Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by hyperbovine on Thursday June 16, 2016 @06:21PM (#11919342)

I have no doubt at we will try this, plus a lot of even dumber ideas, once the shit really starts to hit the fan. The world is not going to just sit back as Manhattan, Mumbai, Shanghai, Sydney, Rio, etc. disappear under a foot or two of water. Politicians (the same one who spent 50 years failing on this issue) will demand action. It's the best argument I can think of for putting serious research effort into geoengineering, odious as it may be.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by danieltillett on Thursday June 16, 2016 @06:27PM (#11919383)

Artificial trees are not considered geoengineering since they are just reversing the CO2 released. The really sad aspect is we are not putting in the R&D resources needed to develop them to the required scale. No matter what we do about preventing the release of more CO2, we need to deal with the CO2 that has already been released.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by tim333 on Thursday June 16, 2016 @06:58PM (#11919564)

Regular trees work quite well and are cheaper. You just have to harvest them and not burn the wood, or turn it to biochar.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by chris_va on Thursday June 16, 2016 @07:16PM (#11919668)

Actually burning the wood works just fine, provided you can sequester (see BECCS, along with recent developments in basalt based CCS).

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by danieltillett on Friday June 17, 2016 @12:32AM (#11920697)

There are not enough natural trees to do the job because we have taken most of the really productive land to grow food. While there is some potential to use biochar in some locations, it is not going to be enough to get the CO2 levels down at the pace we need.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by baddox on Thursday June 16, 2016 @07:33PM (#11919762)

It's probably a lot cheaper for those cities to build flood control systems.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by zamalek on Friday June 17, 2016 @06:23AM (#11921752)

> build flood control systems.

Water is only one problem. By 2070 some places might be uninhabitable according to this[1] study, due to heat.

> At WBTs [wet bulb temperature] above 35C, the high heat and humidity make it physically impossible for even the fittest human body to cool itself by sweating, with fatal consequences after six hours. For less fit people, the fatal WBT is below 35C. A WBT temperature of 35C – the combination of 46C heat and 50% humidity – was almost reached in Bandar Mahshahr in Iran in July 2015.

At some point it's going to cost big bucks. If the study holds water, the Gulf will either need to be evacuated or artificial habitation will need to be built.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/extreme-...

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by m_mueller on Thursday June 16, 2016 @09:57PM (#11920230)

Will still be a wakeup call. And I seriously doubt that flood control (and/or relocation) for all major costal cities will be cheaper than climate engineering.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by sevenless on Thursday June 16, 2016 @07:44PM (#11919801)

I'm very confident the USA will respond effectively to global warming as soon as the Midwest actually sets on fire and not a moment before.

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Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years by afarrell on Thursday June 16, 2016 @08:12PM (#11919908)

As soon as Houston stops being the 4th largest city in America or people come up with a plan for how to kill a city's main industry without it turning into a hotbed of suicide and violent crime.

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