How credible a source is IPSO, the author of the report backing this story? From what I can tell it's a U.K. non-profit hosted by the Zoological Society of London [1], itself a U.K. non-profit [2]. Alex Rogers, IPSO's Scientific Director [1], is also a Professor in Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford [3].
What is 'fake' or 'dodgy' about the article? You haven't actually specified what problems you have with it.
Acidification, pollution and overfishing are all related if you care about ocean biodiversity or about the economic impacts of the collapse of fisheries.
Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. In contrast, the geological record contains long-term evidence for a variety of global environmental perturbations, including ocean acidification plus their associated biotic responses. We review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past ~300 million years of Earth’s history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry—a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.
This is certainly true, but amount matters. If its 300 years then we have a problem, if its 3000, maybe not so much. Articles like this do not help give perspective.
There are almost no positive feedback loops in nature, for the simple reason that they tend to get triggered by random variations and feedback on themself till they reach limit and convert to negative loops.
"The fact that the ice core records do not seem full of methane spikes due to high-latitude sources makes it seem like the real world is not as sensitive as we were able to set the model up to be."
Actually since ocean acidification provides a chemical power source for protozoa, we probably only have a year or two before one of the species adapts and brings it back to it's previous level by harvesting the energy in it. That will allow one of those species to rapidly spread, which is exactly what we want in this case.
Trying to fix it using any kind of non-self-replicating technology is, imho, a non-starter.
The short-term scenario is not good, but from the little I know about aquatic biology/chemistry, it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it.
Increased CO2 levels should just cause algae/cyanobacteria blooms, which will balance CO2/O2 levels back again and foster primary consumers (solving over-fishing as a bonus). Also, H2CO3 gets buffered by all the Ca/Mg content in the ocean, so I don't think it's even possible for the pH to just drop forever (as in the graph someone posted in one of the comments here).
Your right in the sense that there is nothing catastrophic from a the perspective of geological time. There have been mass extinctions before. The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us. There is nothing particularly magical about the environment we want to live in, other than it happens to be about what it would be now if not for recent human actions. Unfortunately, those actions didn't just change the system, they re-introduced raw materials that have previously been removed from the system. There is no reason to believe that the new equilibrium is the same as the old one.
An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. For billions of years it has been using up the planets supply of carbon and trapping it in what is now called fossil fuels. If this continues unchecked, we will run out of available carbon and life on this planet will die off. Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment.
If only we had a large number of planets at varying stages of having life (including being long dead).
> The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us.
I'm adept of the view that the environment influences the organisms as much as organisms influence their environment, or rather that there isn't a clear distinction between environment and the organisms in it [1].
It should be an unrealistic notion to have living human beings and expect the environment to stay the same as before humans [2]. Events like increased CO2 levels in the ocean should be seen as the way things are, rather than one-off catastrophes. These events are what push back on our species, and we are expected to either adapt (be it consciously, with counter-measures, or by accident) or die altogether.
> An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. (...) Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment.
This is indeed an interesting perspective, which I subscribe too, and aligns well with the Gaia theory.
"Events like increased CO2 levels in the ocean should be seen as the way things are, rather than one-off catastrophes."
This is a false dichotomy. Just because these events have happened regularly, on geological time scales, doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a one-off catastrophe from the point of view of homo sapiens. I'm not saying an extinction event, but it could be a catastrophic event.
In other words, taking the long view here (as you're doing) is way too abstract in this case. There will be real costs to change of this magnitude.
> Just because these events have happened regularly, on geological time scales, doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a one-off catastrophe from the point of view of homo sapiens.
I agree. Without the environment pressuring us back though, what would keep us from dumping CO2 in the atmosphere forever, or at increasing rates? We wouldn't even be discussing this.
That's the whole point of my comment: why don't we see humans as a force of nature themselves, as opposed to the more popular view that nature is static and humans are supposed to leave it untouched.
I understand the idea you're putting forward -- you have in fact repeated it three times.
