#147 Kevin McKinney said, “#136, Killian–“No more straw men, please.”
See, this kind of comment is what wastes time and clouds issues. How can a question be a ‘straw man?’
When it is rhetorical.
“From my perspective, I see little about a wind turbine that is not ‘sustainable’ over timespans of, say, a couple of centuries.”
We don’t have centuries.
“Steel comes in because it accounts, by far, for the biggest mass of material involved. As you say, that steel is highly recyclable, and very long-lived. Chris (#138) makes the point that the same is true for the other metals involved in modern turbine designs, from the common, like copper, to the rare, like the neodymium that reduces parasitic electrical load, and it certainly ties in with your point #2: “… enough material extant already to essentially be unlimited.”… …you’ve stated above that we should build mass transit with ‘demonic’ speed. I think there could be value in doing that, and have actively worked to support transit where I live. But: what about all the steel involved there?…
And how do you propose to power those transit systems? Not trying to do a ‘gotcha’ here; I really would like to know what your idea is on this, and from what you’ve written so far it seems a fairly glaring contradiction…”
All of the above is addressed by my “appropriate technology” and “bridge” comments above. I am not a Luddite, I merely understand and accept the natural limits. Another issue is “sustainable cities.” Cities are not. The embedded energy is massive. The energy/resources needed to keep them going as centuries pass? Massive. Cities are about as sustainable as my big toe, and will never be sustainable until and unless they are fully integrated into bio-regions. All this to get to mass transit. The reason we can and should build out mass transit is, if you build it they will come. That is, the large cities *must* depopulate to a given level N for that city/bio-region. This also fits with small, walkable communities (see also Dunbar’s Number, e.g.), small-scale ag (see recent U.N. statements, Rodale, etc.) and other points I would need to write a book to explore.
When you get under the skin of sustainability, and really “get it”, and begin to see a wide array of concepts all supporting the same conclusions, it just gets to the point there’s no denying it. More importantly, it gets to the point you can tell whether something fits in a sustainable world with virtually no in-depth analysis…. because you’ve already done the in-depth and the patterns are clearly visible in any “new” idea or concept or product.
That won’t be so easy as we get closer to truly sustainable solutions. there’s going to be a lot of near-sustainable stuff being proposed that will likely require a more detailed analysis. But as of now, things are so clearly unsustainable it takes little or no effort to identify them.
“Especially if we don’t (continue to) decarbonize energy?”
Remember: It’s not just energy, but also resources. (See Without the Hot Air, e.g.) (cont.)
Killiansays
#147 (cont)
When you combine the need to conserve a wide range of non-renewable resources with the need to return to <300 ppm (No, not 350), quickly, it becomes pretty clear consumption must drop to @ 90% of current. That constraint alone makes building out more power generation ridiculous because we already produce more than 10% of our power from wind, solar, and hydro. Since we have no choice but to wind down consumption rapidly, and decarbonize rapidly, and actually reverse carbonization rapidly, why in the world build more power generation? We are producing ten times what we need already.
"I also have questions about a couple of other aspects. One is the emissions reduction potential of sustainable ag and reforestation. There is no doubt that the Rodale piece that both you and Hank have linked contains encouraging information. But it also acknowledges that the figures are based upon extrapolation of a relatively small number of sites."
And? It's been virtually impossible to get regenerative/permaculture-based research funded because of the massive ignorance involved and the massive lobbying against healthy ag. Nothing we can do about that. We know what regenerative ag does. Again I refer you to the UN's coming out on the side of Regen Ag. We don't have time to keep proving the obvious no matter how much we love the scientific process – and I do.
"can we really afford to bet everything on this possibility?"
You can't afford not to. Non-toxic, more productive, can be applied almost anywhere, adjusted to conditions. What risk, exactly?
"But agriculture as it is is enormous, and a lot of it is controlled by large multinationals."
I'm a firm believer that when you get people to understand "must" reflects hard physical limits that cannot be negotiated, change will come swiftly. Heck, two years ago the only people using "regenerative" as a term *at all*, were a few of us pinkocommiehippydippiepermaculturenutjobwhackos. Now the UN is using it.
"Given that it took a couple of decades to (mostly) educate people on basic practice to avoid getting HIV/AIDS, do you really think that you’re going to do markedly better in spreading the gospel of sustainable ag?"
Seems to be taking on a lie of its own. The change in the last two years is pretty amazing. We are very definitely still on the razor's edge, and will be long after I die, but what we do in the next thirty years will likely determine whether the seas turn to slime. We may already be too late, but since we may also *not* be too late, full speed ahead.
"Don’t get me wrong; I’ll gladly help. But I don’t see rapid, complete mitigation down this road. (And please don’t tell me that you didn’t say that, if I’ve got it wrong; just tell me straight what you do think.)"
All I can say is, I've been talking here at RC about forestation, aforestation and regen ag as ways to draw down and reverse the accumulation of GHGs since, oh, 2011 maybe? Now scientists are saying the same: We can do this with trees and regen ag and biochar!
Told ya so. ;-)
I think what I've said for the last three or four years here was dead on: Grow gardens, grow forests (including food forests), do it regeneratively (permaculturally), simplify and localize has been 100% accurate. Add in what I have come to call Regenerative Governance, et voila!
I think these general points also cover the paragraphs that followed (it is necessary to take "simplification" literally, to **relative** extremes (i.e. straw bale homes vs caves), and in all aspects of life):
"Lastly, let me say straight out one thing that I think: I think that decarbonizing energy is necessary, but not sufficient. That is, if we don’t do so, we’ll have unacceptable losses from climate change and social collapse–loss of life… // …So far, I’m not completely convinced by your answers, but I do think that you are posing valuable questions. Hopefully, I am, too."
Also let me say, I am an idea guy. I can see the whole thing. I can visualize this future with ease – in part because there are people already doing it – but I am not the one to lead people to it. I leave the how to you and others. The what is already known, and simple (never to be confused with easy) to do.
I would attach a graphic that nutshells all of this, but that might be going too far. Feel free to reach out off RC if you really want to understand what I propose.
“Note the bolded word. Whereas *I* said, “No more GHG increases in five to ten years?” See, that’s an absolute stop, not the beginning of slowing.”
How quaint. The RCP the IPCC studied was pretty close to Hansen’s recommendation for a safe target. So, now you have to go and do the climate science to justify something beyond that. When you are done with that, which will take you much longer than five years since you have so many vast areas of ignorance to fill and you seem particularly persistent in keeping those vistas open, then you can come back and ask for an economic model, which probably will take about three years to complete.
I can tell you that you have your math wrong on emissions however since I’ve modeled that. Only about a 60% cut is needed initially to turn over the Keeling curve. (See how I used my words to make clear we’re now talking about concentration rather than emissions which you failed to do?) Another several decades of reducing emissions can be allowed while still bringing the curve down.
I think that if you want to propose a method to make that happen, you may have to include a military attack on China, the largest emitter. If so, you are completely off base. Big wars can eliminate things like Nazi aggression on that kind of timescale, but the conflict has to be over something where winning the peace is practical and that does not seem likely with this issue.
Wili, I hope for a future that includes both protection from asteroids and protection from human stupidity. You’ve read Catton’s Overshoot, I’m sure.
I hope you also realize that without NASA’s climate science, we’d lack an awareness of what we’ve been doing to the planet all this time; ecology needed the high viewpoint satellites gave us.
And I hope you believe that we need to build the spacecraft and tech to do anything about the next asteroid to hit Earth. It’ll happen again, otherwise. Any day now we could be surprised.
Once we can keep a big rock from hitting us, can we figure out how to make use of it without creating more of a mess?
Can’t you imagine people being smart enough to do both?
(Yeah, me neither, most days. But “live as you are in the early days of a better world” reminds me that actions speak louder than words.
And if you’d gotten here sooner you’d have known about those things earlier in your young life. Mentions of biochar here go back years earlier for just one example. You should have cited much of what you write, which you’ve taken from other people’s work and credited to yourself, incredibly.
Kevin M: “See, this kind of comment is what wastes time and clouds issues. How can a question be a ‘straw man?’
Killian: When it is rhetorical.
But as it wasn’t, then it ain’t. I’m trying to understand you. Still not easy, though I appreciate the civil tone in #151.
Kevin M: “From my perspective, I see little about a wind turbine that is not ‘sustainable’ over timespans of, say, a couple of centuries.”
Killian: We don’t have centuries.
You seem to be inverting the timescale, or something. I’m not suggesting that we do have that sort of time to address the present crisis; I’m saying that I think that ‘clean energy’ is (IMO) necessary over those kinds of timescales if we are to minimize loss of life and cultural capital. (As I recall, I went on a some length about that!)
But wait, I see there’s more about that in your #152:
When you combine the need to conserve a wide range of non-renewable resources with the need to return to ~300- ppm (No, not 350), quickly, it becomes pretty clear consumption must drop to @ 90% of current. That constraint alone makes building out more power generation ridiculous because we already produce more than 10% of our power from wind, solar, and hydro.
Mm. I’d like to see the calculation(s), as the concept is not self-evident to me. You say “consumption,” but consumption of what, precisely? Everything? If yes, does it matter how the everything ‘pie’ gets sliced? Least evident to me, though, is the path to get there. You are sanguine about a social ‘tipping point’:
Seems to be taking on a lie of its own. The change in the last two years is pretty amazing. We are very definitely still on the razor’s edge, and will be long after I die, but what we do in the next thirty years will likely determine whether the seas turn to slime. We may already be too late, but since we may also *not* be too late, full speed ahead.
