[HN Gopher] Possibility for strong high-latitude cooling under n... ___________________________________________________________________ Possibility for strong high-latitude cooling under negative emissions Author : rgrieselhuber Score : 68 points Date : 2022-03-06 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | mrfusion wrote: | Sorry but I'm all panicked out. | freddealmeida wrote: | Quite interesting that this is being published in Nature. I think | there are far worse things that need to be removed. But so little | is discussed on the affect of the sun moving into a solar | minimum. That will have some serious consequences as well. | SantalBlush wrote: | >That will have some serious consequences as well. | | According to NASA [1], that is false. | | [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is- | no-i... | hedora wrote: | This particular issue has been well understood for at least | 30 years. Greenhouse gasses are a first order effect. Solar | cycles are second order. | wrycoder wrote: | The principal greenhouse gas is water vapor, and the effect | of solar variation on that is not at all "well understood". | whiddershins wrote: | It is so easy to not pay attention to how bad global cooling, | and/or co2 reduction curtailing plant growth, could be for the | environment and for humans. | | Global warming and CO2 rise are such difficult problems, and we | put so much focus there, it makes me really glad to see some | people taking a broad view. | hedora wrote: | Tl;dr: Climate change is likely to shut down the Atlantic | currents, covering Europe and the US northeast in a glacier. | | (I saw a PBS special on this part in the 90's. Recent satellite | data strongly suggest this is already happening. The last time | this happened, Europe went from "too hot" to "glacier" in the | under fifty years. | | If we wait for that to happen, then cool the atmosphere, then | it'll make the coming ice age worse in the short term. | | In other decades-old news, if we don't start capturing CO2 after | that, and the predictions about runaway greenhouse gas mechanisms | are true, Earth will become like Venus, obliterating life on | earth. | | Am I the only one that learned about this from watching PBS in | the 90s? Is there something novel in the paper? It's good to | raise awareness of just how f-cked we are, I guess. | ripper1138 wrote: | So you feel confident that Europe will be under a glacier in 50 | years? | Imnimo wrote: | I think you've misunderstood the claim - they're saying that | once the currents shut down, it would take 50 years for | glaciers to form. But the currents are obviously still | flowing today, and my understanding is that a collapse is | projected to take many decades. | hedora wrote: | I'm confident we'll get about 50 years warning when/if the | current stops. It's currently weakening, and weather is a | chaotic system. | | I'm also confident that the root cause of the crunching noise | and vibrations from the front end of my car will eventually | lead to a breakdown, but I don't have any idea if it'll | happen tomorrow or in a year. | ripper1138 wrote: | I see. Of course the North Atlantic current will | change/stop at some point regardless of any actions we take | (assuming we don't have technology to keep it going | somehow). But delaying that as long as possible is a noble | goal. | peteradio wrote: | One things for sure, the children born today will be | genetically optimistic. | sacrosancty wrote: | Not a great idea to expect to learn about the world from | sensationalist TV. Especially not such an immature field as | climate science in the 90's. | hedora wrote: | You do realize I mean the 1990's right? The show was | broadcast in color, so it came after climate change science | had "matured". | | Concretely, the magnitude of our current predicament was | correctly forecast by computer models well before 1980, and | the basic mechanisms and effects those models were based on | were well-established by the 1960s. | | Claims to the contrary have been extensively documented to be | part of a paid misinformation campaign the fossil fuel | industry ramped up in the early 1980s. | | The show wasn't particularly sensationalist, for what its | worth. Climate change was a bipartisan concern back then, and | it mostly focused on the fossil records that backed up the | claims it made. It also talked about the solar cycle's impact | on earth's average temperature and compared the magnitude of | the effects over time. | | All the technology that was needed to head off disaster was | already commercialized, assuming a one-two punch, where phase | two involved better batteries. | | No one imagined we would choose to take no action for another | 30 years. | hedora wrote: | To get an idea of the optimism, Biff from Back to the | Future was based on Trump and ends up waxing an engineer's | car. | | If I had to bet what actor would be president in 2016, I'd | have guessed Patrick Stewart, and that his second move | (after installing the captain's chair in the oval office) | would be pointing at a clean energy plan to replace our | carbon nuclear fission power grid with fusion / solar and | saying "make it so". | randomsilence wrote: | All that freed, formerly captured carbon comes from trees and | plankton. How could burning it all lead to life-destroying | conditions when life must have been able to exist under those | conditions? | mostly_harmless wrote: | "all that kenetic energy released when jumping off a building | was formerly potential energy stored when walking up the | stairs. How can that lead to life