Cool, I wasn't aware as I'm only familiar with the oil and gas industry. That's pretty interesting. You should work out the numbers boethius has asked for. How much square meters of rock do you need and what will be the recharge rate. Then you also need to prove it's an economical viable option aside from some obvious engineering challenges of operating equipment under high pressure and high temperatures with moving parts. Generally, engineers aren't happy with both high pressure and high temperature. — Benkei

I'm only going to say this one more time before I get very pissed off. Recharge rate applies to hydrothermal - a form of geothermal that draws heat from underground water. Water is a poor conductor of heat. It takes time to heat up - so there's only so much energy that can be drawn from it, over time.

Recharge rate is not an issue where there is conduction through rock, from a higher temperature energy source. Rock is a good conductor of heat. Any energy you take out of heated rock will immediately be replaced from the higher temperature region adjacent. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Heat always moves from hotter to cooler regions, and passes easily through stone. This is why magma energy is a better term than geothermal.

It's not possible to work out the numbers boethius demanded without doing physical research at a specific location, but clearly, drilling at high temperatures and pressures is possible, and there are millions of cubic meters of rock heated to 700'C. This temperature is desirable because it allows for dry superheated steam - making the most of the thermal expansion properties of water, so to create greater pressure to drive turbines.

You're always so gracious. I love that about you.

Thermal conductivity depends on the composition of rocks.

Thermal conductivity of rocks falls usually in the range of 0.40–7.00 W m−1 K−1 [8]. Low values are characteristic for dry, not consolidated sedimentary rocks, as gravels and sands. Higher thermal conductivity values are for most sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, while very high are typical for felsic igneous rocks. Rocks with high quartz content (e.g. quartzite, sandstone), as well as water-saturated rocks, are the best heat conductors [9]. Balckwell and Steele [10] provide thermal conductivity values for sandstones in the range of 2.50–4.20 W m−1 K−1, for shale: 1.05–1.45 W m−1 K−1, and for claystone and siltstone: 0.80–1.25 W m−1 K−1. — Labus

Near volcanoes it will therefore be high because that's igneous rock. Let's assume there's no temperature drop, how much rock do you need to power a city like New York? How many holes?

How about the engineering part? What existing machines come close and how are you going to make them suitable for those environments? How much is it going to cost? Is it economically viable? How does it compare to other renewable energy sources?

And finally, are there any long term risks? Let's say we only use geothermal energy, how much faster will the core cool? Are we sure that's neglible? If people think "unlimited energy" how will energy usage develop differently?

Here's some info on the economics:

Geothermal power requires no fuel; it is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. However, capital costs tend to be high. Drilling accounts for over half the costs, and exploration of deep resources entails significant risks. A typical well doublet in Nevada can support 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation and costs about $10 million to drill, with a 20% failure rate.[23] In total, electrical station construction and well drilling costs about 2–5 million € per MW of electrical capacity, while the levelised energy cost is 0.04–0.10 € per kW·h.[10] Enhanced geothermal systems tend to be on the high side of these ranges, with capital costs above $4 million per MW and levelized costs above $0.054 per kW·h in 2007.[52]

Geothermal power is highly scalable: a small power station can supply a rural village, though initial capital costs can be high.[53]

The most developed geothermal field is the Geysers in California. In 2008, this field supported 15 stations, all owned by Calpine, with a total generating capacity of 725 MW.[38] — wiki

Recharge rate is not an issue where there is conduction through rock, from a higher temperature energy source. Rock is a good conductor of heat. Any energy you take out of heated rock will immediately be replaced from the higher temperature region adjacent. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Heat always moves from hotter to cooler regions, and passes easily through stone. — counterpunch

This is simply not true. On the scale of literal insulation being a good insulator and a heat pipe being a good heat conductor, rock is closer the insulation side. Energy flows from hot to cold, but it takes time.

Indeed, the reason you need to drill to the depths you're talking about it because the rock is insulating pretty well. If you drill to those depths and extract heat from a small volume, it will indeed recharge pretty fast, but the larger the volume the slower it will recharge.