Love the spirit, there. I’ll stay tuned on the social acceptance front. But don’t forget that this has to somehow play in Mumbai and Moscow, too.
(One of the nasty parts about this is that heavy weaponry is also not sustainable, which introduces the potential bias that those most attached to same will be least amenable to accepting the idea of sustainability. They are also the scariest planetary neighbors to have around–thereby inhibiting others from disarming.)
“I would attach a graphic that nutshells all of this, but that might be going too far. Feel free to reach out off RC if you really want to understand what I propose.”
“…the need to return to less than 300 ppm (No, not 350), quickly…”
You have no justification for this. Hansen’s 350 ppm target is a slow target that allows for some overshoot, and if the WAIS collapse is inevitable regardless of any target as has been proposed recently, then that may allow even more time if GIS turns out to be more stable.
There is an ethical justification for 280 ppm, namely pack out you trash. But with that one, it is OK to take some time to hike up and enjoy the waterfall before carrying the trash out. There is no hurry unless the trash poses a danger. Between 350 ppm and 280, it is not clear that it does.
Omega Centaurisays
The one consumptive that we could sustainably use at ten or more times our present is energy. A combination of wind/hydro/solar could easily “sustainably” supply this amount. All we have to do is build out the (massive) infrastructure. Other resources are harder to place the absolute amounts available. Things like solution mining mining, and perhaps extracting certain rare metals from asteroids mean there is the potential for much higher numbers than we presently consider possible. On the other hand, even iron (in the form of steel) isn’t truly sustainable in the long haul. The loss rate to dispertion, due to rust and loss (for instance ships sinking), is non-trivial and will never be zero. All we can really plan for at the time is the next century or two. The future will (or perhaps) won’t be the ones to perfect sustainability. Our job is to create the conditions whereby they having a fighting chance to do it.
In any case, the path to deep decarbonization runs through electrification of a lot of processes that currently use fuel directly. This includes transport, mining, refining, process and space heat, etc. We have two jobs here, the obvious one is decarbonization of the electrcity grid, and the second is the substitution of fuel based processes with electricity.
Killiansays
Dudley, [edit – please stop]
No justification? Wrong. Have posted many times here the justification. Don’t really care if you missed it.
1. Look at CO2 in 1953.
2. Look at ASI chart @ 1953.
3. Remember 30-year lag in climate response.
4. Realize you need to look at CO2 from 1923.
[edit – stick to factual statements and don’t attack other commenters. Last warning]
MartinJBsays
KIllian, that was not at all helpful. Let’s try this another way. In this future you “visualize… with ease” (your words in 152), how much energy are we producing? Is it 10% of what we generate now? 25%? Just a rough idea would be useful. Thanks!
wilisays
“Can’t you imagine people being smart enough to do both?
Such a lag exists if you stabilize forcing. However, you propose to reduce forcing so it does not work as an argument for you. You could seek to eliminate the present energy imbalance to retain sea ice but that would set your target at around 350 ppm. And, how long you have depends on ice sheet dynamics. You could have a century to get there. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
Wonderersays
when I come along, visiting this site, I want to inform and educate myself in… – you name it –
climate science. As it is explicitly stated by the mods (again & again), here, mitigation is OT.
That does not implicate that thoughts, questions, remarks, annotations, definitions etc. on that
topic are not worth considering and discussing or unimportent in general; quite the opposite.
It’s just not the place to discuss them. To me it’s pretty tedious to read and scroll thru a
heap of half-related posts (approx. s. #144) to fetch the ‘real climate thing’. I’m not
interested in personal engagements or circling debates.
#Killian, #137
AFAIK, The only form of sustainable life of humans (over tens of thousands of yrs) was that of
living in relative small groups, often as nomads, and ‘sustainable’ mostly for exact that
reason. Most ancient societies which where kind of mass socities broke down and dissappeared or
faced long periods of hardship before they recovered (e.g. China). Mass society and sustainability might contradict each other on fundamental levels.
OT: blue + yellow = green :)
#Jasper Jaynes, #144
If you feel insulted by my post, I just can say it wasn’t meant that way.
I explicit referred to your post #126 where you critize “imprecise terminology being used on
this site” and refer to the terms “‘clean’ energy or ‘renewables‘” and “‘sustainable’”.
As openly shown by the ongoing debate, the first two terms are imprecise per se, dependent of
their use in the technical or political realms, and need accurate definition to operate and
communicate with. The third term might be easier to define or operationalize, but with an
inherent risk of polarization towards a more ‘fundamental’ aka ‘strict’ or ‘realistic’
interpretation. It’s this ‘impreciseness’ and the range of individual definitions which opens
the door and invites to misunderstanding and emotions loading or derailing the discussion.
Intentional exploitation of those weaknesses of terms to gain the latter results is known
as t*. (pls don’t take that shoe) ;)
Thanks for your clarifacation of your view on “promotion of misnamed renewables/clean energy” as
trolling. To me your definition seems a bit vast and ‘imprecise’, but I understand why you see
it that way.
I share your views on the (seemingly obvious) failure to address the rising and accumulating
CO2-problem adequately. And yes, it frustrates and depresses me too, to see that the efforts
from decades did not get us off the trajectory towards extinction yet.
#sidd, #141 +1
p.s.: Many thanks to the RC-Crew for providing this invaluable site and to all the posters
providing valuable information, thoughts and inspiration. Keep up the good work and btw:
Congratulations to RCs 10th birthday. Good luck! May the force be with you!
p.p.s.: What about this borehole thing?
Killiansays
#153 Chris Dudley says, Note the bolded word. Whereas *I* said, “No more GHG increases in five to ten years?” See, that’s an absolute stop, not the beginning of slowing.”… The RCP the IPCC studied was pretty close to Hansen’s recommendation for a safe target. So, now you have to go and do the climate science to justify something beyond that.
No, I don’t. Scientists do. I have offered a reason for concern at 350. I raised this point, and posted here on it, long ago. Ask the RC owners why they choose not to test the hypothesis. They can do something with that or not, neither response invalidates the observation and hypothesis *until* tested.
You wanting to invalidate and dismiss others’ comments does not make them invalid. (Obviously.)
I can tell you that you have your math wrong on emissions however since I’ve modeled that. Only about a 60% cut is needed initially to turn over the Keeling curve.
Yeah, except your straw man, goal post changing “…to initially turn over the Keeling Curve…” is not what I addressed. Try again.
…military attack… you are completely off base. Big wars…
Wow. That’s a Straw Saturn, if not a Straw Sol.
#154 Hank Roberts says, “Once we can keep a big rock from hitting us, can we figure out how to make use of it without creating more of a mess?What are your time frames for asteroid wrangling and addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
The risk assessment here seems… extremely inadequate.
#161 MartinJB says: “KIllian, that was not at all helpful.”
Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?
Let’s try this another way. In this future you “visualize… with ease” (your words in 152), how much energy are we producing? Is it 10% of what we generate now? 25%? Just a rough idea would be useful. Thanks!
Answered: Depends where you are. I have already said in this thread roughly 10% in the US. Others think up to 20%. Whether 10% or 20%, we are already there:
Total capacity: 1,179,030 MW
Wind, Solar, Hydro: 336,700 MW
…or 30.8%… and growing at 70% of new capacity yearly.
Link from cleantechnica dot com: http:// cleantechnica dot com /2014/12/23/ wind-solar-account-70-new-us-generating-capacity-november/
Thomassays
A bit on wind power capacity projections for the US. These are from the DOE, not the wind industry.
How the US will get over a third of its energy from wind by midecntury.
Estimated cumulative capacity for wind:
year GW CAGR percent from last entry
2008 25
2013 48 13.9%
2020 113 12.7%
2030 220 6.7%
2050 405 3.1%
Killiansays
155
Hank Roberts says, Killian … since 2011
And if you’d gotten here sooner
Since 2007. Comprehension helped by careful reading. I was specific in that comment about particular points addressed since 2011.
you’d have known about those things earlier in your young life. Mentions of biochar here go back years earlier for just one example.
Many of those issues addressed by me. That you don’t remember that is not my problem, but it’s inappropriate to claim I started posting here four years after I did.
You should have cited much of what you write
I have when it was important to do so. I speak on very broad scales most of the time, often referencing “very recent” or “in the last few days” issues everyone is already aware of.
which you’ve taken from other people’s work and credited to yourself, incredibly.
Argumentation by assertion. Cut and paste, or revoke.
Hey Killian, thanks for the patronizing snark: “Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?” Really? The reason your last answer wasn’t helpful was that it contained a good measure of hand waiving, but it didn’t answer the question.
So, you did a little better this time. Next step for you: what’s the basis for your 10%-20% number? And, given your comments about the unsustainability of solar etc., how do you justify this? Thanks!
Killiansays
# 164 Wonderer said, #Killian, #137 AFAIK, The only form of sustainable life of humans (over tens of thousands of yrs) was that of living in relative small groups, often as nomads, and ‘sustainable’ mostly for exact that reason.
Somebody is waking up to the scale of the problem. Good for you.
Mass society and sustainability might contradict each other on fundamental levels.
