anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

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Tegularius
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Tegularius »

Robert66 wrote: April 20th, 2021, 4:15 am
Tegularius wrote: April 20th, 2021, 3:44 am The problems is none of these are ready for prime time and if one were to be implemented shortly it wouldn't on its own stop the green-house effect from gaining momentum. There would have to be a number of different technologies enabled on a global basis to stop the process...not to mention the fact that all further green-house emissions must cease. Even then we can't be sure whether instead of coming to a standstill it won't continue at a slower rate.
They are all happening now, which is why I listed them.
I think this gives a clearer view than what you listed as already in effect.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environm ... -emissions

https://www.electronicdesign.com/power- ... -a-miracle
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Robert66
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Robert66 »

Yeah, you are right, Tegularius. I will stop trying to be the happy idiot I could never really be, and return to being a depressed realist.
Tegularius
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Tegularius »

Robert66 wrote: April 20th, 2021, 4:52 pm Yeah, you are right, Tegularius. I will stop trying to be the happy idiot I could never really be, and return to being a depressed realist.
Nothing wrong with optimism as long as realism is included, so it doesn't go haywire thinking we're already in the process of having this in control.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
Steve3007
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Steve3007 »

Pattern-chaser wrote:Hmmm. Well, we have refined and concentrated radioactive materials with half-lives approaching that sort of timescale. But that's one of many details.

As the Earth changed throughout its history, it took a very long time - billions of years - before the Earth was survivable for humans. The creation of an oxygenated atmosphere took quite a while, and that was only one of many precursors.

Our doings have left the world polluted - i.e. poisoned - and some of the pollutants are not the sort of thing that can be removed or made safe easily. That might even have to wait until creatures had evolved that would be able to do the job, which could take quite a while.

The fragments of micro-plastic spread throughout the air, water and earth await the emergence of something that could get rid of them.

Pretty much all of the fossil fuels are exhausted, so (if we assume future life might require them???) we would have to wait many millions of years for them to regenerate. ... And that assumes that what we leave behind is capable of supporting the trees and plants to be fossilised.

Then there are the ores, and similar mineral resources, that we have consumed, leaving them changed or combined in such a way that simple extraction is not possible.

I could carry on in this vein for much longer.
Yeah, but a billion years? In much less time than that plate tectonics will have ensured that everything currently on the surface of the Earth will have been subsumed miles under the crust. In a mere 250 million years all of the continents will have joined together again into another big supercontinent that they've decided to call Pangaea Ultima. I think it's easy to forget just what a staggeringly long time a billion years is. It's a significant fraction of the entire age of the (current incarnation of) the universe. So do we really have to worry about things like micro-fragments of plastic (or fragments of micro-plastic) in the air on timescales like that?

I'm all for pointing out how destructive we are on human timescales, but not on those timescales.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Steve3007 wrote: April 22nd, 2021, 6:14 am I think it's easy to forget just what a staggeringly long time a billion years is.

Agreed. And I'm not going to stand on the exact number of 1,000,000,000. But it is also easy to forget just how long it takes for the damage we do to 'self'-repair. Chop down part of an ancient woodland, and then let it recover on its own. It has remaining ancient forest adjacent to it, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem, should it? And yet, after 1000 years of recovery, an observer standing at the side of the forest, looking in, can instantly and clearly see the divide between the forest that was chopped down, and the forest that was left alone. [This was actually done, in Thailand.] Now there's a big difference between a thousand and a billion, but there are much longer-term processes too, that make forest recovery seem to take place in the blink of an eye.

Let's just agree that recovery from human excesses will take a Very Long Time. And let's also remember that I'm not talking about recovering from the state the world is in today. I'm talking about the world as it will be when the final human takes their last breath. By that time, we will be consuming our world so fast that our final gasp will be a very small and quick one. Ever since we discovered we were eating the world, our only reaction has been to consume it faster, and faster still, to take what remains before someone else can/does. What will be left after we finally expire? A bloody big mess that could take up to a billion (??? 🤔) years to recover from...
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Steve3007
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Re: anthropogenic climate change (opening salvo)

Post by Steve3007 »

Pattern-chaser wrote:...Let's just agree that recovery from human excesses will take a Very Long Time...
Agreed!
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