5 ms·
Well, once the CO2 is in the air and stays there, the warming will happen. Then hundreds of years later the threshold is passed and then even removing it from t
by Scarblac 4y ago
Well, once the CO2 is in the air and stays there, the warming will happen. Then hundreds of years later the threshold is passed and then even removing it from the air (something we can't do) won't help anymore.
Once we've emitted enough CO2 to reach 2 degrees warming, it will almost certainly happen that all the ice melts. And there's a point where that will be certain, even if we learn how to remove all CO2 we emitted from the atmosphere. Is how I read it.
The ice on this island is enough to cause about 7m of global sea level rise on its own, iirc.
- gridspy 4y agoFortunately the CO2 does eventually leave our atmosphere, given about 50 years.
- Scarblac 4y agoThat's a lot faster than the numbers I usually see (e.g. Google says 300 to 1000 years).
- folsom 4y agoWhat is the process that removes CO2?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> What is the process that removes CO2? Lots of them [1]. (No free lunch, though. Oceans absorbing carbon makes them acidic.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink
- thechao 4y agoThe snowball Earth's (both of them) were caused by excess serpentine weathering. Serpentine is one of the most common minerals in the Earth's crust — like 80% of it. The serpentine is covered in limestone (and other things) which prevents warm-saline erosion of the serpentine, directly. If you look at the tailings from the coal mines in the TVA, you could "just" ship those tailings to the Gulf coast (using the old train systems) and cause a major glacial period, quite quickly, by grinding up the tailings & dumping them in a mile wide strip from Corpus Christi to Miami.
- akiselev 4y ago> Serpentine is one of the most common minerals in the Earth's crust — like 80% of it. Serpentines are common but they do not make up 80% of the crust. Feldspars are the most common minerals in the crust and they make up less than 60% of it [1]. [1] https://deq.nc.gov/energy-mineral-and-land-resources/geological-survey/geoscience-education/mystery-minerals-fact-sheet/open https://deq.nc.gov/energy-mineral-and-land-resources/geologi...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gridspy 4y agoEdit: the 50 year timeline was my childhood understanding. TIL it is far more complicated. https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page5.php https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/p...
- BirAdam 4y agoWell, if that’s an accurate measure of sea level rise, then ocean salinity would drop significantly and cool the planet very rapidly, and by quite a bit. Not sure what outcome of that would be, but dramatic sudden cooling would likely devastate agriculture.
- bell-cot 4y agoAre you thinking of this theory? Greenland Melts ==> North Atlantic Salinity Falls ==> North Atlantic Ocean Currents Disrupted ==> Local Cooling of Northern Europe If so, sed 's/cool the planet/cool Northern Europe/' Though yes, it'd be locally pretty dire for agriculture. Maybe they could switch to farming fish in all the newly-flooded lowlands...
- mikrotikker 4y agoThe fish will be dead from all the nitrogen run off.