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submitted 1 year ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[-] Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.social 74 points 1 year ago

Positive feedback loops, how do they work?

We've known about this for decades. An example: heating causes permafrost to melt releasing CO2 and methane, which cause more heat to be trapped, which melts more permafrost, which releases more green house gasses, etc.

Positive feedback loops tend to be very unstable, and can lead to runaway situations.

[-] Notyou@sopuli.xyz 28 points 1 year ago

Can't wait for all those ice caps to go away and stop reflecting all the heat that they do reflect being white. It'll just add to it.

[-] Droechai@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago

And when the last ice is gone we will finally have revenge for the Titanic

Hey I found time to laugh in between my doomsday crying.

Thanks. :)

[-] WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Not if blackhat has anything to say about it: https://xkcd.com/2829/

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Can't wait until we turn the planet into Venus 2.0

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[-] burgersc12@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

The article goes out of its way to claim this isn't the case. Theres a line that says something like there is no extra heat in the pipeline.

[-] Spzi@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

I followed the links in that quote:

Climate models have consistently found that once we get emissions down to net zero, the world will largely stop warming; there is no warming that is inevitable or in the pipeline after that point.

Neither addresses tipping points. They seem to talk about something else entirely, like wether a model assumes constant atmospheric concentration, or constant emissions, that kind of difference.

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[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

People are really bad at conceptualizing exponential change from feedback. Our brains expect incremental change. I think that's one of the reasons people can't know accept what is happening.

"I know things are changing, but it's only a bit each day, and it can go like that for years and it won't be that bad."

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 68 points 1 year ago

As much as this news disturbs me .... the thing that disturbs me most is that most of the world will ignore it.

Humanity won't do anything about any of this until millions die and mass migrations start happening due to extreme weather events.

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 33 points 1 year ago

COVID was the perfect microcosm for climate change action. COVID killed a shit-pile of people really quickly. Humans are wired to acknowledge pressing matters (like a pandemic), while more abstract concepts, and things with delayed consequences get pushed to the wayside.

It make sense, why we are the way we are. Who cares about where your meal next week is going to come from, when you're a caveman running from a lion?

Does it make us any less dead? nope. Just the timing is in question.

[-] freebee@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

Even covid was already too hypothetical and abstract and too far away in time and space for millions of people to act cautiously. Climate change is further away still... When it becomes very noticeable, it's far too late: hawaii fire level stuff before people actually realise it's fucked.

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[-] Nudding@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

I'm less optimistic than you, I think we will continue to increase fossil fuel usage, even though millions are dying and being displaced.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 year ago

As long as the income stream isnt threatened either by unrest, mass deaths, or hardware malfunctioning, expect business as usual.

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago

That's the kind of logic I expect to see in the coming decades.

People will argue the details, debate the topics, defend finances and the economy .... all while the world falls apart and people die, are actively dying or will live shorter lives.

Humanity will fade into obscurity as we all fight with one another.

Hell yeah.

Thats for sure. Many finance analysts predict 3 digit oil prices.

Investments will ramp up once demand puts pressure on the price.

And fossil fuel industry will be the most profitable one again.

WE CANT EXPECT OUR SYSTEM TO CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGING THE SYSTEM.

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[-] interolivary@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Humanity won’t do anything about any of this until millions die and mass migrations start happening due to extreme weather events.

We won't do anything even then.

Well, not anything that'd help, at any rate. The worse things get, the more people will vote for conservatives and populists who will sell them easy solutions, which will likely consist of mass violence and rolling back environmental regulations because they inconvenience their voters. The only thing that will actually help will be the inevitable collapse of industrial society at this scale, but to get there hundreds of millions if not billions will die pointless deaths, especially if nuclear weapons are involved in the collapse.

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[-] o0joshua0o@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

After reading headline: Thank goodness!

After reading article: Fuck!

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 72 points 1 year ago

relevant bit (I think, I didn't read the entire thing):

And while many experts have been cautious about acknowledging it, there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years rather than continued at a gradual, steady pace. That acceleration means that the effects of climate change we are already seeing — extreme heat waves, wildfires, rainfall and sea level rise — will only grow more severe in the coming years.

[-] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is nothing new though. Climate Scientist have ALWAYS been fearing a runaway effect. It has a wiki page and all. The author isn't wrong, but it's click bait. It's not telling us anything new.

[-] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 year ago

I think the difference is that, at least when I took a class on this (coincidentally about 15 years ago), we talked a lot about how there was likely to be a runaway effect. This article is saying that the climate measurements from the last 15 years provide evidence that the predicted runaway effect is, in fact, happening.

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[-] APassenger@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It may be click bait, but given the topic and urgency, I want as many unique clicks as it can get.

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[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Ah, my first thought was "Well, either we're less doomed, or more doomed. Probably gonna be the second".

[-] Risk@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago

It ends on a positive though - if the world gets to net zero, then (apparently) no further warming will occur (does this mean runaway warming -from lack of reflection via ice sheets, methane release from previous permafrost zones, etcetera - is no longer expected?).

We just need to push our politicians harder. Poverty and climate are intrinsically linked - we can improve things in the everyday person's life with green investment and policy.

[-] Rhaedas@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Here's the problems with net zero. First, it's a marketing term more than anything. But assuming it was an obtainable goal, it requires carbon removal techniques that have been shown by prototype and basic math to not be scalable to the task. Making another assumption that such emissions or their equivalent could be removed, we would need to go far beyond net zero into negative emissions to start chipping away at not only continued natural emissions from the mentioned runaway feedback loops already set in motion, but the historical carbon that still remains fro the last century or so of our pollution. If just net zero isn't scalable, the latter is magnitudes greater and impossible.

