What does hope look like?

Zooey wrote:

Ooo. A game! I like games!

Okay, I’ll start….

1) Alternative energy very soon just hits a tipping point so large that it cannot be avoided. It becomes so much cheaper to use alternative energy than fossil fuels that the Kock brothers, Exxon, and their allies just get killed in the market.

2) A European country has fantastic success with the Universal Basic Income. Meanwhile, places that don’t have it have such large scale unemployment that voters start actually voting their class interest.

3) Someone like Germany leads the way in putting restraints on corporations.

Enh. I say we invade somebody. Or at least bomb em.

I mean c’mon. It’s been over a month since the last time. What’s the big delay.

…

Even if mankind eliminated the emission of all greenhouse gasses today, there is enough C02 in the atmosphere to keep the average temperature of the earth rising for hundreds of years.

So, I agree with zn.

We should probably bomb somebody.

Link: https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/51/51I69/index.xml?section=topstories

Even if emissions stop, carbon dioxide could warm Earth for centuries
Posted November 24, 2013; 01:00 p.m.

by Morgan Kelly, Office of Communications
Tweet e-mail | print
Even if carbon dioxide emissions came to a sudden halt, the carbon dioxide already in Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years, according to Princeton University-led research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study suggests that it might take a lot less carbon than previously thought to reach the global temperature scientists deem unsafe.

The researchers simulated an Earth on which, after 1,800 billion tons of carbon entered the atmosphere, all carbon dioxide emissions suddenly stopped. Scientists commonly use the scenario of emissions screeching to a stop to gauge the heat-trapping staying power of carbon dioxide. Within a millennium of this simulated shutoff, the carbon itself faded steadily with 40 percent absorbed by Earth’s oceans and landmasses within 20 years and 80 percent soaked up at the end of the 1,000 years.

By itself, such a decrease of atmospheric carbon dioxide should lead to cooling. But the heat trapped by the carbon dioxide took a divergent track.

After a century of cooling, the planet warmed by 0.37 degrees Celsius (0.66 Fahrenheit) during the next 400 years as the ocean absorbed less and less heat. While the resulting temperature spike seems slight, a little heat goes a long way here. Earth has warmed by only 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global temperatures a mere 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels would dangerously interfere with the climate system. To avoid that point would mean humans have to keep cumulative carbon dioxide emissions below 1,000 billion tons of carbon, about half of which has already been put into the atmosphere since the dawn of industry.

Frölicher iceberg
Princeton University-led research suggests that even if carbon dioxide emissions came to a sudden halt, the carbon dioxide already in Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years. The researchers found while carbon dioxide steadily dissipates, the absorption of heat the oceans decreases, especially in the polar oceans such as off of Antarctica (above). This effect has not been accounted for in existing research. (Photo courtesy of Eric Galbraith, McGill University)
The lingering warming effect the researchers found, however, suggests that the 2-degree point may be reached with much less carbon, said first author Thomas Frölicher, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher in Princeton’s Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences under co-author Jorge Sarmiento, the George J. Magee Professor of Geoscience and Geological Engineering.

“If our results are correct, the total carbon emissions required to stay below 2 degrees of warming would have to be three-quarters of previous estimates, only 750 billion tons instead of 1,000 billion tons of carbon,” said Frölicher, now a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “Thus, limiting the warming to 2 degrees would require keeping future cumulative carbon emissions below 250 billion tons, only half of the already emitted amount of 500 billion tons.”

The researchers’ work contradicts a scientific consensus that the global temperature would remain constant or decline if emissions were suddenly cut to zero. But previous research did not account for a gradual reduction in the oceans’ ability to absorb heat from the atmosphere, particularly the polar oceans, Frölicher said. Although carbon dioxide steadily dissipates, Frölicher and his co-authors were able to see that the oceans that remove heat from the atmosphere gradually take up less. Eventually, the residual heat offsets the cooling that occurred due to dwindling amounts of carbon dioxide.

Frölicher and his co-authors showed that the change in ocean heat uptake in the polar regions has a larger effect on global mean temperature than a change in low-latitude oceans, a mechanism known as “ocean-heat uptake efficacy.” This mechanism was first explored in a 2010 paper by Frölicher’s co-author, Michael Winton, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus.

“The regional uptake of heat plays a central role. Previous models have not really represented that very well,” Frölicher said.

“Scientists have thought that the temperature stays constant or declines once emissions stop, but now we show that the possibility of a temperature increase can not be excluded,” Frölicher said. “This is illustrative of how difficult it may be to reverse climate change — we stop the emissions, but still get an increase in the global mean temperature.”

The paper, “Continued global warming after CO2 emissions stoppage,” was published Nov. 24 by Nature Climate Change. Funding for the work was provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione grant PZ00P2_142573) and Princeton University Carbon Mitigation Initiative.

Zooey wrote:

Okay, then.

How about this?

We cut taxes on corporations, and deregulate them, and the marketplace sorts everything out to the benefit of all mankind.

