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TradMike
Trad climber
Cincinnati, Ohio
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Nov 27, 2018 - 10:57am PT
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The population explosion on our planet in the last 100 years has had the biggest impact on the world. The amount of pollution we are putting out is staggering and not just carbon. There are superfund sites everywhere. Nuclear meltdowns poisoning everything. Every product you purchase has a negative impact on the globe. You can't drink out of any of the streams anymore except for a few pristine areas but those are rapidly being encroached upon and will be ruined as well. The easiest fix would be to reduce our population down to a sustainable level and still enjoy the power from fossil fuels. Every way I look at it, it makes the most sense. If each family unit could reduce their offspring down to two maximum, the population would slowly decrease. There is no easy way to reduce carbon emissions and the alternates are just not there yet and maybe never will be there. There are too many people out there that do not care in the least to make a change. They say they will be dead so who cares (I hear this comment a lot).
I think all of those who mass produce babies are the main culprit. Once you hit maximum density, you migrate away taking that same problem elsewhere until the globe is full. We were beyond full a century ago.
Some interesting charts for thought
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 27, 2018 - 11:15am PT
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If each family unit could reduce their offspring down to two maximum, the population would slowly decrease.
The developed world is already there.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Nov 27, 2018 - 11:58am PT
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By 2050 around 2.2 billion people could be added to the global population and more than half of that growth will occur in Africa.
Future population predictions are just that, predictions. But it still doesn't look good.
I have my doubts that Africa is going to ever sufficiently develop to bring birth rates down to replacement levels. Their politics seem worse than what southeast Asia had. The model where you can go from an agricultural model to employing lots of people in low skill manufacturing looks like it is coming to an end. Automation is chipping away at even the lowest paid jobs and there are other reasons that low skill manufacturing is likely to stay in Asia beyond employee costs.
The developed world is going to have social problems from a rapidly aging population and not enough tax payers for pensioners.
And Africa is going to be a constant source of humanitarian crisis and population outflow.
I think both trends are going to continue to create conditions ripe for populist politicians with simplistic nationalist agendas.
That isn't going to be conducive to world wide cooperation to bring down CO2 levels.
Hope I'm wrong on all of that.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Nov 27, 2018 - 12:16pm PT
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Don't forget that conservatives and the religious right believe their duty is to go forth and multiply. And they have actively stopped and prevented all US aid, efforts, and policies towards family planning across the globe.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Nov 27, 2018 - 12:28pm PT
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Global population growth, like global warming, is an issue that's difficult to generate concern on a personal level. It's an intangible that concerns an unspecified period in the distant future.
Most people (just about everyone) focus on basic concerns, for their immediate family. Then, it's general well being for extended family, friends and neighbors.
The further away the issue in time and scope, the less people care.
Global warming.
Global population.
What to do? What to do?
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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Nov 27, 2018 - 01:24pm PT
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Stop the aid?
As Obama said... Yes we can!
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 27, 2018 - 01:45pm PT
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scht00pidest Americans ever.
Thinking they are going to save the Africans.
St00pid Americans can't even save themselves then play God and fuk up the whole planet ....
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 27, 2018 - 06:06pm PT
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Malemute, your need to dominate this conversation with anecdote after anecdote after anecdote reminds me of a carnival barker. Nobody is reading them anymore. Geeeeez, man, do you ever take a break?
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Nov 27, 2018 - 06:21pm PT
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anecdote
noun
a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
"told anecdotes about his job"
synonyms: story, tale, narrative, incident; More
an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay.
"his wife's death has long been the subject of rumor and anecdot
fact
a thing that is indisputably the case.
synonyms: reality, actuality, certainty;
The definition of peer reviewed is something, usually some type of research or study, that has been tested, checked and scrutinized by individuals within the same field.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 27, 2018 - 07:55pm PT
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Free O2 is, perhaps, the signature of a living planet
actually it seems it's the N2 which is most out of equilibrium...
