Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

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Originally Posted by danthepoetman

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the objects in orbit will fall eventually. On the moon, you're right: forget it: it will be there till the expansion of the sun.

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Satellites will not stay in orbit forever. How long they stay up depends on how high they are and the satellite's ballistic coefficient, or mass/frontal area. The drag from our atmosphere decreases with height. Satellites in low orbits, say 500 km, will decay in a few years. At 1000 km they will stay up perhaps a century. Above a few thousand km they would stay practically forever. Space Junk is becoming a serious problem.

There's the two Voyager spacecraft - "1" is about 2 x 10^10 km away and about to enter interstellar space. She should last!!

Climate change, not the national debt, is the legacy we should care about

Worry about the grandchildren? Then stop global warming, but don't pretend deficit reduction by slashing pensions is for them:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...al-debt-legacy

What are those humans doing to this place??

New evidence that the Mayan civilisation was destroyed due to climate change.

Did Climate Change Kill the Mayans?


http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/mayans/

There are a lot of things that didn’t kill the Mayans: asteroid strikes, planet-wide quakes, global cataclysms prophesied by shamans and etched into ancient calendars. What did wipe them out was likely something that is far less mystical, and indeed is entirely familiar to modern civilizations: climate change. If you want a look at what we could face in the decades and centuries ahead, look at what one of the world’s greatest cultures suffered a millennium ago. That’s the conclusion of a newly released study and what it lacks in Hollywood-friendly drama, it makes up in sound — and scary — science.

The arc of the Mayan rise and fall is well known: The civilization first took hold in 1,800 BC, in the Central American region that now includes and surrounds Guatemala. It grew slowly until about 250 A.D. At that point, a great expansion of the culture — known to archaeologists as the Classic Period — began and continued to 900 A.D., yielding the architectural, political and textual artifacts that have so mesmerized scientists. But a decline began around 800 A.D. and led to a final collapse about 300 years later.

The Mayan arc was hardly smooth and steady, and there were periods of turbulence and decline even during the golden era. The great settlement of El Mirador, which once might have been home to 100,000 people, collapsed around 300 A.D, for example. From the fifth to eights centuries A.D., there was an explosion of the rich tablet texts that provided so many insights into how the Mayans lived and worked. Suddenly, however, starting in 775 A.D., the number of texts began to plunge by as much as 50%, a bellwether of a culture that was declining too.

There have been a lot of theories for what accounted for such cycles, with climate among the most-mentioned. The better the year-to-year weather — with plenty of rainfall and reasonably steady and predictable temperatures — the better crops do, and the more the culture and economy can expand. The texts have hinted at declines in productivity, perhaps climate-related, coinciding with generations of unrest, but there was never a precise way to confirm those writings. Analysis of lake sediments can yield a reliable reading of the levels of sulfur, oxygen isotopes and other atmospheric markers at various points in history, which reveal a lot about rainfall and other critical variables. But the Mayans themselves often unwittingly disturbed those sediments, with deforestation — including wide-scale burnings — and fishing.

Anthropologist Douglas Kennett of Penn State University, leader of an international team of researchers from the U.S., Belize, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere thus decided to look at another, less vulnerable, source of evidence: stalagmites in caves. Some of the rainfall absorbed by the ground over the course of centuries will seep into caves and be incorporated into the drip-drip-drip of wet limestone that causes stalagmites to form. Oxygen isotopes entrained in the rain can provide an indicator of how wet a region was at any one point in history.

As Kennett and his colleagues reported in the current issue of Science, they focused their investigation on a cave in the jungles of Belize, which is within 1.5 km (.9 mi.) of one significant Mayan site and 19 mi. (30 km) of three others. In 2006, the scientists harvested a 22-in. (56-cm) stalagmite from deep within the cave. Knowing the rate at which stalagmites develop, they could calculate that the top 16.3 in. (415 mm) of it had been growing continuously since 40 B.C. Every 0.1 millimeter — or about four one-thousandths of an inch — corresponded to about 0.5 years. That’s an awfully fine-grained way to look at history, and the analysis led to some awfully detailed conclusions.

Droughts lasting at least a few decades each occurred from 200 to 1100 AD, and repeatedly coincided with struggles and upheaval in the Mayan culture. There were dry periods in the 640 to 660 window, for example, and there was also a lot of warfare in that period, which makes sense for a culture fighting over swindling resources. Droughts from 820 to 870 similarly were associated with an outbreak of fighting, as well as the disintegration of local polities, or ruling bodies. The decline in historical texts began not long before another period of severe drying, and the collapse of the Mayan culture itself, directly corresponds to the most severe period of drying, from 1020 to 1100.

Broadly, explains Kennett, the most generous period of rainfall during the millennium or so the Mayans thrived was from 450 to 660. “This led to the proliferation of cities like Tikal, Copan and Carasol,” he says. “The new climate data show that this salubrious period was followed by a general drying trend…that triggered a decline in agricultural productivity and contributed to social fragmentation and political collapse.”


