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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by stale2002 on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @11:57PM (#15087481)
The guy is talking about 10 degrees C scenarios, aka scenarios that nobody believes is going to happen.

The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, believes that there will be 2-3 degrees C increase in temperature over the next century.

When someone can rationally talk about what will happen in the IPCC predicted scenarios, which is the scientific consensus, then I will listen to them.

If you are some crank, who is talking about 1000 parts per million of C02, and 10 degrees C temp increase by 2100, well then you shouldn't be taken seriously.

Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by fencepost on Friday August 25, 2017 @05:59PM (#15102566)
I haven't gone back to re-read for this, but I believe 10 degrees is presented as a worst-case scenario because if we hit that it's pretty much game over.

The part you may want starts around footnote 20, in a paragraph that notes 4 degrees as a median projection from the IPCC, with up to 8 degrees at the high end of the curve without factoring in permafrost melt and its associated carbon release or any of a variety of other exacerbating factors (footnoted in the article).

There are ways to calculate how much effort or expense is reasonable to attempt to mitigate a risk, I believe that's often part of the job description of actuaries. Part of it involves figuring out what the cost is if the event in question happens, then what the likelihood of the event is.

Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by arnoooooo on Saturday August 26, 2017 @02:14AM (#15104311)
It's already game over if we hit 5-6 degrees. See for instance http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2015/decem...
Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by ForHackernews on Thursday August 24, 2017 @02:31AM (#15088063)
Elsewhere in this thread, it's been stated that the IPCC has omitted runaway positive-feedback loop scenarios from their predictions, either because they're too poorly understood, or because they're too depressing.

The doomsday scenarios may be uncertain, but they do not (to my layman's understand) seem impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis