I just heard about a jump in atmospheric methane that is not understood.
The oil/gas industry has made some progress to curtail methane emissions so we don't think it is that gang.
I wonder about millions of tons of frozen ancient vegetation in Canada and Russia beginning to rot. ?
One idea is that we have hit the true "terminus" point of the past ice age and temperatures will rise rapidly over the next few decades and then stabilize at the new "normal".
Human CO2 might have pushed temps up but this could be much bigger than we expected.
> The oil/gas industry has made some progress to curtail methane emissions so we don't think it is that gang.
I don't know if we can reach that conclusion. It's been discovered, in Canada at least, that O&G is vastly under-reporting its methane production. I imagine other areas of the world might be even worse.
But they conducted extensive reviews on everything they do and concluded that we should look elsewhere. Maybe methane grows on trees or everyone just had more gas recently
Methane stored in arctic and Siberia is equivalent to 100 of years of todays yearly co2 emissions. Once that starts coming out there’s no point of return for sure.
But the recent increase is probably due to wetlands for now.
Considering we're talking about an event that happens every ~140k years by definition there will be "a return". Just like there will be future ice ages.
>> No one knows the amount of thought I put into this same problem when building train tracks for my son but I had no idea how to solve the problem.
My opinion is that it will rise until we reach a tipping point where changes happen that will lead to the next glaciation. IMHO there will be at least a few years where odd things happen and then the modeling folks will say "oh crap this is going to happen". Stalling of the north Atlantic current is just one of these things that might happen.
In this light, I don't consider human-induced warming a fundamentally new problem, but an acceleration of a process that has been happening for several million years. Not that it makes too much difference - I don't want a glacier in my back yard any more than I want the other outcomes people talk about ;-)
> but an acceleration of a process that has been happening for several million years
That's exactly the main issue, isn't it? A change happening over millenia/millions of years gives enough time and slack for life to adapt, an accelerated change that happens in the course of centuries will just erase many species that can't reconfigure their metabolism through evolution. Of course that life finds a way and new species adapted to a new environment will become more prevalent over time, the issue is exactly that we accelerated it to a pace where most things aren't able to cope. We depend on those things as well to survive.
Having it operational and delivering gas for decades to come would have been worse for the environment. Germany is still a bit tumbling but definitely will move from gas and oil to other means of heating.
The immediate environmental impact of a destructive act can be catastrophic, endangering ecosystems and human lives. While the long-term use of fossil fuels is indeed concerning, abrupt disruption isn't the answer. Instead, we should be pushing for a gradual, sustainable transition to cleaner energy sources. It's about finding a balance without resorting to extreme measures.
Yeah, they have a graph of temperatures from 1940 onwards with a linear trend line— but just by looking at the data points, it seems that an exponential curve would fit the data better.
Maybe someone more skilled than me has analyzed that already? Because just eyeballing it, is really making me nervous about the exponential future projection of that graph of the next 20 years
This was discussed in the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show[1]. Apparently aerosols artificially held down temperatures roughly 1940–1980, after which they started to be reduced (from my memory of what they discussed). So it might be that the contribution of the greenhouse effect is masked in that period of the temperature graph.
Were the aerosols from above-ground nuclear bomb detonations? I remember seeing a graph years and years ago that showed the temperatures really starting to rise was above-ground nuclear bomb testing was banned.
Crazy spur-of-the-moment idea - should we pursue dumping some sort of aerosol into the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of heat Earth receives from the sun? Obviously this shouldn't be pursued in lieu of curtailing our pumping C02 into the atmosphere, but it could alleviate some of the damaging effects from what we've already done.
Sulphur oxides have been proven to reduce global warming - when the ocean freighters cleaned up their emissions in a bid to stop pollution we saw increases in temperature. I hear people suggesting that we dump a ton of that in the upper atmosphere, but adding more crap to the air to try and stop the previous crap reminds me of how the old lady who swallowed the fly ended up with horse-sized problems.
It'd be just a giant game of whack-a-mole, not too dissimilar to what humans tried to do after destroying some ecosystems: travel to a new place in boats carrying rats, the rats get to a new land and multiply quickly, bring cats to control the rat population, the cats kill a lot more than rats and multiply quickly, rinse and repeat.
Complex systems that feedback into each other get very, very tricky to manage. We can't even do that with stupid software, it's a massive human hubris to believe we can do to systems we don't even comprehend...
Except we don't need to replace those sulfur dioxide emissions with more sulfur dioxide; Salt water misted into the air has the same effect, while being pretty unlikely to harm anything.
Aerosols were probably sulfuric acid. Unfortunately this has negative side-effects. Aerosol can also be produced by monoterpenes, e.g. pinene, but there is disagreement about whether this can be helpful.
The crazy part about this is that doing something like that is within reach of a number of wealthy individuals. All it takes is one delusional billionaire to throw caution, and a metric buttload of aerosols to the wind and we will find out whether it was a good idea or not.
