Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/antarctica-at-risk-of-runaway-melting-20189

by uptown • 10 years ago

241 417 10 years ago

cryptoz• 10 years ago

This is based on a new paper published today in Nature. Here is the NYTimes piece about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-ant...

And direct link to the paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7596/full/nature1...

And note, this is separate from the paper last week by James Hansen et al, which discussed the newly researched effects of new feedback loops in ice-melt-surface-waters shutting down ocean circulation (and also increased the amount of sea level rise in shorter time periods).

These are scary times.

reitanqild11• 10 years ago

And note, this is separate from the paper last week by James Hansen et al

The one with a weird weird constants IIRC?

lr4444lr2• 10 years ago

Upvoted. I am not a AGW denialist, but I find it disturbing that every time I come across a new finding in atmospheric science in a press release it is in some way linked to James Hansen's research or advocacy. Can anyone point to a body of research for the layperson that is independent of his influence?

duaneb• 10 years ago

I'm looking at the paper. I don't understand the domain well enough to find the constants to which you're referring—do you have an example and why you find it weird?

James001• 10 years ago

they been saying this for years

noir_lord• 10 years ago

Given the timescales involved they'll be saying it for many more years and given the consensus amongst scientists the smart move is to work to correct.

The worst case is they where wrong and we improved the planet for nothing...oh no.

refurb5• 10 years ago

I'd say the worst case is we spend billions of dollars (that could have been spent elsewhere, say improving human health) on something that makes no difference at all.

mmastrac• 10 years ago

I think the unfortunate reality is that we're going to have to go through a major, catastrophic climate change event before the narrative of the American right (which is by far the most vocal denier of climate change) changes and we can start making some progress in reversing it.

I only hope that whatever event(s) trigger this policy change are somewhat reversible. Earth is, ironically, going to be the first testbed for terraforming technology.

joeld422• 10 years ago

Like Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy? Or the streets of Miami flooding? I don't think anything is going to change a denier's minds if they don't want to. We just have to try and fix it without them.

pklausler2• 10 years ago

s/without/despite/

wainstead• 10 years ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

-- Upton Sinclair

mason2402• 10 years ago

This is an unintentionally great comment. When people claim that every weather event is caused by global warming, it's hard to take it those claims seriously.

gedy• 10 years ago

Honestly - the American right are not what concerns me - it's China, etc which seems to be gladly pumping out more and more CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

We can hide behind per-capita stats but the global CO2 level and climate does not care about per capita.

epistasis9• 10 years ago

I'm not worried about China at all, their leadership has a far better chance of listening to science and acting appropriately. As they grow their standard of living it will be using less carbon intensive methods.

Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery.

Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...

mikeyouse2• 10 years ago

At least China is at least giving lip service to caring about CO2 reductions:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-car...

Every single Republican candidate for president was openly mocking Obama when he was in Paris a few months ago for the climate talks. They're an absolute embarrassment:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-clim...

codecamper15• 10 years ago

The US right wing is providing China with a very convenient excuse.

jussij7• 10 years ago

There is plenty of evidence China is working hard to close their dirty power generation plants and move to clean energy.

Here's something from late 2015:

China is totally crushing the U.S. on renewable energy http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-th...

Here's one that is just a month old:

China set to surpass its climate targets as renewables soar https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-su...

pitchka6• 10 years ago

American continents produce more CO2 than China. Much more.

Animal agriculture has around 51% CO2 footprint. Bunch of it done on the rich soils of Amazon, and vast plains of USA.

Meat, dairy and eggs is what is killing us. Not traffic, not heating.

nazka• 10 years ago

There is this scary video[1] done by NASA that shows the earth with the level of CO2 across a year. The CO2 from China goes right to SF... And then it goes crazy. You can also see why the amazon rainforest is named the lungs of the planet or in this video it looks more like the heart of our planet.

But China seems now to be really willing to reduce its impact on the planet. There are the huge investments on solar panels for instance.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUUo2tL8rvQ

darpa_escapee• 10 years ago

It will be handwaved away until the people with money and power are affected by it.

The irony being that people with money and power are the least likely to ever be affected by it.

larrik• 10 years ago

They're the ones with all the beachfront homes, though...

reitanqild11• 10 years ago

As long as people are flying private jets to climate conferences I cry foul.

If they want anyone to act they would do as the king of Nineveh:Jona 3:6 "For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes."

The moment I see climate scientists starts to switch to teleconferences I think I will give it a second thought.

(Yeah. I know many, possibly most of you don't believe a thing of that but it is still a good example.)

(FWIW: I make a living making solar cell technology, I previously programmed recycling machines. I just happen to be tired of hypocrisy.)

jbattle2• 10 years ago

Phase two will be "of course everyone always believed in climate change, we just disagreed on policies for addressing it".

Phase three will be "it was actually the liberals who blocked action on climate change"

wavefunction• 10 years ago

I kind of don't care about their opinion on a scientific matter. The real issue is building political coalitions to force their compliance through democratic legislation.

hjhgjtyhgdfi85• 10 years ago

What specific solutions are you recommending to reverse climate change? Ban fossil fuels? Force everyone to buy Teslas (which ironically depend on fossil fuels)?

epistasis9• 10 years ago

There are sooooo many that have been proposed.

A revenue neutral carbon tax at about $80/ton is popular enough that oil companies use it in their planning for the future.

The "right" has favored cap and trade schemes in the past (specifically Reagan), but suddenly became allergic to the idea.

Your "solutions" are ridiculous anti-market solutions, presumably exaggerations that you would use to describe the solutions that have actually been proposed?

Also, Teslas and other electric vehicles do not depend on fossil fuels, even if they can potentially be powered by fossil fuels (at much higher efficiencies than fossil fuel vehicles)

TillE• 10 years ago

For the past 15 years or so, Germany has been pursuing an aggressive plan to switch entirely to renewable power, which includes building out lots of wind and solar. Some say it's not fast enough, but it's still pretty impressive, especially for a country so far from the equator. I think the country is around 30% renewable by now.

Bear in mind, this is absolutely necessary for the entire world at some point. Fossil fuels will not last forever. Best start now and not procrastinate.

In terms of specific policy to pursue: basically lots of subsidies.

snowwrestler• 10 years ago

The American right is really a coalition of several different factions, and it can be chipped apart on certain issues. We see that today, with religious conservatives proposing state laws to discriminate against gay and transgender people, but many big businesses opposing those laws.

Maybe we could make progress more quickly on fighting climate change if we simply bought off businesses. Implement a carbon tax that replaces business income tax and results in a net lower tax burden on businesses (from day one), and I bet a lot of opposition funding would dry up.

It would be very expensive... but compare to the cost of protecting or moving all our coastal cities and communities.

Maybe one reason climate change has become a cultural/political issue is that the people who understand the issue best and have worked on it the hardest, tend to also be people who are suspicious of businesses in general. They resist anything that looks like a corporate giveaway, and prefer a regulatory, government-led approach. As a result, "freedom first" libertarian types have lined up with big businesses in opposition.

I won't pretend that I've thought through the details deeply--take this as a musing more than an actual proposal.

codecamper15• 10 years ago

What if the left just figure out how many people to move into right leaning states to make a sweep?

The left has been the majority for a while, but not in charge because 1 person != 1 vote (2 senators / state regardless of population, no D.C. senator, electoral college system.. any more?)

mikeash3• 10 years ago

It would be even easier if the left would just get off its collective butts and go vote.

