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Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn
- rickjames28 13y agoLike many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today Yes, global warming has become the religion of leftists.
- indefatigable 13y agoSomeone famous once said something to the effect of: "When people believe in nothing, they will believe anything." Interestingly enough most of those people are completely in denial about their own irrational zealotry.
- vertr07 13y agoI think what you are referring to is: “He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” ― Alexander Hamilton Nice try though.
- indefatigable 13y agoActually it seems like that's not the correct attribution. It was probably Peter Marshall: "Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for—because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."
- vertr07 13y agoSeems like he mixed a few quotes up to me. ;)
- emil0r 13y ago"One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything." Malcolm Muggeridge
- indefatigable 13y agoThat's it, thanks!
- vertr07 13y agoI always find it funny when the religious claim that atheists are actually religious too and use that to dismiss them.
- jessaustin 13y agoLaugh away, but I'm not religious at all, and the same bullshit that turned me away from religion also turns me away from atheism.
- MartinCron 13y agoNo one group of humans has a monopoly of being 100% free from bullshitters. There's a large group of mostly silent atheists who are perfectly reasonable, just as there are groups of less-silent lunatics.
- jessaustin 13y agoTrue enough, but this observation cuts both ways. There are also large groups of mostly-silent religious people who are perfectly reasonable, to a point. Like the atheists, however, many religions allow the prudentialists, perfectionists, and guilt-trippers to shit all over the place. No thanks, to both of them.
- MartinCron 13y agoSerious question: if you're not a believer and you're not a nonbeliever, where did you wind up?
- vertr07 13y agoNihilism?
- jessaustin 13y agoI mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos. At this point in time I'm more interested in the experiences of living and learning. I don't care enough about "ultimate" questions or answers to accept or reject them. I don't need to be right about this; tomorrow I might decide to be a hardcore fundamentalist X, for any value of X. When I talk to friends and family who have beliefs (or not) of any sort, I try to emphasize the good parts of their systems: those parts that seem the most likely to help them in the ways they need help. I also critique those concepts that don't seem likely to help, but only for that reason, not because they're "true" or not. I've probably said too much; this is really off-topic for HN.
- DenisM 13y agoIt's not just global warming, it's also the "food safety" button - the GMO scaremongering and the whole "organic" deal. Both conservatives and liberals get very religious about what people put in their bodies; the two sides differ primarily on which orifice concerns them the most.
- mikeyouse 13y agoThis is such a ridiculous statement. Leftists like Bill Gates, Newt Gingrich, John Hunstman, Frederick Smith, Susan Collins, Tim Pawlenty? Cap and Trade was a free-market republican idea originally [1], but now that it's being advocated by the 'Leftists', it's become much more politicized. A plurality of scientists agree that steps should be taken, the FUD denial is all paid for by a dozen companies who stand to profit from additional delays, yet it's somehow comparable to 'religion' to think that we should take action? [1] - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of-Mind-Blue-Sky-Thinking.html?c=y&story=fullstory http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of-Min...
- jessaustin 13y agoCap'n Trade was, is, and will always be a guaranteed frenzy of corrupt corporatist rent-seeking. Both varieties of Coke-and-Pepsi Repubmocrat eat from that trough. I actually wish they'd pass a carbon tax, only to forestall the disaster that Cap'n Trade would be.
- indefatigable 13y agoMost scientists agreed that fire involved phlogiston not so very long ago.
- Steko 13y agoThank god the coal companies of the day discredited them. Oh no, it was science that discarded phlogiston? Carry on.
- baddox 13y agoHe didn't say only leftists.
- MartinCron 13y agoOr, an atheist who sees a profound ethical issue uses a religious metaphor to describe the magnitude and emotional response, take your pick.
- losethos 13y agoGod says... Virtual-Notary.Org hereby notes that on Date: Friday September 13, 2013 15:51.18 EDT (UTC-0400) a random drawing in the range [1, 100000], inclusive, based on a hardware source of true randomness, yielded the following decision. Random Value: 24459 ----- 7:15 And Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. 7:16 And he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places. 7:17 And his return was to Ramah; for there was his house; and there he judged Israel; and there he built an altar unto the LORD. 8:1 And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel. 8:2 Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba. 8:3 And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment. 8:4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, 8:5 And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. 8:6 But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.
- mindblink 13y agoNicely done media-rich layout for an extremely important, if thoroughly depressing subject. Personally, I had a hard time slogging through it, due to the overwhelming nature of it all. We need more great coverage like this. Great job, Seattle Times!
- jensenbox 13y agoNice pun in the title.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tsotha 13y agoThis is the real danger from extra CO2.
- jessaustin 13y agoYou read TFA! I wish it were surprising how many here didn't, before climbing up on their soapbox.