They do if managed how society does under the current paradigm. Despite the rather rude attempts to dismiss accumulating scientific and in situ data, it is out there. The advantage we have over hunter-gatherers is understanding *why* things worked. Terra preta was widely practiced in the Amazon, “night soils” in Asia, but they didn’t really understand why they worked. We do now. Combining the scientific mass of data and means of collecting and testing it we have built up with ancient knowledge and awareness and modern inquiry, we have the ability to enhance both ancient knowledge (TEK for some NA First Nations) and nature’s functions.
We have taken nature’s variety and figured out guilds, companion planting, etc., enhance our ability to grow/raise food. Nature’s ideas, our brains applied to problem-solving.
“No, I don’t. Scientists do. I have offered a reason for concern at 350. I raised this point, and posted here on it, long ago. Ask the RC owners why they choose not to test the hypothesis. They can do something with that or not, neither response invalidates the observation and hypothesis *until* tested.”
This statement has a lot wrong with it. Basically though, you don’t have a well formed hypothesis to test. People have already looked at the question and provided answers and you are basically saying you have an uniformed hunch that they are wrong. But they already did thorough work, so why listen to you?
“Yeah, except your straw man, goal post changing “…to initially turn over the Keeling Curve…” is not what I addressed.”
Well, use your words to make it clear. It would be odd if you were not either talking about having emissions decreasing rather than increasing or having the concentration decreasing rather than increasing, but if you mean something else, try to express it. I understand that you don’t get this stuff all that well, but try to be as clear as you can be.
You should be aware though that the IPCC is part of a diplomatic process. If you are asking for things beyond the IPCC you may be asking for things beyond diplomacy as well. I doubt that going beyond diplomacy is likely to accomplish the goal aimed at in this situation.
[to Gavin]
So the Nasa articles about the high risk of mega droughts that were published today. (2/17/15) It was stated that droughts will increase to a span to “20 30 or even 40 years at the most”. It was also stated that in earlier studies published over on live science would make bigger storms more common. I hate using this term but I don’t know any other way to state it.
In this particular case would climate change be a self fixing issue?
I’m shrugging at saying that but as I said before I don’t know how else to word it.
I completely reject the view, held only by a few extreme fringe environmentalists but frequently brought up by denialists, that the only way to save the Earth is to abandon modern technology almost altogether. I do not think we need to abandon cities or even cars. This “the warmers want you to live in mud huts and walk to work, except nobody will have jobs” is pure anti-environmentalist propaganda.
There is no reason cities, or cars, or the use of metals, can’t be “sustainable.” Infinite growth in physical resource use is not sustainable. Slow enough growth, obviously, is sustainable, and so is a steady-state dependent largely on recycling. The latter can be achieved if we stabilize our population. There is also no reason we can’t bring the third world up to first-world standards of living, and do so WITHOUT massive third world use of fossil fuels.
“Sustainable” does not have to mean either “primitive” or “low-tech.” Period.
Jasper Jaynessays
The global climate models seem to be quite good in the temperature ranges covered by prior Holocene (~0-1 C). However, depending on who one believes, we have already committed to a total temperature increase on the order of 1.5-2.0 C, or larger, based on prior emissions. Once we get reasonably well beyond prior Holocene, many experts believe model accuracies become less credible, due to the present omission of carbon feedbacks. This means that any estimates of the effects of corrective actions on energy consumption and alternatives merge into the realm of arm-waving. We obviously need models that incorporate all new phenomena we can expect when temperature increases approach 1.5-2.0 C.
So, why don’t we have models that contain these phenomena? In other disciplines, phenomena whose behavior is less well known are entered as well as can be approximated, and parametric variations which roughly bound the problem are run. Why isn’t this being done with the climate change models?
#176–Jasper, it is being done, at least in part, and has been since at least 2000. I’m not fully up to date on this–not even close–but I do know that Mark Lynas made much of this issue. As I wrote elsewhere:
In [the 3 degrees] chapter, climate regimes we might term ‘sort of safe’ are left behind. Partly that is because a political consensus of some standing has been that damage below this level might be in some sense acceptable, or at least reasonably survivable. But in part this fact is a reflection of non-linear nature of climate impacts, for above 2 C the risk of encountering what have become known as ‘tipping points’ rises–and rises unpredictably.
In Six Degrees the primary concern is for ‘carbon cycle feedbacks.’ In 2000 a paper called “Acceleration of Global Warming Due to Carbon Cycle Feedbacks in a Coupled Climate Model” was published–bibliographically known as Cox et al., (2000.)
Prior to Cox et al, most climate models had simulated the response of atmosphere and ocean to increasing greenhouse gases. But Cox et al was an early product of a new generation of “coupled” climate models. Coupled models added a new level of realism by considering the carbon cycle, in addition to atmosphere and ocean.
That’s part of a summary/review of the Lynas book, available here:
Here we present results from a fully coupled, three-dimensional carbon–climate model, indicating that carbon-cycle feedbacks could significantly accelerate climate change over the twenty-first century. We find that under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, the terrestrial biosphere acts as an overall carbon sink until about 2050, but turns into a source thereafter. By 2100, the ocean uptake rate of 5 Gt C yr-1 is balanced by the terrestrial carbon source, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are 250 p.p.m.v. higher in our fully coupled simulation than in uncoupled carbon models2, resulting in a global-mean warming of 5.5 K, as compared to 4 K without the carbon-cycle feedback.
It’s been cited 2750 times, which should give lots of material to look at:
“More realistic model predictions of future carbon cycle and climate feedbacks require a better understanding of the processes driving the response of tropical ecosystems to drought and warming.”
Does anyone know of a site that shows temperature anomalies relative to 1750 (pre-industrial)? That seems to be the baseline being used for the political 2 degree limit, and for the Hansen J, Kharecha P, Sato M, Masson-Delmotte V, Ackerman F, et al. (2013) estimate of 1C as the limit. So it would be good to keep track of where we’re at, particularly with 2014 and 2010 being so warm. Anomalies relative to more recent averages are less helpful, I think.
Wonderersays
As mitigation is still on topic (OT)….
#Barton Paul Levenson, #175 Continuous growth is never sustainable; slow growth just prolonges the time span up to when reaching the (systems inherent) limits.
About the ‘sustainable growth’ oxymoron see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett
Afaik, there are just two ways to produce pig iron: by use of charcoal (ancient) or coke (‘modern’ (fossil fueled)).
“Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke [].” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pig_iron
It was this change in the iron extraction process, that fueled the production of iron and steel on a large mass scale. This was the pivot to the 2nd industrial revolution in the midst of the 19th century when the use of coke became wide scaled – the same time span the climate relevant ‘preindustrial’ level of CO2 is defined on.
Steel could be produced thru electric arc processing – but iron has relative high loss rate to lifetime – and there is a limit in the percentage of scrap metal when recycling steel. (Even your 10 yr old car is rusty under the paint; – use an electron microscope. :)
May I ask you to provide a hint or link to an alternative (large scalable) technical solution to produce pig iron. (A question I’m really interested in.)
The March 2015 National Geographic Magazine cover story is called “THE WAR ON SCIENCE”. It has lumped climate deniers together with people that believe fluoridation is harmful, vaccinations should be avoided, the earth is flat, and creationism. They all have the common thread of not accepting what the scientific consensus believes.
about once every 5,000 years or so on average an object the size of a football field hits Earth and causes significant damage. Once every few million years on average an object large enough to cause regional or global disaster …
It’s not “if” — it’s “when”
> addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
Nobody’s promising you’ll live forever. Seven billion or so of us will die in the next hundred years ago. Whether we do that gracefully, or greedily, will make a difference for those living beyond our time.
Plio-Pleistocene climate sensitivity evaluated using high-resolution CO2 records
M. A. Martínez-Botí, et al
Nature 518, 49–54 (05 February 2015)
doi:10.1038/nature14145
Abstract:
Theory and climate modelling suggest that the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to changes in radiative forcing could depend on the background climate. However, palaeoclimate data have thus far been insufficient to provide a conclusive test of this prediction. Here we present atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) reconstructions based on multi-site boron-isotope records from the late Pliocene epoch (3.3 to 2.3 million years ago). We find that Earth’s climate sensitivity to CO2-based radiative forcing (Earth system sensitivity) was half as strong during the warm Pliocene as during the cold late Pleistocene epoch (0.8 to 0.01 million years ago). We attribute this difference to the radiative impacts of continental ice-volume changes (the ice–albedo feedback) during the late Pleistocene, because equilibrium climate sensitivity is identical for the two intervals when we account for such impacts using sea-level reconstructions. We conclude that, on a global scale, no unexpected climate feedbacks operated during the warm Pliocene, and that predictions of equilibrium climate sensitivity (excluding long-term ice-albedo feedbacks) for our Pliocene-like future (with CO2 levels up to maximum Pliocene levels of 450 parts per million) are well described by the currently accepted range of an increase of 1.5 K to 4.5 K per doubling of CO2.
Killiansays
# 163 Chris Dudley says “Remember 30-year lag in climate response.”
Such a lag exists if you stabilize forcing. However, you propose to reduce forcing so it does not work as an argument for you.
OMG. The comment was related to climate change in the early 1900’s.
Wow.
#169 MartinJB says Hey Killian, thanks for the patronizing snark: “Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?”
Was neither. Think what you wish. Not worth arguing with you about. Believe me or don’t.