Disproportionate representation is a problem, for sure, but the American left would have far more success despite that problem if only they would go vote in off-year elections.

Either way, I don't think it would help the fundamental problem, which is that roughly half of the voters in this country don't accept climate science, and their party and associated media have set up a huge feedback loop to keep it that way. Helping the Democrats isn't really a solution, because we need two healthy parties.

refurb5• 10 years ago

The left has been the majority for a while

Really? So you're saying every person in America can be neatly defined as either right or left? That's odd because I know a lot of conservative folks who are for marriage equality and left-wing folks who love guns and are members of the NRA.

clarkmoody• 10 years ago

No climate change solution is complete without a serious discussion about nuclear power, which has been opposed by the American left historically.

tremon5• 10 years ago

the discussion has been opposed?

codecamper15• 10 years ago

Maybe when food crops fail consistently and farmers figure out that it wasn't God's wrath or the communists' or the terrorists' fault.

emodendroket2• 10 years ago

I mean, climate change deniers don't help. But people accepting, at least notionally, that it exists are not, as a rule, doing enough either.

sidechannel3• 10 years ago

Policy is not going to fix this. Neither are politicians. We're trapped in an economic model which demands infinite growth. A system built principally on hydrocarbon energy. Modest improvements can be made to improve efficiencies (see Jevon's paradox), but we're in a treadmill to hell. You can't grow GDP without consuming more energy. We stop growing, the system will collapse. And you're never going to have a politician get elected on a platform of conservation. "You know all that wasteful consumption we've enjoyed since winning the second world war, you're going to have to do with less"

Like mold in a petri dish, the human population will collapse ultimately into decentralized anarchist societies who trade among one another. Assuming we stop the 400+ reactors from going into meltdown, the majority of the population will return to farming.

We're not going to Mars anytime soon. You people can't live without AC or even know how to grow a fucking tomato plant. Sadly, most of this community will die.

exclusiv3• 10 years ago

I'm not sold on the AGW stuff the environmentalists put out, but their problem is positioning and they haven't grasped that in their battle.

Nobody is arguing climate change can have big impact. We're discussing AGW. Obviously deforestation and air pollution is a Bad Thing. The environmentalists would be better off telling that story which is quite simple and easy to understand.

I'm a buyer of that as both logic and an investment but not the Chicken-Little AGW story. Positioning is very important when you are selling something.

~7 million die from air pollution related deaths per year

Total number of people that die of starvation per year: ~8 million. ~900 million malnourished.

~800 million don't have access to clean water. Several millions die each year from diseases related to unsanitary water.

I don't understand why we can't unite and tackle those 3 instead of making it a battle between politics, environmentalism and self-righteousness (both sides).

If you believe or don't believe in AGW - tackling air pollution, food supply and the water crisis should be of utmost importance.

radarsat12• 10 years ago

Honest question, does Antartica have any, what you would consider as, inhabitants? My understanding is that it is only scientists from a variety of countries that live there on temporary stints. However, if the ice melts in any considerable way, I wonder if (some very extreme) individuals might start looking at moving there?

It is a huge continent... if the ices melts, it's terrible in a way, but looking positivistically at the situation, there must be lots of potential.

I'm sure there are some treaties etc on Antarctica that limit exploitation? What if a bunch of people went down there with some guns and claimed some land, what would happen?

nitrogen2• 10 years ago

Antarctica does have exposed rock; it's not all just ice.

Not sure why you were downvoted. What we do with it is an interesting question. There is little harm in looking for ways to adapt to climate change if we don't succeed in stopping it.

losteric• 10 years ago

The inhabitants of Antarctica are the least of our concerns. Millions of people around the world will be flooded out of their homes

tomkinstinch• 10 years ago

Additionally, the ice and snowpack of Antarctica contain ~70% of the fresh water available on the entire planet.

radarsat12• 10 years ago

Sorry you misinterpreted me, I am not worried about the inhabitants. I was wondering if anyone has claim to the land.

cromulent6• 10 years ago

It would be interesting.

It's probably one of the best observed treaties, but that would change, I fear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System

mturmon• 10 years ago

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/scien...

jkot2• 10 years ago

It is parceled by teritorial claims. Any inhabitants would have to fight Nato, Russia, Argentina and othrr countries.

uptown• 10 years ago

Russia made a play at the North Pole a while back:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070802-russi...

Not sure about Antartica.

saalweachter2• 10 years ago

The problem is that the best-case scenario for Antarctica is severely limited by the whole "daylight" problem. Being at the pole, it is dark a lot of the time, and even when it is light a lot of the time, the light is hitting it at sharp angle, making it both inconvenient and weaker.

At best you're probably talking, Antarctica becomes as livable as Alaska is now.

touristtam• 10 years ago

There has been industrial interesting at exploiting the mineral resources of Antarctica, so I wouldn't be surprises if there has been consideration at colonizing it as well, or if one of the justification for such enterprise would be to study harsh conditions for potential space colonies.

jkot2• 10 years ago

Is that climate model available in form of source code and original raw data?

MooMooMilkParty3• 10 years ago

I haven't read through the paper in enough detail to see if the actual model used is mentioned, but I did see that they use CCSM forcings. You can see the relevant CESM models here: http://www2.cesm.ucar.edu/models. They provide links to the various components as well as validated configurations for you to play with.

If you are specifically interested in ice sheet models you could look at these:

PISM - http://pism-docs.org/wiki/doku.php

CISM - http://oceans11.lanl.gov/cism/

ISSM - https://issm.jpl.nasa.gov/

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

Climate Model

I'll believe it when I see it. We have at least 40% larger ice sheets now than in 2012, and more than in 2006 [1]. See also [2].

These models have been shown to be wildly inaccurate at empirical prediction [3], so I think we need to work harder and exercise more scientific skepticism before creating alarmist headlines in the mainstream media.

[1] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/culture-civilization/popu...

[2] http://blog.drwile.com/?p=12927

[3] http://objectivescience.net/warming-predictions-vs-real-worl...

Edit - to the downvoters, please explain why I shouldn't exercise scientific skepticism relating to how the mainstream discusses climate change.

bullfightonmars• 10 years ago

You are referring to the extent of sea ice[1] much of which is formed and melts on an annual or slightly longer cycle.

Sea ice is incredibly sensitive to warming.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center the Maximum winter extent of sea ice is now at the lowest recorded in the satellite record.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice [2] https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

That's interesting because you're link [2] is the same source used in my link [2]. There's less ice in the arctic, more in the antarctic from what I can tell. The latter is a pretty big contradictory data point in the typical mainstream climate change narrative, particularly the one peddled by the likes of Al Gore et al.

Here's what I think. People are being overly alarmist and it's driving policy. Nature goes it cycles, on the order of maybe hundreds or thousands (or more) years. It's been way colder in the past than it is now, and it's also been way warmer in the past than it is now. We should reduce CO2 emissions insofar as it affects the health of people, such as smog in China.

But have we definitely teased out our effect on the temperatures from what the earth is doing on its own anyway? I'm still skeptical. Who knows, maybe there's a pattern in the earth's cosmic orbit that accounts for 99% of the warming. Or maybe it's only 1% and we're the 99% cause and Al Gore was right. But until I see this definitive proof, I have to stay skeptical.

placeybordeaux2• 10 years ago

Is it claims about the Artic or claims about the Anartic that you dispute?

ska• 10 years ago

Well, I don't know why people are down voting in particular.