- revscat 13y agoLike many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that such a solution will arise. The powers that be in our world are dedicated to economics, not science, and certainly not to the environment. Their altars are derivatives and overnight lending rates, of war and spying, of realpolitik and power. Humanity, I do not think, is likely to survive this coming apocalypse without widespread civil uprisings against the current power establishment, and with it a sea change in what is viewed as unethical or sinful: unnecessary CO2 production being viewed as the great evil that is is, an existential threat to every extant political, religious, and economic group. Instead we have the Koch brothers, Apple vs. Google flame wars, and the expenditure of almost unbelievable energies on wars and political positioning. It's insane. I don't think humanity will survive into the 22nd century, and it will be our own damn fault for not rising up and removing those power structures that lead us to this point.
- ridicter 13y agoIf you're looking for a direct way to get involved in addressing climate change, check out 350.org. 350 was started by Bill McKibben, the author and environmentalist who first wrote about global warming in 1989. 350 is what scientists consider the safe upper limit to CO2 PPM in the atmosphere. There are local chapters all over--I'm involved in the Portland one. I deal with the struggle you mentioned all the time. In an ideal world, I would be channelling all my energy into addressing climate change. But I have to eat, so I channel my energy into the startup world with the hope that one day I can become more deeply involved in helping solve climate change.
- zevyoura 13y agoFor reference, we are currently at approximately 394 ppm [0] [0]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
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- moocowduckquack 13y agoSo, how do we build solar faster? The energy is there, there is ~89 petawatts of incoming solar hitting the ground and we apparently use ~18 terawatts and it looks technically achievable using current technology, so the main restriction would seem to be production capacity and capital costs.
- jallmann 13y agoWe'd have to cover too much land with solar panels. What we need are more nuclear power plants, but no one will build them anymore.
- yk 13y agoYou need something like half of the Sahara to produce the global primary energy consumption from solar panels alone. [1] ( Or the next few largest deserts combined.) So this is certainly not easy, but it is on the scale of doable. On the other hand, there are reasons why no one has ever tried to finance a nuclear power plant out of his own pockets, it is basically a bet on the interest rate of the next 30 years. ( And besides, we see in Germany that nuclear power gets slaughtered in the market when there is too much renewable energy. [2]) [1] 100 TW primary energy, 100 W/m^2 for solar irradiation on earth and 20% efficiency of the solar cells. Then you need 5e6 m^2. [2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-22/windmill-boom-curbs-electric-power-prices.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-22/windmill-boom-curbs...
- moocowduckquack 13y ago[1] 100 TW primary energy An article by MIT claims 14TW - http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy-scale-part1-1024.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy-scale-part1-1024.h... - and I've seen figures from 12TW to 20TW bandied around and I tend to use 18TW when running the numbers, but I have never seen an estimate as high as 100TW. Where's that figure from?
- yk 13y agoUps, good catch. It is from a old blog post from myself [1]. The reasoning was 10 billion people, with first world energy needs ( 10 kW). The alternative to use this number is, that you get a safety factor of 6 to account for using solar as baseload, weather and everything else that dissipates energy. Edit: Additionally, the power of solar panels used is for England, not the Sahara. The purpose of the posting was essentially a back of the envelope calculation with pessimistic assumptions. [1] http://yoshi-k.de/2008/09/die-plausibilitat-der-solarenergie/ http://yoshi-k.de/2008/09/die-plausibilitat-der-solarenergie... ( German)
- sliverstorm 13y agoGood thing we're shutting down nuclear reactors and spinning up coal plants.
- w0rd-driven 13y agoIs the problem that we're simply creating more CO2 than can be manufactured back into O2 by plants? Would the practicality of a "CO2 vent to space" work? We vent the excess but obviously not everything considering we wouldn't want to destroy all plant life on earth (and subsequently our own in the process). The one major downside is if this wasn't tightly controlled and a "leak" happened we could foster the end of life on the planet. It looks like ocean acidification would do that already so if it'd be the lesser of two evils I'd go for the one we could control. The more obvious choice is to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. How's that really been going all this time? Yeah that's what I thought. Rock? Meet Hard Place.
- masklinn 13y ago> Would the practicality of a "CO2 vent to space" work? Not really. First you need to capture the CO2, then you need to send it to space. Considering the scales involved we're unable to do either.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Would the practicality of a "CO2 vent to space" work? No. The atmosphere is not isolated from space in way that could be addressed by venting (selective or not). You could in principal isolate CO2 and launch it into space (long-term, that's an oxygen-depletion strategy, but, ignoring the resource requirements, it might be better than building it up in the atmosphere on some time scales), but when you consider the resource (including energy) costs of launching material into space, that's a pretty bad idea, especially given that if you can isolate it, you can sequester it on earth with the same atmospheric effect without launching it into space.
