Global warming is 'irreversible'

[Odsox]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7852628.stm

I found this news item both depressing and hugely ironic.
The good 'ole USA administration have gone from denying global warming exists to this in just a few days.

[Odsox]

Of course headlines like this do more harm than good.
What is the point in trying to reduce your carbon footprint (at considerable expense or hardship) if global warming is "irreversible" ??
So, probably just as bad as denying it's existence.

[mamos]

I was reading an interview with James lovelock in the New Scientist that was quite interesting

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nkind.html

Involves farmers turning their crops into charcoal and re ploughing it in to the fields

mamos

[Odsox]

Involves farmers turning their crops into charcoal and re ploughing it in to the fields

Isn't that similar to what cereal farmers used to do until it was made illegal ?
I realise we are not talking about straw burning here, but still along the same lines.

[mamos]

Not really because as I understand it producing charcoal locks in a lot more carbon dioxide that mere burning that would release the co2 to the air

Plus the charcoal production could also generate electricity

I will never happen on a large enough scale

I think his idea that the human race will be culled back to thousands instead of billions and will re build is the most likely in the long term

mamos

[Green Aura]

Has James Lovelock lost it? I suppose at the age of 90 he's entitled to. Not only did he come out in favour of nuclear power, but now he's going into space.

[JulieSherris]

Hmmm.... I could suggest a few folks if they want a start point for the culling..............

[Clara]

I'm sure we all could, but then I'm also sure most of us would make it on someones list, be it personal or as a generalisation of the type of person we are.....

Unfortunately the truth is the truth is the truth, if climate change is irreversible (at least in any timeframe meaningful to the average human being) then that's that. If people can't see that it's not just about their own survival or that of their grandchildren, but about the quality of life on earth for anyone and anything that makes it through the next 2000 years and start acting in a way shows respect for that, then mankind truly deserves its annihilation. It really bugs me that most of these articles give the survival of the human race an artificial importance. We are but one species in an amazing array of life on earth.

[Eigon]

Just because global warming is 'irreversible' doesn't mean that we should sit back and do nothing about it - there are still ways to mitigate the bad effects if we try hard enough.
All it means is that we will never be able to go back to the conditions of - for instance - 1750 (I'm picking a date before the Industrial Revolution really got going).
We can still adapt to a climate where the snowdrops come out a fortnight earlier than they used to do.

A few years ago, James Lovelock was a guest at the Hay Festival, and he spoke then in favour of nuclear power - and actually made a very good case in favour of it. Which I don't remember well enough to summarise. I just remember being impressed by his reasoning and changing my mind on the subject as a result.

[GreenEnergy]

That is really bad news.
What we need to do is try and control global warming as much as possible.
Otherwise things are only going to get worst, we wont see it but the generations to come will suffer even more.

[Turtuga Blanku]

I was reading an interview with James lovelock in the New Scientist that was quite interesting

Interesting stuff, indeed!

Carbon credits is certainly not any real kind of solution at all. It takes away the attention of and interest in real solutions.

The comments of James Lovelock seem a bit too "take turns on two wheels" (<-- is that the right expression?). In other words: simply stating that windmills are ugly and therefore are not a good solution is a bit strange.

I don't think it is too late for emissions reduction measures. So much energy is wasted at the moment. With a little bit of attention and willpower, one could use energy a lot more efficiently. Just a very simply example: imagine how much energy is saved if people (globally) would turn off lights when they are not needed? Or if you would eat a bit less meat per week. There are so many ways to save a bit of energy per household/office building or whatever. All of these little energy saving efforts together do make a difference. Not nearly enough, of course. We will have to take a lot more steps back then just turning of lights in rooms you are not occupying. But the first step is to realize that you can and HAVE to do something yourself.. You, as an individual. You have to change your life style and demand changes from your government as well.

We would have to start using renewable energy (RE) on a global scale to make a real difference. I don't mind a bit of horizon pollution in the form of windmills or solar"farms" if it enables us to battle the climate problems and at the same time enables us to live a still relatively normal (but obviously less energy consuming) life. And you wouldn't have to rely on wind generator parks only. There's thermo energy and tidal energy as well as the just mentioned solar energy.

I don't like talking doom, I like talking realism. And the reality is that you can only "push" an ecosystem this far, and then some serious changes are going to take place in that ecosystem. That is pretty straight forward, common sense logic, I think. The fact that we don't know exactly how an ecosystem is going to change does not mean that it will not change. I'm not looking forward to find just how bad the changes will be for human life.

