[HN Gopher] Possibility for strong high-latitude cooling under n...
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Possibility for strong high-latitude cooling under negative
emissions
Author : rgrieselhuber
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-03-06 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| mrfusion wrote:
| Sorry but I'm all panicked out.
| freddealmeida wrote:
| Quite interesting that this is being published in Nature. I think
| there are far worse things that need to be removed. But so little
| is discussed on the affect of the sun moving into a solar
| minimum. That will have some serious consequences as well.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| >That will have some serious consequences as well.
|
| According to NASA [1], that is false.
|
| [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-
| no-i...
| hedora wrote:
| This particular issue has been well understood for at least
| 30 years. Greenhouse gasses are a first order effect. Solar
| cycles are second order.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The principal greenhouse gas is water vapor, and the effect
| of solar variation on that is not at all "well understood".
| whiddershins wrote:
| It is so easy to not pay attention to how bad global cooling,
| and/or co2 reduction curtailing plant growth, could be for the
| environment and for humans.
|
| Global warming and CO2 rise are such difficult problems, and we
| put so much focus there, it makes me really glad to see some
| people taking a broad view.
| hedora wrote:
| Tl;dr: Climate change is likely to shut down the Atlantic
| currents, covering Europe and the US northeast in a glacier.
|
| (I saw a PBS special on this part in the 90's. Recent satellite
| data strongly suggest this is already happening. The last time
| this happened, Europe went from "too hot" to "glacier" in the
| under fifty years.
|
| If we wait for that to happen, then cool the atmosphere, then
| it'll make the coming ice age worse in the short term.
|
| In other decades-old news, if we don't start capturing CO2 after
| that, and the predictions about runaway greenhouse gas mechanisms
| are true, Earth will become like Venus, obliterating life on
| earth.
|
| Am I the only one that learned about this from watching PBS in
| the 90s? Is there something novel in the paper? It's good to
| raise awareness of just how f-cked we are, I guess.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| So you feel confident that Europe will be under a glacier in 50
| years?
| Imnimo wrote:
| I think you've misunderstood the claim - they're saying that
| once the currents shut down, it would take 50 years for
| glaciers to form. But the currents are obviously still
| flowing today, and my understanding is that a collapse is
| projected to take many decades.
| hedora wrote:
| I'm confident we'll get about 50 years warning when/if the
| current stops. It's currently weakening, and weather is a
| chaotic system.
|
| I'm also confident that the root cause of the crunching noise
| and vibrations from the front end of my car will eventually
| lead to a breakdown, but I don't have any idea if it'll
| happen tomorrow or in a year.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| I see. Of course the North Atlantic current will
| change/stop at some point regardless of any actions we take
| (assuming we don't have technology to keep it going
| somehow). But delaying that as long as possible is a noble
| goal.
| peteradio wrote:
| One things for sure, the children born today will be
| genetically optimistic.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Not a great idea to expect to learn about the world from
| sensationalist TV. Especially not such an immature field as
| climate science in the 90's.
| hedora wrote:
| You do realize I mean the 1990's right? The show was
| broadcast in color, so it came after climate change science
| had "matured".
|
| Concretely, the magnitude of our current predicament was
| correctly forecast by computer models well before 1980, and
| the basic mechanisms and effects those models were based on
| were well-established by the 1960s.
|
| Claims to the contrary have been extensively documented to be
| part of a paid misinformation campaign the fossil fuel
| industry ramped up in the early 1980s.
|
| The show wasn't particularly sensationalist, for what its
| worth. Climate change was a bipartisan concern back then, and
| it mostly focused on the fossil records that backed up the
| claims it made. It also talked about the solar cycle's impact
| on earth's average temperature and compared the magnitude of
| the effects over time.
|
| All the technology that was needed to head off disaster was
| already commercialized, assuming a one-two punch, where phase
| two involved better batteries.
|
| No one imagined we would choose to take no action for another
| 30 years.
| hedora wrote:
| To get an idea of the optimism, Biff from Back to the
| Future was based on Trump and ends up waxing an engineer's
| car.
|
| If I had to bet what actor would be president in 2016, I'd
| have guessed Patrick Stewart, and that his second move
| (after installing the captain's chair in the oval office)
| would be pointing at a clean energy plan to replace our
| carbon nuclear fission power grid with fusion / solar and
| saying "make it so".
| randomsilence wrote:
| All that freed, formerly captured carbon comes from trees and
| plankton. How could burning it all lead to life-destroying
| conditions when life must have been able to exist under those
| conditions?
