3 ms·

IIRC (sorry, no sources) there is no real "lag" or "inertia" in climate. It has been demonstrated that if we stopped any emission right now, the climate would r

by pjerem 4y ago

IIRC (sorry, no sources) there is no real "lag" or "inertia" in climate. It has been demonstrated that if we stopped any emission right now, the climate would rapidly stabilize to its current state (in a couple of years). However, and maybe it's worse, human civilizations do have huge inertia when it comes to changing our way of doing things. I have no doubt that someday in the future, we will be a zero emission species. But I'm really unsure it will be soon enough.

ryukafalz 4y ago
I’m fairly certain that’s not the case, because even with current levels of warming all the polar ice that can melt at current temperatures has not yet. A short video on background: https://youtu.be/Ix2XprA6A7I https://youtu.be/Ix2XprA6A7I That means some level sea level rise and any other climactic changes resulting from melting polar ice are coming regardless of what we do now. We can influence how much this happens, but we’ve already committed to a lot of damage.
jandrese 4y ago
Definitely not in a couple of years. Our current situation is like a big glass of ice tea that you have set out in the sun. For some time it will remain cool and refreshing, but once the ice cubes have finished melting it quickly becomes warm and blah. We need to move it back into the shade, but that's not possible until we've invested heavily into carbon sequestration, and that's not even fully feasible yet. There are a few pilot programs here and there, but nothing that could be scaled up affordably. Not even close. Worse, any solution requires political will to implement, and as you can see from even this thread there are rich and powerful interests willing to spend a lot of lobbying money to make anything like it as politically unpopular as possible. Even in a normally calm and rational HN forum you have them stopping only slightly short of calling climate change activists the new Hitler. Carbon Capture is supposed to be the supply side of the carbon market, but since the technology doesn't exist those markets have never worked.
originalvichy 4y ago
This goes against everything I’ve read on climate change and its long term effects. The world’s oceans are extremely slow reacting components of the climate. Wikipedia ”climate intertia”. If you have more recent data then please post.

by pjerem 4y ago

ryukafalz 4y ago

I’m fairly certain that’s not the case, because even with current levels of warming all the polar ice that can melt at current temperatures has not yet. A short video on background: https://youtu.be/Ix2XprA6A7I https://youtu.be/Ix2XprA6A7I That means some level sea level rise and any other climactic changes resulting from melting polar ice are coming regardless of what we do now. We can influence how much this happens, but we’ve already committed to a lot of damage.

jandrese 4y ago

Definitely not in a couple of years. Our current situation is like a big glass of ice tea that you have set out in the sun. For some time it will remain cool and refreshing, but once the ice cubes have finished melting it quickly becomes warm and blah. We need to move it back into the shade, but that's not possible until we've invested heavily into carbon sequestration, and that's not even fully feasible yet. There are a few pilot programs here and there, but nothing that could be scaled up affordably. Not even close. Worse, any solution requires political will to implement, and as you can see from even this thread there are rich and powerful interests willing to spend a lot of lobbying money to make anything like it as politically unpopular as possible. Even in a normally calm and rational HN forum you have them stopping only slightly short of calling climate change activists the new Hitler. Carbon Capture is supposed to be the supply side of the carbon market, but since the technology doesn't exist those markets have never worked.

originalvichy 4y ago

This goes against everything I’ve read on climate change and its long term effects. The world’s oceans are extremely slow reacting components of the climate. Wikipedia ”climate intertia”. If you have more recent data then please post.