The Earth On Fire: Solving The Climate Crisis

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Moose, Aug 10, 2021.

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Can dangerous climate change be halted?

  1. Yes it can and it will

    13.8%
  2. Yes it can, but it won't

    51.7%
  3. No. It's too late

    31.0%
  4. What 'dangerous climate change'?

    3.4%
  1. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Yes. Herod was right all along.
     
  2. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    The problem as you note is what the likes of China, US and Russia do. What they do will decide what happens to Norfolk, not what we do unfortunately. Do the Russians care about Siberia defrosting ? They are probably delighted.
     
  3. OK. Yes, having been away for a bit, I got you mixed up with someone else.
     
  4. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Me ? I live near Tring and occasionally wander round the reservoirs and have been known to take the odd photo :) ?
     
  5. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Even with that injunction?
     
  6. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Is there something you want to tell us?
     
  7. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    They can't chain me....
     
  8. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Plenty. But probably best not, eh ?
     
  9. Yes. You indeed! And I apologise profusely for an earlier error. I did indeed "reply to the wrong post" having got you and TVoR mixed up in more ways than one (an easy mistake to make) and failing to notice that you were putting forward an entirely diametrically opposed viewpoint.

    And while I'm in confessional mode I also said in an earlier post that "we hadn't been hit by a 'big rock' since the Triassic" which was of course utter b.llocks seeing as a particularly big one landed off the Yucatan some 60m years ago causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. Which was aroundabout the same time as the Deccan traps episode. Got that date wrong too. I will now go and lie down in a darkened room for a bit.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 11, 2021
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  10. Yellow-browed Warbler mate.
     
  11. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Anyone that finds this climate change stuff depressing can cheer themselves up by watching this again....

     
  12. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I've seen and photoed one at a few locations but not Tring :).
     
  13. Yes. I remember discussing this with you previously.

    Can you point me in the direction of the particular episode/episodes where Brian Cox discussed escaping/destroyed atmospheres?
     
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  14. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Sorry no, I can't remember where the scenario was discussed but the pre-series interview I copied comments and a link to, mentioned the headline of how fragile our atmosphere is and that others have lost their atmospheres. In one of the episodes he then went on to mention how a small change can itself cause further changes which cause the "heating up" to snowball but I don't remember the details, sorry.
     
  15. Thanks anyway. I'll no doubt find it/them eventually. However, in advance of that, I'll offer a simple hierachical table. Probably a hostage to fortune but here goes:

    Planet Mass relative to earth:

    Mercury 5.5%
    Mars 10%
    Venus 81.5%
    Uranus 1,450%
    Neptune 1,710%
    Saturn 9,520%
    Jupiter 31,800%

    Now, I hope it won't escape your attentions that the smallest, Mercury, has never had an atmosphere to speak of as far as we know, that the next one up, Mars (much smaller than most of us think) probably did have one once but it somehow 'escaped' and that, next up, Venus (a bit less massive than us) still retains one (albeit an entirely toxic and greenhouse one composed almost entirely of CO2 with a bit of sulphuric acid chucked in - lovely). And with scorching surface temperatures. The hottest in the solar system.

    So those three, along with us, are the four inner, 'rocky planets'. The outer four 'gas giants' can speak for themselves regarding atmospheres. The clue's in the name.

    So I doubt very much if that hierachical table and the comments around it are co-incidental. 'Size matters' when it comes to retaining atmospheres. And, in fairness, nobody on here would appear to be saying anything else thus far. But, when I watch Prof. Cox, if he tells me that we might soonish perhaps enter some sort of +ve feedback loop around global warming which could become 'runaway', rather than a -ve one which might return us to equilibrium, then I'll listen to that 'model'. In short, could we 'do a Venus'?

    If, however, he's going to postulate that we might lose our atmosphere to outer space entirely (when smaller Venus hasn't) and compare us to 10% mass Mars instead, then I'm gonna take that model with a bucket load of salt. Two entirely different things under discussion here.

    Anyway, the combatants on here would seem to be divided between pessimists and optimists and my camp wouldn't appear to be in the ascendancy. But this is the greatest existential threat our species has ever faced. Apart from the avoidance of nuclear armageddon thus far. A game still in progress. So we don't really have a precedent for how we might deal with it other than a criticism of 'being a bit slow out of the starting blocks in the face of something entirely new'.

