Pepe's Climate Thread

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I work in geophysics, you sir are even dumber than flat earth conspiracists.

You do know the difference between being rational and engaging in catastrophisation, right?





If you believe all life on this planet will become extinct in 12 years, then please, enjoy your youthful angst.

I suspect you are also human?...

You know the difference between debate & just being an a**hole don't you?

I've often thought that worry about global warming is the climate version of apocalyptic leanings. It's based mainly on paranoid worry about the uncertain future.

There is zero danger of out of control warming. The warming is not going to spiral into endless warming that wipes out the planet. It just isn't going to happen.

In reality, a warmer Earth is a more productive Earth. The real disaster is not warming but cooling. We are currently in a warm period of an ice age. When this warm period ends and the next glaciation begins, people are going to be starving to death around the world because the Earth will no longer be able to support as much life. The real question is whether more people will starve to death than will be killed in wars over the dwindling resources.

I'm solidly in favor of global warming.

No plastic has gone to far.

You, sir, are a climate change flip flopper then.

The rest of us like fresh air. It's pretty simple.

You are a most persistent Troll. Even when no one else is posting you come up with dribble to support your biases. Give it a rest will ya?

Mod note -

I have merged several closely-related threads created by the same user.

I appreciate that it can be frustrating to speak to people who seem resistant to discussion. However, please refrain from personal attacks. Focus on the facts of the matter. If a user is not interested in facts, then quietly disengage rather than snapping at them.

I expect all users to engage constructively with each other. I will consider the proportionality of responses to non-constructive behaviour.

Understood. My apologies.

Why not split harmful carbon dioxide into harmless carbon and oxygen?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... n-dioxide/

That would to be the most obvious solution.

"At Sandia National Laboratories, we are working to apply concentrated sunlight to drive high-temperature thermal reactions that yield carbon monoxide, hydrogen and oxygen from CO2 and water"

It requires energy - the very energy fossil fuels are exploited for.
By the way, plants do it.

The link LNH has posted is about the user of solar energy for the purpose. It isn't quite artificial photosynthesis but it is close. I think you are right to say that the thermodynamics are probably quite challenging. I also think there are probably going to be problems getting high concentrations of CO2 except in the vicinity of fossil fuel burning, so this is not suitable for Direct Air Capture and there are several competing technologies for high-concentration carbon capture. Finally, of course, as you note we do effectively make use of similar chemical pathways simply by planting more plants!

I'm a little hesitant to wade into this thread, because well the climate conversation seems to not be a conversation at all, just random yelling. But in case someone does want to have an actual conversation.

IPCC future projections and pathways

The October 2018 report is where I am drawing my information from: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/. The IPCC report is focused on pathways to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. According to their projections it is necessaryto sharply reduce emissions in 12 years, or you are committed to an overshoot of 1.5C. This is the source of the infamous "12 years until the planet dies." This is a pretty sever mis-characterization of the IPCC's reporting which in their own modelled pathways higher emissions earlier can be offset by more aggressive negative carbon technology later. For various reasons that I can go into more detail on, I believe this scenario (pathway 4 in the graphic) is the only pathway that has any chance of actually happening.

When it comes to CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal):

The very reason humans have burned enormous quantities of fossil fuels that resulted in current CO2 concentrations was to obtain energy. To make this CO2 coal again, you would need to put at least the same amount of energy into the process - probably much more as efficiency wouldn't be perfect - while still producing all the energy the humanity needs. Not very realistic.

I'm a big fan of temperate zone forests. They are wonderful solar-powered carbon sinks. And a lot of them could grow in the developed countries that can afford losing some of their arable lands. This is something that can be done now, not in some unspecified technological future.

Magz, while you're correct about remaking fossil fuels, that is not necessary. In all futures we need a carbon neutral energy source (currently doesn't exist). With a different energy source the challenge becomes merely to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, not to chemically reduce it back to hydrocarbons. Still challenging, but not thermodynamically impossible.