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| "all that kenetic energy released when jumping off a building
| was formerly potential energy stored when walking up the
| stairs. How can that lead to life destroying conditions when
| life previously held that energy?"
|
| The rapid change in environments can make many species no
| longer suitable for their environment leading to extinction.
| Sometimes they can transfer to a new environment, or sustain
| at a degraded efficiency, but often they cannot if the
| environment change is drastic enough. This is happening
| everywhere all at once.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The GP isn't talking about species extinction.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Same reason breaching a big dam does more damage than the
| same volume of water in an undammed river.
| Retric wrote:
| People aren't going to destroy all life on earth via climate
| change because humans are going to be dead in conditions that
| many life forms would happily survive in. Having said that,
| evolution operates on geologic timescales 100 years isn't
| nearly enough time for most species to adapt to significantly
| different conditions. Florida alligators might happily expand
| their range further north in response to climate change, but
| that's different.
|
| As to the larger point, the sun was ~30% dimmer 4.5 billion
| years ago and will get about 67% brighter over the next 4.7
| billion years. While we would be dead long before we could
| free up all the worlds trapped carbon, in such a hypothetical
| situation the world isn't simply returning to an earlier
| state.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Energy on Earth isn't conserved, as it's not an isolated
| system - the Sun is constantly adding energy to the Earth,
| and we are constantly radiating energy out into space as
| well. Coal and oil were basically batteries filled with solar
| energy from millions of years ago. We are now discharging
| those batteries, adding back all of the solar energy captured
| over millions of years to the Earth today, in addition to all
| of the energy the Sun is still adding at more or less the
| same rate.
|
| It's the same principle as what makes a battery fire so
| destructive - all of the energy stored in the battery in a
| plant somewhere else suddenly gets discharged all at once in
| your car.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| You are releasing 1e6 to 1e7 years of energy in the space of
| 1e2.
| twofornone wrote:
| Glaciers increase albedo. I suspect there are numerous
| understated/undiscovered feedback mechanisms which will
| actually result in cooling as the climate changes and keep the
| global temperature livable.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Not a feedback, but a reduction in polar soot due to China
| moving away from dirty coal emissions to nuclear power could
| also increase albedo.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The IPCC reports don't predict anywhere near these disasters,
| even in their worst scenarios.
|
| I'll trust those over a PBS special from the 1900s.
| sgt101 wrote:
| In other news: population crisis on Mars.
| detritus wrote:
| We seem to be so far from a practically-useful level of CO2
| removal that this seems like a shrill level of concern. That
| said, the logic could apply to much quicker solutions that could
| be distributed globally, such as atmospheric albedo modification
| or space based solar barriers (the latter being hugely
| speculative, of course - but I could imagine a few SpaceX
| starships put to poorly-considered use being able to muster
| something in a decade or three).
| go_elmo wrote:
| Approaches aiming at increasing ocean bio activity, thus carbon
| capture by providing "ocean desert zones" with nutrients by
| whirling up ocean floor in those regions seems interesting for
| that purpose. Still a huge inception into the bio system thus
| risky.
| detritus wrote:
| Ah yes, I'd forgotten about iron-seeding - I was thinking
| entirely in terms of industrial solutions.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I still think iron fertilization is the best bet, not for
| co2 removal, but for albedo modification. Keeping
| equatorial kelp or algae mats alive would prevent lots of
| energy from entering the system. Those mats have albedo
| close to snow in the infrared, where water is about as
| absorptive as it gets.
| detritus wrote:
| I wonder if we could somehow use strategic placement of
| fertilisation to encourage processes that laterally help
| in cleaning up (/collecting) plastic pollution in oceanic
| gyres?
|
| A girl can dream.
|
| - ed: I am fascinated by the idea that otherwise horrid
| floating plastic pollution can act as centres for bio-
| accumlation leading to local, floating bio-domains. I
| guess the real problem is plastic bags and fishing nets,
| not toothbrushes that happen to float.
| go_elmo wrote:
| Ive seen stunning simple / passive water column chimney-
| effect approaches to do this using lower water levels
| mixing, no sources though, was german tv (arte station)
| ttiurani wrote:
| This is an important study because most (all?) scenarios used
| by the IPCC depend heavily on these (as of now) wildly
| optimistic CO2 removal levels, either with BECCS or DACs.
|
| In order to hit the "brief and rapidly closing window" we have
| for effective action, we need to look into lowering material
| flows and energy use by targeting overconsumption. We simply
| don't have time to wait for a tech miracle, and - as this study
| points out - the miracle can have huge downsides.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Unless CO2 removal is profitable without subsidies, it's
| pointless and the money should go into Renewables. If you can
| cut emissions, the CO2 takes care of itself quickly from
| natural sinks.
|
| Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have
| zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than
| they have been increasing.