The volume of rock you need to power something significant (like a continent) is completely massive. To justify the capital equipment of the power station, not to mention the hydrogen production and storage and transport terminals you've been talking about, the amount of power needs to be "worth it".

Which is why, as has posted, many wells fail even in super sweet spot regions such as Geysers that is "the most developed", 15 wells produce 725 MW. An average of 49 MW per well.

That's just not a lot of energy. If heat just "instantly" recharged the rock at 700 C, you wouldn't limit your generation capacity to 49MW per well, you'd just "let her rip" and have nuclear gigawatt power station sized pipes. The reason, once you have a well, you can't just circulate as much water as you want to get as much energy as you want with the rock heat recovering "instantly", is because it's not instant. You're energy extraction must be equal to the recharge rate of the rock volume you're extracting energy from, otherwise the heat source cools to a point you can no longer generate power. Indeed, many geothermal stations end up running at a fraction of their original design capacity, because the recharge calculations were wrong.

The volume of rock will cool as energy is extracted from it, but will only heat up proportional to the surface area below (and to the sides somewhat, but doesn't change the proportionality here).

When you have these sorts of volume to surface area proportionality constraints, the solution is to have a small volume to keep that proportion low; hence stations are in the single or double digit MW range and not the GW range.

Another way to look at it is the heat gradient from the core to the surface. The earth is efficient at trapping all that heat: i.e. the opposite of being efficient at bringing it to the surface; we can make it more efficient by drilling down there and circulating water, but once we do that for a large volume we are constrained again by general heat gradient context of the surrounding rock.

Solar energy does not have this problem, but the energy extraction is a surface area (PV or hot water panels, mirror for solar concentrates, or just windows to heat buildings) and the "recharge" rate is proportional to the surface.

That the energy is spread out over the globe just means it's its own distribution network and we don't need that capital cost.

However, I am not arguing that solar energy will prevent the the climate change catastrophe. I am arguing that it could have, if fossil costs were internalized in the 70s - 80s - 90s, but now it is too late to avoid major tipping points.

The Amazon being a carbon source now, instead of a carbon sink, is a major such tipping points (I remember being discussed literally decades ago as a "oh shit moment" we should try to avoid). Likewise, that temperature records have been recently broken by several degrees, is also evidence of the climate breaking out of the meta-stable Holocene epoch, but the entire Quaternary geologic period, and is currently in an unstable region that will move rapidly towards a new metastable point several degrees hotter than present.

The IPPC models are wrong, on the conservative side, but it was known that they were wrong on the conservative side. The "surprise" is only that the wishful thinking that making conservative models provides a sense of security, turns out to be completely stupid.

However, decades ago to the present some climate modelers worked on realistic models (sometimes the same modelers that work on IPPC models too, and pointed out the things missing that make them conservative), which have always been terrifying in terms of the risk indication (numerical models of complex systems and things that haven't happened yet, only inform risk, never actually predict what will happen).

So, I'm not arguing solar energy can now arrest or reverse the climate crisis, only that it could have easily do so in an economically feasible way if the costs of fossil were internalized (whereas your magma technology could not have done likewise), and, even today, a massive proliferation of solar technology (and adapting society to use solar energy efficiently) would mitigate the crisis, but that is a political problem that is less and less feasible as the world is disrupted more and more by climate change and derivative affects.

So yes, billions of people are likely to perish, and it is definitely murder by the West in both a collective sense of apathy and specific sense on the part of the denialist industry, but that is not a "solution" proposed by us environmentalists pointing it out, it's just largely inevitable at this point.

Certainly, if you could prove magma energy to work, or even be "worth a shot", some billions should be spent finding that out and then a few 10s of trillion building your system if you turn out to be right.

Likewise, some billions should be spent on solar energy to discover the same, and some 10s of trillions spent converting the world to solar (in both installation of solar energy, and converting infrastructure to efficiently use it, with more local production using local energy, removing the large energy costs of both transport and large transport infrastructure).

Neither of these scenarios are happening, and spending trillions on bailing out the banks (i.e. corruption) from the consequences of their own corruption, in combination with the costs of more bailouts of the system in general due to the pandemic, and costs bailing out the system due to the affects of climate change, will likely lead to the kinds of economic dislocations that make large scale global investments no longer possible.

