Climate change/oblivion: breaking point or slow death spiral?

curiosity got the better of me so to back myself up, these are the kind of comments I was thinking of, from early in the thread:

The Earth will recover but we won’t be part of the recovery.

We’re doomed the planet will adapt

eventually there will be no human race – the end

fwiw @Edukator, my realism, if that’s what we want to call it, is quite close to yours

I’d seen those comments as well legometrology but you’ll note that I didn’t contradict them because the geological record tells me that there are probably enough fossil fuels to burn to reach CO2 levels associated with the Cretaceous anoxic events, see link. We’ve so far gone from say 270ppm to 420ppm and indulged in the destruction of a lot of land biomass (carbon sinks). The oceans too will absorb less CO2 as they warm and plancton species change. Vicious circle.

It was volcanism that produced the CO2 in the Cretaceous, man is doing it now. Sure it’s an extreme scenario but one I can’t objectively dismiss. Man wouldn’t have survived a Cretaceous anoxic event.

It wasn’t just the meteorite impact that did for the dinosaurs, it was also climatic change and anoxic events. Just a random google result – well not entirely random, it’s one that focusses on the need for accurate paleo CO2 date rather than 1000ppm because I’m always suspicious of round numbers, they quote 650ppm. I haven’t read it all but as far as I’ve read it’s good:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018216300967

@legometeorology

There are puddles of lead on the surface of Venus for God’s sake

Yes. And the melting point of lead is 327.5 celcius. So clearly, pretty much all life, including microbial, would be a goner.

But this year the average surface sea temperature in Florida is 38.4 degrees.

That’s hotter than your average hot tub. It’s not livable in by any earth-based animal that can’t get access to colder water.

End of. Water too hot to live in, and we enjoy it for shits and giggles, largely oblivious, because our average IQ is woefully inadequate.

this year the average surface sea temperature in Florida is 38.4 degrees.

Can you have a sea surface temperature on land?

@elshalimo

Can you have a sea surface temperature on land?

Given the oceans are “taking one for the team” by absorbing most of the temperature rise, to the detriment of the ecosystem that produces the vast majority of the oxygen we all breathe, who gives a fluff?

I guess your I’m-alright-jack glasses can’t see that.   Must be a failure in schooling, or something.

I don’t wear those glasses, just normal varifocals

Liked most on here, I’m a grumpy pedant who hates to see things misquoted.

The Earth will recover but we won’t be part of the recovery.

Of course the earth will recover (but not back to exactly the same as now partly because man is not interfering as much).
Humans will still be around, just less of them. Remember they were only around 1 million people 10,000 years ago and look where we are now.

Depends on how high we take CO2, Kerley. The comparison with Venus is stupid, but a comparison with a time in the geological record with conditions coresponding to levels of CO2 we have reached or will reach is not doomism it’s realistic.

it’s realistic.

No it’s not, it is an academic exercise as the antecedent conditions are not the same. You can infer, extrapolate etc. but you cannot say it is realistic nor appropriate to today’s conditions. At best it is indicative.

It’s the best we’ve got, and not to be dismissed. Because that’s what climate sceptics have been doing for years and what’s got us where we are now.

Realistic: we melt nearly all the ice which illimintes something which is currently slowing the warming, changing climatic zones and fires further reduce carbon sinks, the oceans absorb les CO2, man goes on with fossil fuel emissions at higher or very high levels.

Co2 levels are higher than in the climatic optimum and temperatures are similar even though ice melting will take a few years so we are lagging slightly what geology would predict.

Realistic. 🙂

@Edukator, I agree with you, I think you’re misunderstanding me.

The reason I consider those kinds of comments unhelpful isn’t because I think they describe a future that isn’t possible.

I find them unhelpful as they take the worst case scenario as a given.

You, in contrast, say thing like:

there are probably enough fossil fuels to burn to reach CO2 levels associated with the Cretaceous anoxic events

which I have no problem with, because you’re not saying that we will inevitably burn them all and extinct ourselves.

We may, we may not.

There are puddles of lead on the surface of Venus for God’s sake

Yes. And the melting point of lead is 327.5 celcius. So clearly, pretty much all life, including microbial, would be a goner.

But this year the average surface sea temperature in Florida is 38.4 degrees.

That’s hotter than your average hot tub. It’s not livable in by any earth-based animal that can’t get access to colder water.

End of. Water too hot to live in, and we enjoy it for shits and giggles, largely oblivious, because our average IQ is woefully inadequate.

@chevychase I completely agree, I think you misunderstood me as well.

My point is that the FT article accuses doomers of sensationalising, that continues to say things like ‘no climate scientist thinks we are soon to see venus-like conditions on earth’. That is itself sensationalising, because no one I know of is claiming we are heading towards a venus-like state. If we were, we’d all be dead before we got a few percent of the way there.

which I have no problem with, because you’re not saying that we will inevitably burn them all and extinct ourselves.

We may, we may not.

I really hope we se sense collectively and act, I have a 25-year-old son who is debating the wisdom of whether to become a father. I optimistically had one child, remains to be seen if this generation will be as optimistic as ours.

It does need us to act though. So far CO2 and methane emissions have increased globally after every COP.

