Global warming 'irreversible' for next 1000 years: study

[ray245]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090127/ts ... 0127132619

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Climate change is "largely irreversible" for the next 1,000 years even if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be abruptly halted, according to a new study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The study's authors said there was "no going back" after the report showed that changes in surface temperature, rainfall and sea level are "largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after CO2 emissions are completely stopped."

NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon said the study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, showed that current human choices on carbon dioxide emissions are set to "irreversibly change the planet."

Researchers examined the consequences of CO2 building up beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million, and then completely stopping emissions after the peak. Before the industrial age CO2 in Earth's atmosphere amounted to only 280 parts per million.

The study found that CO2 levels are irreversibly impacting climate change, which will contribute to global sea level rise and rainfall changes in certain regions.

The authors emphasized that increases in CO2 that occur from 2000 to 2100 are set to "lock in" a sea level rise over the next 1,000 years.

Rising sea levels would cause "irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged," the study said.

Decreases in rainfall that last for centuries can be expected to have a range of impacts, said the authors. Regional impacts include -- but are not limited to -- decreased human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts.

Not sure if AFP is reliable or not in regards to science matters, but if it is true, we are really screwed.

[Sky Captain]

Perhaps I`m missing something, but would`t there be more rainfall if ocean levels raise and area covered by water expands? After all warmer climate and larger surface area of open water means more evaporation which will create more rain.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Looks like geoengineering is the only way now.

[Mayabird]

Perhaps I`m missing something, but would`t there be more rainfall if ocean levels raise and area covered by water expands? After all warmer climate and larger surface area of open water means more evaporation which will create more rain.

From what I've read, the sum total might be greater, but the distribution over the landmasses would be greatly skewed. Some few places would see greatly increased rainfall while interior lands would see much less, and the rain would come more in bursts (sudden severe storms that dump a lot of rain and then vanish, which doesn't help the soil moisture much between runoff and the dry spells between) than spread out. But I'll leave the details to people who understand it better.

[Samuel]

Looks like geoengineering is the only way now.

You mean the popular science "lets build a giant sun shade" method? I'm pretty sure just using desalinization plants and levees would be easier.

[ray245]

Looks like geoengineering is the only way now.

You mean the popular science "lets build a giant sun shade" method? I'm pretty sure just using desalinization plants and levees would be easier.

How long do we have to wait before those cars and oil companies start saying it is OK to use fuel en mass again?

[Teleros]

Looks like geoengineering is the only way now.

How much are you willing to bet that, assuming this article is true, we'll instead see green lobbyists insisting on a "Kyoto v2" and the geoengineering being practically ignored ? I just don't see the idea of planning for the year 3000 catching on somehow .

[Sriad]

This study says that climate is changing and will continue to change whatever we do...

But it makes no claims (as far as I could tell from linked material) that our actions can't either mitigate or exacerbate the effects. There is a big difference between sea levels rising 3 meters over the next thousand years vs rising 1 meter per century.

Furthermore, emissions controls are part of a larger virtuous body of regulations to improve global quality of life and minimize humanity's adverse effects on what's left of Earth's natural ecosystem.

It's always been about minimizing climate change, and still is. Total elimination was never a realistic option.

[Count Dooku]

What worries me about climate change (among many things) is the water supply to Mexico and the U.S., specifically the areas that produce a large amount of the food the world consumes. Could this not be solved by a new water system that consisted of nuclear powered desalinization plants, and a new system to deliver the water to the farms where it's needed?

[dragon]

Well thats kind of obivious when you consider how long climate changes take. The last mini ice age lasted how long. The Earth takes a long view on changing its climates. But people are impatient.



Edit that didn't work.
Heres the webiste where I found the chart
link

[Sky Captain]

What worries me about climate change (among many things) is the water supply to Mexico and the U.S., specifically the areas that produce a large amount of the food the world consumes. Could this not be solved by a new water system that consisted of nuclear powered desalinization plants, and a new system to deliver the water to the farms where it's needed?

This is actually far more worrying about possible climate change effects than see level raise and increased weather activity because two previous are more or less an inconvenience, but if the world`s prime agricultural regions gets ruined then we all will be in a very serious trouble.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Well thats kind of obivious when you consider how long climate changes take.

Climate changes can happen quite fast I understand. They may LAST for a long time, but major changes can happen in just a few years.

[The Big I]

Just curious I've been reading up on carbon capture tech I don't really know much about it the source I have been looking at are a couple of years old it would be nice to find a site with more up to date info on it. But would it help bringing down the atmospheric carbon levels would it help if we started to employ it along side "cleaner" engery source?

Sorry for the thread necromancy but I felt this didn't warrant a new thread.

[Pelranius]

We really need to get around to building that Qattara Depression dam. Nuclear desalination is also a good idea (wonder if we could also extract uranium from seawater while desalinizing it).

[Samuel]

Just curious I've been reading up on carbon capture tech I don't really know much about it the source I have been looking at are a couple of years old it would be nice to find a site with more up to date info on it. But would it help bringing down the atmospheric carbon levels would it help if we started to employ it along side "cleaner" engery source?