But the reason no alternative to fossil is being developed in a serious way (a way that would actually reverse carbon emissions) is political, not technological nor economic (we have the technology, and, as the world is discovering, eating the costs of climate change head on is not "economic bravery and realism" but complete idiocy).

As a note, water is an excellent mover of heat via convection, and if heat conduction to rock was instant as you say, then it would efficiently re-heat any hot water that's down there.

You can also look at the physics and economics of heat storage for power. They exist (such as for solar thermal energy), but for relatively short periods of time, because the material volumes required are simply massive. You'll also note that things like molten salt are used that efficiently transfer heat by convection, and if you work out just having a big cube of rock heated from below, it's not an efficient system (which would be analogous to having a a large cube of rock below the surface heated from further below that).

As an aside, the solution to the intermittence of solar energy is to simply match energy consumption to the energy availability as much as possible, which brings the problem down to a manageable level.

Also, for people who think environmental "alarmists" have been saying the crisis is massive for decades ... but it never happens.

An analogy would be if an engineer on the Titanic pointed out the risk of hitting an iceburg in a couple of days to a few days, and people dismissed this as alarmism.

Then, the next day pointed out the same as a big risk tomorrow, and then people not only dismissed this as alarmism but ridiculed it as the exact same alarmism said yesterday and it didn't happen!!

Then with the iceburg literally approaching a day and a few hours later, people laughing at how the prediction didn't come true, as a couple days already passed!

Finally, after the iceburg is hit and the ship is obviously sinking, people say "idiot! we'll just innovate out of this problem; how'd we build the ship in the first place and make it go super fast if not for innovation".

That's pretty much the climate debate since decades.

That's pretty much the climate debate since decades. — boethius

Sad but true. 36 years ago, when I was 7, my father worked for Shell. When he was again working late and my mom complained I said "he's inventing things for a better environment". There was awareness then and even a kid understood it.

Like the expertise certainly!

But what are you actually saying about what the models predict?

The non conservative models show stable states and tipping points, the holocene stable state we are leaving, and a new one we're heading to, several degrees higher (the anthropocene stable state let's say)?

- It to late now to stay in the holocene, because even if we cut emissions entirely (which won't happen anyway in the near future), having crossed tipping point will carry us further to the anthropocene?

- Is the implication then not that only reducing greenhouse gas-levels on a large scale, to maybe get back to holocene stable state, would have a tangible effect on climate, because anything less will just end us in the anthropocene stable state anyway?

Is that about right?

Unless you have wishes left over, you are clearly suggesting mass murder. — counterpunch

Yeah. :roll: You're an idiot. If someone with a brain wants to discuss it, I will. But it's been discussed before.

Edited to add:

I’m letting my frustration with stupidity get the better of me. I banned TMF because he was saying that what I said implied something that was not implied by what I said. I’m beginning to think that saying someone is implying something might be a common method of engagement. I might end up banning everyone from my engagement if I were to do that.

So, I got to thinking about a few things. Since people seem to be incapable of just asking (like you finally did in your last post; you could lead with that), and they would rather just say the other person must be saying something they did not say, maybe there was a teachable moment in each such case.

In reading the other thread on “A new theory of proof” and your own statement about either/or and wishes on the murder question, I thought I’d try a new angle:

Let’s see if you, counterpunch, have the intellectual horsepower, or imagination, to think of some other way to reduce population to, say, a million people, without having to engage in murder. Let’s see if you can make my best case for me. You know, without sounding like an idiot. Really put yourself in a position of advocacy for population reduction and see if you can’t come up with at least of a few of the many alternatives to murder that others have already posited and would result in population reduction. As I said, this has been discussed by many people before but I want to see if you are capable of thinking, and thinking beyond the simple-minded “either/or”. Go ahead, stretch your brain. See what you can do. Show us all you what you are capable of.

Or you can just stick with telling other people what it is that they must mean. Or you could just ask instead.