The cause of the climate upheaval that claimed the Mayans was not, of course, human activity, since their culture thrived and died long before the industrial age. Instead it was caused by the combined effects of El Niño events and changes in the northeast and southeast equatorial winds known as the intertropical convergence zone. “The preceding conditions stimulating societal complexity and population expansion helped set the stage for later stress on [Mayan] societies and the fragmentation of political institutions.”

This should not give comfort to the dwindling band of modern-day climate-change deniers likely to take the study as proof that the planet’s current climate woes are merely natural fluctuations. The Mayan drying trend played out over centuries, after all. What we’ve been experiencing is the more abrupt, short time-scale variety, a phenomenon that was first foreseen in climate models nearly 40 years ago, and has been unfolding pretty much on schedule and as predicted. The Mayans had no such power to forecast events and certainly couldn’t correct them. We can do both, and the lesson of the study is that we may pay mightily if we choose to take no action. No culture, as the vanished Mayans so starkly illustrate, is too big to fail.

More: Butterflies Moving North to Escape Climate Change



Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/m...#ixzz2BvS5Fk1m

A little ego engineering anybody?

http://io9.com/5959069/10-ways-geoen...?tag=superlist

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Originally Posted by trish

A little ego engineering anybody?

http://io9.com/5959069/10-ways-geoen...?tag=superlist

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Thanks for an interesting link, Trish....but...only yesterday the papers were full of the report from the International Energy Agency (see link) which claims the development of shale reserves in the US will free it from dependency on foreign imports and even make it a larger producer of petroleum than Saudi Arabia, thereby increasing carbon emissions in the US over a span of time when they are supposed to be falling...in addition to which we could end up with more petroleum than water in places like China...however...this does assume that all of the indigenous sources of shale oil and gas in the US are developed, which in itself is a controversial and as yet untested policy decision...it also assumes an uninterrupted and continuing growth of demand for oil and gas throughout the world, and that isn't a given either....
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

I am always dubious of "breakthrough" stories. that's not generally how science proceeds.
So I wonder what the scientists here make of this story given front page treatment recently in a British Newspaper? I've not seen reports on it anywhere else?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...s-8217382.html


Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis
Is scientific breakthrough a milestone on the road to clean energy?

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."

Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages.

"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive, who revealed the breakthrough at a conference at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.

"There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent.

"We don't have any of the additives and nasty bits found in conventional petrol, and yet our fuel can be used in existing engines," he said.

"It means that people could go on to a garage forecourt and put our product into their car without having to install batteries or adapt the vehicle for fuel cells or having hydrogen tanks fitted. It means that the existing infrastructure for transport can be used," Mr Harrison said.

Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy.

Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further. It could transform the environmental and economic landscape of Britain, Mr Harrison explained.

"We are converting renewable electricity into a more versatile, useable and storable form of energy, namely liquid transport fuels. We think that by the end of 2014, provided we can get the funding going, we can be producing petrol using renewable energy and doing it on a commercial basis," he said.

"We ought to be aiming for a refinery-scale operation within the next 15 years. The issue is making sure the UK is in a good place to be able to set up and establish all the manufacturing processes that this technology requires. You have the potential to change the economics of a country if you can make your own fuel," he said.

The initial plan is to produce petrol that can be blended with conventional fuel, which would suit the high-performance fuels needed in motor sports. The technology is also ideal for remote communities that have abundant sources of renewable electricity, such solar energy, wind turbines or wave energy, but little in the way of storing it, Mr Harrison said.

"We're talking to a number of island communities around the world and other niche markets to help solve their energy problems.

"You're in a market place where the only way is up for the price of fossil oil and at some point there will be a crossover where our fuel becomes cheaper," he said.

Although the prototype system is designed to extract carbon dioxide from the air, this part of the process is still too inefficient to allow a commercial-scale operation.

The company can and has used carbon dioxide extracted from air to make petrol, but it is also using industrial sources of carbon dioxide until it is able to improve the performance of "carbon capture".

Other companies are working on ways of improving the technology of carbon capture, which is considered far too costly to be commercially viable as it costs up to £400 for capturing one ton of carbon dioxide.

However, Professor Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York said that the high costs of any new technology always fall dramatically.

"I bought my first CD in the 1980s and it cost $20 but now you can make one for less than 10 cents. The cost of a light bulb has fallen 7,000-fold during the past century," Professor Lackner said.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

I am always dubious of "breakthrough" stories. that's not generally how science proceeds.
So I wonder what the scientists here make of this story given front page treatment recently in a British Newspaper? I've not seen reports on it anywhere else?

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Try this for an answer:
Are British Engineers Really Producing Petrol from Air Technology?

