/sci/ - Science & Math

it's bullshit and these are the people making legitimate climate science look like alarmist bullshit

>>5112004
>>5112009
Actually you guys are full of shit, Venus environment is hellish just because extreme greenhouse effect which makes its surface burn like a hell, with enough time earth greenhouse effect will get into that level too.

>>5112004
>There's more to blame for Venus' climate than just the greenhouse effect.
no there isn't really anything else besides the greenhouse effect to blame for venus' climate.
it's hotter than mercury and the same temperature on night and day sides. if it had the atmosphere earth has, it'd probably be habitable.
something stopped the carbon cycle and plate tectonics on venus and that's why all of it is in the form of carbon dioxide.
however, it does seem like bullshit that humans could precipitate this. would burning every last ounce of biologically stored carbon even get us close?

>>5112057
so it has nothing to do with its closer proximity to the sun hurf de durfedy durf!

>>5112095

Nope. If you moved Venus out to our distance it would still be fucking abyssal. It might drop a few hundred degrees but it would still be 100% uninhabitable.

Also, the earth has plenty of frozen deposits of greenhouse gases. If we thaw them and release them into the atmosphere, we're fucked. We don't know what that threshold is and we don't know how hot the oceans need to get to start a runaway reaction, but once we cross that threshold, it'll get out of hand really fucking fast.

tl;dr - Fossil fuels won't turn the Earth to Venus directly. It will secondarily.

>James Hansen
>dismissing as extremist
The man is cranky and shrill as fuck but he's been doing this for a long time. I dare say he knows more than Anon.

Pic related.

>>5112103
>>5112110
But rapid, violent shifts in the Earth's climate have happened before. Temperatures have warmed substantially over timespans of a few centuries, or even less than a single century. And it hasn't all been thawing from ice ages; rapid spikes in carbon dioxide and methane aren't unprecedented either.

The absolute worst it's gotten was the Great Dying, the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. Which was REALLY FUCKING BAD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event

But not VENUS.

>>5112128
yeah, here's the problem.
if the earth was ever going to enter a venus greenhouse, it would have already done so.
we're contributing to an accelerated warming period, we are not doing crazy terraforming

>>5112057
>no there isn't really anything else besides the greenhouse effect to blame for venus' climate.
yea, insane atmospheric pressure and a lot of gas are clearly caused by greenhouse effect. you are retarded

Venus would be habitable if it didn't have such a massive atmosphere

>>5112213
runaway greenhouse effect caused all of Venus's oxygen to get blown away, leaving it as the giant roasting dustball that we know and love. Same thing could happen to the Earth, if we fuck it up badly enough. I don't think we will, though.

>>5112128
>Triassic_extinction_event

How exactly do they find gas levels in these periods?

>>5112213
the reason it's hot enough on the surface to melt lead is the fact that gas is CO2. obviously if it were nitrogen it would still be rather warm at 90 bar, but it wouldn't be hell.

>>5112242
Dude, carbon measurements in rock deposits. It's not that hard.

Isn't the whole point of making this claim is to illustrate the face that warming can fuel warming?

>>5112307
i guess?
but it seems stupid because there have to be more negative feedbacks on earth than anywhere else. the warmer it gets, the farther the tropics extend, and they'll just start locking the carbon back up.

>>5112307
I'm well aware of positive feedbacks, and it can certainly get bad, but I thought the claim of the Earth turning into Venus was extreme. There's nothing in the paleoclimatic record that supports such a position.

The realistic effects of climate change are scary enough.

>>5112268

What? How about Oxygen levels? How about Nitrogen levels?

>>5112369
idk about that anon but my understanding of it was they took very, very long ice cores. the ice contains some of the air from whenever it was formed.

>>5112374

Is there a term for this type of data gathering? I've been trying my best to google something similar to getting gas levels in periods, but nothing is coming up besides present techniques for coal and oil searching.

The biggest fallacy here is the failure to recognize that Venus' atmosphere is A HUNDRED TIMES more massive than Earth's. So while the basic mechanism behind the effect is the same, the scale of it is very, VERY different.

Therefore the analogy that a "runaway greenhouse effect" could EVER make Earth like Venus is absurd. There's just not that much atmosphere. Not that much free oxygen to liberate fixed carbon.