That will work like a charm. Because “dynamic scoring” tells us so.

In reality, the best possible way to get corporations to reinvest in technology is to tax them 99%. Taxes are only on profits. The whole idea behind that at the very beginning was to encourage reinvestment. Reducing their taxes encourages taking money out of the business and parking it instead in offshore accounts or speculation.

At some point, the Earth’s core will solidify. When that happens, the magnetic field will collapse. Charged particles from the sun will cleanse the surface of all multi-cellular organisms.
That should give hope to the rest of the universe, unless, somehow, some way, we find a way to establish a foothold off of this planet. In that case, watch out universe!

Excellent article from Jacobin about Big Green being infected by Third Way, neoliberal responses to environmental destruction.

No Third Way for the Planet — Kate Aronoff. An environmentalism that can actually save the planet must do battle with corporations. Mainstream environmental groups have done the opposite.

Brief excerpt:

One of the biggest problems with the neoliberal wings of the Democratic Party and the environmental movement is pretty simple: They both could kill us all.

For some time, the two tendencies have run parallel to one another. During the Reagan years, just before Bill Clinton began pushing for welfare reform and expanding the war on drugs, Fred Krupp, CEO of the Environmental Defense Fund, set out to chart his own “third way” for big greens. The “Third Stage,” as he called it, would swap the “relentlessly negative” tone of “polluter-pays” environmentalism for market-based approaches and partnerships with major corporations — fossil fuel companies included.

The strategy caught on, earning him the ears of both Bush administrations and Clinton. Green organizations’ staff in DC ballooned to help lobby and curry favor with politicians. All of a sudden, big business wasn’t the enemy anymore — they were the solution.

When Democrats and mainstream environmentalists tacked rightward in an effort to capture the center, they each lost touch not just with working people, but with the ability to imagine solutions of the scale needed to curb the greatest threat to human existence ever known, climate change. To avert the latter and fight the Trumpian right, each need to shake their enduring faith in the power of free markets.

Rather than Clinton-style market-friendly technocracy, we need an environmentalism that includes redistribution. It’s our only hope for digging out of this mess.

zn wrote:

TSRF wrote:

At some point, the Earth’s core will solidify. When that happens, the magnetic field will collapse. Charged particles from the sun will cleanse the surface of all multi-cellular organisms.
That should give hope to the rest of the universe, unless, somehow, some way, we find a way to establish a foothold off of this planet. In that case, watch out universe!

Yes but because of radioactive decay in the core that could take as long as 91 billion years. The core is hot because it includes long-lasting radioactive elements.

By then, the sun will have expanded and fried the earth (that will start to happen in about 5 billion years).

But by THEN the population of the earth will have spread all over the galaxy, putting up strip malls everywhere it goes.

I think the White Walkers will get us long before that. Or Cersei. We may not have time to build ships fast enough to outrun them. Because, well, Winter is a beach, or something.

nittany ram wrote:

Who do you think would win a fight between Jamie Lanister (before he lost his sword hand) and Aragorn? How about between The Mountain and Legolas? Arya and Samwise?

I know the correct answers. I just wanna see if you know them.

============

Aragorn.
Legolas.
Arya.

Now, what about Ginger vs Mary-Anne ?

w
v

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Who do you think would win a fight between Jamie Lanister (before he lost his sword hand) and Aragorn? How about between The Mountain and Legolas? Arya and Samwise?

I know the correct answers. I just wanna see if you know them.

============

Aragorn.
Legolas.
Arya.

Now, what about Ginger vs Mary-Anne ?

w
v

You got 2 out of 3 correct. That’s a score of 66.7%.

Unfortunately you needed a minimum score of 66.8% to pass the test.

So you failed.

Where you slipped up was when you marked Arya over Samwise.

Arya, like the rest of the Game of Thrones cast, is a fictional character. She’s not real. Game of Thrones is a TV show.

What, you think some wee actress is going to defeat a battle hardened Hobbit in a real fight?

Get real.

———————–

I worry about Sansa, you know.

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

d

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Who do you think would win a fight between Jamie Lanister (before he lost his sword hand) and Aragorn? How about between The Mountain and Legolas? Arya and Samwise?

I know the correct answers. I just wanna see if you know them.

============

Aragorn.
Legolas.
Arya.

Now, what about Ginger vs Mary-Anne ?

w
v

You got 2 out of 3 correct. That’s a score of 66.7%.

Unfortunately you needed a minimum score of 66.8% to pass the test.

So you failed.

Where you slipped up was when you marked Arya over Samwise.

Arya, like the rest of the Game of Thrones cast, is a fictional character. She’s not real. Game of Thrones is a TV show.

What, you think some wee actress is going to defeat a battle hardened Hobbit in a real fight?

Get real.

Well, I think you’re having a great deal of trouble recognizing truth from fiction. For instance, it is known that the Black Widow would whip all the people in your scenarios, and you were too afraid to admit it. I mean, who is more real than Scarlett Johannson?

She’d definitely whip Ginger or Mary Anne.