I think the idea is less novel than you seem to. And more to the point, I don't think it provides guidance.
In a situation where we have no expectation of linearity, waiting for significant pressure back from the environment (as you say, "it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it") may prove very foolish.
It is sort of incredible that on one post you admit to knowing little about the subject, and then on the next you make authoritative (albeit unsurprisingly asinine) arguments such as "it's unrealistic to expect the environment to stay the same, and we should just treat these events as normal and see if we adapt or go extinct."
I think it's pretty clear I'm giving my beliefs on the bigger picture (how we see human interaction with the environment), as a commentary on gizmo686's post, not providing any kind of guideline to the human race from my godly wisdom.
Would add more to the discussion if you elaborated on why you think it's foolish.
I agree with him : your belief that it's possible for humans to keep our environment constant over significant time frames is what's ridiculous.
You're turning around the argument. He's not suggesting anything insane, you are.
You're defending Disney reality (poor little animals ! We must help !) against the idea of evolution (adapt or die ? Can't adapt by the thousands ? Too bad). Guess which one is going to win in the real world, irrespective of what the entire human species decides to do ?
What do you consider "significant time frames"? 10 years, 1000 years, 100,000?
If human activity is destabilizing the environment (ie, we have burned an amount of carbon which is suspiciously congruent with the amount of excess carbon in the atmosphere/oceans) why is it unreasonable to expect human activities to provide a similar amount of stabilization, even if greater amounts exceed our grasp?
I gave you point because you asked the right question about the timeframe.
Consider it 12000-28000 years. Because this is timeframe between quite regular Ice Ages. And any tech-based civilization is wiped by serious icing event. Its inevitable. Thus it is not hypothetical global warming you shold be afraid of, but global cooling. And it is right about to start. Your grand-grand-grandson must get a skill of flintcnapping from you, not server administration, or stock brokerage, if ou want him live.
Everything in nature happens along exponential growth curves, so those years are meaningless. This means that not much appears to happen for long periods (few 100k years at most though), then suddenly exponential growth changes everything. As soon as the growth factor increases I would expect to see massive, unpredictable changes 5-10 generation lengths later, assuming a growth factor of 2.
> why is it unreasonable to expect human activities to provide a similar amount of stabilization, even if greater amounts exceed our grasp?
Because of thermodynamics. Given that you start from a system that is not in thermodynamic equilibrium (the earth is not, nor would it be desirable if it was), large sudden changes are par for the course, not an exception.
There is disagreement on whether it is even possible to halt the changes. You can certainly make the change turn out differently (does not mean better, just different). Thermodynamics takes it as an assumption that it is not (you cannot stabilize (ie. "cool") a gas by adding energy, no matter how large the amount, you can only let it expand into a larger area or bring it into contact with something much more stable than it is, and you'll destabilize the large thing in the process).
The causal problem here (in mathematical terms) is that while it is certainly true that "X" caused change "Y", and that Y is large, the absence of "X" would have lead to an equally large change "Z". Take for example the "3-body" phenomenon : Take the solar system. Move one 1kg rock in the asteroid belt (or almost anywhere else) 1 meter in any direction. Wait 10000 years. Look at the effect it had. Counterintuitively, planetary orbits will differ significantly as a result of that tiny movement. It won't take long for that rock to affect the paths of rocks near it through gravity. The change will grow, and before you know it it significantly affects the paths of the thousands of huge "temporary comets" that get catapulted out of the asteroid belt on a regular basis. A few of those will come close to a moon, and "slingshot" around them, significantly affecting the orbit of said moon, which will affect the path of the planet it's orbiting. Any small difference in orbit will build up over time into the positions and orbits of those planets and before you know it, nothing looks alike anymore.
Dude, climate always changes. But humans have nothing to influence it in any significant way.
All climate change research is paid by cunny people who create carbon quota trade market out of thin air, and seek political control in their own coutries.
Cognitive dissonance is a fascinating area of research.