>>5112378
i think they usually call it paleoclimatology? thats as close as i can think of

>>5112229
>runaway greenhouse effect caused all of Venus's oxygen to get blown away
>Implying Venus' atmosphere was ever oxidant
>Implying it's not just an extremely thick, primordial, volcanic atmosphere, like Earth used to have before photosynthetic cyanobacteria sucked up all the CO2

Hansen is a fear mongering political hack masquerading as a scientist. He has lost pretty much all credibility among objective researchers.

Dont listen to more than two words he says.

>>5112110
Oh the irony. Your fancy chart implies that science is a popularity contest. It is not. All that chart shows is how many people are either right, or wrong. The fact that you and so many others obviously dont know that is more worrisome to me than the climate right now.

Once there was a strong consensus that phlogistons were the secret behind oxidative chemical reactions. Before that, there was nearly total consensus that heavier than air machines could never fly. Oh you had to be crazy to believe otherwise. And going further back, there was absolute consensus, on pain of death even, that the sun revolved around the earth.

Will you never learn?

>>5112004
It's still somewhat improbable, but not impossible.
It's all got to do with runaway feedback loops. If human activities tilt the balance too far off kilter, the natural self-correcting mechanisms can break.

Fortunately most countries have at least tried to curb their emissions, now we just need the third world and USA to follow suit.

The good news is that we're probably not that far gone yet.
The bad news is that if idiots need catastrophic consequences to happen before they believe and do something, THEN it really will be too late.

>>5112390

Thanks.

>>5112415
>third world and USA to follow suit.
You mean china?

>>5112388
venus' atmosphere wasn't always that thick, though. it's just a consequence of so much carbon being locked in the atmosphere rather than elsewhere as it is on earth.
if life had never occured on earth, it wouldn't be that far fetched to imagine. but microbes will always be here, and all they do is destroy CO2 and convert it into something else.

>>5112415
> the natural self-correcting mechanisms can break.
how?
the earth had no ice caps for most of the cambrian period, and there was certainly no lack of life then.
perhaps we wouldn't like spiders the size of poodles, but, life would still exist.

>>5112400
Actually, no.
While Hansen does represent the non-conservative side of climatologists, he's still very much respected by people who know their science. He's only ridiculed by the actual political hacks and other people who are not versed in applicable fields.

If you follow any publications and take note about what kind of people have authored them, you will notice this quite clearly.

>>5112417
>venus' atmosphere wasn't always that thick, though.
I don't believe they have anywhere near the geological evidence to determine that with any certainty.
>it's just a consequence of so much carbon being locked in the atmosphere rather than elsewhere as it is on earth. if life had never occured on earth, it wouldn't be that far fetched to imagine.
Let's say that the billions of hard work by those little microbes were suddenly reversed, and every oxygen molecule in the atmosphere were to take on an extra carbon atom. That's a 38% increase in 20% of the atmosphere. Hardly a Venus-tier atmosphere - hell, it'd STILL be mostly nitrogen.

>>5112424
>billions of years of hard work
Sorry 'bout that.

>>5112421
The thing to remember when talking about the climate change is that the speed at which this is all happening is literally about a hundred times any natural change we know of, barring the great extinction events.

What this means is that we are already changing the system a lot faster than it can correct itself. If we stop doing it now, we might just get catastrophic changes in ecosystems everywhere. If we DON'T stop it and our activities continue to grow as they have, the system can break. While it may seem like fiction, the Venus scenario is just the end point of the path we take if we continue business as usual.

>>5112424
Not that guy, but that kind of change can push the equatorial temperatures high enough to cause runaway evaporation in the oceans. This leads to more water in the atmosphere which acts as a greenhouse gas, which leads to more warming, which leads to more evaporation...

At some point you will hit boiling temperatures.

At that point, even though the Earth can't actually ever equal Venus, the distinction is one of degrees.

For life on Earth, including us, it doesn't matter whether the surface temperature reaches 200ºC of 500ºC and arguing that 200ºC is better than Venus is just silly.