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Nov 27, 2018 - 09:01pm PT
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Global population growth, like global warming, is an issue that's difficult to generate concern on a personal level. It's an intangible that concerns an unspecified period in the distant future.
...
The further away the issue in time and scope, the less people care.
Global warming.
Global population.
What to do? What to do?
Those are real issues and the most powerful individuals in the world: politicians, presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc., all mostly 50+ in age.
Say it is the year 2050 and the climate is really, really bleak. There is no policy or change that could be made that would really make a difference over the following 20~30 years.
So for anyone over 50, the only reason to change is for the benefit of the generations that follow. Because you will be dead before the benefits of the changes really kick in. Unless there is a big increase in life expectancy, or some unseen technology, the 50+ crowd is not likely to ever see a direct benefit from a policy change.
What to do? Voting against Republicans is a start.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 27, 2018 - 09:04pm PT
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Free O2 is, perhaps, the signature of a living planet
actually it seems it's the N2 which is most out of equilibrium...
Sorry, Ed--not biting. But hopefully you found the piece (and the question itself) interesting.
What is a Lituya?
I'm not trying to educate the deniers, they prefer to be ignorant.
Malcontent, if you could actually read this thread as well as you copy and paste to it, you might realize just how ridiculous your statement is.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 27, 2018 - 11:34pm PT
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ON MODELING AND INTERPRETING THE ECONOMICS OF CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE
Martin L. Weitzman
Abstract—With climate change as prototype example, this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low probability, high-impact catastrophes. Even when updated by Bayesian learning, uncertain structural parameters induce a critical “tail fattening” of posterior-predictive distributions. Such fattened tails have strong implications for situations, like climate change, where a catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages. This paper shows that the economic consequences of fat-tailed structural uncertainty (along with unsureness about high-temperature damages) can readily outweigh the effects of discounting in climate-change policy analysis.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 27, 2018 - 11:44pm PT
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Sorry, Ed--not biting. But hopefully you found the piece (and the question itself) interesting.
the increased CO2 in the atmosphere that would result from burning all the fossil fuels would not support the civilization that was doing the burning. The amount of CO2 in the current atmosphere is 3,200 billion metric tons (at 410 ppm). Where would the 37,000 billion metric tons of your fossil fuel burning go?
A more interesting line of questioning (in my mind) is to pursue your assertion (which is common enough) that the O2 in the atmosphere is a signature of life.
The signature of life is an atmosphere in disequilibrium, and on the Earth, the ocean-land-atmosphere system make the N2 fraction in the atmosphere the most out of equilibrium.
The biosphere is what drives the disequilibrium, at about a terawatt. There was a lot of life before the O2 atmosphere...
...note also that human energy production (6 TW) exceeds this.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 28, 2018 - 07:51am PT
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Free O2 is, perhaps, the signature of a living planet
another question to consider: where does the O2 come from? what is the O2 cycle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_cycle
how does climate change effect photosynthesis?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 28, 2018 - 08:52am PT
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Krissansen-Totton, Joshua, David S. Bergsman, and David C. Catling. "On detecting biospheres from chemical thermodynamic disequilibrium in planetary atmospheres." Astrobiology 16.1 (2016): 39-67.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.08249.pdf
Abstract
Atmospheric chemical disequilibrium has been proposed as a method for detecting extraterrestrial biospheres from exoplanet observations. Chemical disequilibrium is potentially a generalized biosignature since it makes no assumptions about particular biogenic gases or metabolisms. Here, we present the first rigorous calculations of the thermodynamic chemical disequilibrium in Solar System atmospheres, in which we quantify the available Gibbs energy: the Gibbs free energy of an observed atmosphere minus that of atmospheric gases reacted to equilibrium. The purely gas phase disequilibrium in Earth’s atmosphere is mostly attributable to O2 and CH4. The available Gibbs energy is not unusual compared to other Solar System atmospheres and smaller than that of Mars. However, Earth’s fluid envelope contains an ocean, allowing gases to react with water and requiring a multiphase calculation with aqueous species. The disequilibrium in Earth’s atmosphere-ocean system (in joules per mole of atmosphere) ranges from ~20 to 2×E6 times larger than the disequilibria of other atmospheres in the Solar System, where Mars is second to Earth. Only on Earth is the chemical disequilibrium energy comparable to the thermal energy per mole of atmosphere (excluding comparison to Titan with lakes, where quantification is precluded because the mean lake composition is unknown). Earth’s disequilibrium is biogenic, mainly caused by the coexistence of N2, O2 and liquid water instead of more stable nitrate. In comparison, the O2-CH4 disequilibrium is minor, although kinetics requires a large CH4 flux into the atmosphere. We identify abiotic processes that cause disequilibrium in the other atmospheres. Our metric requires minimal assumptions and could potentially be calculated using observations of exoplanet atmospheres. However, further work is needed to establish whether thermodynamic disequilibrium is a practical exoplanet biosignature, requiring an assessment of false positives, noisy observations, and other detection challenges. Our Matlab code and databases for these calculations are available, open source.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 28, 2018 - 10:03am PT
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Without O2 Earth would be waterless and much like Venus.
