The bottom line.

[3blake7]

 

This is a graph generated from ice core samples from Lake Vostok, Antarctica. They were able to determine temperature data based on the way the ice crystallized, extrapolate CO2 and Methane concentrations of the time when the ice formed and dust concentrations. This data goes back 400,000 years (actually I think they have up to 800,000 years now).

 

It tells a simple story. Ice ages happen approximately every 90,000 years. After the ice age, there is a subtle global warming which takes about 90,000 years, until it becomes a more aggressive global warming, which somehow results in an ice age.

 

Why do we care about all the other stuff? Who cares about some cities showing lower average temperature increases and other cities showing higher average temperature increases. Who cares about urbanization and the urban heat island. Why does it matter?

 

The bottom line.

 

Global warmings and ice ages happen and they would happen even if we turned off all the machines and held our breath.

 

Now what are we going to do about it? If we are going to stop it, we need to be carbon NEGATIVE. We need carbon dioxide air filtering stations.

 

Why do it? For one, we can stop sea level rise, which is predicted to cost 10s of trillions in damages to coastal cities. Business district New York City would eventually become below sea level, along with New Orleans being totally screwed and not to mention half of Florida. There would eventually be places on this Earth too hot for life, millions of climate change refugees knocking on the doors of countries below or above the hot zone. The coral reefs would eventually die, causing a whole hierarchy of ocean species to have a huge population drop, which could cause food shortages and starvation in countries highly dependent on fish.

 

To ice age or to not ice age, that is the question. In my humble opinion, it's better to have a planetary thermostat than not to have one. We can then ice age whenever we feel like it.

 

Doesn't it make sense to actually get the job done and build the carbon dioxide air filtering stations and become -100% carbon emissions, Carbon Negative? We need to not only stop emissions entirely, we need to be negative emissions to take everything out that we already put in. We have to keep going to push Carbon Dioxide concentrations back down to like 10,000 BC.

 

We could do it for less than like 10% of the military budget.

Edited July 6, 2015 by 3blake7

[3blake7]

I made a spread sheet for calculating how much we need to reduce emissions and how much carbon dioxide removal we need to do.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fPTV2WrWN0E-k2UvePvz2wddjDWPsFmgGUxLeUgCkXQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

Here are some graphs I generated based on the plan currently set on the spreadsheet.

 

 

I did have a question for any experts out there.

 

What is the leading theory for the ice age event? Based on my limited knowledge, I am guessing that the Artic warming up and the Antarctica staying cold will create some warm front - cold front scenario, which may cause air currents to shift once reaching some hypothetical tipping point, then the Arctic will get cold again. From my understanding, since the Earth spins around the equator and it is wider around the equator, the North and South Poles are like the bottom and the cold air will try to sink to the bottom.

Edited July 8, 2015 by 3blake7

[dimreepr]

From my understanding, since the Earth spins around the equator and it is wider around the equator, the North and South Poles are like the bottom and the cold air will try to sink to the bottom.

 

 

That would be the case in a snow shelter but the poles are cold for very different reasons.

[Phi for All]

From my understanding, since the Earth spins around the equator and it is wider around the equator, the North and South Poles are like the bottom and the cold air will try to sink to the bottom.

 

Why does cold air sink? It's because the molecules in cold air are heavier than air that's hotter. Hot air is moving around more, less dense and more spread out. So gravity pulls the heavier cold air down.

 

Where is the gravity pulling at the poles? At the equator? When you look at it like this, is there a bottom or top to Earth? If the poles are like the bottom, why hasn't everything been pulled down there?

[3blake7]

I know the poles are cold because they are further from the sun and the tilt creates the seasons. That's not what I'm talking about. What I was talking about is the Earth isn't perfectly spherical. It's wider around the belt, the equator, so the poles are like a lower elevation. Including the oceans because of the spin, which sort of creates a dam between the two hemispheres. I was thinking of it like, the Southern Hemisphere filling up, until it spills over the equator and rolls down to the North Pole. I read that the Arctic was warming while Antarctica is staying cold, I was imagining what would happen if the North and South Pole temperature differential became more extreme.

I was imagining the Northern Hemisphere currents switching directions.

Edited July 9, 2015 by 3blake7

[swansont]

I know the poles are cold because they are further from the sun

 

No, that's not it.

[Phi for All]

What I was talking about is the Earth isn't perfectly spherical. It's wider around the belt, the equator, so the poles are like a lower elevation.

Elevation (height) isn't measured north to south though, is it? The poles are NOT like a lower elevation. If what you're saying were true, gravity would be pulling things south or north instead of towards the center of the Earth.

 

I read that the Arctic was warming while Antarctica is staying cold, I was imagining what would happen if the North and South Pole temperature differential became more extreme.

Think of the different nature of the poles. The Arctic is a sea surrounded by land, the Antarctic is land surrounded by sea. Which is colder, water or ice?

[dimreepr]

That's not what I'm talking about. What I was talking about is the Earth isn't perfectly spherical. It's wider around the belt, the equator, so the poles are like a lower elevation.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_the_Earth

 

 

While "radius" normally is a characteristic of perfect spheres, the Earth deviates from a perfect sphere by only a third of a percent, sufficiently close to treat it as a sphere in many contexts and justifying the term "the radius of the Earth".

 

[swansont]

Also, the geoid (basically, mean sea level) is an equipotential. Any "draining toward the poles" has had a long time to equilibrate.

[3blake7]

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_the_Earth

 

 

 

I didn't realize the difference was that small.

Also, the geoid (basically, mean sea level) is an equipotential. Any "draining toward the poles" has had a long time to equilibrate.

 

Do you know of a good lamest terms description of the ice age cycle?

 

No, that's not it.

Did I leave out that light goes through more atmosphere since it's at an angle??

[dimreepr]

That's not it either; just read my initial link in post #3

[swansont]

Do you know of a good lamest terms description of the ice age cycle?

 

Do you mean Milankovitch cycles

http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm

Did I leave out that light goes through more atmosphere since it's at an angle??

 

You did leave it out, but it's the matter of getting sunlight for more hours of the day than being 0.05% closer to the sun.

[timo]

The idea to actively capture carbon is not completely new. I never thought it through so far. But two of the three obvious questions towards the implementation (the third one is the business, economic or political model driving this which is an arbitrarily broad discussion) are

1) What do you do with the carbon you capture? Dumping it underground, perhaps. Note that despite talking about gasses we are talking about huge masses, which probably still have huge volumes when liquified or solidified.

2) What is the technology you want to use? Something that need lots of electric energy is probably not smart, except if you cannot get enough of these renewables even after you already fullfilled all your other energy needs. A theoretically very simple and cost-effective technology would be trees, btw.

[CharonY]

It is not my area of expertise, but over the years I have heard a number of engineering talks about a variety of carbon capture strategies and systems. One common thing I noticed is that overall net efficiency (especially when adjusted for cost) tend to be much lower than using certain plant systems, especially those with extensive root networks. It is funny as the respective talks (engineered solutions vs analysis of carbon capture efficiency of different plants) tend to be in different conferences, though it would make sense to mix up engineers with ecologists in this case (or at least more than I have seen so far).