It's amazing to me that people can believe, utterly, such obvious tripe. "All climate change research is paid by cunny people who create carbon quota trade market out of thin air, and seek political control in their own coutries."
I live in Seattle and in just the past few years, beaches which used to be absolutely covered in oysters are now barren because of acidification. And by covered, I mean you need a path through them to walk (they are sharp), and the most difficult thing when picking them was to pick up a single one rather than cluster. This was on the Hood canal for anyone in the area.
Playing devil's advocate here: how is this change in a specific location any more "proof" of ocean acidification than especially cold weather in a different location "disproves" global warming?
Aren't both of these cases instances of cherry-picking?
The ocean's effect as a buffer is fading very rapidly.
The growth of cyanobacteria may have extremely harmful events. No organism on this planet has ever seen a rate of change as strong as this, so this is completely unpredictable territory.
The fact that it's predictable in the span of several hundreds of thousands of years doesn't mean that we're in for massive, massive two hundred years (or more) or unpredictable events.
Systems may take a looong time before they stabilize.
Do you know why this isn't already happening at a pace to keep up with the changes they are measuring? Do you expect that the effects you mention are currently, but will soon catch up? I am honestly curious.
Algae/cyanobacteria blooms are already a reality [1]. The ocean is such a big system though, that I wouldn't expect the long-term effects of these blooms to be observable in a timeframe measured in decades.
A predator-prey model is essentially never just a stable population for both. Instead, you go through periods of increasing prey -> increasing predators -> decreasing prey -> decreasing predators.
Here the prey would be atmospheric carbon dioxide and the predators would be the plankton.
Well, plankton does. Atmospheric carbon increases and (potentially) decreases, and the question I responded to wanted to know why plankton didn't respond to an increase in supply by having already come into existence in the past so that the atmospheric concentration never varied. It's because (just like the predator-prey model) it's difficult for the feeding population to respond in the present to an increased future supply of food.
Its an anlogy, not a syllogism. It would seem enought that Co2 may be correlated with breeding. Which may or may not be technically correct, but its at least a coherent thought.
I read that just after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Capitol trilogy. (40 days of rain, 50 degrees below, 60 days...) Yeah, it's science fiction, but it's plausible hard sf, not space opera. And the Time article sounded way too close to some of what was happening in the books.
Ocean acidification was mentioned somewhat in passing in the last book as something that's very hard to reverse, partially because of the chemistry and partially because of the sheer amount of chemicals that would be required. That was in contrast to a multi hundred billion dollar salt transport to restart the thermo haline circulation.
rising levels of caffeine, PCBs and antibiotics in the Sound's waters: (I can't google for recent articles, but STimes has written about it last 6 months
Let's presume it is all true. Gizmag quoted a study that 15-container ships (just 15) dole out the same amount of pollution as 760-million cars. (I shit you not):
God knows what coal and power plants produce but nonetheless, why does the IPSO and The Guardian have to scare the shit out of everyone instead of offering some sort of real, solution?
If this is all true and this is as dire as they say, one would think or suggest that the military take over the shipping duties of these 15-container-ships and use 15-nuclear-powered vessels instead? this would remove the carbon footprint of these polluting vessels and/or 750-million cars per day with way less waste?
Next, onto the power plants instead of the barbecues and lawn mowers?
Not all journalism or scientific reporting is about presenting solutions, and pointing out the problems (especially of this severity, if the article is to be believed) is an important step. Furthermore, as the article says, I don't think anyone knows the solution. Even if we drastically reduce carbon emissions, it probably won't help.
I often find an attitude of dismissal and disdain towards environmental reporting like this on Hacker News. I think it stems from how we're so used to the optimism and can-do attitude of Silicon Valley that it's hard to digest how we may have created a problem we can't solve. It feels better to think "oh, they're just not being innovative enough in their solutions" and present oneself as above the fray.
But the stark reality, if the science is to be believed, is that we're on the path towards major environmental changes in the foreseeable future, and as of right now, we don't have a solution.
