Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[KingSparta]

Sunday marked the fifth day in a row with 100-degree temperatures at Raleigh Durham International Airport, setting an all-time record.

[rjm]

Today we are at 394 ppm and increasing 2-3 ppm per year.

All of the changes we have seen to date are from a 1 degree increase.

We used to believe that reducing to and stabilizing at 350 ppm might be "safe" because it will only result in an additional 1 degree increase.

Latest paper from James Hansen suggests 350 ppm is probably not safe given the effects we've already seen from 1 degree.

$1 US (1990) equals 9.7 mW of power. 90+% of our power is fossil. Therefore to return to 350 ppm we need to voluntarily reduce our wealth and consumption. Probably not gonna happen given that everybody wants more.

[KingSparta]

whats ppm?

[rjm]

Parts per million of carbon dioxide.

[KingSparta]

Well Besides Burning Oxygen Faster Than It Can Be Reproduced, Cutting Down All The Trees That Make The Oxygen Is Also A Factor. So If We Made More Oxygen The PPM Of carbon dioxide would be off set, Yes?

[rjm]

Yes. To get back to 350 ppm with a semblance of business as usual we need to:

1) stop all use of coal (and replace with nuclear)
2) leave dirty fuels like oil sands in the ground (make do with conventional oil via conservation)
3) stop deforestation (send some of our wealth to developing countries so they don't need to cut trees to catch up to us)

Or we can let excessive debt crash the global economy which will collapse demand for fossil fuels because everyone will be too poor to purchase them. This will then curtail investment in new oil wells which will keep the economy down in perpetuity.

[JimH]

Yes. To get back to 350 ppm with a semblance of business as usual we need to:
3) stop deforestation (send some of our wealth to developing countries so they don't need to cut trees to catch up to us)

Subsidizing birth control might be more effective.  Better behavior may cut consumption, but without a stable population, any savings will soon be lost.

In 1960, just 50 years ago, the world population was 3 billion.  Now it's 7 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

We would have had to raise our automobile mileage from 20 mpg to 45 mpg just to stay even.

[MrC]

And the Cows!

[KingSparta]

Come On Now, Are We Really Going To Put A Plug\Hose On Every Cows Butt?

Not Likely Going To Happen (However I Heard They Have Been Doing Some Testing In This Area).

I Can See Into The Future Where Every Human Being Works At A Work Station When They Set Down They Plug There Ass Into A Large Hose That Goes Back To The Gas Factory. The Energy Produced From There Gas Will Power There Own Work Station.

Don't Eat Enough Beans And You Will Be Laid Off.

This Will Be The Future Recycling.

[KingSparta]

Maybe A Bad Topic But

>> Subsidizing birth control might be more effective.

I Am All For Birth Control, But If I Am Going To Pay For It, Then I Think They Should Pay For One Abortion, The Next One Will Require Sterilization.

I Also Think There Should Be A Limit Of One Kid (I Think China Still Does This, Yes?).


Maybe We Should Build Big Sunglasses For The Earth And Put Them In Orbit.

[rjm]

Maybe We Should Build Big Sunglasses For The Earth And Put Them In Orbit.

It's called geoengineering and lots of people are thinking about different schemes. Some form of space based sun shade has been proposed but is probably too expensive. The most promising idea is to spray sulphur dioxide into the air. Doesn't take much to have a cooling effect. Of course playing with large complex unstable systems can be very dangerous. There may be unintended side effects. And of course which country decides? The one that is suffering heat waves and droughts or the one that has more arable land due to warming? Probably the one with the most guns.