Sorry for the thread necromancy but I felt this didn't warrant a new thread.

Well, you'd need alot of it to have a noticable impact and it won't alter the temperature and climater shifts that are already happening. It will stop the ones that might be triggered with even more warming, which is a good enough reason to do it- we really don't want to trigger a positive feedback loop.

[Junghalli]

I read an article a while back suggesting we might do carbon capture by dumping plant material (like agricultural waste) somewhere where it can't decompose, like say encasing it in a concrete block and dumping it in a sealed vault or the bottom of the ocean. Plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere and incorporate the carbon into their tissues as they grow, and the infrastructure to do such a thing already basically exists.

It sounded like a pretty good idea to me.

[K. A. Pital]

It doesn't mean that it's impossible, merely that it's impossible without resorting to heavy stuff like spreading lots of dust or massively exploding nuclear weapons to cool the Earth down.

[The Big I]

It doesn't mean that it's impossible, merely that it's impossible without resorting to heavy stuff like spreading lots of dust or massively exploding nuclear weapons to cool the Earth down.

There is an easier way to get the CO2 out of the atmosphere by pumping sulphur up there as proposed by Professor Flannery here is the link to the article:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23724412-2,00.html

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, sulphur, our dudes proposed something similar. There's a problem with selling such a massive operation to the public. Not that the public even wants to do anything about it in the first place

[Setesh]

How about we do nothing of the kind. Global warming (or The New Ice Age if you were around in 1974) is complete and utter fraud. John Coleman, the man who founded the weather channel thought there was something screwy about this in'74. What did he find? That global average temperature over the last hundred years has not changed with our increased use of fossil fuels, but instead follows almost exactly the increases and decreases in solar activity. Despite the real increase of carbon in the atmosphere the actual amount is still in the range of a trace gas. (increase of 215 parts per million up to 385) But it still accounts for .0041 of a percent of the total make-up of the atmosphere, far to low to affect a real impact on global temperature.

Link

[Dooey Jo]

But it still accounts for .0041 of a percent of the total make-up of the atmosphere, far to low to affect a real impact on global temperature.

Yeah man, it's not like different molecules have different optical properties, and things like ozone, which amounts to 0.00006% of the atmosphere certainly has pretty much no impact at all on the amount and composition of radiation reaching and leaving Earth. How dare those Greenpeaceniks try to steal our precious oil and SUVs!

[Setesh]

In order for the refractory index of carbon to alter the temperature it will have to get to at least .5 of 1% of total atmosphere, in other words a visible haze. There is simply not enough carbon in the air currently to alter global temperatures. Ozone is a rather interesting case, its effect is increased because most of the ozone is concentrated in the upper atmosphere in a (relatively) thin band where its parts per million is much higher than its global total. Carbon is much more diffuse for the fraction that is airborn, and we have these wonderful things called plants that scrub carbon back out of the atmosphere.

What's scaring me here is some of the 'plans' listed here to get carbon out of the air are more damaging to the environment than the carbon is.

[Samuel]

Despite the real increase of carbon in the atmosphere the actual amount is still in the range of a trace gas. (increase of 215 parts per million up to 385) But it still accounts for .0041 of a percent of the total make-up of the atmosphere, far to low to affect a real impact on global temperature.

God, I love astronomy right now. Mars is a good planet to test that theory- and guess what? Low CO2 means that it has a huge temperature shift every day. You know, the greenhouse effect?

In order for the refractory index of carbon to alter the temperature it will have to get to at least .5 of 1% of total atmosphere, in other words a visible haze. There is simply not enough carbon in the air currently to alter global temperatures.

If only we had other gases that were more potent and had larger effects. You know, like methane. CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas- just the main one we are making.

Lets not forget that all it has to do is insure that more heat is trapped than can escape until we get a new equilibrium and the world warms up. We had Ice Ages not because it was always below freezing, but because it wasn't warm long enough for the snow to melt.

[Mayabird]

Actually we're producing quite a bit of methane right now and the amount is increasing. It's a byproduct of agriculture (rice paddies, and also a lot of cows doing a lot of farting). More farming and ranching, more methane. It's not helping at all.

[Dooey Jo]

In order for the refractory index of carbon to alter the temperature it will have to get to at least .5 of 1% of total atmosphere, in other words a visible haze. There is simply not enough carbon in the air currently to alter global temperatures.

Maybe if you assume that refractive indices are similar for all wavelengths and materials. They are not, however, which the ozone layer clearly illustrates. CO2 is much more opaque to infrared wavelengths.

Ozone is a rather interesting case, its effect is increased because most of the ozone is concentrated in the upper atmosphere in a (relatively) thin band where its parts per million is much higher than its global total.

A whopping 2-8 ppm, compared to mostly 0 elsewhere. That's a concentration a hundred times less than that of CO2, and a band only a few kilometres thick, yet it manages to stop more than 95% of all UV rays.