Net zero is the new "1.5 limit". It's an easy to remember catch phrase for a goal post on wheels. As we pass the old 1.5 mark the new one is used to distract from continued growth of population and consumption, catering to the wired tendencies of our species to procrastinate when danger isn't immediately in front of us. "They'll fix it".

I think the idea that if we can reduce our emissions warming and all that comes with it will also stop is also a subtle marketing being spread because most people don't understand that we're not the sole source of warming, we were just a small catalyst that started the reaction. And with most chemical reactions, at some point the catalyst isn't needed any more to sustain the rest of the reaction. We could stop all emissions right now (whether that be voluntary or not) and the Earth will continue to warm for decades or more just from environmental inertia and breakdown of the system, and then from the addition feedbacks that starts.

The only "fix" for the CO2 issue (which is only part of the problem, but the focus here) is to remove and sequester enough carbon to bring us down to 300 ppm or less, aka preindustrial levels. Put everything burned by our industrial age back into the ground. Entropy alone says that won't happen, calculating the numbers of how much carbon that means is mindblowing. We throw around the giga- prefix like it's nothing, and yet the total carbon we would have to remove gets into the tera- and possibly peta- levels. It's insane.

Net zero is a scam, nothing more. I'm not at all saying we shouldn't change, but don't believe anyone selling you a solution, as change means adaptation and preparation for a different and hostile world, not some science "fix" that will let us keep doing what we've always done.

I'm sure my rant that started as a short reply will get some responses of "what about ___?" Good luck showing me something new that changes the basic math of the problem. It's looking into some of these potential solutions and finding out the real problem that turned me into a hardened skeptic of anything "new". Show me the math that can tackle the numbers, then I'll consider it. In the end you can't fool Nature.

[-] LuckyJones@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

It's insane.

The thermodynamic minimum amount of energy needed to extract CO2 at 450 ppm is 120 kWh per tonne. Current experimental carbon capture plants run at about 5 % efficiency. If we assume we can double their efficiency and can magically produce as many plants as we need, to remove 20 Gt of CO2 per year (half our emissions) we would need 24,000 TWh of energy per year.

That is the entirety of the world's electricity production. To remove half our emissions.

Carbon capture is a non-runner.

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hemp. Nature provides a way to do many things that technology can't do efficiently. Hemp will capture carbon and store 80% in the roots. We would need 5 billion acres of hemp production to remove double our current emissions, I did the math a year ago. That would only be achievable with floating greenhouses, as far as I can figure, but if we hit net zero, then hemp looks much more doable in terms of a long term solution.

Edit: Also marijuana, and we can still use both plants the way we currently do, just store the roots in drums and fill up Yucca Mountain, since we aren't storing nuclear waste there.

[-] Rhaedas@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks for an example of the numbers. And to point out, the entirety of the world's production of electricity is still over 60% from fossil fuels, so using that energy to undo emissions is ideally a wash, and realistically still an increase. And that's if we turned all of the energy to carbon removal from everything else, which would never happen.

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[-] insomniac@sh.itjust.works 59 points 1 year ago

These threads are such a shit show. No one reads the article and then just has the conversation they want to have, other people who didn’t read the article think they’re summarizing it, and everyone walks away dumber.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 year ago

Online discourse tends to be like that

[-] mayo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I read the article but it doesn't say much that hasn't been said a thousand times before.

Thread is a mess though I'll agree on that.

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[-] WytchStar@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago

We've discovered the breaking point of paradise. Hope the next sentient species is a little less selfish.

[-] Nyssa@slrpnk.net 22 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I don't know if it would be possible for another species to reach our level of technology or civilization. We built up our society off of easily accessible energy resources (surface-level coal being our first source of industrial energy). This energy excess allowed us to develop other sources of energy, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. But if you tried starting from zero again, you could never get to this point, at least along the same path, as you need a high level of technology to access any available energy resources. Thus, if any new species took our place, they could only ever rise to the level of the pre-industrial revolution.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

At the very least, even basic electricity production requires copper windings. Which requires copper wire. Which requires refined copper. Which requires copper ore. Which requires copper mining.

Generations of people with manual tools will need to die in the mines for enough electricity to be generated to run a small medical clinic, let alone get post-climate humans to a point of modern civilization.

[-] notabot@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

While it's definitely bleak, it's not quite as bleak as that. Remember that we're leaving behind vast amounts of 'waste', much of which contains things like copper, aluminium, steel and other useful components in relatively easily refinable states.

Future civilisations will be digging through our waste, wondering why we were so profligate, but glad to have it all to hand.

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[-] Rolder@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago

Perhaps if it’s a few million years later and all us dead humans have turned into coal and oil, like the dinosaurs of the past.

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[-] vivadanang@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

Beginning to think we're going to hit 1.6c next year, not 2050.

[-] Neato@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago

Heating is accelerating. IF we stop adding greenhouse gases to the air, the heating should stop. It won't go back down without removing massive amounts of CO2, though.

[-] Hexagon@feddit.it 8 points 1 year ago

It won't stop unless we also remove the greenhouse gases that we put there

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[-] Spzi@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

IF we stop adding greenhouse gases to the air, the heating should stop.

Unless we crossed a tipping point. If so, the heating could continue although we stopped.

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[-] BigMcLargeHuge@mstdn.social 6 points 1 year ago

@Neato @silence7

But how will the shareholders get that 17th yacht?

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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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