10 years on a global scale for every degree climbed, it's undoable even with the machines and skills we have, humanity would not be able to adapt to that and we would join the list of victim species of the 6th extinction.
Incidentally, we are in the middle of the 6th global extinction - but that's a much bigger issue than simply turning down the heat a touch.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9gHuAwxwAs
The food production systems on earth are where they are and what they are based on a climate that has previously changed over the course of thousands and thousands of years. Ditto for the water management systems. We might be able to change those systems to adapt to a warmer planet, but if that needs to be changed once every 10 years on a global scale for every degree climbed, it's undoable even with the machines and skills we have, humanity would not be able to adapt to that and we would join the list of victim species of the 6th extinction.
Incidentally, we are in the middle of the 6th global extinction - but that's a much bigger issue than simply turning down the heat a touch.
Last edited:
I've heard this argument before but it seems to be based upon small scale models of C02 when in fact C02 makes up not even 1 percent of the greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere with water being the predominant driving force.
In fact, the most common gases in Earth's atmosphere are nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), and argon (0.9%) which are not considered greenhouse gases (1). As of 2010 C02 constitutes about 0.041% by volume of the atmosphere. The percentage water vapor in surface air varies from 0.01% at -42 °C (-44 °F) to 4.24% when the dew point is 30 °C. (2) Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, however, changes in its concentration are also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood
As a greenhouse gas, the higher concentration of water vapor is then able to absorb more thermal IR energy radiated from the Earth, thus further warming the atmosphere. The warmer atmosphere can then hold more water vapor and so on and so on. This is referred to as a 'positive feedback loop'. However, huge scientific uncertainty exists in defining the extent and importance of this feedback loop. As water vapor increases in the atmosphere, more of it will eventually also condense into clouds, which are more able to reflect incoming solar radiation (thus allowing less energy to reach the Earth's surface and heat it up). As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor (3)
While there is a miss conception that higher temperatures would lead to a desertification process the theory now is that a warmer planet while increasing store intensity would also increase rainfall worldwide. Higher CO2 levels would also help the yearly north/south hemisphere phytoplankton bloom up to the limits of the iron and phosphorus concentrations in the ocean water. (4) In fact, seeding the ocean with increase iron and phosphorus would increase the ocean's natural cycle of extracting C02 and increase fish supply.
This is not to say we shouldn't curb our C02 emissions as anyone who lives in a city knows the amount of smog generated can be brutal to one's ability to breath. While I do not know if we have enough information to even suggest we know which way the global temperature is going and what the force factors are. I can support the current idea of cleaning up the air due to its real impact on the polluted air around our cities and its negative impact on our health.
Just remember these pictures are not of smoke and thus C02 source but of water vapor being released.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor
(3) https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php?section=watervapor
(4) https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/plants-algae/geoengineering-phytoplankton-blooms
Yep, an increase in average global temperature is a huge issue due to this positive feedback loop with water vapour.
The warmer the atmosphere the more vapour it can hold, man-made emissions may only have increased the average temperature by 0.1 degree C but with the loop we are looking at 0.5 degree C... and when that Permafrost melts and all that methane which is many times more potent that co2 is released... yeah Methane only really hangs around for about 100 years but if it's released over the course of 300 years and the positive feedback loop runs it's course it'll have been a good 500 years of hot hot heat.
Regardless of if it's naturally caused by the sun or man made from emissions, human-kind is going to have a hell of a job holding civilization together during that time.
Sadly we've destroyed a lot of natural habitats. Less habitats, the less that is left behind that could potentially withstand whatever is coming and carry on. Less biodiversity, less environmental diversity, the harder it will be to carry on when things really get shaky. Think of that inbred family who live on the edge of town - Their cone shaped heads and webbed fingers and toes may help them swim faster, but as all have the same genes when one catches the flu, they all catch flu.
Last edited:
That's the thing. More water vapor turns into more clouds which do a great job of reflecting back the sun's energy and have a net cooling effect. There are just too many systems that are not well understood to even start to give a workable model. All the current models only focus on CO2 as its much more straight forward and easier to predict which gives nice results and graphs for funding end caps and thus promotes more government funding. But when you start adding in the bigger systems which have a more direct influence on global temperature we are clueless.