    I take heart from the way we have dealt with the more temporary 'existential threat' over the last 18 months. Delivering a number of vaccines in double-quick time and being well on the way to sorting it.

    There is nothing we can't do when we put our minds to it. BELIEVE. Like our Olympic athletes recently did.
     
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  16. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    So Uranus is pretty massive then?
     
  17. In my yoof it was considered bigger than Neptune's (God of the Depths) but is now considered to be a bit smaller. Apparently. But still effing massive of course.
     
  18. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    I know this is a classic comment with no idea how it could be done: But why can’t we just take the CO2 out of the atmosphere - in effect create machines to create synthetic coal. Making great lumps of carbon, which we could bury in the ground.

    On a similar note. Surely we can mitigate a rise in Sea levels by just diverting the extra water into the Sahara desert. Which by the way, why isn’t that just covered in solar Panels generating the electricity required to desalinate that surplus sea water?

    Why can’t we extract the surplus heat from the warming oceans by building enormous heat pumps to take heat from the oceans to create energy for our use. There must be a way to heat Liverpool but putting a huge reverse fridge in the Irish Sea.

    I mean how difficult can it be to do all that? If Jimmy Tarbuck could become famous as a comedian, machines to make coal from CO2 in the air must be a piece of piss
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2021
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  19. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    But do we have enough charcoal to BBQ the buggers? Interesting that before the prairies in the us were turned to grain production, they supported enough carbon sink in the grass to feed60 million bison in a carbon natural way. Grass lands store more carbon in the grass itself and the soil than forests. Eat beef only fed on grass and it’s carbon positive.
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2021
  20. Machines to remove co2 exist, there are several pilot projects underway. The scale needed though is mind boggling, it would need hundreds of plants removing giga tonnes of co2. One idea proposed is to pump the co2 back into empty oil wells whence it came.
     
  21. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    All valid suggestions but not straight forward and would require a lot of energy to make a significant benefit.

    1. As said, it is possible but the scale required would be massive.
    2. You would need a lot of energy to pump sea water to the Sahara, a lot would of course evaporate to form more clouds and it would leave salt on the shores. More clouds in the tropics would mean more radiation is reflected back into space. The same goes for more solar panels as they have a reflective (glass cover) however again scale would require more rare-earth metals to be mined to be able to manufacture them.
    3. Not really possible, the sea temperature is lower than the air and land temperature outside of the polar regions, the 'excess' thermal energy isn't enough to have a positive thermal potential difference.

    The simplest low cost solutions would be to plant more trees and install reflective devices to reflect back solar energy. Even painting dark rock white could in theory make a difference, the Sun's energy does warm up the air but atmospheric thermal energy is moved away by convection currents in the air, also ultra-violet radiation will readily reflect back into space as it is not absorbed by any gases apart from ozone, the Sun's energy does heat the rocks in the ground as they warm up they radiate back infra-red radiation and carbon dioxide and methane absorb radiation in the infra-red part of the electromagnetic spectrum, hence the greenhouse effect.
     
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  22. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    So if I paint my shed roof white will that help? All building roofs seem quite dark with little if any reflective effect.

    Could we trigger some volcanos to get some dust up there to create a Sun shade?

    I read somewhere that meadows of sea grass grow quicker nd absorb more CO2 than trees. Of course all plants will eventually die and release that CO2 back into the atmosphere. So presumably we need a technology to take the stuff away permanently.

    if man could introduce the flint axe and clear most of the trees on Great Britain before the Iron Age, surely we can start building enough machines to change the atmosphere. Start now and within 200 years every house will have one.
     
  23. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    Painting roofs white is now a thing in some places https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/ultra-white-paint-reflects-sunlight-cools-climate/ , yet what percentage of the Earth is roofing? Not much but if such a roof with the paint requires less energy for aircon then all the better.
     
  24. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    True, they reckon in the UK more land is used for golf courses than all he housing put together. If turning the Sahara into a giant Aral Sea is off the agenda at COP26, perhaps we need a shopping list of a thousand things everybody could do. A very tiny fraction of impact multiplied several billion times might help.
     
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  25. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Our leaders certainly have to stop their climate hypocrisy. Johnson, Rees Mogg, breed and breed, consume, consume.
     
  26. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    Of course, any action taken, e.g. solar panels require mining for lanthanides, will have other knock on effects. Even tidal generators on the Severn will effect wildlife.