Posted October 22, 2012
Robert Webb


The UK press has gone mad over a new energy technology in recent days. I’ve been asked whether it is really as exciting as it seems?

“Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis” ran the headline in the Independent on 19th October, and the story was picked up by the BBC on various channels. “we have been inundated here at AFS with requests for media interviews and comments from social media forums” says the home page of the company’s website - Air Fuel Synthesis.

So is it real? Well it certainly has a highly credible and solid technology foundation - the company was founded by Professor Tony Marmont, who has worked on aspects of renewable energy for many years.

Is it highly novel? Not really. The basic idea is that petrol, like all fossil fuels, is made of hydrocarbons - that is, long chains of hydrogen and carbon atoms. So if you use the right catalysts and processes, you can combine hydrogen and carbon to make fuel, which is what they do.

The hydrogen comes from the electrolysis of water and the carbon can come from the air - though the company speak about highly concentrated sources of CO2 like breweries, distilleries or aerobic digesters.

The problem is of course the question of how much energy is needed to run the whole process. The energy can come from renewable sources - and needs to, in order to keep it carbon-neutral - but the question is whether that energy is better used elsewhere, and more to the point, how much it costs to use it here.

I have seen statements for similar technology that it would require about 20 kWh to produce a litre of fuel. I very much doubt that this includes the energy which would be required if the carbon dioxide were to come from the air (concentrated sources are not that widespread). But even assuming that it does include this and is therefore extendable on a large scale, the problem is that that 20 kWh from a wind turbine or other clean energy source would power an electric car to travel about 60 km, whereas that litre of fuel (which will contain about 10 kWh) would power an internal combustion engined car only 15 km.

Let’s recap those numbers - they are surprisingly stark: we would get four times more mobility out of the primary energy if we used it in electric cars, than if we produced air fuel - at least four times, given the CO2 extraction energy issue and given the fact electric cars are still early stage technology. The difference expands to seven times if you take the efficiency of a Tesla Roadster.

About 13% of our transport fuel is used in applications which require liquid fuel - aviation and shipping - and this innovation has a great and potentially lucrative market there. But for the largest share of the transport market - private cars - the weight of the numbers strongly suggests that EVs are likely to be more successful.

I hate to splash even a few drops of cold water on new innovators’ work, as I’ve spent many years innovating myself - however I’ve also come to the conclusion that our media’s slightly hysterical obsession with the "new new thing" is destructive to the progress of clean energy. The fact is that the physics is quite simple, we have almost the technology we need already, and the main issue is not innovation, but deployment (and the incremental innovations and cost reductions that will follow from large scale deployment).

* The Numbers
Energy consumption of petrol car: 70 kWh/100 passenger-km (typical family car)
For electric car: 34 kWh/100p-km - Nissan Leaf, according to the US EPA.
For Tesla Roadster (2-seater sports car): 21 kWh/100p-km - EPA.
http://theenergycollective.com/node/133691

Thanks for that Stavros

Obama Belatedly Calls For National Conversation On Climate Change:

Obama Belatedly Calls For National Conversation On Climate Change - YouTube

Interesting article Stavros. Just got around to reading it. Thanks.

Very interresting articles, Prospero and Stavros.
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I can't help thinking that this place might look like this, if we're still here in 200 years...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ar-Reg_(2).JPG
Or either this...
http://blog.seya-art.com/wp-content/...t/desert03.jpg
And if we aren't, like this...
http://www.hummingbirdinnbelize.com/...scomb_main.jpg
http://wallpapers.wallpapersdepo.net...-1680x1050.jpg

....

World Bank Fears Devastating 4.0 Degree Warming

The World Bank warned that global temperatures could rise by four degrees this century without immediate action.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/worl...ng-121119.html

Fox News Viewer: Shocking Climate Change Evidence:

Brainwashed Fox News Viewer: Shocking Climate Change Evidence Changed My Mind! - YouTube

From Fossil Fuels to Global Warming Denial, Koch Brothers May Be Biggest Force Behind U.S. Inaction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU6vnujNizc

http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15...-one-pie-chart

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/op...?smid=pl-share

Everyone dies.

meh

fukken get over it.

Then do it already.

http://sppiblog.org/news/bad-boy-sma...all-of-silence

Show me a planet in thermal stasis and I'll show you a dead planet.

Show me a planet with sustainable life and I'll show you a planet, not in thermal stasis, but in dynamic equilibrium.

Come on, you said everybody dies, so why don't you do it already? Not ready yet? That's the point.

I see Mocnkton is still lying with numbers.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...ree_op_ed.html

Climate change 'kills 300,000 every year'

Three hundred thousand people are already dying every year as a result of global warming, according to the most comprehensive report ever on the human impact of climate change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...very-year.html

Are Real Christmas trees better or worse for the environment?

