Climate Change (AKA Global Warming)

[templeboy]

Out of curiosity: how do scientists claim to know the temperatures from hundreds as well as thousands of years ago?  

I think the most common way is ice cores in places like greenland

Just like tree rings, really, -icecores you can quite literally tell how cold was the year 232341BC.

And if there is a weakness in one core, there are multiple cores to compare and compute against each other.

This would be directly taken out of Al Gores film!




Overall the thing that strikes me about the climate change debate is how oversimplified it is, as Will said. Honestly, even if climate change is less anthropologically caused than is the current scientific consensus (bar a few dissenters), there are still so many other disasters that we are not doing enough to avoid. We are running out of oil. We are losing our freshwater reserves. We are running out of minerals. Climate Change or no Climate Change, something is going to give, and if we don't take action to avert it, it will result in starvation, bloodshed and misery.

Just my two cents worth :p

[Sophus]

Anybody read Not By Fire but By Ice? Here's a little tid bit:

http://americandaily.com/index.php/article/2950 ..... thoughts?

[Kidnapkid]

moved this thread.

[Kidnapkid]

Out of curiosity: how do scientists claim to know the temperatures from hundreds as well as thousands of years ago?  

I know that it's actually studies from glaciers that give scientists a good idea about global temperatures. Coring into the ice from various glaciers give an idea about the temperatures going back millions of years. Less ice layered more warmth more ice layered more cold. It's all really scientific. Check this out about how ice coring works in relation to temperature. http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/MoreInfo/Ice_Cores_Past.html

It's kinda sad that our best resource for looking into past temperatures and things like asteroids and things like volcanoes erupting and what not are being destroyed while we sit here and debate global warming.

[Kidnapkid]

One more non response post

Earth Now


Earth After


North America


http://vrstudio.buffalo.edu/~depape/warming/100meter.html

Just some maps that show how the earth could change if the ice really does melt.

[Recusant]

Reviving a thread from the early years of this site. It's possible that the large lacuna here may be due in part to the lost content event about ten years ago. Extreme thread necromancy. Too extreme? Maybe. 

Also maybe-- some good news. Maybe not though and we'll await further pertinent information. Were I the headline editor I'd have inserted weasel words: "appears to have"

"Capturing carbon from the air just got easier" | EurekAlert!

Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide humans produce is key to lowering atmospheric greenhouse gases and slowing global warming, but today's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases.

Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million (ppm), 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preexisting global averages.

A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions. The porous material — a covalent organic framework (COF) — captures CO2 from ambient air without degradation by water or other contaminants, one of the limitations of existing DAC technologies.

"We took a powder of this material, put it in a tube, and we passed Berkeley air — just outdoor air — into the material to see how it would perform, and it was beautiful. It cleaned the air entirely of CO2. Everything," said Omar Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and senior author of a paper that will appear online Oct. 23 in the journal Nature.

"I am excited about it because there's nothing like it out there in terms of performance. It breaks new ground in our efforts to address the climate problem," he added.

[Continues . . .]

Of course the paper is behind a paywall.

Abstract:

Capture of CO₂ from the air offers a promising approach to addressing climate change and achieving carbon neutrality goals. However, the development of a durable material with high capacity, fast kinetics and low regeneration temperature for CO₂ capture, especially from the intricate and dynamic atmosphere, is still lacking.

Here a porous, crystalline covalent organic framework (COF) with olefin linkages has been synthesized, structurally characterized and post-synthetically modified by the covalent attachment of amine initiators for producing polyamines within the pores. This COF (termed COF-999) can capture CO₂ from open air.

COF-999 has a capacity of 0.96 mmol g^–1 under dry conditions and 2.05 mmol g^–1 under 50% relative humidity, both from 400 ppm CO₂. This COF was tested for more than 100 adsorption–desorption cycles in the open air of Berkeley, California, and found to fully retain its performance. COF-999 is an exceptional material for the capture of CO₂ from open air as evidenced by its cycling stability, facile uptake of CO₂ (reaches half capacity in 18.8 min) and low regeneration temperature (60 °C).

[Asmodean]

Carbon capture is interesting. Nature itself does it in form of forests. Of course, when the trees die and rot, they release that captured carbon back into the cycle. However, should they become chairs and bed frames and roof beams before such time... Those can hold on to their carbon for a very long time indeed.

Of course, planting and chopping down and replanting forests comes with its own set of challenges, and I suspect depletes the soil in the long run. A chemical (colloquially speaking) solution is probably called for.

Still, my money is kind-of on atmospheric seeding of the more reflective variety.

[zorkan]

On a cold and miserable day in England, I can't help thinking climate change is a good idea.

https://theconversation.com/the-uk-and-irelands-climate-was-tropical-26-million-years-ago-heres-why-that-matters-now-238467

[Recusant]

A possible result of climate change/global warming is the collapse of the Gulf Stream. Paradoxically, that would result in the climate in the UK becoming more extreme, including colder winters.

* * *

If any chemistry geeks are reading, I found access to the paper in my post above. Properly it would go in the "Materials Science" thread but . . .

The full paper is available at the Yahgi Laboratory site. Currently it's the top paper in the "2024" section, click the "Full Article" link to get access with a token. I was looking for any information regarding practical application of covalent organic frameworks like COF-999. The paper doesn't address that except for a comment at the end:

[T]he scalability of this COF and the design of a practical device will be an important priority for future implementation of these materials.

[zorkan]

As of yesterday we are on track for 3 degrees rise by end of century.
https://www.politico.eu/article/united-nations-emissions-gap-global-warming-data-climate-change-report/#:~:text=With%20the%20policies%20currently%20in,2.6C%20and%202.8C.

It should compensate for the Gulf Stream switch off.

I'm so looking forward to COP29 in Baku.
https://unfccc.int/cop29
Delegates enjoy your business class flights, your 5 star hotels and your wining and dining, then come home having achieved more promises.

[Recusant]

As of yesterday we are on track for 3 degrees rise by end of century.
https://www.politico.eu/article/united-nations-emissions-gap-global-warming-data-climate-change-report/#:~:text=With%20the%20policies%20currently%20in,2.6C%20and%202.8C.

It should compensate for the Gulf Stream switch off.

That could happen:

The loss of this warm water would obviously result in a cool down in Northern Europe. But calculations indicate that the shutdown isn't likely to take place until after the planet had warmed enough to offset this cooling.

Or it could go differently:

The underlying scenario here—the complete shutdown of the AMOC and thereby the Gulf Stream by midcentury—is likely to be science fiction. But the work indicates that one of the ideas about what would happen isn't: Europe really would cool down enough to more than offset the warming climate by the end of the century.

So a roll of the dice--maybe it'll be fine. 

[zorkan]

Prediction is very difficult, especially the future.
From 2010.
https://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/218537/Dawn-of-a-new-ice-age

From 2017.
https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-predict-mini-ice-age-could-hit-uk-by-2030-11186098

[Asmodean]

Yes.

It's difficult to identify all the variables involved and then figure out which variables matter to what degree. From there, even small discrepancies early in the model may result in huge [compounding] discrepancies at the moment of comparison. That's mostly why ye meteorological forecast charts tend to balloon like the Big Bang the further you are from t=0.

[zorkan]

On the subject of the Big Bang, where did all the energy come from to cause it?

[Asmodean]

One hypothesis is colliding cosmic membranes.

Yeah... More questions than answers. It is kind-of fascinating though.