But exercising "scientific" skepticism would involve citing real (i.e. primary) sources, not blog posts that don't seem to be able to cite properly either. Otherwise it's just skepticism.

cromulent6• 10 years ago

Here is a paper indicating that the models are not "wildly inaccurate".

http://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2310.epdf?referrer_ac...

refurb5• 10 years ago

Here are some papers, from climate scientists, acknowledging that models need to be re-evaluated since they've tracked poorly with climate change over the past decade.[1][2]

[1]http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/full/463284a.html [2]http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-forecast-for-2...

codecamper15• 10 years ago

You'll believe it when you see what, exactly? A 12 foot wave of water heading towards your door?

wlesieutre2• 10 years ago

Certainly not from the insanely warm, practically snowless winter we've had in the northeast US.

Everybody's perfectly happy to believe the climate scientists when they say "That's mainly due to El Nino this year."

Then the next day the same scientists say "CO2 emissions are affecting the climate" and we're back to "What global warming? If I can't see something it doesn't exist."

kilroy123• 10 years ago

Honest question. If 99% of scientists and astronomers said a giant asteroid were headed to earth, and within 10 years, all life on the planet would be destroyed. Would you believe it?

danielvf3• 10 years ago

Not as a certainty, no. Given that kind of time frame and a very far object, neither our measurements, nor our calculations could possibly be precise enough to know anything other than a probability of an earth impact.

Unless we are talking about a big object hanging out nearby, slowly getting closer, in which case I have plenty of non-scientist acquaintances who will be pointing telescopes at it and verifying.

whitegrape3• 10 years ago

For something as (relatively) easy to predict as asteroid trajectories, I would be very curious why the 1% disagree, or whether it really is 99% given that exact phrasing with no qualifications. It invites scrutiny, but also invites not being certain either way (though I would err on the side of that large a majority even if I'm not certain). I posted this quote by Bertrand Russell almost a month ago, it's worth a repost: "(1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment."

droopybuns• 10 years ago

I would, but only after their claim could be experimentally (and independently) reproduced.

Science is a bitch!

rs999gti• 10 years ago

within 10 years

Is it really 10 years? Within our lifetimes? Within 50 years?

I really wish someone would nail down a definitive timeline to when someone should really worry about climate change.

I mean ordering the world's problems big to small, I'd say unemployment, income inequality, and stagnant economic growth are more important things to worry about.

orf4• 10 years ago

please explain why I shouldn't exercise scientific skepticism

Linking to blog posts is not "exercising scientific scepticism". It's a fucking biased blog post that's just another echo in your echo chamber. Here, let me try:

Obama is a space lizard[1][2][3]

Edit: To all the downvoters, please explain why I shouldn't exercise scientific scepticism relating to how the mainstream discusses the presidents reptilian status?

1. http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2013/03/man-in-black-reptilian-sh...

2. http://www.hiddencodes.com/obama/

3. http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/02/06/3199

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

Comparing a magazine and blogs and articles from doctors to the crap you posted

I'm sorry this particular topic turns off your ability to think critically and brings out snarkiness instead.

scott_s2• 10 years ago

Steven Novella, a scientific skeptic (http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-arctic-sea-...), summarizes it well: Arctic sea ice is undeniably decreasing over the last 36 years. The long term trend is clear. Those who want to deny this trend, however, focus on short term data because you can cherry pick any conclusion you wish.

His blog post rebuts your claims.

zxcvvcxz5• 10 years ago

Alright sure, the 40 year trend differs from the 10 year trend. That's a good reason to be skeptical of my original claims (seriously).

Maybe you can provide more counter-argument to my skepticism of climate changes being man-made.

Take a look at this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Phaneroz...

Sea levels have historically gone all over the place, definitely without us driving SUVs way back when.

Now this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Gla...

It's pretty stable during the industrial revolution, when CO2 production really was kicked up a notch. Also, the rate of sea level rises rose at a much faster rate say 10,000 years ago than they're rising right now.

What I'm trying to say is that I think these temperature trends are more macro on the order of thousands of years, and probably mostly out of our control. I think what we're seeing now with contemporary research - 10 years ago, or 40 years ago - is mostly noise.

yk2• 10 years ago

Clicking on two links in your sources led me to

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

which directly contradicts your statement. ( In fact we have record low sea ice this winter.)

jussij7• 10 years ago

Because you show lots of skepticism, but there is nothing scientific about it. The science has been done and the answer is in.

If you do not understand the science, that doesn't make the science wrong, it just makes you look stupid.

lossolo• 10 years ago

Did you notice that there is more signs every year, that we are heading to catastrophe but we try not to think about it and feel like everything will be ok anyway - who cares? It's better to read what's up with Kardashians instead of facing the reality. Reality in this case means changing the way we live, dramatically, because there is no other way to stop what's coming. Politicians will not do this because it means economical decline, unemployment etc.

On last conference in Paris NOTHING was done. All agreed that everyone will do what they "can" to work against global warming, which means every country in the world can say "we are doing what we can" while doing almost nothing.

awt5• 10 years ago

Did you ever notice the conflict of interest in which government funded scientists predict disaster, requiring more research to be funded? Oh and did you ever notice how all of the solutions proposed give the government more control over the economy?

cromulent6• 10 years ago

As opposed to the conflict of interest where the people who make money from the status quo, and the scientists on their payroll, say there is no problem?

I understand the scepticism, but if there is a problem with the status quo, that is the only way to find out about it. The people making money off selling oil aren't going to volunteer to shut down.

nabla92• 10 years ago

If you look at the time scales we are looking at, it becomes more understandable.

For example, this article that describes the runaway rising of sea level predicts that "Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15 metres by 2500."

We are dead by 2100 when the sea level is up one meter. It's the future generations who suffer.

gdubs2• 10 years ago

I'm holding on to some optimism re: Paris summit. It's too early to say that nothing was done, as we haven't hit the first checkpoint. In the U.S., the most troubling thing to happen since Paris is the Supreme Court's decision to temporarily block Obama's clean power plan. Given the vacancy on the court, it's unclear how this will play out once the case makes its way up.

In terms of the 'we don't seem to think about it' – it's behavioral economics 101. We're very optimistic about our futures, and very obsessed with the present. It's why people need to be opted-in to 401k plans. We imagine 'tomorrow' to be this wonderful place where everything will get done and work out ok.

My optimism on Paris? It's a cautious one...

StriverGuy• 10 years ago

What can the individual change about their lifestyle to help prevent this?

chrisb• 10 years ago

There's an interesting view on that here: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

PerfectElement• 10 years ago

Reduce or eliminate your consumption of animal products. I think this is the easiest and most impactful step any individual can take. It doesn't rely on politicians or corporations. You just need some temporary will power to learn and change a few habits.

doctorcroc• 10 years ago

This is an important point. In large part the california drought was exacerbated by how much water the livestock industry consumed: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-13/cows-suck-u...

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

When I needed a new car a few years ago, I passed on my 'dream car' for a more basic car because the flashy car took 50% more fuel.

But in the end, that's small fries. I should be taking the bus to work if I really wanted to reduce my travel carbon footprint.