|
| We already have free CO2 removal. The challenge is and always
| has been on the emission side.
|
| CO2 levels are about 420 ppm and go up about 1.5 per year. A
| 120 year half life yields -3.5 ppm per year.
|
| It is worth investing some money in development for the
| moonshot possibility of economic viability. Unless it becomes
| cheaper to capture than build renewables, the the money will
| always be better spent on green energy.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| "Per the ipcc model, if we could wave a magic wand and have
| zero emissions tomorrow, CO2 levels would fall faster than
| they have been increasing."
|
| Traditionally, the idea is that the ocean would absorb the
| 'excess' CO2 put there by fossil fuel combustion over the
| industrial era. However, this is quite a slow process and
| it's entirely possible to reach a new steady state of
| relatively high atmospheric CO2 (and high global
| temperature, i.e. ice-free poles) and stay there for
| several million years - it's happened in the past.
| Furthermore, we have the permafrost melt ongoing across the
| Arctic, and shallow marine sediments are also releasing
| methane and CO2. This will continue for decades in the
| immediate zero-emission scenario, that turning point has
| come and gone.
|
| Maybe if a full transition off fossil fuels had begun in
| 1980, when the science was clear, we'd be stabilizing at
| current conditions (*it takes ~100 years for the climate
| system to finish responding to current forcing, assuming no
| additional forcing, mainly due to oceanic warming lag
| effects). We're in for warming for the next 50 years, no
| matter what, and the world is clearly not getting off
| fossil fuels any time soon, all the major fossil fuel
| actors have plans for status quo production for the next 30
| years (rather than say 3% reduction per year, which would
| mean no fossil fuel production in 30 years).
|
| It's going to happen slowly on human time scales, i.e. the
| scale is decadal for noticeable differences in the year-to-
| year average, but it's also inexorable. "It's in the post"
| is the British saying that applies. Like trying to throw
| the rudder over on the Titanic after the iceberg is
| detected, it's all too little too late.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| The profit / reward is your kids get to live and have kids.
| hannob wrote:
| I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. It points
| precisely to the point: Many current climate scenarios have
| already negative emissions "priced in". We absolutely need to
| have research to better understand what that means, and we
| should have a plan b if negative emissions at large scales
| don't work.
| landemva wrote:
| I didn't downvote though I noticed this, 'We simply don't
| have time to wait ...'.
|
| Whatever the topic, I mentally ignore posts which shill the
| NEXT WORST THING EVER.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I think a more important lesson here is that this is not a
| simple system. its pretty unlikely that we're going to able to
| calmly walk it back to the state it was in before
| landemva wrote:
| There were many prior states. In fact, it changes. Vikings
| had pastures on Greenland until it got cold and they were
| driven off. Greenland is now covered in snow and ice. Will
| Greenland return to pastures? Probably at some time.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| The even more wild concept is that the atmosphere's
| composition was already changing before human involvement, we
| just sped up the process by like 1000x.
|
| We don't normatively need the atmosphere to be "natural," we
| just need it to be in a state that doesn't destroy the
| thousands of years of infrastructure we've built.
| 01100011 wrote:
| What if we tap sources of energy, like fusion and to some
| extent(*) fission, which are novel to the normal solar/earth
| system and release extra heat energy into the atmosphere? Since
| this study is obviously only relevant in the far future, why not
| add in likely future technologies to the mix?
|
| It seems to me that at some point we could just wrap the earth in
| shutters(since we're talking far future anyway) or intentionally
| release greenhouse gasses to servo the planet's temp.
|
| * - I believe much of the geothermal heat is actually heat from
| fission already so I don't know if fission energy changes the
| balance much.
| throwanem wrote:
| > I believe much of the geothermal heat is actually heat from
| fission already
|
| On what basis do you believe this?
| topaz0 wrote:
| This seems to have a good explainer:
|
| https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/probing-question-
| wha...
| no-body wrote:
| But aren't we at the end off the small ice age? And is global
| warming really something we can prevent, or is it part off the
| normal warming and cooling cycles off the earth? I sometimes
| wonder if all the effort we do is in vain.
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| There's a huge difference between warming over a couple tens of
| thousands of years (natural rate), and warming over a couple of
| decades (our current trajectory).
|
| That difference is the eradication of much of life on earth
| that is unable to evolve to a new environment. For example,
| insect numbers worldwide are drastically lower than decades
| ago, and insects are required for almost all pollination of
| plants and a key source of food for small animals. The "food
| chain" collapses if there is no first chain.
|
| Even a partial loss of ecodiversity can lead to further
| problems later.
|
| Our efforts are certainly not in vain.
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