I agree with the criticism of HN. The lack of understanding of basic geography and the environment is shocking. Its like listening to a bunch of non-technical sales people discuss computer security.
> But the stark reality, if the science is to be
> believed, is that we're on the path towards major
> environmental changes in the foreseeable future, and as of
> right now, we don't have a solution.
I'd disagree we're on the path. We are threading deep into woods that path leads (Hello poisonous jellifishes!).
I'm not sure we can turn, back, but if by some miracle scientists are all wrong, and we aren't doomed in the near future, we still need to be extremely careful of our impact on ecosystems.
The study talks about other pollutants (like Sulfur Oxide and other particulates), but not CO2. The amount of CO2 emited by these ships is not stated in the article, but can be estimated from their rate of fuel consumption. That said, in general ships are more efficient than cars, especially at this scale. It's entirely likely that the CO2 per mass of freight per distance covered by container ship is of the order of magnitude, or lower than in a car.
This is because of the sulphur emission control laws that will come into action then. Basically, ships will buy scrubbers that clean the exhaust gases, buy low sulphur diesel, or change to a completely different fuel.
The emissions control areas, or ECA:s as they are called, inlude US coasts, the North Sea, the English Channel and the whole Baltic Sea.
This will cause massive cost increases in shipping. Expect your import goods to be expensive and export profits to be less. Yet it will save lots of lives.
There's nothing to this. It's customary for news outlets to wait until they get the go ahead from an organization/company/govt releasing a report (usually done simultaneously). So as to not play favorites, I guess.
In case they will be taking it down, here is the text:
Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years
Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable
By Fiona Harvey in Kiel
The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013
Coral is particularly at risk from acidification and rising sea temperatures. Photograph: Paul Jarrett/PA
The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday.
An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood.
In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: "This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth's known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun." It published its findings in the State of the Oceans report, collated every two years from global monitoring and other research studies.
Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University, said: "The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth."
Coral is particularly at risk. Increased acidity dissolves the calcium carbonate skeletons that form the structure of reefs, and increasing temperatures lead to bleaching where the corals lose symbiotic algae they rely on. The report says that world governments' current pledges to curb carbon emissions would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world's reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising.
Corals are vital to the health of fisheries, because they act as nurseries to young fish and smaller species that provide food for bigger ones.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the seas – at least a third of the carbon that humans have released has been dissolved in this way, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and makes them more acidic. But IPSO found the situation was even more dire than that laid out by the world's top climate scientists in their landmark report last week.
In absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere, the world's oceans have shielded humans from the worst effects of global warming, the marine scientists said. This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood.
Acidification harms marine creatures that rely on calcium carbonate to build coral reefs and shells, as well as plankton, and the fish that rely on them. Jane Lubchenco, former director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine biologist, said the effects were already being felt in some oyster fisheries, where young larvae were failing to develop properly in areas where the acid rates are higher, such as on the west coast of the US. "You can actually see this happening," she said. "It's not something a long way into the future. It is a very big problem."
But the chemical changes in the ocean go further, said Rogers. Marine animals use chemical signals to perceive their environment and locate prey and predators, and there is evidence that their ability to do so is being impaired in some species.
Trevor Manuel, a South African government minister and co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, called the report "a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global oceans".
"Unless we restore the ocean's health, we will experience the consequences on prosperity, wellbeing and development. Governments must respond as urgently as they do to national security threats – in the long run, the impacts are just as important," he said.
Current rates of carbon release into the oceans are 10 times faster than those before the last major species extinction, which was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction, about 55m years ago. The IPSO scientists can tell that the current ocean acidification is the highest for 300m years from geological records.
They called for strong action by governments to limit carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to no more than 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That would require urgent and deep reductions in fossil fuel use.