My house probably produces way more CO2 than my car. Heating/cooling (use a programmable thermostat, wear warm clothes indoors in winter). Lights (I've mostly switched to CFL.. no LEDs yet, until the CFLs start dying). Laundry (use cold water.. new detergents work better in cold water anyway). Water heating (you'll never take my long hot showers from me!!).

vancan1ty4• 10 years ago

Do not reproduce, encourage others to not reproduce. The 100% most effective way to reduce the human effect on the planet is to reduce the number of humans on the planet.

But of course if you follow that philosophy that probably just means you lose the evolutionary lottery and someone else will have plenty of children to take your kids' place.

mac01021• 10 years ago

You might be surprised how much of your carbon footprint is accounted for by air travel, even if you only take one commercial flight per year.

In carbon emitted per mile it's about the same as traveling by car. But those airliners cover a lot of miles in one trip.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transp...]

elgabogringo2• 10 years ago

Antarctic Sea Ice is at record levels:

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reache...

placeybordeaux2• 10 years ago

In 2012-2014. Back to average levels in 2015.

zajd• 10 years ago

Extent is not volume and sea ice is way less of a problem than land ice

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

24gttghh• 10 years ago

Yes, and heat stroke can give you chills. If we just keep giving the pendulum a boost, eventually the difference between extremes will become untenable.

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

Keep reading your link

“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.
Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km).

---

The sea level is currently rising at about 3mm/yr (~1.2in/decade). The sea level is about 8 inches higher now than in 1870, and the rate of rising is increasing (+0.016mm/yr^2).

jonstokes• 10 years ago

So, if that Boston map is correct, then MIT, Boston University, and chunks of Harvard will all be toast by the time my youngest is the age of her great-grandfater. Crazy.

awt5• 10 years ago

CO2 is not a pollutant. Without it, plants, and thus animal life will die. In fact plant death nearly occurred recently on a geological timescale. More co2 = more life. There is no such thing as stasis wrt global climate, and I'm glad the climate does not appear to be moving in the direction of an ice age in the near term, although it looks as though in the long term this is inevitable.

nabla92• 10 years ago

Check the definition of polluntant and polluntant taxonomy. Polluntant is not the same as poison or harmful chemical.

Carbon dioxide is a fund pollutant.

awt5• 10 years ago

OMG co2 is not harmful it is plant food. If there is more of it more plants grow. The earth has had insanely higher amounts of co2 in the atmosphere than are present today in which periods life thrived even more so than today.

elipsey• 10 years ago

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/extent/

Edit: lol why downvote? are you the only person on HN who doesn't like charts?

exabrial• 10 years ago

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/extent/sea-ice/S/2

This does nothing but lend creedance to the flat earth theory. NORTH AND SOUTH POLE ARE THE SAME

bjz_3• 10 years ago

Do note that the sea ice extent has little to do with what the ice sheets are doing. From what I last heard (my information might be out of date), the slight increase in sea ice extent in the south pole could be due to changes in winds or ocean currents in the southern ocean.

danielvf3• 10 years ago

Note that you will need to select "Southern Hemisphere" at this link in order to see the Antarctic ice measurements. By default you are seeing something else.

elliottkember• 10 years ago

Anartic?

medymed• 10 years ago

If excess energy consumption is a 'vice', we would be following Malthus's prediction of a vice-based catastrophe before a food based 'Malthusian' catastrophe:

"The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."

Just like yeast die of alcohol (pollution) poisoning during fermentation before their food source is anywhere near depleted, we might have plenty of food but not do so hot. If yeast could only slow their reproduction they might last for a darn good while in the brew...but luckily they destroy themselves! Otherwise beer would be too slow, and that's unacceptable.

dd362• 10 years ago

As long as politicians remain cheap to purchase, there will never be a solution without catastrophe and maybe not even then.

We need a well-funded super pac to more than offset the super pacs of the fossil fuel industry. A big stick that can go after every congress person, senator and governor relentlessly.

mombul• 10 years ago

I'm dumb when it comes to science. But if the worst case scenario happens, couldn't we build facilities to 'dispose' of the melted ice in any way, instead of letting the sea level rise?

orf4• 10 years ago

The volume of water is staggering, and what exactly would you do with it?

jordanb• 10 years ago

Maybe tow it beyond the environment.

yk2• 10 years ago

The problem is, dumping large volumes of melting water anywhere technically creates an ocean.

craigyk2• 10 years ago

By my quick calculation, one meter of sea rise would be ~100,000 cubic miles of water. The great lakes hold ~5,500. So no, probably not.

mrfusion2• 10 years ago

That's a really good question. Maybe we could pump it to a colder area of Antarctica? Or pump a corresponding amount of ocean water to a cold area of Antarctica.

craigyk2• 10 years ago

pumping melted, probably saline water over ice doesn't seem like a great way to refreeze the water, more like a good way to melt more ice.

jussij7• 10 years ago

And now that cold area of Antarctica starts to warm up and the problem just got worse.

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

I read an article about this a few weeks ago. Basically it's not possible because of the amount of energy required to pump the water. It's a HUUUUGE amount of water. Sea levels are rising 3mm/year, which is ... hmm

Surface area of Earth = 510 million km^2 = 5.10e14 m^2.

~70% is water, so 3.57e14 m^2.

Multiply that by 3mm (3e-3 m) = 1.07e12 m^3.

1.07 trillion tonnes of water. Per year.

Or 33,907 tonnes per second!

cozzyd2• 10 years ago

WAIS is 530,000 cubic miles of ice. This comes out to 2x10^18 kilograms of ice (assuming it's all at glacial ice density; in reality the upper few hundred meters are less dense) which will correspond to 2x10^18 liters of water to dispose of. This is 100 times the volume of lake Baikal or the Great Lakes (and only ten times smaller than the Arctic Ocean), if I did all my math right...

jqm• 10 years ago

Building those facilities would probably be very expensive. Maybe we should start by renting mini storage units:)

themgt• 10 years ago

Possibly a better idea, but still stretching the limits of human engineering, would be to try to structurally reinforce the weakest points of Greenland/Antartica, e.g. Jakobshavn, Thwaites, etc. It's important to understand these aren't just homogenous sheets of ice, due to geology/ocean currents/etc there's specific weak points that are collapsing far more rapidly, and as they do it will be like popping the cork off a bottle. If we could find a way to buttress the corks, it could help slow the melt-out.

That said, any time you consider any geoengineering idea, you have to make the argument that the $1 trillion or whatever you'd spend on solar radiation management or ice shelf preservation or whatever, would not be money better spent on just transitioning away from fossil fuel use.

codecamper15• 10 years ago

Has anyone made an estimate of the total cost to convert to 100% renewable power in the US?

Taek• 10 years ago

I fear an Armageddon. We are changing the climate faster than we understand what's happening, and we're starting to get weirder and weirder weather patterns. We're threatening our food supply.

We've destroyed most of the ocean's fish, and we're heavily dependent on livestock and crops for food. If we disrupt the weather too much, we're not going to be able to make food. People are going to starve, and not by the millions but by the hundreds of millions. Certainly enough strife to cause war between the countries that are actually trying to do something and the countries that are continuing to ramp their CO2 output.

We don't know when we cross the line from 'severe' to 'dire', but we've got enough destructive technology that if it becomes a global problem, we may end up blowing ourselves up trying to resolve the conflict.