(http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009 ... ceans.html).

What we can do is cheat those consumers (like bacteria, nematodes and worms) by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field.

Is massive burial of non-biodegradable charcoal the solution? I don't know. It seems a lot more risky to me that focusing on development of RE. I think you'd almost have to turn the charcoal into diamond to be sure that it is non-biodegradable! We need to be sure that this so called non-biodegradable charcoal will not end up in some kind of carbon cycle after all.

To give an example: I know of a study that showed that collecting waste separately (separate the organic waste from the inorganic waste) was actually a not so smart thing to do (in all cases), because this study showed that adding organic matter to inorganic, toxic waste helped to speed up the cleaning of the toxic waste. Some bacteria in the organic waste were able to turn heavy metals into non-toxic matter. Were you to simply put the charcoal into the ground, you have to be very very sure that some kind of organism will not benefit from it and will increase their population size rapidly, maybe cause a lot of other problems, next to, of course, bringing all the carbon into the air again after all, in the form of CO2.

Also, what crop waste? I'm not sure there is so many crop waste. When grain is harvested, the rest of the plant is used to make hay for barn animals. Then again, I don't pretend to be an agricultural expert, so I do not really have an idea of the amount of crop waste and what it is used for at the moment. But I do know that burning all the crop waste means that you might be loosing a lot of nutrients as well (which have been taken out of the ground and are "secured" in/by the plant). That might mean that you have to start using more and more fertilizers.

If you want to keep the earth (top soil) healthy, the bacteria, nematodes and worms should be part of it. If all organic matter is burned into inorganic charcoal, what are those the bacteria, nematodes, worms and fungi going to feed upon, but the fertilizers? That part is a unclear to me.

What is also unclear to me is how this guy can be a Gaia-guy and also be a guest on a space travel trip... imagine how much fuel is burned and how much CO2 is released in the atmosphere for that one trip!

b.t.w. in the larger scale of things, I agree with what he is saying about how this all could be a positive thing for the earth and maybe even for the human species. On an individual scale, I don't quite like what seems to be coming right at us. But I like to stay upbeat, which is why I wrote 'First Step' (find it in the player) some time back. (You see? There is something positive in everything! This article enabled me to enter a bit of spam in this thread!)

[Odsox]

Also, what crop waste? I'm not sure there is so many crop waste. When grain is harvested, the rest of the plant is used to make hay for barn animals. Then again, I don't pretend to be an agricultural expert, so I do not really have an idea of the amount of crop waste and what it is used for at the moment.

This is another problem that has exacerbated today's situation.
When grain is harvested only barley straw (not hay, hay is made from grass) is any good for animal feed, the vast majority of grain in the UK is wheat .. and wheat straw is only used as animal bedding. Before WW2 this was not a problem as most farms were mixed and all the straw was used on the farm it was produced, which then was turned into manure, which was then spread back onto the land as fertiliser.
Now nearly every farm is specialised (monoculture) and cereal farmers have no livestock, and livestock farmers probably live many miles from the cereal farmers and have developed other means of bedding their animals, including none at all, wood shavings and sand.
You may (or may not) remember up till about 15 years ago cereal farmers burnt the straw in the fields but the smoke pollution and a few fires getting out of control put a stop to that. Ploughing the straw ash (carbon) back into the soil was one way of recycling the worthless straw ... ploughing in the un-burnt straw is not an option as the decomposition of the straw depletes the soil of nitrogen.

So much energy is wasted at the moment. With a little bit of attention and willpower, one could use energy a lot more efficiently. Just a very simply example: imagine how much energy is saved if people (globally) would turn off lights when they are not needed?

As a country dweller this is a subject near to my heart ... the western world's emissions could be halved if all those town and city street lights were turned off.

You, as an individual. You have to change your life style and demand changes from your government as well.

I agree with you totally, it's no good relying on alternative energy to leap to the rescue. The answer is we must reduce our energy requirement to get down to manageable levels that alternative energy sources can provide, not sit back and wait for those alternative energy sources to rise to our present day perceived needs.

[Turtuga Blanku]

[...]straw (not hay, hay is made from grass)

cheers! there is a very useful mnemonic to keep the two apart in my own language, but it doesn't work in English