We can either address Climate Change or Collapse. Sandy is a foretaste of Collapse.

[Junkdrawer]

Just a hint of how bad Collapse will be.

Climate Change is NOT a hippie/liberal issue for extreme treehuggers.

Climate Change is the most serious issue industrial civilization has ever faced. And right now, we're doubling down by burning more, much more fossil fuel each year in the full knowledge that it takes hundreds of years for the excess carbon to be reabsorbed by the biosphere.

Three numbers: 350, 450 and 550. Those are parts-per-million figures for carbon. 350 is what Bill McKibbon and Jim Hansen believe is the danger threshold for carbon. 450 is what the IPCC has been and will probably continue to use as the basis for suggested governmental action. 550 or more is what the Big Oil lobby wants to push.

Today, we're at 391.01 ( see: http://co2now.org/)

If 350 is correct, we will need to radically restructure of our society to address the issue.

If 450 is correct, we might, might, be able to stay under the limit by aggressive-but-not-radical industrial and social changes.

If 550 is correct, we can burn all the cheap oil and change sometime before we need to go to, say, shell oil.

The problem is that while 450 and 550 might be politically expedient, 350 looks to be the actual answer. And while on most issues a "the perfect is the enemy of the good" philosophy kind of works, on this issue it's deadly.

A word about 'radically restructure of our society'. There are many ways this could go. We could cut way back on industrial output to match the lower power generation capacity of renewables, emphasize necessities AND spread the resultant pain equitably. Or we could cut back on everything but luxury goods and allow the 1% to continue their lifestyles while everyone else is reduced to subsistence wage surfs. Just saying.

[ananda]

1. Umm.. I think the scientists have already stated that we are past the point of no return.

nt

[Junkdrawer]

6. All depends on how many tipping points we've crossed.

I (and many people in the know I read) believe we've crossed the albedo-ice-volume tipping point.

The biggie is the methane clathrate tipping point. Some Russian scientists are claiming the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is gushing methane. Others question this. I saw that the NSF has given a big research grant to study the problem further. Meanwhile, there was a report in the news that the Gulf Stream is starting to leak methane.

Sure feels like an emergency to me.

[Spider Jerusalem]

19. Which is not really a good reason to just say "well fuck it why bother"

[AverageJoe90]

24. Unfortunately, that is exactly what many will say when they hear all this apocalyptic stuff.

You know, 'Venus Syndrome' and all that jazz?

Which is why I'm deadset against that kind of thinking. Because it doesn't work. Period.

[AverageJoe90]

22. Who has? Malcolm P.R. Light? Guy McPherson?

Neither of these men are really credible in my book. In fact, you know what the science DOES say? It says that we CAN mitigate climate change, something that is agreed upon by a large majority of scientists.

This was a really, really good article done by the guys at Skeptical Science not too long ago that has some marvelous details of just a few examples of what can be done:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solving-global-warming-not-easy-but-not-too-hard.html

Take a good look at it......

[Junkdrawer]

26. Note that the sited study seeks to "stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at 500 ppm by 2050"...

Everything depends on where the red line is.

[truebrit71]

2. That should be parts-per-MILLION not billion...

[Junkdrawer]

3. Thanks

[Blue_Tires]

4. Too many people in a position to do something don't care/don't understand science

while the others up top ARE smart enough to understand it, but their economic livelihood hinges on them continuing to "play dumb"

[Junkdrawer]

5. I watched this video by Bill Maher. The Republicans HAVE to recruit people that stupid....

for the House Science committee.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101773536

[Blue Meany]

7. I think the most effective thing is to focus on limiting methane ASAP rather than focusing on carbon

dioxide. Methane is more than 20 times as powerful as CO2 as a global warming agent and is responsible for almost half of global warming. The good news is that methane cycles into gasses that do not cause global warming in about 8 years. Thus, if there is a shot at actually reversing global warming, it lies with cutting methane. Unfortunately, with global warming as advanced as it already is, the process is releasing methane from the arctic--but all the more reason to cut back these now.

This involves shifting to a vegetarian diet, which would be difficult for meat eaters and disruptive of some parts of the agricultural sector. And it would involve managing waste in ways that minimizes methane production at landfills. These measures could, perhaps, stave of the worst until CO2 can be brought under control, a process that would take longer and be far more disruptive.