    I read somewhere if they use a different colour for one of the 3 blades used in a wind turbine it cuts down the number of bird impacts as they can see them easier.
     
  27. cyaninternetdog

    cyaninternetdog Forum Hippie

  28. All sorts of ideas to solve this problem have been suggested over the last couple of days since I last visited this thread. Some already in existence, some speculative and some probably with more mileage in them than others. But all of that is exactly why I remain optimistic. And all of those ideas are ones that are being debated by us lot on here rather than the scientists and engineers who will be at the cutting edge.

    There's this thing called inertia which afflicts most of us. We don't take easily to change. It takes us a bit of time, we often need to be forced into it and then, when it happens, we realise that the required change wasn't so bad at all.

    I remember decimalization of our coinage. Older people in particular weren't keen at the time and thought they'd never get used to a system based on multiples of ten. As opposed to twelve and twenty! Then, about a fortnight afterwards, everyone was entirely happy with it other than that some shopkeepers had used it for a bit of a mark-up.

    Quite recently we had two big 'holes' in our ozone coverage over the two poles (particularly the Antarctic) allowing in excessive solar radiation. Then we got rid of CFCs in aerosol cans and fridges. Now we don't have that problem anymore.

    Residents in Chesham are currently being very NIMBY regarding new housing on their patch to help solve the housing problem in this part of the nation. Inertia eh? But they'll be required to come around soon enough.

    Much of the distinction between pessimists and optimists on here seems to me to be around the definition of a 'last chance saloon'. Particularly in regard to this topic. I'd suggest that it's very much a 'moving feast'. We may currently be in some sort of 'last chance saloon' here, but the last, last, last, last saloon is some way over the horizon yet.

    Much of our properly addressing this problem might be solved by a change in accounting practise. Wot I hear you ask?

    Back in 1973 an economist called Ernst Schumacher wrote his seminal book - Small is Beautiful. It was a paean in favour of localism in defiance of globalisation and one of its central planks was that balance sheets shouldn't simply regard the atmosphere, the rivers, the oceans and stuff to be dug up from under the ground (where only the costs of extraction and transport still apply) and as freebies for expoitation and as dumping grounds with no value in their own right or financial consequences for doing so. All are finite resources that were previously regarded as infinite. And largely still are although 'the polluter pays' and 'carbon offsets' are 'half- ars.d ways' of thinking about that.

    Things change, things move on. Particularly in the face of real existential threat. It's fanciful to think that we'll go into some 'dark night' without a whimper once the chips are really down. Changes in behaviour and new technologies will save us.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2021
  29. True I believe. Although I never personally saw a bird fly into them despite looking out for exactly that for more hours/days/years than I care to remember. So a problem that's a bit overstated i.m.h.o.

    Anyway much of the research around that has gone on off the Aberdeenshire coast opposite a certain golf course. Which has p.ssed off 'Haystack Heid' no end.

    A result in itself!
     
  30. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    It’s expected to hit 48 degrees in Spain today, the hottest ever recorded temperature there.
     
  31. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    What a good day for the Tour of Spain bike race to start. :(
     
  32. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    Generating an electromagnetic field that deflects the stellar wind of charged particles wherever that planet is and of whatever size is important in atmosphere retention and also as atmospheric stripping continues even with such a field albeit at a far reduced rate planetary mechanisms that replace lost atmosphere.

    Having read books on disasters and management nothing is done until they happen and sometime even after they happen nothing still is changed unless they are severe enough. The people warning that changes were needed prior to the disaster are usually ignored. Because most humans cannot think past the week ahead.
     
  33. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    One thing most can do is .....driving smaller cars .
    Why do people have to drive a 3litre gas guzzler unless
    you want to impress the neighbors with your status symbol?
    These days , due to technology , a bog standard 1 litre has uumph.

    Also people need to move around less. Less F.O.M. Which will not please
    affluent liberals.

    So to re-cap . Extinction rebellion, do you want your FOM ? , or do you
    wish to save the planet ?

    Anywho . For sure . Every 10 years we get told the Earth dying and we shall go back to the moon.
    To my certain knowledge in 10 years, old age aside, we shall still be here, and we wont go back to the moon . What will happen tho is another climate Armageddon 10 year story / NASA BS 10 year claim.
    For sure . Go Google .
     

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