Putting up a geosynchronous mirrored-foil tarp that shadows the entirety of one of earth's larger deserts would take about the same amount of effort — and be much easier to reverse if it turns out to be a bad idea.
I think the important part here is you could do the aerosol injection secretly. It's pretty much impossible to launch a rocket to geosync orbit without a major government getting involved in your business.
This has been studied in pretty extensive detail & what I remember is that it’d require a custom plane design to get to efficiencies where this is worth pursuing. And the number of flights required would be hard to hide from a motivated government adversary. Still worth pursuing. Any takers on here?
Somebody mentioned this in a reply, but it deserves to be a top level comment. A good chunk of this year's unusual heat may be attributable to a reduction in SO2 emissions from shipping. Article cites other factors as well, but this implies that 2023 is the new normal.
The argument to immediately stop burning fossil fuels is a radical position which few take seriously.
But you seem to be arguing that it'd be pointless in the same way that pressing the break in the immediate moment before a car accident is futile. Sure it might not help a lot, but I'd argue it's still the right call and will rarely make the situation worse.
I'm not arguing a position for or against action, I'm pointing out that things are worse than the quote claims, and I'm pointing it out because there is a long history of downplaying the severity of the situation when it comes to this issue.
Whether it's pointless or not is up for debate. Your brake pressing analogy could be slightly off. Rather than being in the moment before the car accident, we could be in the moment just after driving off of a cliff. In that case, brake pressing is indeed futile. But I think the system we're in is too complex to know for sure, and I'm all for people wanting to say that they are interested in doing anything they can. I'm also all for people actually taking action rather than just saying they are on board with the idea. Also...just do nothing if that's your preference.
> I'm pointing out that things are worse than the quote claims
I believe you misunderstood the quote. "Would only get worse" is a set phrase that means getting worse is inevitable. The "only" means that no other outcome is possible. It's sort of an intensified version of "would get worse" in that it's more definite.
So "it would only get worse if the world continues to burn planet-heating fossil fuels" means that if we continue burning these fuels, there is no chance we will avoid the consequences. It does not mean that the only way to have the problem is to keep burning fossil fuels.
It's not a great analogy. The possible downsides to breaking before a car are slim. The downside to immediately stopping burning fossil fuels are huge including disrupting the global economy, life critical heating/cooling in cold/warm climates and basically modern life globally.
We could barely lock down for a pandemic. Imagine telling someone (or entire winter cities) they will likely freeze to death today to reduce emissions.
That is not comparable to hitting the breaks to lessen a crash.
> The downside to immediately stopping burning fossil fuels are huge including disrupting the global economy, life critical heating/cooling in cold/warm climates and basically modern life globally.
That's why I said that's not an option. Stopping fossil fuels would be the same as stopping the car instantaneously - it would be a brand new car crash.
Thank you for pointing this out! I have quite a few Chinese friends and they never cease to be entertained by the long list of "Chinese" proverbs that American's claim to know.
It turns out that since for most of Western history China was synonymous with the "mysterious far east", it become common practice to just tack on "Chinese" to the origin of any saying to let it exotic credibility.
Unsurprisingly "May you live in interesting times" is not a Chinese curse.
Immediately stopping all greenhouse gas emissions would kill a lot of people quickly by breaking supply and production chains for pretty much everything. So that is not an option.
It would also result in a near immediate (weeks) increase in global average temperature due to the reduction in aerosol masking.
People like to fixate on a simple correction that they can work toward (more often just talk about), but the situation is not simple. And I don't think people should be making statements that suggest there is a simple solution at this point.
i don't think anyone ever argued in favor of ceasing the usage of all greenhouse emitting fuel sources all at once. However we can't even agree to gradually phasing them out in a realistic timeline, see Kyoto Protocol
It's relevant because people continue to downplay just how dire the situation is.
It's not only going to get worse if we continue burning fossil fuels. It's going to get worse no matter what.
If accepting that would lead you to conclude that we shouldn't bother, so be it. That's your interpretation, not mine. But downplaying those facts so that you can feel better about the situation is something I would disagree with strongly.
Nobody is downplaying it. Yes, it's going to get worse no matter what, relative to how it is now. But continuing to burn fossil fuels will almost certainly increase how much worse it is over the medium-longer term (decades-centuries) compared to rapidly curtailing use.
That's your interpretation, not mine.
Well, what do you advocate for? Semantic accuracy is good, but quibbling over it takes up time that could be better spent on ranking proposals.
> If we stop burning oil now it will get worse for a while, and then it will get better again.
It's not a given that it will get better again. Not on timescales that matter to our species anyway.
>It also gives us the option to work on carbon capture and mitigation technologies.
Couldn't we do that while still burning fossil fuels? Not sure why we'd have to stop burning in order to have the option to work on capture and mitigation.
> If we just carry on it's guaranteed to keep getting worse and worse until it doesn't matter any more.