No country in the world is properly tackling overfishing, the report found, and almost two thirds are failing badly. At least 70 per cent of the world's fish populations are over-exploited. Giving local communities more control over their fisheries, and favouring small-scale operators over large commercial vessels would help this, the report found. Subsidies that drive overcapacity in fishing fleets should also be eliminated, marine conservation zones set up and destructive fishing equipment should be banned. There should also be better governance of the areas of ocean beyond countries' national limits.
The IPSO report also found the oceans were being "deoxygenated" – their average oxygen content is likely to fall by as much as 7 per cent by 2100, partly because of the run-off of fertilisers and sewage into the seas, and also as a side-effect of global warming. The reduction of oxygen is a concern as areas of severe depletion become effectively dead.
Rogers said: "People are just not aware of the massive roles that the oceans play in the Earth's systems. Phytoplankton produce 40 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, for example, and 90 per cent of all life is in the oceans. Because the oceans are so vast, there are still areas we have never really seen. We have a very poor grasp of some of the biochemical processes in the world's biggest ecosystem."
The five chapters of which the State of the Oceans report is a summary have been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal.
Yup, why do I suspect that this article
is more of the same from the big movement
to claim that humans are evil, carbon
is filthy, filthy humans are ruining the
planet with evil carbon, or evil humans
are ruining the planet with filthy carbon,
and the only hope for the planet is massive,
UN directed carbon cap and trade to send
massive amounts of money from the evil,
rich nations to the noble, poor nations,
and that humans should junk their cars
and either walk or use bicycles, and the
rich nations should feel ashamed and
guilty for their grossly excessive use
of the finite resources of our pure, precious,
pristine, delicate planet, right at the
tipping point of total devastation?
Do I have that about right? Or we could
borrow from the Mayans and kill people
and pour their blood on a rock to keep
the sun moving across the sky or, in this
case, save the planet from filthy carbon
from evil humans. Or, we need a boys'
band complete with uniforms to counter
the sin and corruption of a pool table
in town. Let's have some more flim-flam,
fraud scams!
They can be a bit like rubbery noodles if they're not thoroughly dried, or crispy like shredded cabbage if they are. I don't know if the edible ones don't sting or they do something to neutralize the stingers. (Jellyfish stingers are spring loaded and generally work quite well whether the jellyfish is alive or not.)
Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance?
I'm not talking about moore's law, but statistical models used to predict the future. How many solar flares will there be in 2020? What will the DOW be in 2050? How many democrats will be in congress in 2021? Stuff like that.
So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault."
I'm just curious if anyone knows of any predictive models that weren't created to scare the shit out of people.
> Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance?
Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever.
The forward-looking aspect of the science of cosmology.
Lots more.
> So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault."
That's more indicative of the biases through which you filter the available information (perhaps most importantly, the bias in the information sources from which you receive information -- e.g., if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media, there's a pretty heavy bias in what predictions you are going to hear about.)
> Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff.
Lots of it involves predicting the behavior of complex economic and social systems using empirically-tested (scientific) methodologies.
> That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples?
If you want to know about where science is used to predict the behavior of complex systems, one place to look would be the scientific literature of fields which are concerned with the behavior of complex systems.
Keep in mind that the last world war resulted in nuclear attacks. I don't think we have any guarantee that "mutually assured destruction" will be enough to save us if there is another truly global war between the remaining super/nuclear powers.
And now we also have stuff like "depleted" uranium rounds which have pretty serious consequences on future generations.
They talk about the oxygen content falling by 7% by 2100. This makes me wonder: let's assume the worst and earth is headed for a mass extinction event. How long do these events usually take? Are they slow processes, or does everything just die one day?
What would happen is that the rate of biodiversity drops drastically, and organisms that are simple and adaptable (like cockroaches, algae, jellyfich, certain classes of bacteria, small mammals, urban birds) adapt and thrive and consume the rest of the flora and fauna, and permanently adapt their environments making the situation extremely fragile for more complex and delicate birds and larger vertebrates.
Also, the system goes out of the equilibrium slowly developed in the last climate age.