Insulting me with “not helpful’ (diminishing) and “handwaving” (dismissive) and “So, you did a little better this time” (patronizing) isn’t gaining you points.
I have, in this thread, stated how to determine sustainability repeatedly. What do you not understand?
10 – 20%? Are you not aware of the calculations of the numbers of Earths it would take to support 7 billion at American consumption? If five to seven, consumption must fall by a reverse fraction. That’s a simple way to do it.
#175 Barton Paul Levenson said, I completely reject the view, held only by a few extreme fringe environmentalists…
Git dem bad peoples! Git em! This fringe pragmatists thinks you’re funny. Given the UN calls for regenerative – read organic, largely demechanized, non-fossil fuel-using – small holdings and the end to Big Ag, well, is that really fringe, e.g.?
There is also no reason we can’t bring the third world up to first-world standards of living, and do so WITHOUT massive third world use of fossil fuels.
There is that long list of soon-to-be-gone non-renewable resources… Is this something you deny, or…?
“Sustainable” does not have to mean either “primitive”
Agreed!
“low-tech.”
Yeah, pretty much does. Period. Of course, your straw man no hi-tech is to be used? Look into “Appropriate Technology.” I, for one, call for using those non-renewables we choose to use to maintaining international communication, some long-distance travel and the internet – though not nearly as extensive an internet as today.
So, uh, not hardly your colorful, impolite, descriptors.
Pray tell: How do we raise consumption of 9 billion to “First World” standards of living when doing so is expected to use 3 (Europish) – 7 (American-ish) Earths worth of resources?
#185 Hank Roberts said, Even rhetorical questions
What are your time frames for asteroid wrangling …?
Not rhetorical.
addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
Not rhetorical.
No attempt at meaningful answer noted.
There is a very real time constraint on time to alter course. Were we able to mine the moon, asteroids, whatever, and not keep befouling our planet and warming it, I’m all for it. But planning today as if you can point to a time in the future and say on this date we will begin mining these things, is beyond poor risk assessment and planning.
Even when renewables are factored in we cant stop the energy growth that appears to need to come from all sources including nuclear, renewable and fossil. The very idea of giving renewables state subsidy to warrant its much needed major growth relative to other fuel sources seems to be a politically major issue.
Here in the UK we are planning major offshore wind farms (one of the largest in the world off the coast of Yorkshire) and when you see it consists of 400 turbines providing electricity for around 2 million homes (13th of the UK housing stock) then its a good thing but when I look at my energy bills I can see a major issue here. I use around 2000 KWhs of electricity and around 18000 KWhs of gas to heat my home in the winter, hot water and cooking in my car around 10000 KWhs equivalent. So look out for an lot more renewables in the future for the air conditioning is coming to.
Jasper Jaynessays
Chris#180,
I had seen the MacDougall paper shortly after it became available publically. It reflected a good start, but there was much that had not been included. Your reference, a discussion of the paper by Andy Skuce and associated reader comments, identifies some of these omissions. In particular, Skuce’s section entitled “Why even this bleak prospect may be optimistic” provides some specifics of these limitations/omissions. Additionally, comment #4 in particular identifies a few:
“There has been a lot of alarm (and some wild claims) regarding the CH4 emissions from the ESAS as observed by the Russian researchers and others. Since the paper does not take those emissions into account, nor these:
“Finally, this study does not consider any contribution of methane from methane hydrates, either from under permafrost or under ice sheets, nor from fossil methane currently trapped under an impermeable seal of continuous permafrost.”
There seems to be quite a few potentially significant methane emissions still to take into account. One would have to assume that the warming estimates in the above paper are very conservative still.”
All well and good, but if we know there are identifiable emission sources that have not been included in the global climate models, with the potential that the magnitude of these sources could be significant, then I don’t know how we can make any credible statements about the effects of mitigation using models that are incomplete.
W: Continuous growth is never sustainable; slow growth just prolonges the time span up to when reaching the (systems inherent) limits.
BPL: No kidding. But if growth is slow enough, the limits could be reached 1-2 billion years from now, when the Earth goes into a runaway greenhouse effect due to the steady increase in luminosity of the sun as it ages across the main sequence. That’s sustainable enough for all practical purposes.
Personally, I am for steady-state. But “sustainable” means you can keep on doing it for a reasonable period of time. That’s what it means.
K: Pray tell: How do we raise consumption of 9 billion to “First World” standards of living when doing so is expected to use 3 (Europish) – 7 (American-ish) Earths worth of resources?
BPL: By finding other ways to provide a good standard of living. What makes you think good housing, adequate food, clean water, and jobs requires the massive overuse of resources the west enjoys? A great deal of our “use” of resources is wasteful, inefficient, and destructive. There are better ways to do things. We do not need to consign the Third World to permanent poverty.
And is it possible for you to post without extreme scornful sarcasm, or is that just your normal mode of discourse? You’re not making friends.
zebrasays
Since this topic is going on, I’d like to make a suggestion to Killian et al.
1) Offer some concrete metrics for ‘lifestyle’ or ‘standard of living’ when you talk about 7 billion or 10 billion people achieving same. Are we talking SUV’s and McMansions for all?
2) Explain why you think it inevitable that the entire world population will achieve that standard. Poor people have always been with us.
For my part, I think the danger of societal disruption, migration, even nuclear war, is the near-term issue with climate change. (See Pakistan water shortage, for example.)
So whatever mitigation can be achieved starting as soon as possible might delay that– there would still be poor people in Pakistan, but there wouldn’t be war with India over Kashmir because of water.
For JJ — put “methane” in the search box at the top of any RC page.
You’ve missed much long since discussed here previously. It’s news to you.
Read some, get a handle on the quantities and trends from studies.
Reality is plenty scary.
Oh, and models are never “complete” — not necessary, to be useful.
______
” I tried briefly to find support for your statements and failed:
‘oogle it: “climate+model”+”carbon+feedback””
See my response to Chris, #190. These are some of the major, and more obvious, feedbacks, and have been identified by numerous authors. There are many more, but a query like yours doesn’t have sufficient complexity to find them. The problem is there are feedbacks at different scales, almost like a fractal problem. As the scales become more and more regional (sub-grid level), the terminology will change. Even though the processes contribute to climate, ‘climate’ may not be used in the article. So, a broader feedback query is required to identify the full spectrum of mechanisms related in any way to climate.
McPherson, to whom you refer in #179, has identified perhaps forty of these mechanisms, although he mixes in mechanisms at different scales, and some of which I would not categorize as carbon feedback. It’s the largest catalog of feedback mechanisms I have seen; perhaps someone can point to a better source. Again, as I concluded in #190, without inclusion of at least the major carbon feedback mechanisms rather comprehensively, I don’t see how one can make credible statements as to which, if any, mitigation schemes will help us avoid extinction. Unfortunately, the modus operandi on this site appears to be mitigation by assertion, where posters promote their pet approaches without any credible models to quantify their impacts.
(hat tip to JJ who mentioned Andy Skuce, and ‘oogle I did)
October 12, 2014 by Andy Skuce
Dreadful GSA blogpost by Canadian geologists
Geologists, especially those, like me, of a certain age, often have problems with climate science and the idea that humans may be triggering a massive and abrupt change in the climate. Global change, we were taught, occurred slowly ….
… climate science comes along and grabs all the headlines. Suddenly, we hear, change is coming fast and the outcome could be ugly. The familiar music of natural geological change is about to be disrupted by a noisy interruption in the form of human intervention. To add insult to injury, many of the people delivering this disruptive message do not seem—at least to some geologists—to be sufficiently deferential to the extensive knowledge about the slow and cyclic changes in the geological past.
This is quite false, as I found out for myself. My initial reaction many years ago to hearing about climate change was one of disbelief, mixed with a strong suspicion that the climate forecasters had neglected to take the lessons of Earth history into account. I soon found out that I was completely wrong about this. I confess also, as I read the scientific literature, that I learned more about modern geology than I had in many years working as an industrial geoscientist. Unknown to me, immersed in my own areas of specialty, geology had moved on, especially in palaeoclimatology.
This information is not hard to obtain ….
… They really do not get it: it’s not the current interglacial that is at an end, it is quite likely the entire ice-age cycle that we have now disrupted. In the space of a few years we have changed the composition of the atmosphere well beyond the bounds of the Pleistocene. Atmospherically speaking, we are now in the Pliocene and will stay there for centuries even if we close down our industry right now. If we continue to carry on the way we are, we may even recreate the atmosphere of the Eocene hothouse by the end of this century. This is not alarmism, it is observation, plus simple physics and chemistry, informed by a geological perspective of time: we are forcing changes on the atmosphere in the space of decades that took millions of years for similar amounts of change in Earth’s history.
Set it to ‘since 2014’ to reduce the total and rule out citations and patents.
Still plenty there considering the feedbacks you seem to think are ignored.
If you use the RC search tool you’ll find discussion of several such models.
Prefer scary? There are real scientists saying real, well cited, scary.
Susan mentioned Jeremy Jackson at the Naval War College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAtCQ7REXAc
Reality is plenty scary. Watch out for the people fond of exaggeration and handwaving — if you can’t find cites to support the claim, reposting it is just that.
PS, if you can’t spend the time to watch the full video, jump to about the one-hour mark and listen to the last nine and a half minutes, in the question-and-answer period.
Then read Eddy-mediated transport of warm Circumpolar Deep Water across the Antarctic Shelf Break (pages 432–440)
Andrew L. Stewart and Andrew F. Thompson
22 JAN 2015 | DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062281
#147 Kevin McKinney said, “#136, Killian–“No more straw men, please.”
See, this kind of comment is what wastes time and clouds issues. How can a question be a ‘straw man?’
When it is rhetorical.
“From my perspective, I see little about a wind turbine that is not ‘sustainable’ over timespans of, say, a couple of centuries.”
We don’t have centuries.
“Steel comes in because it accounts, by far, for the biggest mass of material involved. As you say, that steel is highly recyclable, and very long-lived. Chris (#138) makes the point that the same is true for the other metals involved in modern turbine designs, from the common, like copper, to the rare, like the neodymium that reduces parasitic electrical load, and it certainly ties in with your point #2: “… enough material extant already to essentially be unlimited.”… …you’ve stated above that we should build mass transit with ‘demonic’ speed. I think there could be value in doing that, and have actively worked to support transit where I live. But: what about all the steel involved there?…
And how do you propose to power those transit systems? Not trying to do a ‘gotcha’ here; I really would like to know what your idea is on this, and from what you’ve written so far it seems a fairly glaring contradiction…”
All of the above is addressed by my “appropriate technology” and “bridge” comments above. I am not a Luddite, I merely understand and accept the natural limits. Another issue is “sustainable cities.” Cities are not. The embedded energy is massive. The energy/resources needed to keep them going as centuries pass? Massive. Cities are about as sustainable as my big toe, and will never be sustainable until and unless they are fully integrated into bio-regions. All this to get to mass transit. The reason we can and should build out mass transit is, if you build it they will come. That is, the large cities *must* depopulate to a given level N for that city/bio-region. This also fits with small, walkable communities (see also Dunbar’s Number, e.g.), small-scale ag (see recent U.N. statements, Rodale, etc.) and other points I would need to write a book to explore.
When you get under the skin of sustainability, and really “get it”, and begin to see a wide array of concepts all supporting the same conclusions, it just gets to the point there’s no denying it. More importantly, it gets to the point you can tell whether something fits in a sustainable world with virtually no in-depth analysis…. because you’ve already done the in-depth and the patterns are clearly visible in any “new” idea or concept or product.
That won’t be so easy as we get closer to truly sustainable solutions. there’s going to be a lot of near-sustainable stuff being proposed that will likely require a more detailed analysis. But as of now, things are so clearly unsustainable it takes little or no effort to identify them.
“Especially if we don’t (continue to) decarbonize energy?”
Remember: It’s not just energy, but also resources. (See Without the Hot Air, e.g.) (cont.)
#147 (cont)
When you combine the need to conserve a wide range of non-renewable resources with the need to return to <300 ppm (No, not 350), quickly, it becomes pretty clear consumption must drop to @ 90% of current. That constraint alone makes building out more power generation ridiculous because we already produce more than 10% of our power from wind, solar, and hydro. Since we have no choice but to wind down consumption rapidly, and decarbonize rapidly, and actually reverse carbonization rapidly, why in the world build more power generation? We are producing ten times what we need already.
"I also have questions about a couple of other aspects. One is the emissions reduction potential of sustainable ag and reforestation. There is no doubt that the Rodale piece that both you and Hank have linked contains encouraging information. But it also acknowledges that the figures are based upon extrapolation of a relatively small number of sites."
And? It's been virtually impossible to get regenerative/permaculture-based research funded because of the massive ignorance involved and the massive lobbying against healthy ag. Nothing we can do about that. We know what regenerative ag does. Again I refer you to the UN's coming out on the side of Regen Ag. We don't have time to keep proving the obvious no matter how much we love the scientific process – and I do.
"can we really afford to bet everything on this possibility?"
You can't afford not to. Non-toxic, more productive, can be applied almost anywhere, adjusted to conditions. What risk, exactly?
"But agriculture as it is is enormous, and a lot of it is controlled by large multinationals."
I'm a firm believer that when you get people to understand "must" reflects hard physical limits that cannot be negotiated, change will come swiftly. Heck, two years ago the only people using "regenerative" as a term *at all*, were a few of us pinkocommiehippydippiepermaculturenutjobwhackos. Now the UN is using it.
"Given that it took a couple of decades to (mostly) educate people on basic practice to avoid getting HIV/AIDS, do you really think that you’re going to do markedly better in spreading the gospel of sustainable ag?"
Seems to be taking on a lie of its own. The change in the last two years is pretty amazing. We are very definitely still on the razor's edge, and will be long after I die, but what we do in the next thirty years will likely determine whether the seas turn to slime. We may already be too late, but since we may also *not* be too late, full speed ahead.
"Don’t get me wrong; I’ll gladly help. But I don’t see rapid, complete mitigation down this road. (And please don’t tell me that you didn’t say that, if I’ve got it wrong; just tell me straight what you do think.)"
All I can say is, I've been talking here at RC about forestation, aforestation and regen ag as ways to draw down and reverse the accumulation of GHGs since, oh, 2011 maybe? Now scientists are saying the same: We can do this with trees and regen ag and biochar!
Told ya so. ;-)
I think what I've said for the last three or four years here was dead on: Grow gardens, grow forests (including food forests), do it regeneratively (permaculturally), simplify and localize has been 100% accurate. Add in what I have come to call Regenerative Governance, et voila!
I think these general points also cover the paragraphs that followed (it is necessary to take "simplification" literally, to **relative** extremes (i.e. straw bale homes vs caves), and in all aspects of life):
"Lastly, let me say straight out one thing that I think: I think that decarbonizing energy is necessary, but not sufficient. That is, if we don’t do so, we’ll have unacceptable losses from climate change and social collapse–loss of life… // …So far, I’m not completely convinced by your answers, but I do think that you are posing valuable questions. Hopefully, I am, too."
Also let me say, I am an idea guy. I can see the whole thing. I can visualize this future with ease – in part because there are people already doing it – but I am not the one to lead people to it. I leave the how to you and others. The what is already known, and simple (never to be confused with easy) to do.
I would attach a graphic that nutshells all of this, but that might be going too far. Feel free to reach out off RC if you really want to understand what I propose.
Killian (#136),
“Note the bolded word. Whereas *I* said, “No more GHG increases in five to ten years?” See, that’s an absolute stop, not the beginning of slowing.”
How quaint. The RCP the IPCC studied was pretty close to Hansen’s recommendation for a safe target. So, now you have to go and do the climate science to justify something beyond that. When you are done with that, which will take you much longer than five years since you have so many vast areas of ignorance to fill and you seem particularly persistent in keeping those vistas open, then you can come back and ask for an economic model, which probably will take about three years to complete.
I can tell you that you have your math wrong on emissions however since I’ve modeled that. Only about a 60% cut is needed initially to turn over the Keeling curve. (See how I used my words to make clear we’re now talking about concentration rather than emissions which you failed to do?) Another several decades of reducing emissions can be allowed while still bringing the curve down.
I think that if you want to propose a method to make that happen, you may have to include a military attack on China, the largest emitter. If so, you are completely off base. Big wars can eliminate things like Nazi aggression on that kind of timescale, but the conflict has to be over something where winning the peace is practical and that does not seem likely with this issue.
Reductio ad absurdum.
Wili, I hope for a future that includes both protection from asteroids and protection from human stupidity. You’ve read Catton’s Overshoot, I’m sure.
I hope you also realize that without NASA’s climate science, we’d lack an awareness of what we’ve been doing to the planet all this time; ecology needed the high viewpoint satellites gave us.
And I hope you believe that we need to build the spacecraft and tech to do anything about the next asteroid to hit Earth. It’ll happen again, otherwise. Any day now we could be surprised.
Once we can keep a big rock from hitting us, can we figure out how to make use of it without creating more of a mess?
Can’t you imagine people being smart enough to do both?
(Yeah, me neither, most days. But “live as you are in the early days of a better world” reminds me that actions speak louder than words.
Despair is so damned boring.
> Killian … since 2011
And if you’d gotten here sooner you’d have known about those things earlier in your young life. Mentions of biochar here go back years earlier for just one example. You should have cited much of what you write, which you’ve taken from other people’s work and credited to yourself, incredibly.
#151, Killian:
But as it wasn’t, then it ain’t. I’m trying to understand you. Still not easy, though I appreciate the civil tone in #151.
You seem to be inverting the timescale, or something. I’m not suggesting that we do have that sort of time to address the present crisis; I’m saying that I think that ‘clean energy’ is (IMO) necessary over those kinds of timescales if we are to minimize loss of life and cultural capital. (As I recall, I went on a some length about that!)
But wait, I see there’s more about that in your #152:
Mm. I’d like to see the calculation(s), as the concept is not self-evident to me. You say “consumption,” but consumption of what, precisely? Everything? If yes, does it matter how the everything ‘pie’ gets sliced? Least evident to me, though, is the path to get there. You are sanguine about a social ‘tipping point’:
Love the spirit, there. I’ll stay tuned on the social acceptance front. But don’t forget that this has to somehow play in Mumbai and Moscow, too.
(One of the nasty parts about this is that heavy weaponry is also not sustainable, which introduces the potential bias that those most attached to same will be least amenable to accepting the idea of sustainability. They are also the scariest planetary neighbors to have around–thereby inhibiting others from disarming.)
“I would attach a graphic that nutshells all of this, but that might be going too far. Feel free to reach out off RC if you really want to understand what I propose.”
Done. Check your FB message folder.
Killian (#152),
“…the need to return to less than 300 ppm (No, not 350), quickly…”
You have no justification for this. Hansen’s 350 ppm target is a slow target that allows for some overshoot, and if the WAIS collapse is inevitable regardless of any target as has been proposed recently, then that may allow even more time if GIS turns out to be more stable.
There is an ethical justification for 280 ppm, namely pack out you trash. But with that one, it is OK to take some time to hike up and enjoy the waterfall before carrying the trash out. There is no hurry unless the trash poses a danger. Between 350 ppm and 280, it is not clear that it does.
The one consumptive that we could sustainably use at ten or more times our present is energy. A combination of wind/hydro/solar could easily “sustainably” supply this amount. All we have to do is build out the (massive) infrastructure. Other resources are harder to place the absolute amounts available. Things like solution mining mining, and perhaps extracting certain rare metals from asteroids mean there is the potential for much higher numbers than we presently consider possible. On the other hand, even iron (in the form of steel) isn’t truly sustainable in the long haul. The loss rate to dispertion, due to rust and loss (for instance ships sinking), is non-trivial and will never be zero. All we can really plan for at the time is the next century or two. The future will (or perhaps) won’t be the ones to perfect sustainability. Our job is to create the conditions whereby they having a fighting chance to do it.
In any case, the path to deep decarbonization runs through electrification of a lot of processes that currently use fuel directly. This includes transport, mining, refining, process and space heat, etc. We have two jobs here, the obvious one is decarbonization of the electrcity grid, and the second is the substitution of fuel based processes with electricity.
Dudley, [edit – please stop]
No justification? Wrong. Have posted many times here the justification. Don’t really care if you missed it.
1. Look at CO2 in 1953.
2. Look at ASI chart @ 1953.
3. Remember 30-year lag in climate response.
4. Realize you need to look at CO2 from 1923.
[edit – stick to factual statements and don’t attack other commenters. Last warning]
KIllian, that was not at all helpful. Let’s try this another way. In this future you “visualize… with ease” (your words in 152), how much energy are we producing? Is it 10% of what we generate now? 25%? Just a rough idea would be useful. Thanks!
“Can’t you imagine people being smart enough to do both?
(Yeah, me neither, most days…”
‘-)
Killian (#160),
“Remember 30-year lag in climate response.”
Such a lag exists if you stabilize forcing. However, you propose to reduce forcing so it does not work as an argument for you. You could seek to eliminate the present energy imbalance to retain sea ice but that would set your target at around 350 ppm. And, how long you have depends on ice sheet dynamics. You could have a century to get there. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
when I come along, visiting this site, I want to inform and educate myself in… – you name it –
climate science. As it is explicitly stated by the mods (again & again), here, mitigation is OT.
That does not implicate that thoughts, questions, remarks, annotations, definitions etc. on that
topic are not worth considering and discussing or unimportent in general; quite the opposite.
It’s just not the place to discuss them. To me it’s pretty tedious to read and scroll thru a
heap of half-related posts (approx. s. #144) to fetch the ‘real climate thing’. I’m not
interested in personal engagements or circling debates.
#Killian, #137
AFAIK, The only form of sustainable life of humans (over tens of thousands of yrs) was that of
living in relative small groups, often as nomads, and ‘sustainable’ mostly for exact that
reason. Most ancient societies which where kind of mass socities broke down and dissappeared or
faced long periods of hardship before they recovered (e.g. China). Mass society and sustainability might contradict each other on fundamental levels.
OT: blue + yellow = green :)
#Jasper Jaynes, #144
If you feel insulted by my post, I just can say it wasn’t meant that way.
I explicit referred to your post #126 where you critize “imprecise terminology being used on
this site” and refer to the terms “‘clean’ energy or ‘renewables‘” and “‘sustainable’”.
As openly shown by the ongoing debate, the first two terms are imprecise per se, dependent of
their use in the technical or political realms, and need accurate definition to operate and
communicate with. The third term might be easier to define or operationalize, but with an
inherent risk of polarization towards a more ‘fundamental’ aka ‘strict’ or ‘realistic’
interpretation. It’s this ‘impreciseness’ and the range of individual definitions which opens
the door and invites to misunderstanding and emotions loading or derailing the discussion.
Intentional exploitation of those weaknesses of terms to gain the latter results is known
as t*. (pls don’t take that shoe) ;)
Thanks for your clarifacation of your view on “promotion of misnamed renewables/clean energy” as
trolling. To me your definition seems a bit vast and ‘imprecise’, but I understand why you see
it that way.
I share your views on the (seemingly obvious) failure to address the rising and accumulating
CO2-problem adequately. And yes, it frustrates and depresses me too, to see that the efforts
from decades did not get us off the trajectory towards extinction yet.
#sidd, #141 +1
p.s.: Many thanks to the RC-Crew for providing this invaluable site and to all the posters
providing valuable information, thoughts and inspiration. Keep up the good work and btw:
Congratulations to RCs 10th birthday. Good luck! May the force be with you!
p.p.s.: What about this borehole thing?
#153 Chris Dudley says, Note the bolded word. Whereas *I* said, “No more GHG increases in five to ten years?” See, that’s an absolute stop, not the beginning of slowing.”… The RCP the IPCC studied was pretty close to Hansen’s recommendation for a safe target. So, now you have to go and do the climate science to justify something beyond that.
No, I don’t. Scientists do. I have offered a reason for concern at 350. I raised this point, and posted here on it, long ago. Ask the RC owners why they choose not to test the hypothesis. They can do something with that or not, neither response invalidates the observation and hypothesis *until* tested.
You wanting to invalidate and dismiss others’ comments does not make them invalid. (Obviously.)
I can tell you that you have your math wrong on emissions however since I’ve modeled that. Only about a 60% cut is needed initially to turn over the Keeling curve.
Yeah, except your straw man, goal post changing “…to initially turn over the Keeling Curve…” is not what I addressed. Try again.
…military attack… you are completely off base. Big wars…
Wow. That’s a Straw Saturn, if not a Straw Sol.
#154 Hank Roberts says, “Once we can keep a big rock from hitting us, can we figure out how to make use of it without creating more of a mess?What are your time frames for asteroid wrangling and addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
The risk assessment here seems… extremely inadequate.
#161 MartinJB says: “KIllian, that was not at all helpful.”
Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?
Let’s try this another way. In this future you “visualize… with ease” (your words in 152), how much energy are we producing? Is it 10% of what we generate now? 25%? Just a rough idea would be useful. Thanks!
Answered: Depends where you are. I have already said in this thread roughly 10% in the US. Others think up to 20%. Whether 10% or 20%, we are already there:
Total capacity: 1,179,030 MW
Wind, Solar, Hydro: 336,700 MW
…or 30.8%… and growing at 70% of new capacity yearly.
Link from cleantechnica dot com: http:// cleantechnica dot com /2014/12/23/ wind-solar-account-70-new-us-generating-capacity-november/
A bit on wind power capacity projections for the US. These are from the DOE, not the wind industry.
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-the-us-will-get-a-third-of-its-energy-from-wind-by-midcentury/335423/
How the US will get over a third of its energy from wind by midecntury.
Estimated cumulative capacity for wind:
year GW CAGR percent from last entry
2008 25
2013 48 13.9%
2020 113 12.7%
2030 220 6.7%
2050 405 3.1%
155
Hank Roberts says, Killian … since 2011
And if you’d gotten here sooner
Since 2007. Comprehension helped by careful reading. I was specific in that comment about particular points addressed since 2011.
you’d have known about those things earlier in your young life. Mentions of biochar here go back years earlier for just one example.
Many of those issues addressed by me. That you don’t remember that is not my problem, but it’s inappropriate to claim I started posting here four years after I did.
You should have cited much of what you write
I have when it was important to do so. I speak on very broad scales most of the time, often referencing “very recent” or “in the last few days” issues everyone is already aware of.
which you’ve taken from other people’s work and credited to yourself, incredibly.
Argumentation by assertion. Cut and paste, or revoke.
Speaking of Catton, here’s a thoughtful remembrance: http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2015/02/william-cattons-warning.html
Hey Killian, thanks for the patronizing snark: “Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?” Really? The reason your last answer wasn’t helpful was that it contained a good measure of hand waiving, but it didn’t answer the question.
So, you did a little better this time. Next step for you: what’s the basis for your 10%-20% number? And, given your comments about the unsustainability of solar etc., how do you justify this? Thanks!
# 164 Wonderer said, #Killian, #137 AFAIK, The only form of sustainable life of humans (over tens of thousands of yrs) was that of living in relative small groups, often as nomads, and ‘sustainable’ mostly for exact that reason.
Somebody is waking up to the scale of the problem. Good for you.
Mass society and sustainability might contradict each other on fundamental levels.
They do if managed how society does under the current paradigm. Despite the rather rude attempts to dismiss accumulating scientific and in situ data, it is out there. The advantage we have over hunter-gatherers is understanding *why* things worked. Terra preta was widely practiced in the Amazon, “night soils” in Asia, but they didn’t really understand why they worked. We do now. Combining the scientific mass of data and means of collecting and testing it we have built up with ancient knowledge and awareness and modern inquiry, we have the ability to enhance both ancient knowledge (TEK for some NA First Nations) and nature’s functions.
We have taken nature’s variety and figured out guilds, companion planting, etc., enhance our ability to grow/raise food. Nature’s ideas, our brains applied to problem-solving.
Killian (#164),
“No, I don’t. Scientists do. I have offered a reason for concern at 350. I raised this point, and posted here on it, long ago. Ask the RC owners why they choose not to test the hypothesis. They can do something with that or not, neither response invalidates the observation and hypothesis *until* tested.”
This statement has a lot wrong with it. Basically though, you don’t have a well formed hypothesis to test. People have already looked at the question and provided answers and you are basically saying you have an uniformed hunch that they are wrong. But they already did thorough work, so why listen to you?
“Yeah, except your straw man, goal post changing “…to initially turn over the Keeling Curve…” is not what I addressed.”
Well, use your words to make it clear. It would be odd if you were not either talking about having emissions decreasing rather than increasing or having the concentration decreasing rather than increasing, but if you mean something else, try to express it. I understand that you don’t get this stuff all that well, but try to be as clear as you can be.
You should be aware though that the IPCC is part of a diplomatic process. If you are asking for things beyond the IPCC you may be asking for things beyond diplomacy as well. I doubt that going beyond diplomacy is likely to accomplish the goal aimed at in this situation.
Also, the table in your link: http://c1cleantechnicacom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2014/12/US-Renewable-Energy-Capacity-Nov-2014-Table.jpg does not agree with the numbers you give and the numbers you give don’t address the question you were asked since capacity and generation are different.
[to Gavin]
So the Nasa articles about the high risk of mega droughts that were published today. (2/17/15) It was stated that droughts will increase to a span to “20 30 or even 40 years at the most”. It was also stated that in earlier studies published over on live science would make bigger storms more common. I hate using this term but I don’t know any other way to state it.
In this particular case would climate change be a self fixing issue?
I’m shrugging at saying that but as I said before I don’t know how else to word it.
Sad to hear that William Catton died.
Why is mitigation now on topic?
I completely reject the view, held only by a few extreme fringe environmentalists but frequently brought up by denialists, that the only way to save the Earth is to abandon modern technology almost altogether. I do not think we need to abandon cities or even cars. This “the warmers want you to live in mud huts and walk to work, except nobody will have jobs” is pure anti-environmentalist propaganda.
There is no reason cities, or cars, or the use of metals, can’t be “sustainable.” Infinite growth in physical resource use is not sustainable. Slow enough growth, obviously, is sustainable, and so is a steady-state dependent largely on recycling. The latter can be achieved if we stabilize our population. There is also no reason we can’t bring the third world up to first-world standards of living, and do so WITHOUT massive third world use of fossil fuels.
“Sustainable” does not have to mean either “primitive” or “low-tech.” Period.
The global climate models seem to be quite good in the temperature ranges covered by prior Holocene (~0-1 C). However, depending on who one believes, we have already committed to a total temperature increase on the order of 1.5-2.0 C, or larger, based on prior emissions. Once we get reasonably well beyond prior Holocene, many experts believe model accuracies become less credible, due to the present omission of carbon feedbacks. This means that any estimates of the effects of corrective actions on energy consumption and alternatives merge into the realm of arm-waving. We obviously need models that incorporate all new phenomena we can expect when temperature increases approach 1.5-2.0 C.
So, why don’t we have models that contain these phenomena? In other disciplines, phenomena whose behavior is less well known are entered as well as can be approximated, and parametric variations which roughly bound the problem are run. Why isn’t this being done with the climate change models?
For JJ, please cite what you wrote above about carbon feedbacks and models.
I tried briefly to find support for your statements and failed:
‘oogle it: “climate+model”+”carbon+feedback”
(copy and paste that or whatever search terms you find useful into a web search box; double quotes confuse the blog software here)
Where are you getting the ideas that you believe?
Why do you trust the sources telling you those things?
#176–Jasper, it is being done, at least in part, and has been since at least 2000. I’m not fully up to date on this–not even close–but I do know that Mark Lynas made much of this issue. As I wrote elsewhere:
That’s part of a summary/review of the Lynas book, available here:
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Mark-Lynass-Six-Degrees-A-Summary-Review
Here’s the link to Cox et al (2000):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v408/n6809/full/408184a0.html
Money quote:
It’s been cited 2750 times, which should give lots of material to look at:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15484520333780887330&as_sdt=80005&sciodt=0,11&hl=en
But figuring it out thoroughly isn’t easy:
“More realistic model predictions of future carbon cycle and climate feedbacks require a better understanding of the processes driving the response of tropical ecosystems to drought and warming.”
That’s from a paper last year, Wang et al (201):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/abs/nature12915.html
Of course, there are other possible sources of ‘non-linearity’ to worry about, too, like sea ice, boreal forest dieback and so forth.
P.S. for J.J.
I kept trying to find some support for what you believe.
Is it McPherson that you’re relying on? If so please take time to read
http://planet3.org/2014/03/13/mcphersons-evidence-that-doom-doom-doom/
Seriously — read it, slowly, all the way through.
Check the links and read those and think about what you consider reliable.
If you feel deep in your heart that you know for sure what the answer is — read it all a second time.
That’s the least you should do to avoid fooling yourself and others.
Jasper (#176),
Here is something describing some work on carbon feedbacks. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Macdougall.html The subject is being addressed.
See discussion here: https://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=17722#comment-622713
> Must we limit ourselves to meteorite falls?
http://www.mining.com/maniitsoq-home-to-the-oldest-meteor-impact/
Does anyone know of a site that shows temperature anomalies relative to 1750 (pre-industrial)? That seems to be the baseline being used for the political 2 degree limit, and for the Hansen J, Kharecha P, Sato M, Masson-Delmotte V, Ackerman F, et al. (2013) estimate of 1C as the limit. So it would be good to keep track of where we’re at, particularly with 2014 and 2010 being so warm. Anomalies relative to more recent averages are less helpful, I think.
As mitigation is still on topic (OT)….
#Barton Paul Levenson, #175
Continuous growth is never sustainable; slow growth just prolonges the time span up to when reaching the (systems inherent) limits.
About the ‘sustainable growth’ oxymoron see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett
Afaik, there are just two ways to produce pig iron: by use of charcoal (ancient) or coke (‘modern’ (fossil fueled)).
“Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke [].”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pig_iron
It was this change in the iron extraction process, that fueled the production of iron and steel on a large mass scale. This was the pivot to the 2nd industrial revolution in the midst of the 19th century when the use of coke became wide scaled – the same time span the climate relevant ‘preindustrial’ level of CO2 is defined on.
Steel could be produced thru electric arc processing – but iron has relative high loss rate to lifetime – and there is a limit in the percentage of scrap metal when recycling steel. (Even your 10 yr old car is rusty under the paint; – use an electron microscope. :)
May I ask you to provide a hint or link to an alternative (large scalable) technical solution to produce pig iron. (A question I’m really interested in.)
The problem of CO2 airising in the production process of cement may be solvable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement#Use_of_alternative_fuels_and_by-products_materials
and!!!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement#Green_cement
Green cement! – Wow!
The March 2015 National Geographic Magazine cover story is called “THE WAR ON SCIENCE”. It has lumped climate deniers together with people that believe fluoridation is harmful, vaccinations should be avoided, the earth is flat, and creationism. They all have the common thread of not accepting what the scientific consensus believes.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
Even rhetorical questions deserve serious answers, when available:
> What are your time frames for asteroid wrangling …?
Depends on how many there are with our name in their flight track, right?
So we count’em and track’em.
How many do you think we need to be concerned about?
Not these, most of them were too small, except that last one over Russia:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/bolide_events_s.jpg
the frequency and approximate energy released by bolide events detected from 1994 through 2013
It’s not “if” — it’s “when”
> addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
Nobody’s promising you’ll live forever. Seven billion or so of us will die in the next hundred years ago. Whether we do that gracefully, or greedily, will make a difference for those living beyond our time.
Hank (#181),
Indeed, the wait-for-windfalls approach to sustainable mining may be self-contradictory owing to the potential climate consequences of the windfalls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event ;-)
Have I missed discussion about this?:
Plio-Pleistocene climate sensitivity evaluated using high-resolution CO2 records
M. A. Martínez-Botí, et al
Nature 518, 49–54 (05 February 2015)
doi:10.1038/nature14145
Abstract:
Theory and climate modelling suggest that the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to changes in radiative forcing could depend on the background climate. However, palaeoclimate data have thus far been insufficient to provide a conclusive test of this prediction. Here we present atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) reconstructions based on multi-site boron-isotope records from the late Pliocene epoch (3.3 to 2.3 million years ago). We find that Earth’s climate sensitivity to CO2-based radiative forcing (Earth system sensitivity) was half as strong during the warm Pliocene as during the cold late Pleistocene epoch (0.8 to 0.01 million years ago). We attribute this difference to the radiative impacts of continental ice-volume changes (the ice–albedo feedback) during the late Pleistocene, because equilibrium climate sensitivity is identical for the two intervals when we account for such impacts using sea-level reconstructions. We conclude that, on a global scale, no unexpected climate feedbacks operated during the warm Pliocene, and that predictions of equilibrium climate sensitivity (excluding long-term ice-albedo feedbacks) for our Pliocene-like future (with CO2 levels up to maximum Pliocene levels of 450 parts per million) are well described by the currently accepted range of an increase of 1.5 K to 4.5 K per doubling of CO2.
# 163 Chris Dudley says “Remember 30-year lag in climate response.”
Such a lag exists if you stabilize forcing. However, you propose to reduce forcing so it does not work as an argument for you.
OMG. The comment was related to climate change in the early 1900’s.
Wow.
#169 MartinJB says Hey Killian, thanks for the patronizing snark: “Perhaps you are not ready for the answer?”
Was neither. Think what you wish. Not worth arguing with you about. Believe me or don’t.
Insulting me with “not helpful’ (diminishing) and “handwaving” (dismissive) and “So, you did a little better this time” (patronizing) isn’t gaining you points.
I have, in this thread, stated how to determine sustainability repeatedly. What do you not understand?
10 – 20%? Are you not aware of the calculations of the numbers of Earths it would take to support 7 billion at American consumption? If five to seven, consumption must fall by a reverse fraction. That’s a simple way to do it.
#175 Barton Paul Levenson said, I completely reject the view, held only by a few extreme fringe environmentalists…
Git dem bad peoples! Git em! This fringe pragmatists thinks you’re funny. Given the UN calls for regenerative – read organic, largely demechanized, non-fossil fuel-using – small holdings and the end to Big Ag, well, is that really fringe, e.g.?
There is also no reason we can’t bring the third world up to first-world standards of living, and do so WITHOUT massive third world use of fossil fuels.
There is that long list of soon-to-be-gone non-renewable resources… Is this something you deny, or…?
“Sustainable” does not have to mean either “primitive”
Agreed!
“low-tech.”
Yeah, pretty much does. Period. Of course, your straw man no hi-tech is to be used? Look into “Appropriate Technology.” I, for one, call for using those non-renewables we choose to use to maintaining international communication, some long-distance travel and the internet – though not nearly as extensive an internet as today.
So, uh, not hardly your colorful, impolite, descriptors.
Pray tell: How do we raise consumption of 9 billion to “First World” standards of living when doing so is expected to use 3 (Europish) – 7 (American-ish) Earths worth of resources?
#185 Hank Roberts said, Even rhetorical questions
What are your time frames for asteroid wrangling …?
Not rhetorical.
addressing climate such that billions don’t die off?
Not rhetorical.
No attempt at meaningful answer noted.
There is a very real time constraint on time to alter course. Were we able to mine the moon, asteroids, whatever, and not keep befouling our planet and warming it, I’m all for it. But planning today as if you can point to a time in the future and say on this date we will begin mining these things, is beyond poor risk assessment and planning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11417968/BP-says-CO2-emissions-unsustainable-warns-on-global-warming.html
Even when renewables are factored in we cant stop the energy growth that appears to need to come from all sources including nuclear, renewable and fossil. The very idea of giving renewables state subsidy to warrant its much needed major growth relative to other fuel sources seems to be a politically major issue.
Here in the UK we are planning major offshore wind farms (one of the largest in the world off the coast of Yorkshire) and when you see it consists of 400 turbines providing electricity for around 2 million homes (13th of the UK housing stock) then its a good thing but when I look at my energy bills I can see a major issue here. I use around 2000 KWhs of electricity and around 18000 KWhs of gas to heat my home in the winter, hot water and cooking in my car around 10000 KWhs equivalent. So look out for an lot more renewables in the future for the air conditioning is coming to.
Chris#180,
I had seen the MacDougall paper shortly after it became available publically. It reflected a good start, but there was much that had not been included. Your reference, a discussion of the paper by Andy Skuce and associated reader comments, identifies some of these omissions. In particular, Skuce’s section entitled “Why even this bleak prospect may be optimistic” provides some specifics of these limitations/omissions. Additionally, comment #4 in particular identifies a few:
“There has been a lot of alarm (and some wild claims) regarding the CH4 emissions from the ESAS as observed by the Russian researchers and others. Since the paper does not take those emissions into account, nor these:
“Finally, this study does not consider any contribution of methane from methane hydrates, either from under permafrost or under ice sheets, nor from fossil methane currently trapped under an impermeable seal of continuous permafrost.”
There seems to be quite a few potentially significant methane emissions still to take into account. One would have to assume that the warming estimates in the above paper are very conservative still.”
All well and good, but if we know there are identifiable emission sources that have not been included in the global climate models, with the potential that the magnitude of these sources could be significant, then I don’t know how we can make any credible statements about the effects of mitigation using models that are incomplete.
W: Continuous growth is never sustainable; slow growth just prolonges the time span up to when reaching the (systems inherent) limits.
BPL: No kidding. But if growth is slow enough, the limits could be reached 1-2 billion years from now, when the Earth goes into a runaway greenhouse effect due to the steady increase in luminosity of the sun as it ages across the main sequence. That’s sustainable enough for all practical purposes.
Personally, I am for steady-state. But “sustainable” means you can keep on doing it for a reasonable period of time. That’s what it means.
K: Pray tell: How do we raise consumption of 9 billion to “First World” standards of living when doing so is expected to use 3 (Europish) – 7 (American-ish) Earths worth of resources?
BPL: By finding other ways to provide a good standard of living. What makes you think good housing, adequate food, clean water, and jobs requires the massive overuse of resources the west enjoys? A great deal of our “use” of resources is wasteful, inefficient, and destructive. There are better ways to do things. We do not need to consign the Third World to permanent poverty.
And is it possible for you to post without extreme scornful sarcasm, or is that just your normal mode of discourse? You’re not making friends.
Since this topic is going on, I’d like to make a suggestion to Killian et al.
1) Offer some concrete metrics for ‘lifestyle’ or ‘standard of living’ when you talk about 7 billion or 10 billion people achieving same. Are we talking SUV’s and McMansions for all?
2) Explain why you think it inevitable that the entire world population will achieve that standard. Poor people have always been with us.
For my part, I think the danger of societal disruption, migration, even nuclear war, is the near-term issue with climate change. (See Pakistan water shortage, for example.)
So whatever mitigation can be achieved starting as soon as possible might delay that– there would still be poor people in Pakistan, but there wouldn’t be war with India over Kashmir because of water.
Carry on.
For JJ — put “methane” in the search box at the top of any RC page.
You’ve missed much long since discussed here previously. It’s news to you.
Read some, get a handle on the quantities and trends from studies.
Reality is plenty scary.
Oh, and models are never “complete” — not necessary, to be useful.
______
Good news for people citing science papers:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/ars-readers-now-have-access-to-any-nature-papers-we-cover/
(Can RC get that same access privilege?)
Hank#177,
” I tried briefly to find support for your statements and failed:
‘oogle it: “climate+model”+”carbon+feedback””
See my response to Chris, #190. These are some of the major, and more obvious, feedbacks, and have been identified by numerous authors. There are many more, but a query like yours doesn’t have sufficient complexity to find them. The problem is there are feedbacks at different scales, almost like a fractal problem. As the scales become more and more regional (sub-grid level), the terminology will change. Even though the processes contribute to climate, ‘climate’ may not be used in the article. So, a broader feedback query is required to identify the full spectrum of mechanisms related in any way to climate.
McPherson, to whom you refer in #179, has identified perhaps forty of these mechanisms, although he mixes in mechanisms at different scales, and some of which I would not categorize as carbon feedback. It’s the largest catalog of feedback mechanisms I have seen; perhaps someone can point to a better source. Again, as I concluded in #190, without inclusion of at least the major carbon feedback mechanisms rather comprehensively, I don’t see how one can make credible statements as to which, if any, mitigation schemes will help us avoid extinction. Unfortunately, the modus operandi on this site appears to be mitigation by assertion, where posters promote their pet approaches without any credible models to quantify their impacts.
Jasper (#190),
It may be that melting permafrost can by countered by converting tundra to steppe using elk and such as the snow cover retreats. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2462990?sid=21105895178643&uid=3739704&uid=2&uid=3739256&uid=2129&uid=4&uid=70 Perhaps new sinks need to be considered as well.
A geologist’s comments, reflecting on the difficulty some older geologists have with the sudden change happening now:
http://critical-angle.net/2014/10/12/dreadful-gsa-blogpost-by-canadian-geologists/
(hat tip to JJ who mentioned Andy Skuce, and ‘oogle I did)
More on positive feedback in the Arctic that is not in the climate models; interview with Shakhova about recent trip (May 2014).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQDVr1eMLK8
https://vimeo.com/98920418
JJ, you’re proclaiming that models don’t include carbon feedbacks (or not the right ones, or not enough of them, or something)
Which of these have you read enough about to criticize?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=climate+model+carbon+feedbacks
Set it to ‘since 2014’ to reduce the total and rule out citations and patents.
Still plenty there considering the feedbacks you seem to think are ignored.
If you use the RC search tool you’ll find discussion of several such models.
Prefer scary? There are real scientists saying real, well cited, scary.
Susan mentioned Jeremy Jackson at the Naval War College:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAtCQ7REXAc
Reality is plenty scary. Watch out for the people fond of exaggeration and handwaving — if you can’t find cites to support the claim, reposting it is just that.
PS, if you can’t spend the time to watch the full video, jump to about the one-hour mark and listen to the last nine and a half minutes, in the question-and-answer period.
Then read Eddy-mediated transport of warm Circumpolar Deep Water across the Antarctic Shelf Break (pages 432–440)
Andrew L. Stewart and Andrew F. Thompson
22 JAN 2015 | DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062281