Climate Change

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We saw a chart once that showed how removing the tetraethyl lead from gasoline caused a dramatic decrease in the amount of lead in the air. in people's aggressivity

Fixed that for you
Actually, this is not a joke.

[kladner]

A correction to my statement above regarding the gaseous output of the Laki fissure eruption:

The outpouring of gases, including an estimated 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and an estimated 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide, gave rise to what has since become known as the "Laki haze" across Europe.[8]

[kladner]

Global temperatures are set to rise more than one degree above pre-industrial levels according to the UK's Met Office.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Global warming algorithm:

1. More people make more CO2
2. Planet heats
3. Half of the people die
4. Less people make less CO2
5. Planet cools

Big deal!

Actually, it is a little more complicated than that...

1. There is temporal latency.

1.2. You can keep pumping in the chemicals for far longer than the effects start taking place.

1.3. Then you have people to keep burning stuff while you dig yourself underground.

1.3.1. They die. You live.

2. A few years, or decades or hundreds or thousand years later, humans can again stand on Earth unprotected.

2.1. PROFIT!

[fivemack]

I just have a little trouble with your step 1.3.1.

The major existential problem that the rich world will see with climate change is that some of the places in the poor world which are changed from being able to grow enough crops to feed their population, to not being able to grow enough crops to feed their population, have thermonuclear weapons. And when even 2% of your population have starved, the incentives against using thermonuclear weapons get a whole lot weaker.

In comparison to that, building dykes is a solved problem costing less than rebuilding cities; building your new cities in different places from the old one isn't incrementally much more expensive; you effectively had to build a new port every fifty years anyway because you needed deeper shipping lanes and different ship-unloading equipment, and if you have to build it in a different place because the coastline has moved, that's not a terrible problem.

If the inhabitants of Phoenix (built on the ruins of a Hohokam irrigation scheme that stopped being viable because of climate change) have to move to Austin, move they will.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by fivemack

I just have a little trouble with your step 1.3.1.

OK. Always interested in debate.

Originally Posted by fivemack

The major existential problem that the rich world will see with climate change is that some of the places in the poor world which are changed from being able to grow enough crops to feed their population, to not being able to grow enough crops to feed their population, have thermonuclear weapons. And when even 2% of your population have starved, the incentives against using thermonuclear weapons get a whole lot weaker.

Wow!!! Nuclear weapons??? (George W. Bush: It's properly pronounced New Clear. Say after me... And then go hit a golf ball...)

Originally Posted by fivemack

In comparison to that, building dykes is a solved problem costing less than rebuilding cities; building your new cities in different places from the old one isn't incrementally much more expensive; you effectively had to build a new port every fifty years anyway because you needed deeper shipping lanes and different ship-unloading equipment, and if you have to build it in a different place because the coastline has moved, that's not a terrible problem.

If the inhabitants of Phoenix (built on the ruins of a Hohokam irrigation scheme that stopped being viable because of climate change) have to move to Austin, move they will.

The fundamental point I am trying to make is that people shouldn't be complacent.

[kladner]

If the inhabitants of Phoenix (built on the ruins of a Hohokam irrigation scheme¹ that stopped being viable because of climate change) have to move to Austin², move they will.

1. Wow! Did The Salt River Project use the Native American layout in its early stages? Thanks for that information.

2. Austin could not carry the load. The Hill Country of Texas is parched and burning, and reservoirs are at all-time lows.

[davar55]

Originally Posted by chalsall

...
The fundamental point I am trying to make is that people shouldn't be complacent.

Now that I agree with.

[davar55]

Why don't you do a bit of catch-up reading, ya lazy twit? Starting new threads on old topics because you're too lazy to do a bit of homework - not cool.
Locking thread - if the OP, in his perusal of the existing thread, finds his Q has not been adequately Aed there, he is welcome to post his Q there.

I just wanted to know if my particular questions had been addressed, and you locked my thread just
because of a perceived overlap of topics. What if my direction on the issue was at total odds with
the apparent unanimity being expressed in this thread? Then the forum would lose objectivity and
the opportunity too hear contrary views, if any are to be expressed. I think you unfairly jump the gun.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Global warming algorithm:

1. More people make more CO2
2. Planet heats
3. Half of the people die
4. Less people make less CO2
5. Planet cools

Big deal!

This presupposes that the excess atmospheric CO2 will have some means of reducing itself before step 5 can occur. What are humans currently doing to the world's rain forests?

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

This presupposes that the excess atmospheric CO2 will have some means of reducing itself before step 5 can occur. What are humans currently doing to the world's rain forests?

All the rain forest recycles just a very small percent of the carbon dioxide. Something equivalent to few thousands of square kilometers of plankton or other green algae... Which btw, come by volume, not by surface (unlike the forest, which is "thin", the water is much thicker and it has thousands more layers). Technically you (general you) can fart as much as you want, with all your relatives and their cars and industrial furnaces, you will only succeed to make happy (by giving it enough CO2 to make it drunk, or "get high") some columns of water of some square kilometers of photic zone of the sea.... You people consider yourself too important, and more powerful than you really are..

Edit: before you ask, of course I don't advocate for cutting down all the forests. They have many other roles there (against erosion, natural resources, rain-factories, blah blah).