[Junkdrawer]

8. Agreed. And if Climate Change shifts agricultural zones as fast as it's seeming to....

the move away from meat may need to happen to prevent famine.

[antigone382]

10. But there are problems with totally abandoning animal products.

In a traditional diversified farm there is nutrient cycling; animals consuming crop wastes and grasses return most of those nutrients to the soil in the form of manure (the food products derived from them are a relatively small proportion of the actual nutrients they consume). Even today farmers located near animal production operations can use the manure that is produced.

If a farm only produces vegetable crops, it will eventually require inputs to mitigate nutrient depletion. If there is no animal waste to supply those nutrients, farmers are more likely to be dependent on synthetic fertilizer, a product that requires large amounts of energy to produce.

I definitely believe that we need to significantly reduce our animal product consumption. But I think we need to focus on efficient internal nutrient cycling on our farms.

[Junkdrawer]

11. And then there's hog farms and the unbelievable waste pools they produce...

Traditional diversified farming is a thing of the past. Factory Farming is where we're at today

[antigone382]

17. Believe me I'm aware of that.

I'm just saying that switching to a totally vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most beneficial option for long term soil health.

[Blue Meany]

14. The solution to this is using humanure and composted food, which can cycle back into the soil

the nutrients that were removed from it. However, this is not as easy as it sounds, at least on a large scale, since humans digest alot of things (drugs, hormones, toxins) that other people will not necessarily want cycled back into their food. Of course if no one is eating meat and we clean up the food system, this might minimize the problem. China has used humanure as their main fertilizer for centuries and it is, at least, sustainable.

[OSPREYXIV]

9. Road Map for Renewal

Last edited Wed Oct 31, 2012, 01:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Ironically, the way out is through Ohio.
(This is a little long but hopefully worth your time.)

An American economic, financial and political recovery can only occur if the automotive sector undergoes an utterly complete transformation that must start from the ground up.

Clearly the disfunctional political infrastructure that impedes policy shifts favoring such a move will also need to be revamped. What will provide the magnetic "pull?" Radical design changes.
"Built it and they will come." Incremental models of "progress" based on planned obsolescence or conspicuous consumption are obsolete. We are talking revolution here, folks.

The "electric car" is an illusion that has three serious drawbacks: 1) they use batteries that are expensive, depend on cheap supplies of lithium (Bolivia becomes the new Saudi Arabia overnight because vast deposits are there); 2) the electrical energy required ultimately depends on a steady, controllable source of fossil or nuclear energy and 3) the range of electric vehicles remains very limited. Barely works in cars, not at all for trucks.
This is a big place. Europeans have a compact continent, compact cities, compact cars.

Converting the entire fleet to a natural gas-based system means a buildout of a retail distribution infrastructure that'd cost billions. The carmakers would build NG vehicles if there were places for consumers to refuel. The fuel industry would be happy to build the distribution system if there are a lot of natural gas vehicles.

The paradox has been resolved. The answer is a hybrid vehicle that uses natural gas as a source of electrical energy. It's all-electric, does't require an expensive battery pack and has the range, power and pickup of an ICE vehicle. Natural gas is used to provide electrolyte for a solid oxide fuel that weighs one-sixth of a typical cast iron engine.
Instead of using a fraction of the methane's energy (3% of the 27% produced by burning), over 80% of the potential energy is converted to electrical power. Imagination is the only limitation when this happens. Best of all, that portion of the global reserves of methane are increased by a factor of 2.5 or better. It's just a safety net. Why?

This is an intermediate step that would begin to solve the climate issue. Ultimately an all-electric global energy infrastructure would alleviate and reverse the process of CO2/CH4 buildup but only if there were vast improvements in our methods of producing electrical power on a global scale.

The answer to that problem is aneutronic fusion.
Conceptually, the present efforts to produce a working fusion reactor are hampered by a lack of understanding of the behavior of plasma which is not only the fourth state of matter, it makes up 99% of the known Universe. Neon lights utilize plasma to make a phosphoresent glow and the aurora borealis results as a plasma excites an ionized atmisphere. Aneutronic fusion depends on being able to contain a focussed reaction that occurs when isotopes of hydrogen and boron are introduced in a magnetic container at very high temperatures in a near vacuum. (Look online for info re Hannes Alfven, the polywell, focussed fusion, plasma universe, etc. This what Tesla was investigating until TPTB sabotaged his research.)
This is no sea story, folks. It's happening now.