It's guaranteed to keep getting worse and worse in that case. But we might already be at the point where it doesn't matter anymore. I wonder, at what point would you say it doesn't matter anymore? How do you know?
> The first is the rational choice, especially when the momentum in the models already accounts for likely future changes.
That's the rational choice based on the conclusions you have personally come to, along with your own mental predisposition. I don't believe the situation is simple enough to say that this is the only rational choice for everybody.
The right trees, planted in the right locations (0.9 billion hectares), could store 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide. ... That's two thirds of all the CO2 humans have generated since the industrial revolution.
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
So we could plant not just 0.9 billion hectares but 3 billion.
Twice as much CO2 as we have generated since the industrial revolution.
> Couldn't we do that while still burning fossil fuels? Not sure why we'd have to stop burning in order to have the option to work on capture and mitigation.
Because those technologies don't work at the scale needed. Check how much we're producing and how much carbon those factories are able to store. We'd need tens of thousands of them.
An interesting impact of an immediate stop of fossil fuel emissions is a rapid temperature increase over a few years due to an unmasking impact. i.e. the aerosols that are continually being produced due to fossil fuel burning drop out within days, weeks, months, increasing the solar radiation reaching the surface [0,1].
> An interesting impact of an immediate stop of fossil fuel emissions is a rapid temperature increase over a few years due to an unmasking impact. i.e. the aerosols that are continually being produced due to fossil fuel burning drop out within days, weeks, months, increasing the solar radiation reaching the surface [0,1].
Well, what if we did so and also start spraying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere?
Is that the option that comes to mind when presented with the facts?
That's your reaction. Not mine. Who am I to tell people what to do or not do?
You could just as easily have read what I said and thought: "So we need to prepare for something even worse no matter what, and we also need to act much more aggressively than we are!"
Your top message does seem to imply and suggest there’s nothing to be done, and there are multiple replies that saw this as your summary point.
I agree with you that it’s dire, and we need more aggressive action. I agree it’s going to get worse. In the short term, in terms of a few years, it’s true that changes to fossil fuel consumption won’t fix it. In the long term (decades and centuries) that’s not true though, and we do need to be thinking both short term and long term. We do need to curtail fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emission in order to solve this problem eventually, in addition to taking stronger actions in order to alleviate some of the symptoms anytime soon, right?
How do people here feel about geoengineering? Seems like we have a pretty good tool to counteract the warming effects (although not the ocean acidification affects) with SO2. Not sure why it's not taken seriously.
I’m all in. It’s clear that none of our governments are up to the task of taking on this global coordination problem. The science is clear by now, so let the engineers take over & do what they do best: solve the damn problem.
No doubt the big Canadian Barbecue had a significant effect. Not to say there is no trend, just that this particular year is exceptional for at least on reason.
I also wonder if the war in Ukraine had an effect too. To my understanding in a lot of the initial stage, Russia was extracting as much natural gas as stopping the extraction process would render it hard to restart, but with much reduced opportunities to sell it, they were just flaring the excess gas.
Of course, the traditional customers of that gas were burning gas too, sourced from elsewhere via LNG, or in some cases, coal. So in effect in 2022, we ended up double dipping on the european fossil fuel usage as it was burned both in europe and in russia.
There is a decent amount of confidence that it's an outlier in the last 120,000 years, but you're right, there are no written records that far back.
Regardless, do you find it reassuring to know that the world is rapidly changing in a way that's proving to be predictable? We can easily look at that chart and guess what it's going to look like over the next 10 years.
There is not a “decent amount of confidence” and your CNN link provides no proof that there’s any at all outside of a sentence claiming tree rings and coral mean it may be. There is so much disinformation (from both sides) and fear mongering about this subject that anything not a direct and peer reviewed source should not be taken as any kind of proof of anything.
The american right desperately want this to be a political fight so they can continue to ignore and profit from it for another few decades while they all die off and not have to worry about the consequences
Nice projection, you’re just spitting word for word political nonsense which is unrelated to a single thing I said. CNN saying that there is proof this is the hottest day in 120,000 years isn’t scientific and linking to them doing so isn’t an act of engaging in science. I think maybe it’s you who has gotten so caught up in a political fight you’re convinced you aren’t taking part it one.
> We can easily look at that chart and guess what it's going to look like over the next 10 years.
That's why all the past predictions have been so accurate, right? "But we know more now." We do not. Some intellectual humility by those wanting tyranical control over our lives would be fantastic.
If we have more data points in cities, this could skew the results. I live in a forested area and going into the city can easily add 3 or 4 degrees Celsius.
I wonder about millions of tons of frozen ancient vegetation in Canada and Russia beginning to rot. ?
One idea is that we have hit the true "terminus" point of the past ice age and temperatures will rise rapidly over the next few decades and then stabilize at the new "normal".
Human CO2 might have pushed temps up but this could be much bigger than we expected.
https://theconversation.com/rising-methane-could-be-a-sign-t...
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/