I was recently in Africa, and I was shown the rate at which the country (Cote d'Iviore) was growing. Families with as many as 10 kids. But all I could see was deforestation. Miles and miles of deforestation, something like 30 minutes of driving through an urban area that had all been vegetation in 2011.

This season's weather was weird, and it has made me very afraid of what's coming in the next 5 years. We're destroying our planet's methods of regulation, and at the same time we are increasing the rate at which we're introducing adversarial agents. It's going to be a disaster, because everyone reading this critically knows that the people in power aren't going to do anything about it until people in their own country are dying by the millions as a result.

If you care about surviving the next 20 years, this should be your biggest concern. We depend on a stable climate. Without that, we will not have food. Be afraid.

codecamper15• 10 years ago

If you were shocked to see 1 million crossing into Europe in 2015, imagine what it will be like in the near future when tens of millions face drought & famine.

The general problem is that most of the world lacks the scientific understanding to know how big & bad of a problem this may turn out to be.

Google & zuckerberg could just black out certain zip codes every so often. go to google.com & get a message about the impending doom & what the person can do about it.

To me, people should not be able to pick & choose technology. If you enjoy using a cell phone & sending email then you should accept what scientists are saying. No more doubting.

If software is eating the world, it should hurry up & start directing the herd.

pdonis15• 10 years ago

If you enjoy using a cell phone & sending email then you should accept what scientists are saying.

This is not a valid argument. The science that underlies the workings of your cell phone and email is more accurate by many orders of magnitude than climate science. "Science" is not all one thing, and climate science does not get to claim the same accuracy as, say, electrodynamics just because it has "science" in its name.

brbsix3• 10 years ago

It sounds like you're advocating for totalitarianism. What scientists in what disciplines are the designated authorities? What does "no more doubting" or "you should accept what scientists are saying" even mean?

Suppose some scientists say "global warming is an imminent existential threat". Should I be forced to implement their policy proposals as well, or do I just have to nod my head in agreeance to their every decree? What is the threshold upon which scientists must be "accepted" (and presumably obeyed)? Who decides this?

This is the stuff of nightmares.

iamcurious2• 10 years ago

I do not doubt that the climate is changing nor I doubt that humans play a large factor in that. Yet I cannot gather the will to be afraid. It is true that we haven't faced this challenge from a prevention standpoint, at least not beyond small mitigations, but when has humanity embraced prevention from the start? We usually leave that as a lesson for the second time...

Climate change will stress our civilization and we will deal with that stress, becoming more capable and sophisticated in the process. Well that, or we will die. But that has been the deal since the start. Lets stay awake people, there will be lots of adapting to do!

schiffern• 10 years ago

we will deal with that stress, becoming more capable and sophisticated in the process. Well that, or we will die

You missed one. It is also possible that we become less capable and less sophisticated (e.g. the dark ages).

pharrington2• 10 years ago

Assuming no major attempt to stop or reverse climate change happens until the major crises start (Im an American), huge swathes of infrastructure will be destroyed or rendered unusable. To say we've grown used to that infrastructure is a adorably naive understatement; like I'm sitting here eating a genetically engineered animal grown a thousand miles away that was only born so it could be killed, while arguing with hundreds of people simultaneously by mashing my finger into a sheet of sapphire and having light waves beamed into space and back. Modern human is so weird that we're essentially a different species compared to what we were/will be without the current global infrastructure. I'm afraid societies dont have or wont quickly be able to develop the knowledge needed to survive the new planet we're making.

katabasis2• 10 years ago

For some context about what impact this could have on major U.S. cities, the NYTimes published an interactive a few years back[1].

I guess if this new model is accurate, the scenarios on that link which are projected for 100-300 years out could instead happen in a few decades. This would result in major areas of Miami, New Orleans, NYC, and Sacramento all going underwater.

Scary stuff.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/24/opinion/sunday...

haberman• 10 years ago

Sacramento?? It is 50 miles inland. If that's right, that's crazy.

katabasis2• 10 years ago

Right, totally not what one would expect. But based on the geography of California, it's very vulnerable if the water levels were to go up significantly. There would essentially be a second Bay cutting deeper into the state, only it would probably be a toxic mess a few feet deep with acres of asphalt and buildings barely submerged.

ktRolster• 10 years ago

Elevation of Sacramento is 30 feet....that's lower than the bay bridge.

mmanfrin• 10 years ago

Central valley all used to be marshlands/lakes/extensions of the bay. The coastal regions of CA are hills. CA is basically a giant bowl (which flattens out towards the south).

ps4fanboy3• 10 years ago

If you strongly believe this could happen in the next few decades why not buy some property on what will be the new water front?

nostrademons• 10 years ago

It'll be underwater (literally and figuratively) 5 years after you buy it...

Also, changes in land values are far more likely to be driven by changes in employment patterns, transportation technology, and weather systems than by sea levels.

wrsh072• 10 years ago

Is there any reason why, if we had a decade of warning, we wouldn't be able to protect much of this area?

hackuser3• 10 years ago

We've had several decades of warnings about global warming, yet we've barely done anything about it. Why?

pilsetnieks2• 10 years ago

"I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase."
-- Donald Trump, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/0...

There's a considerable chance that this man will be your next president.

Jedd• 10 years ago

Not just any, but many.

This story is about ~1 metre sea level rise. Greenland's glaciers (if they were to entirely melt) provide ~8 metres, and Antarctica's would provide ~60 metres - so even if you built a wall to protect some / much of this area, you'd have to be planning either subsequent abandonment or a lot more construction work.

But this presupposes that it's feasible from an engineering or financial perspective -- I suspect that in any but a tiny number of cases that it would not be.

In turn it assumes that people would want to live behind a wall that is protecting them from probable death if it collapses, or is intentionally destroyed by the kinds of people who like to kill other people. And these walls would be quite an attractive target.

Would you want to live beneath sea-level if you had the option to live above sea-level?

Then there's groundwater issues (salinity is going to render such earth less habitable).

mdorazio2• 10 years ago

The other answers don't actually address your question. To some extent, yes, because adequately protecting large areas of exposed coast requires building and maintaining many miles of seawalls. This isn't impossible by any means, but economically it's not very feasible to protect, say, Miami from both rising sea levels and the intense hurricanes that are likely to result. It would be much cheaper to just relocate people inland as needed.

mesh• 10 years ago

Im curious, how does this actually happen?

i.e. is there one catastrophic event where everything is immediately flooded? (Similar to Katrina).

Or is the area just slowly flooded over decades? In which case, no one does anything? (i.e. the Sacramento scenario is hard to fathom in this scenario)

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

I suppose it would be like Katrina (New Orleans) or Sandy (New York), which of course un-flooded after the storm, but each time it floods, with the base sea level being higher than last time, it gets progressively worse until you just give up spending the money to reclaim the land and protect it from the next storm.