As far as crops go, we'll see new varieties of plant illnesses appearing in places we hadn't seen them before. Unpredictable weather kills the more fragile species that depend on consistent climate.
Some ecosystems become simply uninhabitable; the Siberian bog swamps which are beginning to melt and release a greater amount of methane than ever before seen by humanity will not support the current crop of bacteria and plants. However there are no mammals and complex predators that can effectively fill the niche that will be created (at least not for potentially many thousands of years). So what you'll have is the growth of tall grasses and bushes that can survive on the new climate, but lacking a sustaining ecosystem, there won't be birds or large predators. Since insects develop very rapidly they will probably thrive, but their impact on the new ecosystem will not be predictable.
A lot of land probably won't be able to support crops, however the current state of industrial farming leaves the land depleted, so it will take many generations to replete the topsoil necessary for more balanced wildlife to survive.
Amphibians are already at a stage of mass extinction; their porous skin allows for a very large degree of exchange with chemicals in their environment, and are already suffering the effects of pesticides and herbicides in the environment. If those things biodegrade effectively that effect will not be felt in a few decades, but the change of climate will probably be too much (it already is).
I would be careful with the word simple. Adaptable is the important component, and that seems to be related more to being small and not particularly specialized. Simple sounds like a description of the amount of genetic data the species contains. It has been a while since I took biology, but if I recall correctly, even small and adaptable species have a lot of genetic data. When a mass extinction event happens, once the environment stabilizes, the doors are open for large animals again, and the small ones already have the genetic complexity needed to fill those niches relatively quickly.
If adaptability (without simplicity) is the key component, that sounds like somewhat good news for humanity, us being a versatile type, and we can eat a lot of things for food. It's not quite clear to me that survival necessarily implies smallness.
Though I would imagine that a lot of humans would die in the process. It would make the black plague look like child's play.
The Hellstrom Chronicle is a 1971 "science fictiony" cult film that, strangely, won the 1972 Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Documentary Feature.
In the film, the fictitious scientist Dr. Nils Hellstrom claims, on the basis of scientific-sounding theories, that insects will ultimately win the fight for survival on planet Earth because of their adaptability and ability to reproduce rapidly, and that the human race will lose this fight largely because of excessive individualism.
They seem very in favor reducing over-fishing, switching to clean energy sources, etc. They're only in favor of geoengineering if politicians can't get their shit together and we end up on the brink of a disaster.
"We do not promote the use of the [geoengineering] method highlighted in this section. We merely present it here as an interesting solution proposed by the field of geoengineering, a popularly growing discipline which seeks to provide technical solutions which manipulate the earth’s climate in order to counteract the effects of global climate change."
"Any solution proposed by the field of geoengineering is akin to addressing the symptoms and not the source of the problem."
Fossil fuels are not a long-term energy solution in any case, so it makes more sense to attack the problem from that angle.
And I suspect the answer is that it's not cheaper. I'm unaware of any cheap, scalable, safe method of reducing CO2 levels. It's difficult to conceive of a practical solution to global warming that doesn't involve drastically reducing the ongoing CO2 output. How are you going to balance out 30+ billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year?
I guess the Scifi question is can you build a nuclear ship with some apparatus that pulls the CO2 out of the ocean and breaks it into C (stored on ship) and O (released into atmosphere)?
Most large navies run nuclear reactors on board their ships. IIRC, nuclear submarines pull water and use a portion of reactor power to get fresh oxygen.
But I'm also not sure that the reaction is as easy as it sounds. First of all, manufacturing such a ship would likely cause a great deal of greenhouse emissions. Would the ship's benefit offset the pollution it implicitly creates as it is built? How about the pollution generated by its operation? No engine emissions, but when the reactor gets decommissioned it'll have to be buried, likely by diesel-powered equipment and covered in concrete which is manufactured in a dirty process. Tugboats aren't nuclear powered. Re-fuelling apparatuses aren't nuclear-powered. Crew will produce waste, reactor needs to be cooled which introduces unwanted heat to the water, etc etc etc.