- kaybe 13y agoThe problem is that the carbon cycle is pretty much closed at the plant side. They create O2, but during burning, rotting or other biological activity it gets transformed into C02 again. You can see this in the data - during the northern hemisphere winter CO2 goes up, during summer it goes down. There's also a similar day-night cycle. What happens then is that more CO2 is added, and it seems to be clear at this point that the plants are not keeping up - even losing ground due to land use change and deforestation. Main carbon sinks are ocean uptake (the problem discussed in the article), weathering and the small amounts of organic matter that sink below the ground/sea/lakes without rotting (and which will create new coal and oil in time). Apart from the first point, these processes happen on geologic time scales. (Also, shells of small sea animals, but again a miniscule factor. Those will be the next lime rocks.) What you suggest is a new sink for carbon. However, it would probably cost more energy than can be gotten from fossil fuels because gravity. (Sry, too tired to run the calculations right now.)
- DanBC 13y agoWhat can I, as an individual with no money nor power, do to help stop this? I can reduce my energy use as far as possible. Apart from the online stuff I'm pretty low CO2. I can reduce, reuse, and recycle. (I need to get better at that.) But what else can I do?
- pilom 13y agoDecrease your transportation needs. Running a gasoline vehicle for 1 second produces more CO2 than turning off all of the zombie loads in your house. Move closer to work so your commute is shorter and you'll cut your carbon footprint more than any other thing you could do.
- mayanksinghal 13y agoI guess we can pick the alternative energy source of our liking and evangelize for it. We can also technologically, monetarily, electorally and emotionally support the people who are looking for and deploying these alternatives. At least temporarily switch to ecologically cheaper foods, so that species who are facing problems get a few decades of rest, and recommend your preference to others who might enjoy the change as well.
- rosser 13y agoThe ecological impact of meat is one of the biggest reasons I became a vegetarian.
- geedy 13y agoCrowd fund energy initiatives. Depending on your views on various energy sources, i.e. solar, take a look at https://www.sunfunder.com/ https://www.sunfunder.com/ https://joinmosaic.com/ https://joinmosaic.com/ Also, don't become too pessimistic. Even here, its pretty obvious that people tend to fall into two camps: doomers or deniers. Very few in between. I have spent the better part of a year struggling with depression related to the realization of the scale of environmental and sustainability issues facing civilization. I was a doomer, and some days, I still am. That said, I also see that the uptake of renewable energy is accelerating. Electric car sales were considered negligible two years ago, and now they are growing fast. Thats not to say that there aren't HUGE challenges facing us. But I also feel more hopeful that things will eventually change in time.
- indefatigable 13y agoSince regulating CO2 is such a useful political tool, it's not surprising that a new hypothesis justifying regulation has been making its way into the mainstream as the global warming movement collapses. I doubt that the researchers involved are interested as much in the politics, but it's fair to say that they wouldn't be getting a fancy new media campaign if their results didn't support the movement. Remember Marcott et al?
- Steko 13y ago"as the global warming movement collapses" ... "Remember Marcott et al?" Sorry most of us dont frequent bonkers climate denialism blogs. There's nothing there to the foaming at the mouth over Marcott: http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/climate-science-once-again-finds-itself-fighting-with-hockey-sticks/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/climate-science-once-... Unfortunately, almost all of the controversy was completely off-target, and a lot of it displayed a significant misunderstanding of the claims of the Marcott paper.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoThe most important component of a strategy to reduce CO2 emissions is a carbon tax, which is economically equivalent to a cap-and-trade system. However, people involved in tech seem to be especially prone to what I call a "problem solving" bias: discrete problems require discrete solutions, and we just have to figure out if the right solution is solar, nuclear, or the Savory Institute. The (correct) economic point of view is that there are many possible solutions, and a carbon tax properly incentivizes implementing all of them. On the issue of China, because their per capita emissions are so low, and any reasonable global cap and trade system would allocate CO2 emissions rights to countries on a per-capita basis (or at least per-capita indexed to some base year like 1960), China is not actually the bad guy, and under a fair cap and trade system they would be net sellers of CO2 credits not the other way around. However too many people are blinkered by anti-Sinitism to accept this fact.
- indefatigable 13y agoGiving politicians the authority to levy a carbon tax is an absolutely terrible idea, and it has nothing to do with how I feel about China.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoI believe that the idea that China is obstructing a global carbon tax (among supporters of such a tax) mainly comes from racism and is not supported by the facts. However, people oppose global/national carbon taxes for a number of reasons unrelated to racism. I'm not sure why you are concerned with the authority to levy a carbon tax, since (1) such a tax would almost certainly be beneficial and (2) politicians already have essentially unlimited legal authority to raise taxes of any sort.
- indefatigable 13y agoWe seem to disagree, as I'm convinced that a carbon tax would almost certainly be an unmitigated disaster.
- rwallace 13y ago
- javajosh 13y agoJust out of curiosity, is there anything objectively better about colorful coral than the drab and dreary sea-life? The implication is that we should be upset that our sea life is about to get less pretty.
- socialist_coder 13y agoIf you read the article or watched the video it answers your question.
- gwern 13y agoThe article goes into plenty of detail about the commercial impact.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIt engenders a larger, more complex ecosystem with greater diversity and resiliency.
- ISL 13y agoWow! This is a sea change for the Seattle Times, too. The Times is a newspaper. This is the first time I've seen anything approaching this quality in video form from them. Strong work.