Global Warming fix?
-
Breakthrough Electrocatalyst Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Ethanol
A research team led by scientists from Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Northern Illinois University has discovered a new electrocatalyst that can consistently convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol with very high energy eff
tl;dr: Scientists found a catalyst that aids converting CO2 and water into ethanol with
low energy inputhigh energy efficiency.
-
@abarker Pretty sure we've seen this a few days ago elsewhere (Other News thread?) but too
to look it up now.
-
As long as people will drink it, or burn it. In the end it will still be release into air as CO2.
You need to remove that carbon completely from the carbon cycle in order to make progress in delaying global warming.
-
@cheong Putting back in the same CO2 you just took out is still progress compared to the status quo of putting in new CO2 that hasn't been in the atmosphere for millions of years. Sequestration would be even better, sure, but that doesn't make this bad.
-
@Mason_Wheeler meh. We kind of need that old CO2 back in circulation if you ask me. There's always a bunch being taken out. Gotta get it back at some point.
That said, this might prove to be a decent way to store energy from stuff like wind or solar. If they can make it scale and cheaper or at least competitive with other things then it will be a good thing. Might still prove useful in some niches, where you're out in the middle of no where. Remote African villages or somewhere with no infrastructure.
-
Well, I posted this one ~2 months ago, but it is a different paper: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1715824
Is that the one you were thinking of or was there another one?
-
@Dragoon No, that's from July. What I'm thinking of is more recent, and it didn't involve methanol. But it's cool to see multiple similar techniques all showing up at about the same time.
-
@abarker said in Global Warming fix?:
tl;dr: Scientists found a catalyst that aids converting CO2 and water into ethanol with low energy input.
No. Not "low energy input". Merely high-efficiency. Since the Carbon-Oxygen bond is a very stable one, that's still a sizeable amount of energy needed.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@abarker Pretty sure we've seen this a few days ago elsewhere (Other News thread?) but too
to look it up now.I tried looking, but didn't see it. If it is somewhere, I blame
search.
-
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
There's always a bunch being taken out. Gotta get it back at some point.
That part happens naturally. CO2 in vs. CO2 out stayed admirably well balanced throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
There's always a bunch being taken out. Gotta get it back at some point.
That part happens naturally. CO2 in vs. CO2 out stayed admirably well balanced throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution.
-
@boomzilla A graph that loses all useful resolution 2 million years ago does nothing to disprove my claim that it's remained stable "throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution."
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla A graph that loses all useful resolution 2 million years ago does nothing to disprove my claim that it's remained stable "throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution."
Who gives a fuck about your irrelevant claim? I was proving my claim.
-
@boomzilla How is your claim relevant when it deals with times when we weren't around, and the entire point of worrying about CO2 levels is the prediction that continued increase will specifically render the planet unfit for human habitation?
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla How is your claim relevant when it deals with times when we weren't around, and the entire point of worrying about CO2 levels is the prediction that continued increase will specifically render the planet unfit for human habitation?
I'm orders of magnitude more worried about a new ice age. The biggest danger from climate change is overreaction by hysterical people.
-
Guys, garage. And if it's still broken, it's extraordinarily fortunate that one of the two people that can fix it is part of this discussion.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla How is your claim relevant when it deals with times when we weren't around, and the entire point of worrying about CO2 levels is the prediction that continued increase will specifically render the planet unfit for human habitation?
Based on the chart that @boomzilla shared, it looks like a global temperature of about 22°C is somewhat normal. Current average temperature is something like 14°C. Seems the graph is still somewhat relevant.
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
I'm orders of magnitude more worried about a new ice age.
You are actually concerned about a glacial period; we are currently in an interglacial of the Quaternary Ice Age.
-
@abarker said in Global Warming fix?:
Based on the chart that @boomzilla shared, it looks like a global temperature of about 22°C is somewhat normal. Current average temperature is something like 14°C. Seems the graph is still somewhat relevant.
That's a red herring. It's ignoring a whole host of issues regarding that particular interpretation.
For example, it's ignoring two (out of many!) issues: One, when the climate did change it usually did so on a scale of millenia. Time enough for evolution/adaptation to occur. Two, when said change did not occur over millenia but more on a basis measured in days or years, such a change you'll usually find under the heading of "extinction event".
I mean, yeah, the Earth will survive. Whether we will be around is a completely different question. But we've been around this particular block: I'm on the side of the majority of people who actually study that phenomenon. The rest is a fringe who'll be depicted by history the same way homeopaths are.