This I agree with and why I am torn on the whole thing. While I hate the misleading and outright lies of the movement the end goal I can support. We really need to be careful with this planet as its the only one we get for many more years. Mars and Venus are fun to send robots to but they really don't offer the ability to expand our habitual space and we do not have the technology to reach any further.
And I think this is where they feel they need particulate cloud seeding. Clouds and raindrops can only form around a nucli like dust, pollen, soot or other particle at the relevant height. No nucli, no cloud, more greenhouse.
If they said that in the article, apologies. Haven't read it yet :)
This has always been an issue with climate science, I don't think they lie so much as try to dumb down things because they think simple explanations will be easier for people to digest. The problem is, you end up with stories about "Global Warming" that people dismiss because winter still happens (a lot of people genuinely don't know the difference between climate and weather) and they don't understand how these two things can go together. Or "Climate Change" and they point out the stronger hurricanes but most people don't really register that because they don't see it first hand. As complicated as it is, I think it would have been best to just do a data dump in the first place with an explanation that other things that we don't yet understand are also having an effect and then try to work from there. Then they could explain that the few things we do have some control over could be partially mitigated now while research continues. Most people still wouldn't get it but they would be less prone to distrust the information if it hadn't been broken up to begin with, with each issue being talked about like it was the one and only cause and the only thing in the world that mattered. At this point, even if one of these ideas really was a perfect solution to a guaranteed, world ending problem, I don't think people would trust them enough to do something so drastic because in a lot of people's eyes they appear to just be guessing.
Of course, the other issue is that these things need to be dumbed down pretty severely for the average politician to even begin to understand. For most of them 2 + 2 = we need to raise taxes.
Ahh, the joys of cloud seeding. Been there done that. Spent far to much time in a helicopter being flown around the Sierra Nevada's to collect snow samples to show it had a 5% to 15% increase in targeted snow yield for hydropower generation.
Wait a min I think Someone already tried that one. Look how that ended.
Exactly. It would have been even more effective to show the wonderful air over the cities and go hey how about we work towards cleaning this up or we might as well not care about those cigarettes your neighbor is blowing in your face cause it doesn't matter. One thing we do have to be wary of is unforeseen consequences. During the '90s in California in an attempt to reduce logging, they pushed to use plastic bags for shopping as log and thus paper bags were bad. The idea was that the plastic bags would be recyclable and thus mitigate their environmental impact. The truth was people are sloppy pigs and the plastic bags got everywhere and even the ones turned in for recycling ended up just being thrown in the landfill and have since created a far larger environmental impact then logging had. The secondary impact has been the increase of dry fuel in the California forest due to lack of tree thinning and bark beetle infestation, both had been mitigated to a degree by logging. Fire works too but its a bit unpredictable in its consumption especially when it starts burning down people's homes it tends to be stomped out.
Apparently, they are finding that that switch still wasn't a bad idea. https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/paper-plastic1.htm
Even reusable cotton totes are worse than plastic unless you use the same ones every week for around 12 years. https://phys.org/news/2018-08-reuse-bags.html
This all started coming out after California banned plastic straws in favor of paper only to find that the paper ones aren't recyclable and have a greater impact on the environment during production. Despite this, NY has already passed a law to plastic bags and straws next year because they aren't really big on collecting data before passing laws. NYC is a huge contributor to this by leaving their trash on the sidewalks for pickup without being in containers. The animals tear it open and small things like this just wash into the storm drains. Instead of dealing with their trash like at least a 3rd world country would, they decided to push this crap on all of us.
My understanding is that your best bet is to get some of those really high quality plastic bags from stores and just reuse those and to use either recyclable plastic or washable straws. The funny thing is Trump actually did this by selling reusable and recyclable plastic straws just to flip off CA.
Our time and energy would be better spent building huge spaceships where the surviving population could live in relative comfort while the planet stabilizes itself without us. We could leave some robots behind to do clean up work and send us a signal when everything was ready for us to come down out of orbit and begin living on our big blue marble again. I know you're thinking about what generations would do out in space, but that's easy. We build a supertech culture by investigating and engineering all manner of high tech devices that will be easy on the environment and not so dirty and wasteful as old systems currently used by man today. Anyone who doesn't want to participate can play SC:VR.
TL;DR: move off the planet Earth and let it reset itself, then come back.
TL;DR: move off the planet Earth and let it reset itself, then come back.
sulfate particles exposed to ultraviolet light create acid rain, seems to me this cure could end up worse on the environment.