Are Real Christmas trees better or worse for the environment? - YouTube

West Antarctic Ice Sheets Warming Twice as Fast as Previously Thought:

http://gawker.com/5970928/west-antar...iously-thought

Rebecca Tarbotton, head of Rainforest Action Network, dies at 39:

http://grist.org/climate-energy/reme...KIXngw.twitter

Top Obama Environmental Official Departs “Frustrated” Over Pipeline, Inaction On Climate:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/t...parts-frustrat

I'm in the AGW camp. I also believe that our influence on the atmosphere, albeit small (5-10% is often stated), is enough to alter the delicate balance enough to prove disastrous (both in time perspectives that matter to humans and geologically). When this snowball starts rolling the avalance can't be averted, ie. you can't stop what's set in motion by burning less fossil fuels (and if we do that the economy will stall further, so we're trapped between a rock and a hard place).

The elephant in the room is, however, overpopulation and depletion of nearly every useful resource there is, from hydrocarbons (coal, gas, oil), copper, iron, rare earth metals/minerals, phosphorous, fresh water in parts of the world und su weiter.

Yet we seem to think that economies cannot survive without growth. It's not enough to make an annual profit, the profits have to increase. Baskin-Robbins closed down the franchise in my town because it's profits weren't large enough. Large enough for what they didn't say. Growing economies require growing markets which consist of more and more consumers using more and more raw materials expelling more and more pollution. We need a whole new economic model. I think the elephant in the room is human greed. Once people are comfortable and secure in their future, they seem to automatically curb their rate of reproduction. But if there's a dollar to be made by exploiting one's fellow man, you can be sure the exploitation will commence. Yes, we need a whole new economic model; not one based on consumption, expansion and greed but one based on sanity, stability and sustainability.

Yeah, somehow it's considered normal to keep money in the bank and expect there to be more of it after a year through some sort of magical concoction called growth. Similarly, if companies can't hire more people, increase salaries or open in more locations it's problematic? Dr Albert Bartlett said humankind's greatest shortcoming was our inability to understand that growth in a system full of finites cannot go on unchecked and I wholeheartedly agree. However, as this seems to be an inherent trait embedded in our genetic firmware, I doubt we have what it takes to "change". That would entail something different than being human.

I read a fun piece in an American newspaper recently, "lowest holiday spending growth since 20xx". It could've just as well said "Another year of growth", but no, they were disconcerted that it wasn't higher than so and so. Even experts at economics don't pick up on these things, makes you wonder about the state of the world. :)

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Originally Posted by trish

Yet we seem to think that economies cannot survive without growth. It's not enough to make an annual profit, the profits have to increase.

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because thought interest on loans debt grows as well

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Originally Posted by muh_muh

because thought interest on loans debt grows as well

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True enough. And so the circle closes.

the only logical conclusion is to go back the the middle ages economic model and murder all bankers every few years to clear the debt

And Then Came Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=FFOkLbe5498 :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/bu...?smid=pl-share

That oil rig allegedly has 150,000 gallons of diesel. That's 570 thousand litres or about 3500 barrels of oil equivalent.

In comparison, Norway uses 250,000' barrels of oil equivalent daily, the US around 18 million barrels and the world 90 million barrels. This equals 39.75 million litres (10 million gallons), 2.86 billion litres (0.76 billion gallons) and 14.3 billion litres (3.78 billion gallons) in total, respectively. Every single day.

The prospect of Arctic drilling is not opposed by me: we desperately need whatever oil we can find to perpetuate business as usual. However, there may not be any significant quantities of recoverable, high-quality oil there, and the energy invested to get it will be considerable. And let's face, "we're" not going to be rational enough to downsize, downscale and de-complexify our societies for the sake of the environment or the thousands of generations and thus billions of people who could have been.

The question is not, "Should we or should we not drill in the Arctic?" We can, for example, implement measures that make drilling in the Arctic more sustaining of the environment. Is a species of Ursidae any less valuable than a gigawatt of power that will be spent and dissipated into the atmosphere never to be used again?

Anything and everything is meaningless and has no inherent value except what we decide to add to it, I think. Whether the poster child of AGW, the polar bear, is more important than the at-most 30 billion barrels of oil equivalent (a year worth of consumption, which took the Earth 5 million years to turn from dead plant material (and dinosaurs) to hydrocarbons) that might be found in the depths of the Arctic isn't a binary question. Hundreds of species allegedly go extinct every day without so much as a question raised by MSM, who focus more on Brad Pitt's nasal hair or future movie prospects.

"More sustainable" sounds like New-Speak for "slightly less environmentally damaging/unfriendly/hostile". What I've read leads me to believe that whether we cease all hydrocarbon activity now (and thus kill 6 billion ~ people) or keep going at full steam, things have been set in motion that will irrevocably "turn up the heat" for those that inhabit and inherit the planet.

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

These are great times we're living, bros!