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Forgive my ignorance on this issue but Earth has various feedback mechanisms that forestalls CO2: getting absorbed back into rocks and consumption by flora. Is

by cconroy 10y ago

Forgive my ignorance on this issue but Earth has various feedback mechanisms that forestalls CO2: getting absorbed back into rocks and consumption by flora. Is comparing CO2 levels to 4 mya disingenuous because that is just one variable we are isolating? Are we sure that rising CO2 is producing these effects attributed to climate change and not some complicated combination of factors that is evidenced by Earth history of rising temperature followed by cooling temperatures followed by...

eru 10y ago
Understanding the climate is hard. Scientists are working on exactly these kinds of problems.
jfoutz 10y ago
It's just a statistic. There are lots you can look at. This one is interesting specifically because it hasn't happened in 4my. The earth will be fine, life will continue. The more specialized something is, the more it's at risk for exceeding tolerance. Costal housing is good example. It's built to withstand perhaps 100mph winds, beyond that roofs come off. The built in mitigation is pretty slow, so there will be perhaps a couple hundred years of rebuilding stuff. Sea walls, levees, more weather resistance.
foxylad 10y ago
You are correct that we don't understand EXACTLY how this works. But we do have an increasingly good idea, and it is now very widely accepted that increasing CO2 levels are due to fossil fuels, and that they are going to make life for future generations miserable. And I don't mean a few beach-side swimming pools falling into the ocean miserable - I mean millions of people drowning in a storm surge in Bangladesh, and millions more starving to death in Africa miserable. So we can either hope that some mysterious feedback mechanism will appear that puts this all right, or we can figure out how to fix this. And we've actually done this before. In the 1980s, scientists started raising concerns that the ozone layer was being depleted, and an international response reduced our CFC use to levels where we are now seeing the ozone layer recovering. In my cynical moments, I do wonder if the difference between then and now is that the oil lobby is much more powerful than the refrigeration lobby, but actually I think the problem is that reducing CO2 is a much harder problem and so more people just bury their head in the sand. So you can choose - bury your head in the sand (that's really what dreaming of mysterious negative feedback mechanisms is), or get fixing. I have kids and would hope that their kids have as good a life as I do, so I'm fixing.
- neolefty 10y ago
  With CFCs it helped that a single company manufactured 25% of the global supply (according to Wikipedia anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Chlorofluorocarbons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Chlorofluorocarbons) and when presented with evidence that they were harming the environment, led efforts to find alternatives. CFCs were a great victory, and encouraging when it comes to battling CO2 emissions, but also much easier to curtail both politically and technologically.
brc 10y ago
No, you're not ignorant. Yes, if the earth were an unstable system it would have destabilised in the past. Yes, it is a combination of factors poorly understood, like the work only now coming out of CERN. Yes, the ROI of the various treaties and tax plans are beyond negative. Yes, this type of comment is verboten.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  Care to show us your notes about the ROIs of the various treaties and tax plans?
- the8472 10y ago
  > Yes, the ROI of the various treaties and tax plans are beyond negative. Have you factored externalties into those ROI calculations? > Yes, if the earth were an unstable system it would have destabilised in the past. A stable system can still have its equilibrium point shifted in one direction or another. Your blood for example is a buffered solution, keeping a relatively stable pH. But it can still be influenced by many things.
tspiteri 10y ago
I don't get this concern for Earth itself. The planet had much higher CO2 levels before life began. Then plants etc. absorbed some of that CO2, and a lot of it is now in coal, oil, etc. instead of in the air as CO2. When we are burning fuels, we are actually returning the atmosphere to a more original state. However that state is not good for us. So when we are talking about global warming, it is today's life, including us humans, that will suffer, not the planet itself.

by cconroy 10y ago

eru 10y ago

Understanding the climate is hard. Scientists are working on exactly these kinds of problems.

jfoutz 10y ago

It's just a statistic. There are lots you can look at. This one is interesting specifically because it hasn't happened in 4my. The earth will be fine, life will continue. The more specialized something is, the more it's at risk for exceeding tolerance. Costal housing is good example. It's built to withstand perhaps 100mph winds, beyond that roofs come off. The built in mitigation is pretty slow, so there will be perhaps a couple hundred years of rebuilding stuff. Sea walls, levees, more weather resistance.

foxylad 10y ago

You are correct that we don't understand EXACTLY how this works. But we do have an increasingly good idea, and it is now very widely accepted that increasing CO2 levels are due to fossil fuels, and that they are going to make life for future generations miserable. And I don't mean a few beach-side swimming pools falling into the ocean miserable - I mean millions of people drowning in a storm surge in Bangladesh, and millions more starving to death in Africa miserable. So we can either hope that some mysterious feedback mechanism will appear that puts this all right, or we can figure out how to fix this. And we've actually done this before. In the 1980s, scientists started raising concerns that the ozone layer was being depleted, and an international response reduced our CFC use to levels where we are now seeing the ozone layer recovering. In my cynical moments, I do wonder if the difference between then and now is that the oil lobby is much more powerful than the refrigeration lobby, but actually I think the problem is that reducing CO2 is a much harder problem and so more people just bury their head in the sand. So you can choose - bury your head in the sand (that's really what dreaming of mysterious negative feedback mechanisms is), or get fixing. I have kids and would hope that their kids have as good a life as I do, so I'm fixing.

neolefty 10y ago
With CFCs it helped that a single company manufactured 25% of the global supply (according to Wikipedia anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Chlorofluorocarbons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Chlorofluorocarbons) and when presented with evidence that they were harming the environment, led efforts to find alternatives. CFCs were a great victory, and encouraging when it comes to battling CO2 emissions, but also much easier to curtail both politically and technologically.

brc 10y ago

No, you're not ignorant. Yes, if the earth were an unstable system it would have destabilised in the past. Yes, it is a combination of factors poorly understood, like the work only now coming out of CERN. Yes, the ROI of the various treaties and tax plans are beyond negative. Yes, this type of comment is verboten.

dwaltrip 10y ago
Care to show us your notes about the ROIs of the various treaties and tax plans?
the8472 10y ago
> Yes, the ROI of the various treaties and tax plans are beyond negative. Have you factored externalties into those ROI calculations? > Yes, if the earth were an unstable system it would have destabilised in the past. A stable system can still have its equilibrium point shifted in one direction or another. Your blood for example is a buffered solution, keeping a relatively stable pH. But it can still be influenced by many things.

tspiteri 10y ago

I don't get this concern for Earth itself. The planet had much higher CO2 levels before life began. Then plants etc. absorbed some of that CO2, and a lot of it is now in coal, oil, etc. instead of in the air as CO2. When we are burning fuels, we are actually returning the atmosphere to a more original state. However that state is not good for us. So when we are talking about global warming, it is today's life, including us humans, that will suffer, not the planet itself.