But there wasn't O2 in the atmosphere for the first approximately 3.1 billion years of Earth's existence (or, at most, only a very small amount). Photosynthetic organisms were converting CO2 into O-- for at least 2 billion of those years, more likely almost 3 billion, but either not in very great quantity, or it was all reacting with other elements and not becoming O2. The factors that led to a big enough increase in photosynthesis to create an atmosphere generally similar to today's (10% O2 by about 600 million years ago; passing the present 21% at about 350 mya) are not certain, but there are darned near 4 billion years before the effects of photosynthesis had a very big effect on atmospheric composition. Big topic, very interesting.
Really interesting abstract, Ed.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 28, 2018 - 10:20am PT
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As an observation, people are ignorant. They listen to news tailored for them, and rarely question.
There was a recent NYT poll that was shocking. 1 out of 4 Americans cannot name a branch of government. 1 out of 10 thought that Judge Judy was a member of the Supreme Court.
I will look it up.
Remember when civics was taught?
America is in real trouble. China now publishes more scientific papers than the US. They are going to mop the floor with us some day.
Natural climate change is influenced by cycles in Earth’s orbit and the precession of its axial tilt. Mars is a great example of this. It’s orbit is more elliptical, and perihelion coincides with Southern Hemisphere winter. Apphelion coincides with Southern Hemisphere summer.
So the Southern Hemisphere is colder and has a larger ice cap.
Earth’s cycles are called Milankovich Cycles. They correlate fairly well to rises and falls of sea level. I see cycle after cycle stacked on top of each other in oil wells. We study these cycles.
The current warming is not the result of Milankovitch Cycles. Greenhouse gases are the highest in several hundred thousand years. With no greenhouse gases, we would be in an ice age. We are playing with fire. The Arctic will be ice free during the summer very soon. Glaciers are retreating around the world. Arctic ice is less than ten feet thick. It’s melting will not raise sea level much. The risk is the massive change in albedo.
I blame this on the right wing. They are always anti science unless it happens to be in their interest.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 28, 2018 - 10:33am PT
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Malemute, limestones are normally composed of the tests of small marine organisms. They generally preserve well in the rock record. Massive amounts of carbon are tied up in carbonate rocks.
I studied the.chemistry of calcium carbonate. Magnesium can exchange the calcium ion. Magnesium Carbonate is called Dolomite. Magnesium and calcium are a solution series in carbonate rocks.
Petroleum Geologists learn depositional environments of both carbonate and clastic rocks. I am mainly a clastics guy, but I have found more in limestones. Generally porous skeletal buildups that we call Bioherms. I found a big gas field composed of skeletal fragments. Made a ton of money.
It is.hard to explain simply, but if you are up for some reading, you could learn it on your own.
Your statement was correct, but it is a thick topic.
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