An informed electrorate will be able to change the outcome. Let these sheep in wolves' clothing keep pulling the wool over our eyes, and we'll all drive off the road.

Don't just vote. Demand change!

[Junkdrawer]

15. Robert W. Bussard & aneutronic fusion made a splash here a few years ago....

Any word on how that research is going?

[OSPREYXIV]

28. Polywell news

Bussard's concept is still being investigated but it is not clear whether the USN's ONR is involved.
Like the free electron laser, the program seems to have been "defunded."

[magical thyme]

16. this conveniently ignores the fact that automotive production uses vast quantities of energy

and other resources.

Sorry, folks, but sooner or later, we will move away from happy motoring.

[OSPREYXIV]

29. A(greed). Sooner is far better

Ultimately population drives all human endeavor.
Mass transit is a far more attractive alternative.
IMHO, our only reasonable alternative is a plan to cooperate in a global effort to reduce carbon emissions but any solution must must proceed from an over-all understanding of how much energy will be required. The "energy crisis" that we face is the root cause of all of our other so-called crises. We need much more energy, not less, but energy of a different kind. Electricity.

We're running out of water, arable land, rain forest, and reasonable alternatives for one very overlooked reason. The PTB are satisfied with present arrangements. They not only control the extraction, refining and distribution of all the fuel we all need to stay alive, they control all the food supplies as well. Does anybody ever talk about that on DU? Of course not. Why not? The system is in the hands of those same bankers who made all the lines of credit disappear using our money. But you knew that. We all know it. What can we do? Well, we are overlooking one simple fact: the energy-that-becomes-capital is extracted from the commons. Just as we own the stocks in the mutual funds, hedge funds etc., we own those commons, not the corporations. That's why they've been trying to hoodwink us since Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific RR, the SCOUS decision that twisted the language of the 14th Amendment, redefining the corporations as persons who possess certain inalienable rights.

The days of "Happy motoring" are over. What seems reasonable and rational is to plan on a long-term basis to eliminate fossil fuel energy sources ASAP. Fuel cell powered vehicles help get us there as an intermediate step. Mainly they'd revive the depressed labor market in a rational manner. We are trapped in an obsolescent model of capital formation. Carmaking requires skilled labor. It hasn't been completely robotized. Yet.

Continental geography determines engineering solutions for now. Just not possible to eliminate personal transportation in this country as it has come to exist due to railroad-era layouts that were then overlaid with the petromotive grid. However...reduce weight and you reduce the fuel burden, lighten the frame, body panels, as well as other sub-components, extending range even further. Removing all personal vehicles from the system is unachievble unless urban and suburban centers are reconfigured much more densely and efficiently. The collapsed housing bubble can be understood much more quickly if it is explained as a result of unrestrained growth of an obsolete development model based on an oil-dependent transportation system. We became slaves of the cars that freed us from being confined (doomed) to lives of maddening boredom on isolated farms or emprisonment in overcrowded cities. No one will repeal the law of unintended consequences in our lifethymes.

A new strategic triad for a new American century:

*Rebuild the passenger rail system using existing easements AMAP, going vertical, monorail, etc. High-speed lines should be built along major conurban axes. E.g., Boston-Washington via New York. San Diego-LA-SF, Chicago-NY. The idea is to make inter-city travel times beat total flight times. Air times seem lower until we calculate total time in transit. Rail approaches door to door.
*Rebuild the agribiz machine tool industry and the overall agribiz model. If Sandy is the future, we're facing famine if we don't anticipate a way to grow food on an industial scale in more weather- proof, solar-electrically powered, drip-irrigated conditions. The key word is anticipate. People do not plan to fail. The fail to plan.
*Use the intellecual property rights of aerospace design industry proactively to monitor the earth as an organism. Right now it protects us from the people we say we want to persuade not to blow us up with our own technology. What if we were to de-weaponize (some of) our weapons and use them to help people who get less than a meal a day, have to carry their water and wake up wearing the same dirty clothes they slept in?

(No, I don't mean New Yorkers. Grim as it is and will continue to be, the post-tropical stormscape of NYC provides an invaluable lesson about the fragility of modern urban civilization.
Everything depends on electricity.