Yeah. :roll: You're an idiot. — James Riley

I have a fairly good idea of my own intellectual abilities, and I'm far from idiocy. For example, I know there isn't time to reduce population by means other than murder within the timeframe climate change allows for. So it would be pretty fucking stupid of me to suggest population reduction as a solution. And then worse if I got all pissy about it!

But what are you actually saying about what the models predict? — ChatteringMonkey

Well, numerical models of complex systems don't really make "predictions" in the usual scientific sense (such as predicting the position of a star behind the sun during an eclipse is a "prediction", falsefying the theory if it doesn't happen).

Numerical models of complex systems basically inform us about risk.

For instance, that the earth will warm if we emit green house gases, is a prediction, made over hundred and twenty years ago using pretty basic analytical (in the math sense of on paper solutions) methods, following experiments on gases to understand their basic atmospheric properties.

However, having zero clue how this would impact the earth's ecological system, the discover of the global warming theory concluded this warming would actually be a good thing, helping pants grow and boost agriculture.

Had the globe not actually warmed, then this would have refuted the theory.

Numerical models come in to inform risk, but, even then, they are viewed as inferior to extrapolation from retrospective geological data. As soon as there is retrospective data, for instance data about galaxy types and sizes, the modelers can't be trusted anyways, as they obviously tweak their models to show what we see.

In other words, the models of relevance are simply basic extrapolation of climate history.

Where numerical models come in is informing more detailed risk analysis. For instance, there's no geological data on how past climate change affects city infrastructure, because cities didn't exist back then, so, you can (and people do) build models to try to evaluate infrastructure risks (like the recent damn and levy busting in Germany).

However, we don't actually need these models to know the risks are ridiculously high and we shouldn't change the climate. The basic thing is climate sensitivity, which we already know because of the ice ages: that very subtle changes caused by very slowly changing orbital characteristics (with basically no material being added or taken away from the earths surface bio-physical systems) can bring and take away massive glaciers kilometres thick over a significant area of the globe.

So, if slow and subtle orbital changes can cause such a big change, the risk that a really massive and sudden change (adding billions of tons of material to the earth's surface processes, every year! for over a century!!!) is simply extreme madness.

The non conservative models show stable states and tipping points, the holocene stable state we are leaving, and a new one we're heading to, several degrees higher (the anthropocene stable state let's say)? — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, basically this is correct. The earth has two meta-stable climate regimes, climatologists call the "hot-box" and the "cold-box". The cold box has ice at both polls and wild swings in ice-cover due to orbital changes. The "hot box" doesn't have ice at both polls and is much hotter. This is driven by the physics of snow, that it melts quickly passed a threshold (the aptly names melting point); i.e. the difference between rain and snow can be a few degrees, not some linear proportional change, such as at 20 C we get 90% rain and 10% now, at 0% we get a 50-50 mix, and then at -20 C we get 90% snow and 10% rain.

If there was land at both polls, we'd be essentially locked into a cold box state, very difficult to break out of.

If there were free oceans at both polls, we'd be for sure in a hot box state.

With land at one poll, and a constrained ocean surrounded by land at the other poll (making heat exchange with warmer oceans not so efficient), gives us the recent cold-box, but only insofar as an ice cap covers the North poll. It's "pretty stable", lasting millions of years, but it's no where near as stable compared to a situation where land simply covered the whole North poll connecting Canada to Russia.

- Is the implication then not that only reducing greenhouse gas-levels on a large scale, to maybe get back to holocene stable state, would have a tangible effect on climate, because anything less will just end us in the anthropocene stable state anyway? — ChatteringMonkey

If you're going to jump out of a building, it's still better to jump from a lower floor.

I have a fairly good idea of my own intellectual abilities, and I'm far from idiocy. For example, I know there isn't time to reduce population by means other than murder within the timeframe climate change allows for. So it would be pretty fucking stupid of me to suggest it. And then worse if I got all pissy about it! — counterpunch

So the answer is "no." You don't have the intellectual horsepower to come up with something other than murder. Instead, you put a qualifier of "time" on the ability to effectively do so. Time might be the same factor that you seem to allow yourself on the magma deal. Hmmm. Sounds like you might be an idiot after all.