>>5112439
*200ºC OR 500ºC

>>5112432
>...the Venus scenario is just the end point of the path we take if we continue...
that's kind of a big assertion
i find it difficult to believe that there is enough biologically captured carbon that can be released in such a short time as to heat the earth to the point of complete sterilization. the lifeforms that gave us the present earth atmosphere existed in a fairly hellish environment.
it's not too difficult to believe that we could change the earth to the point where it would be difficult for us and many other extant species to survive. more basic forms of life are far more resilient, though.

>>5112439
>At some point you will hit boiling temperatures.
Uh huh... and just where exactly is that?

>>5112451
Forget how much carbon there is. Ultimately, all the oxygen in the atmosphere came from carbon, so it's safe to assume there's enough carbon holed away somewhere to react with all the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Use the oxygen as you're limiting factor. You'll still see it's substantially less than on Venus.

>>5112460
..when the greenhouse effect causes surface temperature to reach 100ºC ?

>>5112451
Existed. Past tense. I can already tell you that most life on this planet has lost the ability to withstand temperatures above boiling.

But to make life impossible doesn't even take boiling temperatures. When the temperature and humidity of air go high enough, humans and other animals can no longer shed heat produced by our own bodies. When that happens, large areas in the tropics will be devoid of higher life.

>Researchers find future temperatures could exceed livable limits
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100504HuberLimits.html

>>5112474
see >>5112439

>>5112473
>..when the greenhouse effect causes surface temperature to reach 100ºC ?
And can there possibly exist enough CO2 on Earth to reach that point? Even if ALL the oxygen was reacted with carbon, we'd still be at less than 20% CO2 (roughly 1/500th as much as is present on Venus, and at a farther distance from the Sun to boot).

>>5112473
>large areas in the tropics will be devoid of higher life.

this isn't what's in dispute though. a mass extinction is one thing, the transformation of earth into a hellscape is another.
the point i'm driving at is that unless you kill all photosynthesizing life, the amount of CO2 in earth's atmosphere will inevitably decrease. killing <span class="math">\textit{all}[/spoiler] photosynthesizing lifeforms is a pretty tall order.

>>5112483
Nice reading comprehension. I guess you didn't read the part about how CO2 rising will cause more water evaporation, which causes more warming, which causes more evaporation...

Now, try reading that again and realize that it's a self-reinforcing loop.

>>5112473

this isn't what's in dispute though. a mass extinction is one thing, the transformation of earth into a hellscape is another.
the point i'm driving at is that unless you kill all photosynthesizing life, the amount of CO2 in earth's atmosphere will inevitably decrease. killing <span class="math">all[/spoiler] photosynthesizing lifeforms is a pretty tall order.

>>5112483
Also, see my previous post about how it doesn't matter whether the temperature is 200ºC or 500ºC because both are too high.

>>5112506
Yes, it's a tall order, and if you follow the posts up, you will see that I concede that.

But what it ISN'T is "impossible".

Do note that most predictions are heavily conservatively biased. We have already seen that what is actually happening either follows the worst predictions or even goes beyond them.

If the human species continues to convert active biomass and inactive coal to active greenhouse gases and if it continues to accelerate said activity, then the venus scenario becomes a very high possibility.

>>5112504
But that positive reinforcement effect is ALREADY present, and has been for practically all of Earth's known geological history, and yet SOMEHOW the greenhouse effect has never run away before - despite having already had a dense, oxygen-free atmosphere before.

If such a notion were true, then the fixation of carbon by primordial microbes should not have been able to cool the Earth in the first place - CO2 fixation should NOT have been able to "reverse the runaway," so to speak. But it DID, which can only mean one of two things: That Earth, even with all atmospheric oxygen bound up in CO2, is still below the "tipping point;" or that no such tipping point even exists.

>11 foot dunks

well fuck what are we waiting for, lets colonize Venus, come on!

>>5112536
We'll have to live in giant floating Zeppelins or else our feet are going to get extremely toasty.

Does everyone think that Venus' core is solid? I've read that it may not necessarily be solid but the problem could be that the planet's crust is too hot and enough heat can't escape the core into the crust.