Maybe look into whatever it is they do in the Netherlands. A very large fraction of the entire country is just barely above sea level (or even below it in places).

cozzyd2• 10 years ago

Time to buy some property in Chicago I guess...

grandalf• 10 years ago

I wonder how much the public perception of the danger of large-scale ice melt is influenced by a lay understanding of the way phase changes can happen extremely suddenly.

bjz_3• 10 years ago

Probably not that much. What worries me is feedback loops like the melting permafrost, and collapse of the Amazon ecosystem. Or the loss of ice causing more sunlight to be absorbed. Or a sudden overflow of the ocean's ability to store energy (something that has been masking most of the warming so far). Things could run out of our control in a very short amount of time.

markkat• 10 years ago

I was talking about this to a fellow physicist friend the other day. Natural system with equilibrium points don't evolve away from them smoothly. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect the climate to be any different.

andy_ppp• 10 years ago

Does anyone know if these climate models are open source, how they work etc? It seems this is an area where we as software engineers can start to have a think about how accurate these simulations are and possibly think about ways of improving them...

barbs• 10 years ago

Good idea. For more ideas, here's Bret Victor's post "What Can A Technologist Do About Climate Change".

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

codecamper15• 10 years ago

You should be. My cousin works on these models. He says they are written in Fortran and are really great big balls of mud.

Also, feedback loops are something they have only very recently considered.

vram22• 10 years ago

For those who might not know the meaning:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud

cwal37• 10 years ago

It is possible to access many parts of most of these models, however I think it's not as easy as you might imagine to just dive in and improve them. Often, an individual needs a background in a specific scientific field in addition to some software engineering capabilities. Sometimes this means you have mathematicians and physicist pursuing higher degrees in atmospheric science, in other cases an ecologist gains a masters in CS. I think you might be underestimating the programming and numerical chops of people who are involved in making the models run, not everyone is a great programmer, but they do exist within the broad field.

The overarching climate models also typically aren't individual monolithic models, but tend involve various multidisciplinary pieces spanning much of the physical sciences. Also, get ready to work in Fortran. I spent a summer at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and met some people there whose work was mostly the uncertainty quantification of outside climate models. My understanding at the time was that the lab specifically does not produce their own model, but rather, acts as an impartial testing ground for the major efforts from other global institutions.

All of that aside, they do have plenty of problems, and people from the outside do come in and make improvements, it's just not necessarily easy to break into. If you wanted something more accessible to start thinking about, you could do worse than the edGCM from Columbia[1].

[1] http://edgcm.columbia.edu/software2/edgcm-climate-modeling/

MooMooMilkParty3• 10 years ago

Yes, here's one of the big ones: https://github.com/CESM-Development

As someone with a small amount of background in software engineering (though it's not my primary job) I can say that they do think about these things and do have very experienced software developers working on these projects, but help is always appreciated!

Speaking to the accuracy of the simulations I do think that's more in the domain scientist's court though, since most of these things use pretty specialized numerical models and physical approximations.

Edit: I'd also like to say that I pretty much agree with everything cwal said.

acqq11• 10 years ago

A lot of sources are accessible, as well as the data:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/?wpmp_tp=1

The models are all numerical simulations. But even if you are skilled in numerical calculations you'd need a lot of energy to learn and understand the domain too.

Here's one university elementary-introduction-level course about that:

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/CSC2602/

and one book with the real formulas:

http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/stocker14icm.pdf

jbu• 10 years ago

Here's some documentation of me getting one running. http://www.lshift.net/blog/2015/03/31/lets-run-science-part-... In short, yes they're open, but they tend to be what I call the 'science' coding style.

ps4fanboy3• 10 years ago

Unless China, USA and India start cutting emissions anything the smaller countries do to limit their emissions will likely dwarfed by the growth in these super polluter countries.

api• 10 years ago

Wouldn't the EU also rank if considered collectively?

thinkcontext• 10 years ago

Yes, the EU will need to cut its emissions but it has a cap and trade system and political leaders are generally on board with the need to remake their economies without carbon. In addition, it is miles ahead of the US in terms of emissions. According to this article, in 2013, the EU had per capita emissions of 6.8 tons/person versus 16.5 for the US. Even more startling, it was lower than China, which weighed in at 7.2.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29239194

jussij7• 10 years ago

And unless we stop thinking about this as a countries issue rather than a issue for humanity then we are all doomed.

ps4fanboy3• 10 years ago

Until countries give up their sovereignty it will always be a country issue.

mdorazio2• 10 years ago

Slightly more nuanced point: US emissions are actually down from their peak by quite a bit [1]. The problem is that developing countries like China are rapidly increasing their emissions to US per capita levels [2] while the rest of the world's emissions aren't dropping fast enough to compensate. At this point it's pretty inevitable that world CO2 levels are going to continue rising for many years.

[1] https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.ht... [2] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC/countries...

jseliger• 10 years ago

The problem is that developing countries like China are rapidly increasing their emissions to US per capita levels

I've also read that many of China's emissions come from producing products for export, such that the U.S. may be shedding official omissions by shifting production to China, which allows the emissions to be counted there even though the final product ends up being used in the U.S.

erikpukinskis• 10 years ago

That's not really how it works. Small countries can make massive differences by improving technology, updating best practices, and doing research that can help illuminate the path forward.

We desperately need a clearer picture of what the climate change timeline is going to look like, and how to approach each step, given immensely complicated cultural realities. People in smaller countries with good education systems are positioned perfectly to take a lead role in that.

blueprint• 10 years ago

It's going to be a lot worse than this. Time to get realistic about the fact that the balance of the natural environment has been broken, and it will definitely lead to a collapse of the global ecosystem in a couple years. This problem is not being caused by CO2 alone. That's only a tiny part of it. There will be massive tectonic activity. Global warming is only the first step. It's like when a human gets a fever. 1°C of global temp increase is a huge amount of heat but does not show terribly dangerous symptoms. But 2 - 3°C increase means massive upheaval and risk of brain death. To solve this problem, we need to be looking into gravity, not just radiative transfer/greenhouse gasses.

But perhaps a bigger problem than nobody knowing about the gravity problem is that at this stage, nobody wants to know, either. For that reason, nobody can prevent the coming period of change.

gdubs2• 10 years ago

From what I understand, a carbon tax is one of the most immediate and effective things we could do to combat climate change. If I understand the Macroeconomics correctly, the supply side shouldn't feel too much of a hit. Low-income consumers could maybe write off the carbon tax. I.e., the revenue from the tax could either go towards infrastructure spending, or it could go back to people in the form of a tax offset somewhere else.

Imagine if the money pouring into the American political process right now was channeled into electing Congressional leaders who, you know, believe in science. Or if some of the grassroots dollars being burned on TV ads for candidates A, B and C could be spent on a campaign to convince the public that a carbon tax would be good for us.

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

Yep, economists largely agree that a carbon tax is an effective strategy

A couple polls of economists (nearly unanimous)

http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-re... http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-re...

benjaminRRR• 10 years ago

Australia was a good experiment on this and the effects were dramatic, equally dramatic when it was repealed (yes a major piece of legislation was rolled back, which is another problem in itself) http://www.energy.unimelb.edu.au/documents/australia-repeale...

codecamper15• 10 years ago

All these discussions are quite well spoken & well said, from both sides!

Tay should read this page.

AnthonyMouse6• 10 years ago

I'm tired of arguing about CO2. Let's make the Republican argument for a carbon tax.

Buying oil enriches countries antagonistic to the US. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela. Oil is a global commodity. If we use less oil then those countries will lose twice: Once because they're selling fewer barrels of oil and then again because, with less demand, pre-tax price per barrel goes down.

