12 ms·

We need something like this to stop global warming!

by throw8932894 5y ago

WJW 5y ago
Redistributing heat across an object does not make the object as a whole any cooler.
- fsloth 5y ago
  No but if it affects albedo it has an effect on the incoming radiation. I.e more ice - higher albedo - radiation is not absorbed at the surface.
gmuslera 5y ago
It may slow down for a maybe short while the emission of greenhouse gases originated by permafrost thawing. But that won't solve that we keep adding big amounts of fossil carbon to the atmosphere, nor the amount of fossil carbon that we managed to add to the cycle so far that is what is driving climate change now. To stop global warming net zero plus massive carbon capture is needed, moving pieces in a mostly closed (or at least with stable enough inputs) system won't do the trick.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Perhaps cultivation of reclaimed land could capture some carbon? And it says something about re-greening the Sahara too..
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Carbon capture from re-greening the Sahara would be countered by de-greening the Amazon, since the latter is fertilized by the former as winds blow dust over the Atlantic. These systems are complex, and just doing what intuitively feels right can just as easily be counterproductive.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Hmm, but why does the Amazon need to be constantly re-fertilised? Where does it lose that phosphorus? EDIT: ah, rain seems to leach it away from the amazon basin over time. Still wonder where it all goes though, into the sea?
      - genewitch 5y ago
        Forest ecosystem soil is fragile, because the soil is very loose due to animals, vegetation, insects, mushrooms. A large, old forest only produces on the order of a foot of topsoil in 50 years. It is possible to produce more artificially with rainwater mitigation and drainage paths that are engineered rather than left to chaos. As a side effect, growing in the Sahara would also potentially drastically reduce Atlantic hurricanes. So we have to decide what's more important, trees (move them to Sahara! Or at least replant equal numbers in Sahara and elsewhere) or human lives and infra.
aww_dang 5y ago
Is there any irony in observing the fickle preferences of man in regards to geoengineering? Perhaps our understanding is more limited than some are willing to admit. 63 years ago, there was a push to warm the arctic. In 1978, doomsayers predicted a new ice age. For all of the predictions of apocalypse, none have materialized. However, throughout history fear has been a powerful tool for motivating and manipulating the public. "Ice Age 1978 Leonard Nimoy" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 "List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
- dTal 5y ago
  Of "man"? Your language is as outmoded as your disbelief in anthropogenic climate change.
  - hardlianotion 5y ago
    I don't think parent is blaming women
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  https://www.factcheck.org/2019/05/manipulated-time-cover-on-climate-recirculates/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/05/manipulated-time-cover-on-... > We’ll again refer to the 2008 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that found there was not a scientific consensus in the 1970s on the cooling idea. The authors, by surveying the peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979, found quite the opposite.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Fact check sites like the one you listed will increase their stature when they acknowledge that science is not a process of consensus. I look forward to reading a "fact check" site which "debunks" this ridiculous turn of phrase. Even if we accepted this misnomer in your quote, we can easily observe that "scientific consensus" has shifted throughout history. >(00:12:30) The climatic record in these deep sea cores tells us that there have been eight ice ages in the last 700,000 years. It also tells us when they have occurred. This provides us with a test of various theories of the ice ages. We now have a theory that tells us that changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit act as a pacemaker for the ice age succession. Since this theory can precisely predict when ice ages occured in the past, it also can predict when ice ages will occur in the future. From this theory we can say with confidence that we are currently heading towards another ice age. Dr. James D. Hays https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hays%20et%2076%20Science%20194-1121.pdf https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hays%2...
dathinab 5y ago
no, that proposed project wasn't done with any environmental considerations at all and likely would have pretty devastating environmental effects through various effects. We need a huge collaboration of countries. We don't need a mega project which creation will cause tons of CO2 (building stuff produces CO2 equivalent emissions) have devastating environmental damage, and massive security risks. Assuming we can fix climate change by mega project is just the wrong approach. We need a very (very very) high number on mostly smaller changes (and probably some larger law changes). So that even if some of them fail it doesn't matter in the grater picture, and so that there is actually a realistic chance to pull it of (which for such a hypothetical mega construction is very small for various reasons).
- me_me_me 5y ago
  > We need a huge collaboration of countries. Go ahead we are listening. Who would you go about coordinating and enforcing 'huge collaboration of countries'? All i remember is world leaders coming together, year after year - shake hands, thump their chest expressing how sorrowful they feel, give great speeches how everything will change - and then nothing changes.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    There being a need for something and it happening are two fundamental different thinks. Just because it doesn't happen doesn't mean there is not need for it. The Bering Strait Dam btw. would have required a higher degree of collaboration then is needed to limit climate change. Sure a few less countries would be involved be the involved countries still would need a much deeper level of collaboration which given that it's effect would have been rather negative for many of the cost countries it would have been rather hard to archive any agreement.
  - codingdave 5y ago
    Except that isn't how it has gone - we had 4 years where the US did not sit down and agree, and actually went backwards on climate agreements. This year, the world leadership has come back together for the first time in years. I don't want to go down a political rabbit hole here, but we should at least get the facts straight.