So the answer is "no." You don't have the intellectual horsepower to come up with something other than murder. — James Riley

It's your idea; you suggested population reduction - it's for you to say how you intend to achieve that. I said over-population isn't the problem. The misapplication of technology is the problem. Applying the right technologies 8-10bn people could survive and prosper long term - with very few government interventions in the market or civil sphere.

If you're going to jump out of a building, it's still better to jump from a lower floor — boethius

Not if the lower floor is insignificant relative the height you are jumping from... dead is dead.

But thank you for the info, I'm trying to get a handle on the science of climate change, the risks and possible consequences etc... without the political biases weaven through, which is not allways easy.

It's your idea; you suggested population reduction - it's for you to say how you intend to achieve that. — counterpunch

And had you lead with that, I might have deigned to entertain you. But instead, you pretended to tell me what my position was. So, I figure if you know so much about my position (instead of asking), I'd just have you explain population reduction protocols that I have overlooked in my trek toward murder. You know, since your such a prescient genius about my position.

The misapplication of technology is the problem. — counterpunch

And who misapplies technology? People? If there were fewer of them, would the misapplication matter as much? I mean sure, a nuke by one person could wreck havoc, but a million people driving cars? Probably not.

Applying the right technologies 8-10bn people could survive and prosper long term - with very few government interventions in the market or civil sphere. — counterpunch

First of all, fuck 8-10 billion people. It's not all about people. But second (and back on track), applying the time constraints that you placed on me, how quickly do you think you can get this done? And, more importantly (here is why your telling me what my position must be is so fundamentally fucking stupid), how would your time frame for tech to save us compare with the time frames for various population reduction avenues that you can't fathom? I guess you don't know what you don't know, so why should I waste my time engaging with you?

Well, it's never a guarantee, less fast you're going the more likely to survive.

However, in this analogy, the height is not yet guaranteed to be fatal. Right now it's comparable to just likely breaking a bone, nothing too "serious" (if we did everything we could do engineering wise to stop green house emissions, stop burning the Aamazon etc.).

However, although catastrophe is already "baked in", as I've mentioned by any standard of "catastrophe", there's really big variations. There's also natural variations that can work in our favour or not.

However, the biggest thing is that implementing the best sustainable system we can, sooner rather than later, stabilizes global society, making nuclear wars and AI warfare less likely.

For instance, converting all our mono-crop land to forest gardens would increase food yield but also be far more resilient, as trees are not only more resilient to droughts but protect the soil with shade and transpire more water into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) (and of course diverse plants are less risk than a single plant; basic "risk management" economists happily apply to investing ... but somehow a single plant species, and not only a single species but genetic copies, on huge areas is "economic").

However, it takes some decades to grow trees, decades we currently have. So, if we did that, we'd still have a lot of disruptions, but things would probably be "ok" (of course, there's still risk of the tipping points being severe anyways, but it's no a guarantee, so lowering the risk is still the coherent choice).

If forest gardens are so efficient, why don't we currently do so to make money?

Because they are efficient at making food in terms of energy input, but are not profitable in terms of labour input (low skilled labour to pick fruit from mono-crop orchards is high ... so imagine the cost of high skilled labour to manage a little ecosystems). Forest gardens do not "drive profits", through unsustainable extraction of soil wealth (it is more profitable to run machines over mono-crops while degrading the land ... then just move to other land using those profits, than make a sustainable system). However, if one says "hmm, well, maybe if we want a sustainable system we don't actually want unsustainable mono-crop plantations, with unsustainable mineral and fossil inputs (something like 9 calories of fossil energy are required to grow 1 calorie of food in the current system)", then the analysis changes, and highly skilled labour is not "profitable" but is super energy efficient, if those people happen to live there and like living in a forest garden and doing high skilled work over long periods of time because it's their home and source of food. Such people would still need energy of course, but solar technology solves that.

This is the sort of system that is "efficient", but it basically means ending capitalism as is currently practiced, in which the purpose is the running of personal vehicles.

Well, it's never a guarantee, less fast you're going the more likely to survive.