This also means we get free money at the expense of those countries. If we enter into a treaty with Europe and China to each put a $2/gallon tax on oil, that does not make gas go from $2 to $4, because the tax will reduce consumption (as intended), which reduces demand, which lowers prices. So instead of paying $2 of which $2 goes to the bad guys, you pay $3 of which $2 goes to Uncle Sam and $1 goes to the bad guys. Then that's $2 we can use to cut other taxes, $1 of which came from the bad guys. So not only is this revenue neutral, it's effectively a tax cut -- you pay $1 extra for gas and then pay $2 less in income tax. American taxpayers end up with more money in their pockets at the expense of Russia and Iran. And the higher we make the gas tax the more it reduces demand which transfers even more money from antagonistic foreign countries to US taxpayers.

Somebody tell me why CO2 even matters when carbon tax justifies itself regardless.

pitchka6• 10 years ago

Simple way of burning less oil is taking subsidies from all the industries that get them, like meat, dairy and eggs.

Luxury foods are really the biggest greenhouse gas footprint. Cows produce more than 60% of our methane footprint, and on a 20 year scale methane is around 80 times more potent than CO2 for global warming.

Taxes can be a solution but you have to take subsidies too.

AnthonyMouse6• 10 years ago

Methane is very potent but there is also much less emitted than CO2.

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources/agri...

According to that link agriculture is 9% of CO2-equivalent emissions while electricity and transportation are 58%. Which isn't to say nothing should be done about agriculture, but it isn't the bulk of the problem, and it isn't what motivates climate change deniers.

MooMooMilkParty3• 10 years ago

While you are correct that methane is quite potent, when discussing climatological effects it's not as important as CO2. Especially when discussing ice sheets and sea level rise, the long term (1000+ year) effects are what's likely to reduce Greenland and Antarctica to points where feedbacks will prohibit their regrowth (thus dooming them to complete melt and us to deal with the unfortunate side effects).

Again, not disagreeing in any way, just looking to provide some context in relation to the subject matter in the original post. In fact, I think climate change and environmental stewardship are issues that go hand in hand and should definitely be taken more seriously.

jabagawee• 10 years ago

I don't have an opinion yet on a carbon tax or politics, but I can't agree with oil-producing countries suffering a double loss in lower sales and lower prices. The overly-simplified version of supply-vs-demand states that with constant supply, prices are lowered to raise demand. Thus, it's only a single loss there.

AnthonyMouse6• 10 years ago

What makes you think supply is unaffected by price? If that were true then we should clearly impose a 99.9% revenue tax because supply would be unaffected.

dredmorbius5• 10 years ago

The language parent post used may be imprecise, but the effect is largely what oil extractors are now seeing.

Global oil prices have fallen due to demand descruction. Total quantity of oil consumed is down as well. Revenues, as P * Q, are down. It's a compound effect.

Saying that both supply and demand have fallen is incorrect in an economist's sense as to an economist these are functions. Shifting one function (usually expressed as a "curve") moves along the other curve, even without a change in that function.

Confusing, I know.

protomyth6• 10 years ago

So, why isn't some billionaire working on something to remove the CO2 from the air / ocean and collect the carbon and release the O2. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm actually interested in why, given the other scenarios, the technology isn't being developed for a energy efficient way to do this.

schoen• 10 years ago

A lot of people are actively researching ways to get CO₂ out of the atmosphere or prevent it from entering the atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_removal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

satellitec4t7• 10 years ago

The energy requirements to do it make it impractical, like splitting water into hydrogen for fuel cells.

Also, think about how much of the Earth is covered in plants that already do this -- I'm doubtful we could come up with something that could match the current CO2->O2 capacity of all the Earth's plants and algae.

protomyth6• 10 years ago

We need to spend money on this type of research since these articles keep saying it we've come too far.

Also, think about how much of the Earth is covered in plants that already do this -- I'm doubtful we could come up with something that could match the current CO2->O2 capacity of all the Earth's plants and algae.

We need to make up the delta not replace what's there.

dredmorbius5• 10 years ago

Scale. Costs.

It costs about $550 to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. Alternatives, such as sequestering CO2 from seawater, may be cheaper, around $150. I'm going to stick with the higher estimate.

To just tread water we'd need to remove as much CO2 as we're adding presently.

Current global emissions are 9.875 gigatons (billion tons).8 Let's call it 10 gigatons to make the math easier.

That's 550 * 10 billion or $5,550 billion dollars per year in carbon sequestration. A thousand billion is better known as a trillion (in the US), and the US GDP is about $15 trillion.

This would equal 1/3 of total US economic output.

On a global scale, GDP is about $70 trillion, so we're looking at 1/12 of the global economy. Call it an 8% tax on everything.

It's the sort of thing a unified international effort might accomplish, but it's well beyond the reach of even the single richest person or corporation.

There's the additional problem that once you remove the CO2, you've got to hold on to it. That's 10 Gt you'd have to freeze or compress and essentially hold in storage for a few thousand years. That's a considerable warehousing project.

Not releasing the CO2 in the first place may be strongly preferable.

------------

Correction: I'd read off the 10 Gt value not realising it was carbon, rather than CO2. Actual is 35 Gt CO2, so multiply dollar amounts and percentages by 3.5.

That's $19.25 trillion, or more than the total US GDP, and 28% of total global GDP. Or a ~30% tax on everything.

protomyth6• 10 years ago

It costs about $550 to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. Alternatives, such as sequestering CO2 from seawater, may be cheaper, around $150. I'm going to stick with the higher estimate.

Well, given the cost it looks like relocating NYC by itself is going to be, it might be worth it to pursue some research into energy efficient processes that can break the CO2 down.

There's the additional problem that once you remove the CO2, you've got to hold on to it. That's 10 Gt you'd have to freeze or compress and essentially hold in storage for a few thousand years. That's a considerable warehousing project.

I was proposing putting money into researching a technique / process to break the CO2 down into O2 and carbon. Carbon has uses that would freeze it outside the carbon cycle for a long time.

Not releasing the CO2 in the first place may be strongly preferable.

Well, from all the news, its too late now, so we might need to go to some other solution.

dang• 10 years ago

We merged this thread and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11392246, but adopted the more neutral title of the latter. If people feel strongly about one URL being better than the other, we can change that.

Animats3• 10 years ago

For the Western US, the problems aren't so bad. There's a coastal mountain range along most of the California coast. In LA, a few places such as Venice/Marina Del Ray may need seawalls, but except for a few areas areas, three blocks inland is at least 100 feet above sea level. LAX is 121 feet above sea level.

The SF bay has more problems than the coast. Parts of San Francisco may need seawalls, and bayfront development such as Redwood Shores needs to be stopped. Google HQ is in trouble; they're on fill and only 10' above sea level. But once you're south of US101/CA237, you're OK in most of Silicon Valley.

In the southeastern US, things are potentially much worse. There's no coastal mountain range. Florida is barely above sea level now. Miami floods regularly. New Orleans is partly below sea level already.

A big question is what this does to Mississippi River flooding. A higher sea level means less river flow and more upstream flooding.

kempbellt• 10 years ago

I think the idea is to look at the actual problem causing climate change.

Unless your post was satire. Putting seawalls up everywhere that might be affected seems like the wrong message to take away from the article.