>>5112527
it's also worth noting that most stores of carbon and oxygen wouldn't be freed by heating the earth alone.
for example, the oxygen trapped as rust in the earth isn't going anywhere quickly, and neither is the carbon & oxygen trapped as calcium carbonate.

>>5112527
You have a few facts wrong there. The thick atmosphere of Earth was blown off probably by the Late Heavy Bombardment and the young flaring sun. Before any life existed.

Only when the crust had a chance to solidify and seas were able to form did life come to play in the mechanics. For seas to form, the surface temperature had to already be below boiling.

Also, you know what also has never existed before? Humans.

In two hundred years we have already caused as much change as ten to a hundred thousand years of natural processes.

Also, the amount of GHGs we produce every year is only climbing, nor does it show any sign of a plateau.

And furthermore, the higher the temperatures get, the less air moisture will turn into clouds to rain down and will instead stay in the air to act as a GHG.

>>5112561
I'd had that thought, but forgot to include it. Oxygen atoms locked up by geological processes are much harder to free, and thus will likely never contribute to the greenhouse effect (as CO2) or any other atmospheric process again.

I'm afraid we're NEVER getting that oxygen back. Those microbes that caused the oxygen-crisis weren't very forward-thinking.

>>5112512
>We have already seen that what is actually happening either follows the worst predictions or even goes beyond them.
Wait wat now.

>>5112564
>The thick atmosphere of Earth was blown off probably by the Late Heavy Bombardment and the young flaring sun. Before any life existed.
Even if that were true, it'd be completely irrelevant. The late heavy bombardment predated Earth's CO2 atmosphere altogether.
>Only when the crust had a chance to solidify and seas were able to form did life come to play in the mechanics. For seas to form, the surface temperature had to already be below boiling.
Thanks for supporting my point, dumbass. If temperatures were below boiling (and below a "runaway point") even in the presence of that massive CO2 atmosphere (much more dense than any that could exist again on Earth), then there is simply no way that partially reversing the fixation process could boil the oceans as you describe.
>In two hundred years we have already caused as much change as ten to a hundred thousand years of natural processes.
>etc. etc.
Doesn't matter (well, it does, but not with respect to the hypothesized runaway greenhouse). It's just not going to happen - we don't have enough oxygen left to heat things to the tipping point, nor have we ever.
>
>And furthermore, the higher the temperatures get, the less air moisture will turn into clouds to rain down and will instead stay in the air to act as a GHG.
Clouds will still form, just as higher altitudes - even if there is no liquid water left on the surface. Just look at the H2SO4 cycle on Venus.

>>5112566
>I'm afraid we're NEVER getting that oxygen back. Those microbes that caused the oxygen-crisis weren't very forward-thinking.
Uh, how is that a problem? Why would you want massive amounts of oxygen, unless you want to be on a constant high?

>>5112575
See
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/10/climate-alarmism

Also, if you pay attention, the news over the past few years have had an increasing amount of climate news with the words "faster than predicted", "warmer than in any simulation" and so on.

>>5112583
Well, it's one of the several reasons humanity may have to abandon this rock in the distant future - if they survive that long, that is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth
>During the next four billion years, the luminosity of the Sun will steadily increase, resulting in a rise in the solar radiation reaching the Earth. This will cause a higher rate of weathering of silicate minerals, which will cause a decrease in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In about 600 million years, the level of CO2 will fall below the level needed to sustain the C3 method of photosynthesis used by trees. Some plants use the C4 method, allowing them to persist at CO2 concentrations as low as 10 parts per million. However, the long term trend is for plant life to die off altogether. The resulting loss of oxygen replenishment will cause the extinction of animal life a few million years later.

>>5112584
"warmer than in any simulation"
In which akternate world is that happening?

>>5112575
We've been emitting far more CO2 than the IPCC expected, but the temperature has been practically flat. Alarmists say "assuming the model is correct, we've emitted too much CO2, so things will get really bad." But if you relax the assumption that our models explain everything about the climate, then the unexpected increase in CO2 paired with the unexpected stagnation in temperature has serious problems for the model.

tl;dr When they say "It's worse than we thought" they purely mean the amount of CO2 emissions.

>>5112602
>temperature has been practically flat
No it hasn't and I thank you for not outright lying any more.