destroying conditions when | life previously held that energy?" | | The rapid change in environments can make many species no | longer suitable for their environment leading to extinction. | Sometimes they can transfer to a new environment, or sustain | at a degraded efficiency, but often they cannot if the | environment change is drastic enough. This is happening | everywhere all at once. | marcosdumay wrote: | The GP isn't talking about species extinction. | ceejayoz wrote: | Same reason breaching a big dam does more damage than the | same volume of water in an undammed river. | Retric wrote: | People aren't going to destroy all life on earth via climate | change because humans are going to be dead in conditions that | many life forms would happily survive in. Having said that, | evolution operates on geologic timescales 100 years isn't | nearly enough time for most species to adapt to significantly | different conditions. Florida alligators might happily expand | their range further north in response to climate change, but | that's different. | | As to the larger point, the sun was ~30% dimmer 4.5 billion | years ago and will get about 67% brighter over the next 4.7 | billion years. While we would be dead long before we could | free up all the worlds trapped carbon, in such a hypothetical | situation the world isn't simply returning to an earlier | state. | tsimionescu wrote: | Energy on Earth isn't conserved, as it's not an isolated | system - the Sun is constantly adding energy to the Earth, | and we are constantly radiating energy out into space as | well. Coal and oil were basically batteries filled with solar | energy from millions of years ago. We are now discharging | those batteries, adding back all of the solar energy captured | over millions of years to the Earth today, in addition to all | of the energy the Sun is still adding at more or less the | same rate. | | It's the same principle as what makes a battery fire so | destructive - all of the energy stored in the battery in a | plant somewhere else suddenly gets discharged all at once in | your car. | 41b696ef1113 wrote: | You are releasing 1e6 to 1e7 years of energy in the space of | 1e2. | twofornone wrote: | Glaciers increase albedo. I suspect there are numerous | understated/undiscovered feedback mechanisms which will | actually result in cooling as the climate changes and keep the | global temperature livable. | wrycoder wrote: | Not a feedback, but a reduction in polar soot due to China | moving away from dirty coal emissions to nuclear power could | also increase albedo. | BurningFrog wrote: | The IPCC reports don't predict anywhere near these disasters, | even in their worst scenarios. | | I'll trust those over a PBS special from the 1900s. | sgt101 wrote: | In other news: population crisis on Mars. | detritus wrote: | We seem to be so far from a practically-useful level of CO2 | removal that this seems like a shrill level of concern. That | said, the logic could apply to much quicker solutions that could | be distributed globally, such as atmospheric albedo modification | or space based solar barriers (the latter being hugely | speculative, of course - but I could imagine a few SpaceX | starships put to poorly-considered use being able to muster | something in a decade or three). | go_elmo wrote: | Approaches aiming at increasing ocean bio activity, thus carbon | capture by providing "ocean desert zones" with nutrients by | whirling up ocean floor in those regions seems interesting for | that purpose. Still a huge inception into the bio system thus | risky. | detritus wrote: | Ah yes, I'd forgotten about iron-seeding - I was thinking | entirely in terms of industrial solutions. | galangalalgol wrote: | I still think iron fertilization is the best bet, not for | co2 removal, but for albedo modification. Keeping | equatorial kelp or algae mats alive would prevent lots of | energy from entering the system. Those mats have albedo | close to snow in the infrared, where water is about as | absorptive as it gets. | detritus wrote: | I wonder if we could somehow use strategic placement of | fertilisation to encourage processes that laterally help | in cleaning up (/collecting) plastic pollution in oceanic | gyres? | | A girl can dream. | | - ed: I am fascinated by the idea that otherwise horrid | floating plastic pollution can act as centres for bio- | accumlation leading to local, floating bio-domains. I | guess the real problem is plastic bags and fishing nets, | not toothbrushes that happen to float. | go_elmo wrote: | Ive seen stunning simple / passive water column chimney- | effect approaches to do this using lower water levels | mixing, no sources though, was german tv (arte station) | ttiurani wrote: | This is an important study because most (all?) scenarios used | by the IPCC depend heavily on these (as of now) wildly | optimistic CO2 removal levels, either with BECCS or DACs. | | In order to hit the "brief and rapidly closing window" we have | for effective action, we need to look into lowering material | flows and energy use by targeting overconsumption. We simply | don't have time to wait for a tech miracle, and - as this study | points out - the miracle can have huge downsides. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Unless CO2 removal is profitable without subsidies, it's | pointless and the money should go into Renewables. If you can | cut emissions, the CO2 takes care of itself quickly from | natural sinks. | | Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have | zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than | they have been increasing. | | We already have free CO2 removal. The challenge is and always | has been on the emission side. | | CO2 levels are about 420 ppm and go up about 1.5 per year. A | 120 year half life yields -3.5 ppm per year. | | It is worth investing some money in development for the | moonshot possibility of economic viability. Unless it becomes | cheaper to capture than build renewables, the the money will | always be better spent on green energy. | photochemsyn wrote: | "Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have | zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than | they have been increasing." | | Traditionally, the idea is that the ocean would absorb the | 'excess' CO2 put there by fossil fuel combustion over the | industrial era. However, this is quite a slow process and | it's entirely possible to reach a new steady state of | relatively high atmospheric CO2 (and high global | temperature, i.e. ice-free poles) and stay there for | several million years - it's happened in the past. | Furthermore, we have the permafrost melt ongoing across the | Arctic, and shallow marine sediments are also releasing | methane and CO2. This will continue for decades in the | immediate zero-emission scenario, that turning point has | come and gone. | | Maybe if a full transition off fossil fuels had begun in | 1980, when the science was clear, we'd be stabilizing at | current conditions (*it takes ~100 years for the climate | system to finish responding to current forcing, assuming no | additional forcing, mainly due to oceanic warming lag | effects). We're in for warming for the next 50 years, no | matter what, and the world is clearly not getting off | fossil fuels any time soon, all the major fossil fuel | actors have plans for status quo production for the next 30 | years (rather than say 3% reduction per year, which would | mean no fossil fuel production in 30 years). | | It's going to happen slowly on human time scales, i.e. the | scale is decadal for noticeable differences in the year-to- | year average, but it's also inexorable. "It's in the post" | is the British saying that applies. Like trying to throw | the rudder over on the Titanic after the iceberg is | detected, it's all too little too late. | gonzo41 wrote: | The profit / reward is your kids get to live and have kids. | hannob wrote: | I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. It points | precisely to the point: Many current climate scenarios have | already negative emissions "priced in". We absolutely need to | have research to better understand what that means, and we | should have a plan b if negative emissions at large scales | don't work. | landemva wrote: | I didn't downvote though I noticed this, 'We simply don't | have time to wait ...'. | | Whatever the topic, I mentally ignore posts which shill the | NEXT WORST THING EVER. | convolvatron wrote: | I think a more important lesson here is that this is not a | simple system. its pretty unlikely that we're going to able to | calmly walk it back to the state it was in before | landemva wrote: | There were many prior states. In fact, it changes. Vikings | had pastures on Greenland until it got cold and they were | driven off. Greenland is now covered in snow and ice. Will | Greenland return to pastures? Probably at some time. | RC_ITR wrote: | The even more wild concept is that the atmosphere's | composition was already changing before human involvement, we | just sped up the process by like 1000x. | | We don't normatively need the atmosphere to be "natural," we | just need it to be in a state that doesn't destroy the | thousands of years of infrastructure we've built. | 01100011 wrote: | What if we tap sources of energy, like fusion and to some | extent(*) fission, which are novel to the normal solar/earth | system and release extra heat energy into the atmosphere? Since | this study is obviously only relevant in the far future, why not | add in likely future technologies to the mix? | | It seems to me that at some point we could just wrap the earth in | shutters(since we're talking far future anyway) or intentionally | release greenhouse gasses to servo the planet's temp. | | * - I believe much of the geothermal heat is actually heat from | fission already so I don't know if fission energy changes the | balance much. | throwanem wrote: | > I believe much of the geothermal heat is actually heat from | fission already | | On what basis do you believe this? | topaz0 wrote: | This seems to have a good explainer: | | https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/probing-question- | wha... | no-body wrote: | But aren't we at the end off the small ice age? And is global | warming really something we can prevent, or is it part off the | normal warming and cooling cycles off the earth? I sometimes | wonder if all the effort we do is in vain. | mostly_harmless wrote: | There's a huge difference between warming over a couple tens of | thousands of years (natural rate), and warming over a couple of | decades (our current trajectory). | | That difference is the eradication of much of life on earth | that is unable to evolve to a new environment. For example, | insect numbers worldwide are drastically lower than decades | ago, and insects are required for almost all pollination of | plants and a key source of food for small animals. The "food | chain" collapses if there is no first chain. | | Even a partial loss of ecodiversity can lead to further | problems later. | | Our efforts are certainly not in vain. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-06 23:01 UTC)