-
@abarker said in Global Warming fix?:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla How is your claim relevant when it deals with times when we weren't around, and the entire point of worrying about CO2 levels is the prediction that continued increase will specifically render the planet unfit for human habitation?
Based on the chart that @boomzilla shared, it looks like a global temperature of about 22°C is somewhat normal. Current average temperature is something like 14°C. Seems the graph is still somewhat relevant.
Am I reading this correctly in that you're saying an increase in temperatures of 8° would just get us to "normal"?!
If I'm not reading this correctly, I need to ask for clarification how it is in any way relevant. On the other hand, if I do then "8° rise in temperatures would be just enough" is definitely a new low in anything I've read about climate change so far.
-
@abarker said in Global Warming fix?:
Based on the chart that @boomzilla shared, it looks like a global temperature of about 22°C is somewhat normal
...normal for the last few hundreds of millions of years? But not for the human period, which is the thing we care a bit more about.
-
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
There's always a bunch being taken out. Gotta get it back at some point.
That part happens naturally. CO2 in vs. CO2 out stayed admirably well balanced throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution.
Here's what the earth looked like during the Cambrian period:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotese_520_ma.png
According to Wikipedia, the sea level was between 4m and 90m above our current one. Just so you have a reference for what "normal" means in this context. Surely, you realize that this change in a shorter time frame would be catastrophic to human civilization, right?
-
@cheong said in Global Warming fix?:
As long as people will drink it, or burn it. In the end it will still be release into air as CO2.
You need to remove that carbon completely from the carbon cycle in order to make progress in delaying global warming.
We could put it in those nuclear waste repositories we're not using anymore!
-
@dfdub said in Global Warming fix?:
Surely, you realize that this change in a shorter time frame would be catastrophic to human civilization, right?
NYC, SF, Sacramento, Boston, most of Portland, urban parts of LA and Seattle, and Florida would all be underwater. Sounds like a net win to me. Chicago would still be above sea level, but you can't win them all.
-
@HardwareGeek said in Global Warming fix?:
NYC, SF, Sacramento, Boston, most of Portland, urban parts of LA and Seattle, and Florida would all be underwater.
That probably won't happen while we're alive. Maybe when our grandchildren are old. Even with our crazy emissions, it takes time for all that ice to melt.
Still, the rate of change is significantly different than the natural rate of change would be. @boomzilla's graph suggests that those cities would eventually be underwater again anyway, which is true, but is completely missing the point: The current rate of change is what's dangerous because neither the ecosystems nor human civilization will have sufficient time to adapt, since we're suddenly talking about decades instead of millennia (or even longer time frames).
-
@HardwareGeek said in Global Warming fix?:
urban parts of LA and Seattle, and Florida would all be underwater.
Learn to swim.
-
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
One, when the climate did change it usually did so on a scale of millenia. Time enough for evolution/adaptation to occur. Two, when said change did not occur over millenia but more on a basis measured in days or years, such a change you'll usually find under the heading of "extinction event".
Well, it isn't entirely unprecedented: https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2017/06/underwater_forest_discovered_alabama.html
There is supporting research in other areas that suggests that rapidly changing sea levels are not that uncommon.Notably, this is about sea level change and not directly the overall climate, but the two are rather directly linked. So I would find it rather implausible that the sea level could rise dozens of feet without the temp increasing to match it.
-
@dfdub said in Global Warming fix?:
Here's what the earth looked like during the Cambrian period:
Sure, sure. I wasn't advocating going back to that. But we're a loooooong way from 5000ppm.
According to Wikipedia, the sea level was between 4m and 90m above our current one. Just so you have a reference for what "normal" means in this context. Surely, you realize that this change in a shorter time frame would be catastrophic to human civilization, right?
Surely you didn't think I was advocating for a Cambrian climate. Seriously,
.
-
@Dragoon In what way does that contradict what I was saying? I never said that rapid change did not happen. I merely said that such a rapid change is not the best thing to happen to the then-current ecology.
-
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
@Dragoon In what way does that contradict what I was saying? I never said that rapid change did not happen. I merely said that such a rapid change is not the best thing to happen to the then-current ecology.
You were heavily implying that this always results in mass extinction, which is not the case for the sunken forest that I posted. So I was merely pointing out that in at least this instance there was rapid (far more rapid than even our worst case projections) change in climate and it didn't cause mass extinctions.
-
@Dragoon said in Global Warming fix?:
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
@Dragoon In what way does that contradict what I was saying? I never said that rapid change did not happen. I merely said that such a rapid change is not the best thing to happen to the then-current ecology.