>>5112602
You're stuck in the past.

>>5112600
One in which simulations are notoriously conservative.

>>5112618
>>5112612
Dunno what exactly he was rambling about, but there HAS been a curious leveling in global temperature across the past decade.

It may be transient, but whatever the cause for this flattening, I imagine it's something distinct from the greenhouse effect (since CO2 is indeed still climbing).

>>5112626
>>5112618
>>5112612
>Senate summons a climatologist to give a summary of current situation in August this year.
>He explains all simulations overshot warming.
>Guys on 4chan disagree.
Well I'm sorry we can't all be experts like you.

>2012
>Not knowing negative feedback loops

>>5112640
Keep fuckin' that chicken, newt.

>>5112512
>Do note that most predictions are heavily conservatively biased. We have already seen that what is actually happening either follows the worst predictions or even goes beyond them.

I remember the early 90s predictions about Europe not having any more snowfall by now. Last year or so the IPCC had to backtrack on several quite ludicrous assertions they made in their report like completely molten glaciers in the Himalayas by 2030 and something about the Netherlands bogging down or sinking due to high tides.

I don't think you are being completely rational here. Alarmism is not scientific behavior. Demonize something beyond belief and people will turn against you in the long run. Why make up bullshit hypotheses when the facts can be as scary anyway?

>>5112668
They retracted that statement about the Himalayas almost immediately. There is likely to be be HUGE flooding in the Netherlands and Bangladesh in the coming decades though.

>>5112668
So what? If that's your standard, then nothing in science is good enough ever for you. I've never seen a math textbook without errors ever, for instance. So math is bullshit.

>>5112660
The picture is right in this fucking thread, what are you even talking about?

The alarmist retardation in this thread is astounding.

Normally it's the deniers that make complete asses of themselves...

>>5112683
What? Nothing in science is good for me because I think we shouldn't make bullshit claims just because it sounds more catastrophic?
You know, there is extrapolation and there is hyperbole. Some people erroneously think they are interchangeable - I think you might be one of those.

If you fail to see how baseless those predictions were you might as well begin to fear for aliums on Dec 21.

>>5112684
Almost immediately is not exactly how fast it took them to notice and retract more like 3 years later. And about the Netherlands they said 55% would be under water in the next few decades that's quite an extraordinary claim given that there hasn't been a major flood in there for some time. The Dutch minister of environment had to demand a correction in the first place before anything happened to that report.

The problem here is that those assessments the IPCC issues are not much more than a summary of research made by others, a meta-analysis of sorts. Since many countries rely on those for environmental policies I fucking expect them to be somewhat accurate and filter some of that alarmist bullshit.

Don't you really see the harm in exaggerating the threat to bullshit proportions?
Does nobody remember Aesop's fable of the boy who cried wolf?

There's a lot more solar energy coming into Venus. The Earth is probably too far away from the sun to face a runaway greenhouse effect.

Venus had a runaway climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate–silicate_cycle
It started by evaporation of surface water, and then a massive shift in the carbonate equilibrium.

>>5112004
>This... is bullshit, right?
Yes.
James E. Hansen is the type of "unbiased scientist" that frequently get arrested while joining unlawful protests with his extremely much biased enviromentalist friends.

He is about as reliable as the average politician.

>>5112632
Could it be sunspots? I know a lot of deniers like to pin the blame for climate change solely on those, but they do have a miniscule effect on the climate, right?

Unless we're entering the Milankovich cycle responsible for another ice age. In which case, burn that fucking carbon, we're going to need the insulation.

On a sidenote, the actual threatening greenhouse on Earth is not carbon dioxide but water because the H2O molecule has so many damn absorption lines from its rotational states. Carbon dioxide is only pushing the Earth's mean temperature towards these lines and that is why carbon dioxide is bad for the atmosphere.

>>5113085
Saying it's just a minuscule effect is the same it's the only thing to blame in regards to climate change. We still don't understand the exact the full extent of the Sun's influence on our weather and climate. An example would be the rather young realization that neutrinos can in fact be responsible for cloud-seeding.

Since we can exclude a sudden change in the composition of our atmosphere, I'd say the Sun is the most probable cause for that anomaly.