A couple of fact on the news this evening demonstrate that carbon offsetting measures are a drop-in-theCO2-ocean greenwashing:

The Canadian forest fires which are still out of control have so far burned an area a fifth of the size of France which is a pretty big area and dwarfs all the planting much vaunted by companies as part of their greenwashing. However the CO2 realeased by the fires is only equivalent to Japan’s emissions of CO2 for year.

Canaries fires getting out of hand now too on the newsand we’ve got another heat wave forecast. That’s five in two years for some parts of France. Oh and another fire in France.

https://archive.is/rWIvy

This FT article has me questioning what my pension will look like

legometeorology

curiosity got the better of me so to back myself up, these are the kind of comments I was thinking of, from early in the thread:

My point is that the FT article accuses doomers of sensationalising, that continues to say things like ‘no climate scientist thinks we are soon to see venus-like conditions on earth’. That is itself sensationalising, because no one I know of is claiming we are heading towards a venus-like state. If we were, we’d all be dead before we got a few percent of the way there.

It’s the other (flip) side of the conflation and environmentalist thing… with the same net result “for the majority”.
Wild and easily disprovable claims that really just end up people in general not trusting the actual science.

The reality is a less than a percent is not going to allow human life as we know it… (to take the full extreme we could if pressed survive in bunkers etc. – I’m talking about anything approaching normal not sci-fi)

Famine, droughts and wars are one way or another going to be in at least tens of millions (that is just a similar scale to the Chinese Famine) 20 million is <<10% of Nigeria by itself… <<1.5% of the population of India shit it’s not even the population of Dehli capital region.

Science Educator/Science Journalist – Geologist by training
“Where environmentalists get it wrong (ALL OPINION)”

In response to that video: I don’t know what I think of Just Stop Oil. My gut feeling is that I can’t imagine how it’s helping anything. But I’m extremely conflict avoidant, so of course that will be my gut feeling.

What I can say is that, for someone as subscribed to evidence-based think as the presenter claims to be, he draws upon embarassingly little historical evidence to make his case. Zero, in fact. No mention at all of how anti-slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, and any other protests were received in their time. I’d guess that the response to Just Stop Oil is not dissimilar. There was probably a large chunk of the population that said to abolitionists ‘look, I agree with your aim, it’s very noble, but it’s simply not feasible to abolish slavery completely and you’re being overdramatic’.

So it’s very easy to point to GB News and say ‘look what they are saying about Just Stop Oil, obviously it isn’t working’. But the right wing media has been saying all along that environmentalists should focus their protests at people in power instead, then when Greenpeace draped banners down Rishi’s (empty) home, they immediately replied ‘not like that’. It’s pretty clear that all they will tolerate is things like petitions, which don’t fundamantally change anything.

legometeorology

In response to that video: I don’t know what I think of Just Stop Oil. My gut feeling is that I can’t imagine how it’s helping anything. But I’m extremely conflict avoidant, so of course that will be my gut feeling.

Rather than point by point.
This is a VERY RARE opinion piece by potholer … unless you follow his channel you wouldn’t realise how rare that is and how strongly he must feel to do this.

Short answer to Just Stop Oil (mine not his)… all you have to do is ask how successful they are in Saudi or Russia to see the futility. The larger “opinion” is (paraphrasing perhaps as I’m not going to watch again for a direct quote) that these environmental groups care more about principals than fact or outcomes.

He illustrates this with the Rainbow Warrior whereas I illustrated this with nuclear power.

He (like myself) is very much a believer in the facts of climate change. He support the rainforest charity working with people to make their lives better through less greenhouse gases .. whereas I’ve previously supported charities trying to promote the use of gas for cooking and boiling water instead of dung or wood.

This whole “sustainable red herring” is a huge barrier to addressing climate change.
It’s so obvious it shouldn’t need to be pointed out that just because you capture some CO2 when something grows that deliberately releasing that CO2 is harmful even if you claim it’s carbon neutral. The argument we don’t have sustainable isotopes to run fusion “forever” is another red herring because the question should be asked is can we reduce global CO2 in a useful way over the next decades. Standing on principal and rejecting this on principal is as bad as doing nothing.

Anyway, take a look at some of the other video’s (the majority of more recent ones are pretty much all debunking climate change deniers)

Radio 4, 20:00 tonight.

The larger “opinion” is (paraphrasing perhaps as I’m not going to watch again for a direct quote) that these environmental groups care more about principals than fact or outcomes.

Yes, I guess that’s part 1 of his critique, which I didn’t really challenge (assuming part 2 was the critique of protest tactics)

I have less to argue with there. Nuclear is one example as you point out. GM is another. To be fair, I don’t really know enough about either to have a really firm opinion, but I do feel they have been rejected by some environmentalists in a principled way, rather than a reasoned one.

On the other hand, principles can kind of act like heuristics, which can be good decision making tools.

So being vegan, for example, will almost certainly reduce the carbon footprint of someones diet dramatically, but there are contexts where eating meat is lower impact. It’s impossible to do a full supply chain analysis of every single meal choice, so it makes sense to just be vegan as a heuristic for lowering the impacts of one’s food.

Paywall unfortunately (and I couldn’t get 12ft ladder to work)

https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/mg25934523-500-fighting-climate-change-means-avoiding-doomism-as-well-as-denial/

https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/2387728-spreading-climate-doom-may-make-it-harder-to-halt-global-warming/