You were heavily implying that this always results in mass extinction, which is not the case for the sunken forest that I posted. So I was merely pointing out that in at least this instance there was rapid (far more rapid than even our worst case projections) change in climate and it didn't cause mass extinctions.
Erm, first of all, said forest did kind of become extinct and secondly, this does not prove that the surrounding area / rest of the Earth was not affected? Where did your article state that the the rest of the world carried on like nothing happened?
Hell, I'd like to point out one paragraph:
"It's pretty rapid change geologically speaking," Becker said, just after his first dive in the forest. "We're looking at 60 feet of seawater where a forest used to be… I'm looking at a lot of development, of people's shore homes and condominiums, etcetera, you know. The forest is predicting the future, and maybe a pretty unpleasant one."
[...]
Becker said science, and even the very existence of the Underwater Forest itself, provides such concrete proof of climate change and fluctuating sea levels that he fears the politicians of today are spending too much time arguing about what role pollution may have played in our current climate rather than focusing on how to get ready for the coming changes.If one of the guys the article is about kind of disagrees with your notion I have to wonder if you have even read it fully.
-
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
Erm, first of all, said forest did kind of become extinct and secondly, this does not prove that the surrounding area / rest of the Earth was not affected? Where did your article state that the the rest of the world carried on like nothing happened?
Yes the forest did, not sure how that matters. Second, this article doesn't but there is plenty of other history to the point about there not being mass extinctions during that time frame.
If one of the guys the article is about kind of disagrees with your notion I have to wonder if you have even read it fully.
No, I think he rather agrees with me. Worrying about man-made climate change is a waste of time if nature can (and it has clearly shown that it can) change on its own accord far faster than we are projected to be changing it now.
-
@Dragoon said in Global Warming fix?:
No, I think he rather agrees with me. Worrying about man-made climate change is a waste of time if nature can (and it has clearly shown that it can) change on its own accord far faster than we are projected to be changing it now.
Yeah, fuck that. Sorry, I'm out. This is getting too stupid.
-
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
@Dragoon said in Global Warming fix?:
No, I think he rather agrees with me. Worrying about man-made climate change is a waste of time if nature can (and it has clearly shown that it can) change on its own accord far faster than we are projected to be changing it now.
Yeah, fuck that. Sorry, I'm out. This is getting too stupid.
Wait, you are you saying that isn't what Becker is arguing?
Becker said science, and even the very existence of the Underwater Forest itself, provides such concrete proof of climate change and fluctuating sea levels that he fears the politicians of today are spending too much time arguing about what role pollution may have played in our current climate rather than focusing on how to get ready for the coming changes.
I will admit, I was perhaps a bit extreme in my statements.
-
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
Surely you didn't think I was advocating for a Cambrian climate.
No, I was merely pointing out that that graph isn't really an argument in your favor. Hell, it isn't even a good counterargument against what @Mason_Wheeler said, because if it usually takes millions of years for the natural CO2 levels to change significantly, doesn't that actually support the thesis that they're relatively stable?
-
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
What’s with those boundaries? Couldn’t you find a more recent image?
Anyway, it’s a neat demonstration of these large increases of global temperature each coinciding with an extinction event. Assuming you know your extinction events.
-
@dfdub said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
Surely you didn't think I was advocating for a Cambrian climate.
No, I was merely pointing out that that graph isn't really an argument in your favor. Hell, it isn't even a good counterargument against what @Mason_Wheeler said, because if it usually takes millions of years for the natural CO2 levels to change significantly, doesn't that actually support the thesis that they're relatively stable?
Self-balancing in the medium term, since the C from CO2 gets stored into trees. The more CO2 there is in the air, the faster trees grow. Only to be released again by the occasional forest fire.
More permanent changes occur when some matter gets buried long-term. Like, say, a forest and a couple dinosaurs got buried, and now we have oil.
To get an estimate of the maximum swing for the atmospheric CO2 content, take an estimate on the total coal and oil deposits globally, and assume it all gets converted to CO2.
...Do we know the approximate quantities of O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere currently? And I don't mean the mixture ratio, but the total mass.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in Global Warming fix?:
CO2 in vs. CO2 out stayed admirably well balanced throughout thousands of years of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution.
It's not clear that it did. Widespread farming and forest clearing may well have had an impact, but we don't really see that because that was long ago (and we don't really know what the climate would have been without that).
-
@topspin said in Global Warming fix?:
Am I reading this correctly in that you're saying an increase in temperatures of 8° would just get us to "normal"?!