We need something like this to stop global warming!

WJW 5y ago

Redistributing heat across an object does not make the object as a whole any cooler.

fsloth 5y ago
No but if it affects albedo it has an effect on the incoming radiation. I.e more ice - higher albedo - radiation is not absorbed at the surface.

gmuslera 5y ago

It may slow down for a maybe short while the emission of greenhouse gases originated by permafrost thawing. But that won't solve that we keep adding big amounts of fossil carbon to the atmosphere, nor the amount of fossil carbon that we managed to add to the cycle so far that is what is driving climate change now. To stop global warming net zero plus massive carbon capture is needed, moving pieces in a mostly closed (or at least with stable enough inputs) system won't do the trick.

Chris2048 5y ago
Perhaps cultivation of reclaimed land could capture some carbon? And it says something about re-greening the Sahara too..
- kibwen 5y ago
  Carbon capture from re-greening the Sahara would be countered by de-greening the Amazon, since the latter is fertilized by the former as winds blow dust over the Atlantic. These systems are complex, and just doing what intuitively feels right can just as easily be counterproductive.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Hmm, but why does the Amazon need to be constantly re-fertilised? Where does it lose that phosphorus? EDIT: ah, rain seems to leach it away from the amazon basin over time. Still wonder where it all goes though, into the sea?
    - genewitch 5y ago
      Forest ecosystem soil is fragile, because the soil is very loose due to animals, vegetation, insects, mushrooms. A large, old forest only produces on the order of a foot of topsoil in 50 years. It is possible to produce more artificially with rainwater mitigation and drainage paths that are engineered rather than left to chaos. As a side effect, growing in the Sahara would also potentially drastically reduce Atlantic hurricanes. So we have to decide what's more important, trees (move them to Sahara! Or at least replant equal numbers in Sahara and elsewhere) or human lives and infra.

aww_dang 5y ago

Is there any irony in observing the fickle preferences of man in regards to geoengineering? Perhaps our understanding is more limited than some are willing to admit. 63 years ago, there was a push to warm the arctic. In 1978, doomsayers predicted a new ice age. For all of the predictions of apocalypse, none have materialized. However, throughout history fear has been a powerful tool for motivating and manipulating the public. "Ice Age 1978 Leonard Nimoy" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 "List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...

dTal 5y ago
Of "man"? Your language is as outmoded as your disbelief in anthropogenic climate change.
- hardlianotion 5y ago
  I don't think parent is blaming women
ceejayoz 5y ago
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/05/manipulated-time-cover-on-climate-recirculates/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/05/manipulated-time-cover-on-... > We’ll again refer to the 2008 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that found there was not a scientific consensus in the 1970s on the cooling idea. The authors, by surveying the peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979, found quite the opposite.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Fact check sites like the one you listed will increase their stature when they acknowledge that science is not a process of consensus. I look forward to reading a "fact check" site which "debunks" this ridiculous turn of phrase. Even if we accepted this misnomer in your quote, we can easily observe that "scientific consensus" has shifted throughout history. >(00:12:30) The climatic record in these deep sea cores tells us that there have been eight ice ages in the last 700,000 years. It also tells us when they have occurred. This provides us with a test of various theories of the ice ages. We now have a theory that tells us that changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit act as a pacemaker for the ice age succession. Since this theory can precisely predict when ice ages occured in the past, it also can predict when ice ages will occur in the future. From this theory we can say with confidence that we are currently heading towards another ice age. Dr. James D. Hays https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hays%20et%2076%20Science%20194-1121.pdf https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hays%2...

dathinab 5y ago

no, that proposed project wasn't done with any environmental considerations at all and likely would have pretty devastating environmental effects through various effects. We need a huge collaboration of countries. We don't need a mega project which creation will cause tons of CO2 (building stuff produces CO2 equivalent emissions) have devastating environmental damage, and massive security risks. Assuming we can fix climate change by mega project is just the wrong approach. We need a very (very very) high number on mostly smaller changes (and probably some larger law changes). So that even if some of them fail it doesn't matter in the grater picture, and so that there is actually a realistic chance to pull it of (which for such a hypothetical mega construction is very small for various reasons).

me_me_me 5y ago
> We need a huge collaboration of countries. Go ahead we are listening. Who would you go about coordinating and enforcing 'huge collaboration of countries'? All i remember is world leaders coming together, year after year - shake hands, thump their chest expressing how sorrowful they feel, give great speeches how everything will change - and then nothing changes.
- dathinab 5y ago
  There being a need for something and it happening are two fundamental different thinks. Just because it doesn't happen doesn't mean there is not need for it. The Bering Strait Dam btw. would have required a higher degree of collaboration then is needed to limit climate change. Sure a few less countries would be involved be the involved countries still would need a much deeper level of collaboration which given that it's effect would have been rather negative for many of the cost countries it would have been rather hard to archive any agreement.
- codingdave 5y ago
  Except that isn't how it has gone - we had 4 years where the US did not sit down and agree, and actually went backwards on climate agreements. This year, the world leadership has come back together for the first time in years. I don't want to go down a political rabbit hole here, but we should at least get the facts straight.