Would it even be economically possible to build/operate?
How many ships would be required to make a measurable impact?
You could build one ship, but you'd need to build and power millions of them to have any impact.
You'd have to reduce the CO2 resulting from the combustion of coal and oil during the whole industrial era, or maybe a bit less, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the task at hand.
When asking about our ability to geiengineer, remember that we are the once that caused this problem in the first place, and without even trying. Having said that, releasing CO2 is a much easier problem than removing it.
As to your proposal, CO2 would decompose into C2 and O2 (with twice as many O2 molecules). Incidentally, C2 is a strong acid [1]. Additionally, breaking CO2 this way would move it to a higher energy state, and therefore require a net input of energy. (Technically, given what I know, it is possible that there is just a high activation energy to do this, but seeing as CO2 is such a common product of energy releasing reactions, including metabolism, I'm pretty sure it is just a low energy molecule). Also, it took pretty much all of our industrial force to introduce the CO2 in the first place, and there was huge economic incentive.
The more popular ideas in geo-engineering are to let nature do the hard work for us. For example, a common idea is to introduce iron to the ocean. This would increase plankton populations, and the plankton would then use solar power to remove CO2.
> For example, a common idea is to introduce iron to the ocean. This would increase plankton populations, and the plankton would then use solar power to remove CO2.
I'm wary this leads to a "and now you have TWO problems" situation... presumably oceans full of plankton would do lots of other bad things too? Humans introducing plants/animals to control the populations of other plants/animals has worked spectacularly badly over the course of history (see: New Zealand).
It’s almost impossible to produce a lot of C2 because it reacts with itself and produce some Carbon compound, like an amorphous version of graphite, similar to soot. In this version it can be compressed and buried.
(The main problem with this idea is that the decomposition needs a lot of energy.)
Is there any reason no one is talking about terraforming seriously yet? What kind of technologies can be used to draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much would it cost to make a difference?
A few people are talking about "geoengineering" approaches, e.g. pumping sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cause a cooling effect. But such ideas are pretty fringe, I suspect because a) they sound crazy b) that kind of intervention risks serious unexpected consequences.
Basic thermodynamics can provide a lower limit : at least 9x more energy than was gained by burning it (except for oil burned in power plants, where it'd be 6-7x, but that's not much).
That seems to mean that without massive expansions in nuclear power it's just not in the cards.
But like with nuclear power, we don't have to do all the work. We don't need to generate electricity and then run conventional a CO2 filter. Hypothetically, if we dump 1 trillion dollars into genetic engineering, why can't we design some biological chain reaction that would do all the work?
Actually I sort of like the medieval approach : government prizes. We want this done, why not create a competition ? If a company can solve this problem, document how you've done it (AFTER the fact) and present it to a board of government scientists. If they believe you, you get the prize money.
And make the prize money something like $5 billion or so. Chump change for what you're asking for. Besides, it has to be an amount that would provide decades of comfort for a company of at least a dozen people + a nice reward for any investors.
This worked for draining swamps in the late middle ages. It worked for building things like clocks and compasses, and these sorts of prizes is how ocean-capable ships were designed in the first place. I would argue that the (early) prizes were for 'allow a ship to navigate without any visible markers on the ground', about as nebulous a concept as 'lower atmospheric co2 by 50% - or at least prove you can do it' would be.
It's sad to me that this is not the top post. It seems that fact is a reflection of the problem at hand. We don't care about the oceans as much as we care about Twitter. :(
I find it incredibly sad it has made the top post.
The article does not link to any peer review studies to prove it's point, which to me means it's probably bunk, taking a know issue and enlarging it to sensationalise.
With a little bit of research on your own you can find out for yourself that this is an incredibly important issue that affects everyone on the planet, and there is nothing "sensational" about the way it is reported.
I don't know where you live, but the Swedish Green party still want to immediately start phasing out nuclear power. More CO2 for the world.