It's an entirely unhelpful scale. To see why, note that the average lifespan of a species is about one pixel wide on that graph. (Not 100% accurate, but good enough.) When temperature changes are slow enough, the usual evolutionary mechanisms work wonderfully well. The “slow enough” there depends on how many generations pass during the change in environment, and so will vary widely between species. (It also depends on genetic variability, mutation rates, etc. Natural selection is very much a random process.)
There's no doubt that there will continue to be life on Earth. The extra CO₂ will exit the atmosphere fairly quickly actually (probably via mountain weathering if nothing else). But while the elevated levels of the gas are present, there may be problems with the habitability of certain parts of the world.
-
@dfdub said in Global Warming fix?:
Even with our crazy emissions, it takes time for all that ice to melt.
It doesn't have to melt. It just has to start floating.
The most worrying areas for causing sea level rise right now are Greenland and West Antarctica. For example, Greenland is showing signs of elevated glacial flow rates. The really big bulk of sea rises would come if the icecap in East Antarctica were to melt, but that's believed to be a less likely thing, at least in the near future.
-
@Dragoon said in Global Warming fix?:
Second, this article doesn't but there is plenty of other history to the point about there not being mass extinctions during that time frame.
"Sometimes it doesn't result in a mass extinction event" isn't something I'd personally want to bet on.
-
@acrow said in Global Warming fix?:
Like, say, a forest and a couple dinosaurs got buried, and now we have oil.
Coal. Oil is believed to come from sea algae.
-
@dkf said in Global Warming fix?:
@acrow said in Global Warming fix?:
Like, say, a forest and a couple dinosaurs got buried, and now we have oil.
Coal. Oil is believed to come from sea algae.
Moot point, but may underline the meaninglessness of the discussion.
We could burn all the biomass on Earth, save for a few plants. And after a few years all that carbon would be back in biomass anyway. Elevated temperatures will speed up the process.
-
@dkf said in Global Warming fix?:
West Antarctica
How do you define the "West" of a region at the pole?(yes, I know the real answer: by convention)
-
@remi said in Global Warming fix?:
@dkf said in Global Warming fix?:
West Antarctica
How do you define the "West" of a region at the pole?(yes, I know the real answer: by convention)
I use the names given by others.
-
@Dragoon said in Global Warming fix?:
@Rhywden said in Global Warming fix?:
@Dragoon In what way does that contradict what I was saying? I never said that rapid change did not happen. I merely said that such a rapid change is not the best thing to happen to the then-current ecology.
You were heavily implying that this always results in mass extinction, which is not the case for the sunken forest that I posted. So I was merely pointing out that in at least this instance there was rapid (far more rapid than even our worst case projections) change in climate and it didn't cause mass extinctions.
I don't know about the one in Alabama, but I recall hearing about a sunken forest in Oregon, and IIRC it wasn't caused by climate change and rapid sea level rise at all, but by tectonic activity, making it literally a sunken forest.
-
@Mason_Wheeler That sort of thing is pretty cool, and we definitely should remember that the world is not static even without us, and that what people really want is just No Changes or at least extremely predictable ones. But what we want is not always what we get.
-
@dkf said in Global Warming fix?:
what people really want is just No Changes or at least extremely predictable ones
The proper term is "stability," and it's probably the least-talked-about of the fundamental tenets of civilization, because it's just that fundamental and implicit.
-
@dfdub said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
Surely you didn't think I was advocating for a Cambrian climate.
No, I was merely pointing out that that graph isn't really an argument in your favor. Hell, it isn't even a good counterargument against what @Mason_Wheeler said, because if it usually takes millions of years for the natural CO2 levels to change significantly, doesn't that actually support the thesis that they're relatively stable?
And again, I Mason's thing was not my point and did not argue against my point. It was a subject change. I wasn't arguing about his point even a little.
-
@kazitor said in Global Warming fix?:
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
What’s with those boundaries? Couldn’t you find a more recent image?
Anyway, it’s a neat demonstration of these large increases of global temperature each coinciding with an extinction event. Assuming you know your extinction events.
Correlation and all that.
-
@boomzilla said in Global Warming fix?:
Correlation and all that.
You can't really be sure which way round the causality goes, as the data doesn't normally really have that sort of resolution, but a massive change in environmental conditions would probably kill a lot of things. It's not a dumb assumption. We also know there are natural events which can cause such things (major meteorite strikes, large scale volcanism, etc.) Could the other way round also work? Well, if something were to wipe out a lot of plants then that would have a big temporary impact on the climate, as there'd be less carbon fixation and a lot more methane released (during decomposition of all that wood) so that's not crazy either.
So… correlation is about what we can manage (for all prehistoric climate events) unless we get really lucky with the data.