Animats3• 10 years ago

No, I'm serious. I assume the problem won't be fixed globally, so we have to look at it locally. For the Western US, it's not that bad. Southeastern US, not so much. The northeastern US has populated low-lying areas; the low-value ones need to be evacuated and the high-value ones, like Manhattan, protected. Even Manhattan isn't very flat; seawalls only need to go up to 30th St or so.

The US as a whole is in good shape; much of the US is way above sea level. Russia, which has almost no useful coastline, will be fine.

InclinedPlane• 10 years ago

The assumption underlying a lot of the recommendations for actions in response to climate change is that the overwhelmingly dominant factor is CO2 emissions, and that reducing CO2 emissions is the only and/or best way to walk back from the consequences. Neither is true. For one, CO2 emissions reductions may not be realistically possible with our current technology and geopolitical situation. More importantly, there are other factors at play (such as soot changing the albedo on snow/ice covered arctic areas) and it's likely that there are dynamic effects at play which cannot simply be walked back by reducing CO2 atmospheric concentrations.

It's very likely that we're already locked into a certain level of sea level rise over the next few hundred years due to the breakup of antarctic ice sheets. This may not be something we can stop even if we could reduce atmospheric CO2 to whatever level we chose tomorrow. We need to look at ways of mitigating the impact of climate change and environmental change (whatever the cause) in the future even as we look at ways to try to reduce the negative impact of human activity on the climate and biosphere in general.

There are far too many people who look at pollution and climate change through an essentially religious lens. As though CO2 emissions are sin, and the only thing to do when caught sinning is to stop sinning, or at least sin less. This is an incredibly immature way to handle the complex relationship between mankind and Earth's environment.

arasmussen• 10 years ago

#bandaidfix

jonnathanson• 10 years ago

Seawalls are a bandaid fix, yes, but they're probably a reality we'll have to deal with at this point. We may have passed the point of inevitability for this rise in sea level -- barring, as the article suggests, any unforeseen stabilizing or countervailing forces to balance out the loss of the ice sheets.

Basically: seawalls aren't the solution, but they're probably part of how we cope with whatever degree of sea-level rise is already bound to happen at this point.

themagician2• 10 years ago

I'm really not convinced Miami will be around in 20 years. The floods are worse every year. Miami Beach doesn't just flood, it shuts down. There will come a time when sea level rise and hurricane season will collide in such a way that it won't be practical to rebuild.

Miami Beach is 4' above sea level on limestone. The slightest acceleration in seal level rise will doom the city. Maybe when the mega mansions on Palm Island become unserviceable people will take things seriously.

People say it could take another 100 years for the sea level to actually consume the land, but that's really not necessary. Just look at New York post Hurricane Sandy. Crippled parts of the city for months. When you get a storm like that, combined with higher tides and more regular flooding it seems like game over because they're just won't be enough time to rebuild before the next flood.

autoreleasepool4• 10 years ago

As someone who lives in Miami your comments come across as hilariously exaggerated

Animats3• 10 years ago

That's a good point. What high sea levels look like in practice is more frequent flooding. This happens long before total immersion.

For Hurricane Sandy, if the 14th St power substation had been protected, and subway and train tunnels equipped with flood gates (that was supposed to happen after 9/11 as an anti-terrorism measure) the damage would have been much more localized. The appropriate role for government here is to toughen up the infrastructure. New York has a plan.[1]

We just have to write off Miami Beach and parts of New Orleans. New Orleans has higher ground nearby, but Miami doesn't.

There are some tricks used in urban areas subject to river floods. Here's the Tamshui River as it flows through Tapei.[2] The river is bordered by broad parks, and the park is bordered by a freeway raised on a berm. That's all for flood control. During floods, the parks are underwater. Massive floodgates block roads under the freeway. (There are emergency stairs for people caught on the wrong side.) The river bridges are all high enough to bridge any flood. After each flood, the parks need some maintenance, but they have few structures and the ones they have are very solid. San Jose has a similar, but smaller, arrangement for the Guadalupe River. (Yes, that's why there are such nice trails and bike paths in downtown San Jose.)

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/sirr/downloads/pdf/final_report/Ch3_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamsui_River#/media/File:Dansh...

sidechannel3• 10 years ago

I wouldn't even give NYC 20 years. A direct hit from a category-3 hurricane would decimate that city. The building codes were only updated in 2008 to withstand hurricane winds. It's really only a matter of time

poelzi• 10 years ago

ACK. If we are good at anything, then of the optimism bias.

We constantly overestimate our abilities while we underestimate the problems that can emerge.

Combined with our rather low ability to think in systems theory enough, to actually understand the system we are living in...

Bad combo...

chr1• 10 years ago

Building sea walls is not a very good solution, we need to find a way to move melt water to the deserts instead. There is a very large amount of dry land that could consume a large portion of ice sheets as groundwater.

hackuser3• 10 years ago

This assumes that climate change problems are local (in fairness, maybe the parent comment just happens to be focusing on those particular issues), but it may well create global economic and security crises, including wars.

Other than concern for the welfare of billions of people, who will buy your products? How will technology, education, and economic development spread in the developing world or even in the wealthy ones, when so many resources are spent on surviving climate change? Look what a blow the Great Recession and a couple of minor wars was to so many people; this would be much worse.

biot• 10 years ago

I'm fairly ignorant in terms of the science behind this, and one thing in the article raises some questions for me:

  > Sea level has risen a lot — 10 to 20 meters — in warm
  > periods in the past

Presumably this is in the distant, pre-industrial past. If so, what caused the warm period and, assuming sea level subsequently dropped afterwards, what caused the warm period to end? Other than human activity contributing to the current warm period, why is it different than previously?

GrantS• 10 years ago

There appears to still be active research about mechanisms that explain the historical data but here's a clearly written article [1] discussing a few factors such as: variation in solar radiation due to variation in Earth's orbit, changing ocean currents which may lead to huge upwellings of carbon dioxide from previously sunken dead algae.

[1] https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2013/04/30/how-the-ice-...

puppetmaster32• 10 years ago

What is the impact of Volcanoes or other natural things to the global warming?

vixen99• 10 years ago

What is the impact of CO2? We do not actually know its magnitude (on global temperature). We certainly know that the relationship is not one of direct proportionality. Climate literature shows that its interpretation (in terms of causation) is made exceptionally difficult by many other factors which if given a fair discussion would render virtually every popular account unreadable and most definitely outwith the reach of any rational policy making. Doubters should examine the Vostok core data and temperature data for 1880-2016. For sure, there's a story there but to claim there's a policy directive arising from this data is simply unjustified. To be clear - simplistic denial of <any> link is of course mere ignorance.

puppetmaster32• 10 years ago

Hi Vixen.

In science, debate is encouraged. Seems that some are scared of a debate.

the_why_of_y• 10 years ago

Answered in the 2013 IPCC report, on page 1008 (page 56 in the PDF):

FAQ 11.2 | How Do Volcanic Eruptions Affect Climate and Our Ability to Predict Climate?

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chap...

tn13• 10 years ago

Those who want others to take climate change seriously must take these models with a boatload of salt. Be definition these are models based on data we don't fully understand and has very bad record of proving completely wrong.

These models are very much life stock market predictions of boom and bust which seldom come true yet both booms and busts happen regularly.

dschiptsov• 10 years ago

The problem is that with enough math and big data it is possible to create a model with predicts everything one wishes.

Any digree of disconnection from reality is easily attainable.

Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

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