(If the seas do have an ecological crash which makes the remaining eco systems go down, then any surviving Green party members will probably argue the advantage of this, pushing their carts down "The Road".)
I don't see nuclear power as a great solution. The waste contaminates the environment for thousands of years. And the system is not fault-tolerant, failing in ways which render the environment uninhabitable for who knows how long (Chernobyl, Fukushima).
Yeah, it doesn't generate CO2. But at least you can live in a hotter world, can't live with nuclear waste/fallout.
(Also, we don't know that a hotter climate is bad, we've never tried it before)
Are you sure that's an objective assessment of the relative risks, numerically speaking, and not just a common human failing of seeing slow acting, nebulous threats like climate change as being less dangerous than fast and scary threats like nuclear disasters? Nuclear seems the less dangerous bedfellow to me.
This is one more 'climate change' BS. It does not stop fascinate me how self important climate change advocates are. Humans are not geological factor. Besides no one really have time machine to check validity of such claims. And we know very small about actual chemistry of the oceans, especially when it is deeper than SF beaches.
Disclaimer: I participated in research of lake sediments looking for insights about metal pollutant trends.
Wait, so you're saying that despite the fact that:
- We have accurate measurements of ocean Ph and CO2 concentrations for the past 50 years
- We have a clear understanding of the emissions of CO2 from manmade sources and a record that goes back since the beginning of the industrial age
- We understand the effects of acidification on a large variety of ocean species
- We see a trend of ocean absorbtion of CO2 absolutely consistent with out knowledge of atmospheric chemistry
That means that it's BS?
If you had some evidence to back up the fact as to why a set of multiple thousands of studies in oceanography are flawed when they point out to a singular trend, with a margin of confidence greater than most of the so-called scientific facts that are out there, I wouldn't think what you write is plain denialism.
One of the saddest parts of this whole saga is how the carbon dioxide alarmists have hijacked research budgets and public interest which could be spent dealing with legitimate environmental concerns.
I was confused by this, as well. Given the scale of geologic time, I'd assume they meant 300 million. But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. So it's confusingly worded.
Most often in financial accounting, though conventionally, in other domains such as academia. Depending on the news outlet, some magazines and papers will also use "M" for thousand and "MM" for million, though that practice is probably dying out in the popular press. And of course, the "M" in "CPM" stands for thousand.
"M" was originally an abbreviation for "mille," which is French for "thousand" (by way of Latin origins). Traditionally speaking, one "M" means thousand, and "MM" means thousand-thousand, or million.
Kind of off-topic: if ocean temperatures are increasing, isn't this the same thing as the ocean having more potential energy? If energy generation from waves was increased substantially, would this cool the ocean or act as a dampener against the earth's rotation? Perhaps both?
Heat, ocean waves and the earth's rotation are so many orders of magnitude apart in terms of frequency that a machine designed to dampen one could not possibly have an effect on the others.
While I recognise this question might be abrasive, I feel compelled to ask it.
Why does this belong on Hacker News?
This isn't technology. This isn't legal news (i.e. software patents). This is in no way related to Hacker News. I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted, but I feel we need a place to put these or a tagging system similar to lobsters.
The vast majority of "show HN: my new disruptive pseudo-plagiarized wheel-reinventing RESTful scalable .js + go single-page site framework" or "_insert_valley_startup_here_ plans to revolutionize _trivial_consumer_SaaS_niche_" posts have little to do with actual hacking, either. Few complain about those.
Here we have a post that points out a massive systemic problem we're facing as a species for which we have no current solution. Pretty sure we're in hacker territory. Much more so than in the case of the Yet-Another-Web-Framework or Disruptive-Instagram-For- Squirrels crap we normally get on the front page.
HN attracts some highly intelligent and resourceful people who do things that are radical and can change the way all other people do things. And I think these are the very people who can help to fix these sorts of real world problems.
One could argue that this would affect any number of technological subjects. From the obvious 'no oceans, no life, no technology' to the subtle change in stocks due to the report that the article is covering.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted
