BodyBySisyphus [he/him]

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: November 17th, 2021

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  • If you add up the current CO2 level of 424ppm, the effect of CH4 and the other greenhouse gases (+100ppm), and the effect of “albedo dimming” (+100ppm). Then we are at a level of +624ppm(CO2e).

    I know it’s weird of me to be anti-doomer about this stuff, but this is dumb. It’s not like Earth system models don’t account for non-CO2 GHGs and albedo; if they were looking solely at CO2-related radiative forcing, they’d be even more off base. In the past when CO2 levels were higher, methane was also higher and albedo was probably lower, so saying that we’re actually looking at a situation analogous to a world where CO2 is at 624 ppm is double-dipping. Extrapolating from a single year of difference, even if it was one where the models substantially underestimated the degree of warming is also a little premature. It’s a sign that the models need to be revised, but assuming we’re just going to keep going at this rate is probably not a good idea.

    That said, at this point I think we’re just debating over which generation is going to end up holding the hot potato, not whether there will be someone to pull it out of the oven. This article was written almost three years ago and goes into a lot of the same scenarios. We’ve got several Damoclean swords hanging over us, including the AMOC and the stratospheric cloud deck and the seabed methane clathrates and so on. Even if the rate of warming returns to its pre-2020’s levels, it’s still faster than any time since the Siberian traps and that was not an awesome time for complex life.




















  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.nettoHistory@hexbear.netI'm Curious
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    6 days ago

    I like this line of thinking, but I’m having a hard time using it to understand the phenomenon of crop circles.

    Explanation 1: it was a previously unknown spacefaring species that uses giant circles to communicate.
    Explanation 2: it was a couple middle aged Brits with some boards

    Does Occam’s Razor say that it was a couple of aliens with some boards, or it was a previously unknown advanced civilization of middle-aged British men?