However, in this analogy, the height is not yet guaranteed to be fatal. Right now it's comparable to just likely breaking a bone, nothing too "serious" (if we did everything we could do engineering wise to stop green house emissions, stop burning the Aamazon etc.).

However, although catastrophe is already "baked in", as I've mentioned by any standard of "catastrophe", there's really big variations. There's also natural variations that can work in our favour or not. — boethius

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. So then where do the variations come in is what I don't understand. Is it just a matter of slightly delaying the increase of temperature then, to buy more time until you get to the next stable state?

First of all, fuck 8-10 billion people. — James Riley

We have very different perspectives. I care about sustainability, but not because I conceive of nature as some romantic ideal - I put before human interests. Sure, after applying magma energy technology, I'd suggest desalinating water to irrigate and develop wastelands; rather than burn the forests and deplete natural water sources, but that's because forests are necessary to a sustainable biosphere. Not because I hate humanity, yet get all weepy about trees. I'm trying to describe ways to secure a decent future with minimal disruption, and you want to send out murder squads! Sad thing is, your plan is more likely than mine!

We have very different perspectives. I care about sustainability, but not because I conceive of nature as some romantic ideal - I put before human interests. — counterpunch

The funny thing is, your myopic, human-centered BS is precisely what put us the position we are in. Had our dumb asses conceived of nature as some romantic ideal then we wouldn't be having this conversation. But with your either/or mentality, it has to be bunny-hugging, or press on with tech. Murder or magma. Doh!

Nevertheless, unless you have wishes left over for your time line, you are clearly suggesting we fiddle while the planet burns.

I'm trying to describe ways to secure a decent future with minimal disruption, — counterpunch

Too late for minimal disruption. You're foot-dragging has fucked us.

and you want to send out murder squads! — counterpunch

LOL! You're an idiot.[

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. — ChatteringMonkey

There's lot of variations possible, it's not an inevitable process from one point to another.

For instance, a lot of ice melting is driven by black particles from burning fossil fuels. So, if we stopped burning fossil fuels and made sure what we do burn is done super cleanly, then maybe Greenland doesn't melt, antarctic doesn't melt, there's still snow in the arctic in winter.

In other words, ice-free summer arctic ocean may have a lot of snow covering meta-stable states associated with it. For, once we get an ice-free arctic ocean summer ... there's no more summer arctic ocean ice to melt, so that particular feedback process stops.

The arctic is currently in a climate regime transition to an summer-ocean-ice-free state, but this does not inevitably trigger all the other tipping points possible (this has little to do with the Amazon right now). Meta-stable transition is one subsystem at a time; some subsystems maybe strongly or weakly coupled, and we don't really know, and it could even be going from one climate subsystem transition to the next always requires human help of more emissions.

For example, another big tipping point would be shutting down the thermohaline current, which has been proven to be slowing, but, as far as I know, still seems unlikely in more scenarios ... but not impossible. The process that drives slowing down this current is fresh water melting into the arctic (that is not salty and so doesn't do the haline part of the process). So, the more we slow down ice melt, the less likely we are to hit this tipping point (which maybe difficult to trigger anyways, and really needs a "good go" at it to have a good chance).

Turning the Amazon into a carbon source rather than carbon sink (bad for the climate for obvious reasons), seems more to do with just normal capitalism driven deforestation, and not a climate change effect (such as snow melting at the poles; though, climate change doesn't help the Amazon). Snow-less ecosystems in the tropics could be not so affected by climate change, if we stopped destroying them directly and severely weakening them: as it stands, our direct destruction of these ecosystems in conjunction with a bit of climate change can tip them into transitioning to savanna type ecosystems.

In short, currently, we are going towards a snow-less summer arctic ocean; changes in ocean snow cover is the most rapid systems change (as warm water melts ice quickly). As far as I know, climate change could be more-or-less stabilized around this new meta-stable state (if we did massive, global action now). Other tipping points are not "inevitably" triggered by a ice-free arctic ocean summer.