[Javaman]

12. How long does carbon stay in the atmosphere?

Carbon is forever
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Carbon dioxide emissions and their associated warming could linger for millennia, according to some climate scientists. Mason Inman looks at why the fallout from burning fossil fuels could last far longer than expected.

After our fossil fuel blow-out, how long will the CO2 hangover last? And what about the global fever that comes along with it? These sound like simple questions, but the answers are complex — and not well understood or appreciated outside a small group of climate scientists. Popular books on climate change — even those written by scientists — if they mention the lifetime of CO2 at all, typically say it lasts "a century or more"1 or "more than a hundred years".

"That's complete nonsense," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. It doesn't help that the summaries in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have confused the issue, allege Caldeira and colleagues in an upcoming paper in Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences2. Now he and a few other climate scientists are trying to spread the word that human-generated CO2, and the warming it brings, will linger far into the future — unless we take heroic measures to pull the gas out of the air.
more at link...

If that's too doom and gloom for you, here's something more "hopeful"...

Carbon Dioxide Duration in Atmosphere
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00296.htm

How long dose Carbon Dioxide stay in the atmosphere?

Bill,

The duration period for carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is somewhere between 100 and 500 years. Obviously, not all carbon dioxide molecules will stay in the atmosphere that long, but on average the duration may be around 200-300 years. Some scientists believe that it could be longer than that, others believe that the duration is shorter. Presently, there is some uncertainty in those figures.

The most important thing concerning CO2 duration is that its large concentration plus its long duration in the atmosphere make it the most important greenhouse gas after water vapor.

Some other greenhouse gases also have similarly long durations in the atmosphere, but their concentrations are much smaller than CO2 and thus they are less important (but not unimportant) contributors to warming.

Although water vapor is the most effective greenhouse gas, it has a duration in the atmosphere of only 3-7 days and its concentration will likely only increase if atmospheric temperature increases. This is a double whammy that most climate scientists are concerned about. If increasing concentrations of CO2 result in warmer atmospheric temperatures, that will likely result in higher water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere and thus further enhance atmospheric warming, assuming that the increased water vapor concentration does not lead to increased cloudiness (which may reduce warming in some regions of the world, but increase warming in others).

David R. Cook
Meteorologist
Climate Research Section
Environmental Science Division
Argonne National Laboratory


--------------------------------

either way, the nations of the world will have to stop spewing CO2 into the atmosphere right now in order for the world to have a chance of survival 500 years from now.

Until then, the CO2 is still going to keep spewing until Washington is hit by a major storm thus popping the beltway bubble.

[Junkdrawer]

13. Exactly. CO2 is unlike other air pollution issues....

We're used to waiting until the pollution is deadly and then clamping on pollution controls. With carbon, waiting until you can't live with it is waiting FAR too long.

And then there's ocean inertia: you have to wait 30-50 years before the full effect of any given CO2 level is felt.

[Tikki]

18. Environmental issues could be one of the first things our President Obama could address..

in his second term. There are so many issues revolving around this. Let's let him know we
are excited about his second term and want these issues addressed.


Tikki

[Fire Walk With Me]

20. Food production is already being seriously effected. Start growing your own

and get community gardens going!

[argiel1234]

21. while I agree that human caused climate change is real

mother nature is much more potent

Deccan traps, geothermal and supervolcano eruptions have released much more co2 into the atmosphere in one giant belch than humanity has released since the industrial revolution.

Human activity just increases it that much more.

[AverageJoe90]

23. True, but one thing to consider....

Is just how quickly things are changing.......maybe not quite as fast as after Toba or the K/T asteroid but definitely lightning-fast compared to events in which there were no artificial forcings.

[argiel1234]

25. i agree as well,

we are burning some 84 million barrels of oil every DAY, stuff which took hundreds of millions of years to naturally build up. Not even including coal and natural gas which is in the millions of tons combined every day as well.
\

Humans are real good unfortunately at fucking up the planet real quick

edited posting for spelling

[sendero]

27. If you mean do something to stop it..

... that bus left the terminal years ago.

And even if it hadn't - a cursory, and I mean cursory examination of world politics would disabuse you of ANY notion that ANYTHING of value can actually be done (I'm talking the developing world who is not going to accept limitations on their energy use PERIOD) so my advice would be simple.

Get ready for more wild weather because here it comes.