There's also geo-engineering. Maybe with human intervention, we could "seed back" arctic winter ice that then survives summer. However, all such schemes only make sense if we actually stop the cause of more warming, otherwise it's a massive cost that doesn't actually solve anything (adds a tiny bit of delay, but not really, as more warming will eventually melt that "human caused ice" anyways; it's only useful if more warming actually stops, and "nudging" things back towards more ice therefore long term trend setting, not the fashion of the week).

On-land ice melt is a lot longer process, and preventing Greenland and the Antarctic from significant melting, would be a big difference. We know from the geologic record that glaciers can experience catastrophic melting, but it's not known the exact details; so again, less heating, less likely we are to trigger such events (even if it's already "likely", there's always a chance that action in combination of the luck of natural cycles still achieves a less likely result; however, especially with the antarctic, it's unlikely we could actually melt it all, only some parts that actually sit below the water line are at good chance of melting, and so more heating can make a big difference of what actually melts, and how fast; likewise for Greenland, if we stopped black particles and more heating, maybe it's melt rate stabilizes).

Land-ice, the shear volume of the ocean and time to heat it up, ecosystems that have not yet been completely destroyed for cattle and palm oil, etc. are all buffers in the system that have longer response times than ocean-ice.

The sooner we arrest green-house emissions, the less likely we are to saturate these buffers, the more time we have to try to get carbon out of the atmosphere and promote ice forming and staying over winter (in a slow and stable way, instead of some last-ditch effort fast and reckless way such as pumping reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere), and the more stable our ecosystems are throughout the changes, meaning less likely wars and so on will intervene to make things even more chaotic.

However, this is no longer the 90s. Severely problematic ocean rise is going to happen, severe climate disruptions are already happening and will get worse, crop failures, large scale famines. We do, however, currently have a choice of "how bad". "Survival" could mean 100 000 people in small communities around the poles, or, something more-or-less similar to our current civilization (based on solar energy, distributed, very different, but something we can "imagine" as "pretty good transformation" of current lifestyles around the world) and a world with more-or-less the current ecosystems (rather than basically the apocalypse with a totally unrecognizable world for those 100 000 survivors).

LOL! You're an idiot. — James Riley

We've established that. What we haven't established is how you intend to reduce human population to under 1 million in time to save the planet. If that's not a viable option - and clearly it isn't, then we have to do something else. Like, what I was talking about before you so rudely interrupted me to advocate genocide.

Thank you for the detailed response, and the examples. This does make a lot of sense, the models are only a rough approximation of an underlying reality afterall. We kindof know the rough ballpark of where, how and when things will go wrong, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about the specifics, and about what the interaction are between the moving parts. Nevertheless better save than sorry, I agree.

These kind of long term, high impact/uncertain probability risks are difficult to sell politically I suppose, because you do know the impact of the policy measures on your constituency typically. Things do seem to be picking up traction now, technologically, economically and politically.

What we haven't established is how you intend to reduce human population to under 1 million in time to save the planet. — counterpunch

I'd say that I have established it (I have) and you have not, but since you know what I'm thinking, then you must have established it too, right? But then I guess you proved you don't know what I'm thinking because you think I'm thinking murder. This proves that you don't know what you don't know. Teachable moment: From now on, don't tell other people what they are thinking. Ask instead. Doh!

If that's not a viable option - and clearly it isn't, — counterpunch

But if you don't know what you don't know then you don't know that.

we have to do something else. — counterpunch

But we haven't done it. We've talked shit about magma and shit. And even if that were viable, you haven't shown how it could be done in time or any faster than the options you don't know.

what I was talking about — counterpunch

It's my understanding, from others on this thread, you are talking out your ass. I've yet to see you refute their rebuttals to your magma idea. Maybe you've got something. I don't know. I don't pretend to know what I don't know, or what you haven't told us; like how your magma idea overcomes the rebuttals. Normally I focus on what was said and not who said it, but your telling me what I think leads me to believe the others on this thread are right and you are an idiot.

In my fantasy world you would admit you were wrong to tell me I was advocating murder and genocide. You would apologize. You would then re-ask your belated question about how I would go about reducing population, and then we could discuss the merits of those ideas and the relative time lines between my ideas and yours. But you be you.

To hell with my fantasy. I'm done with you regardless. There are many proposals out there for population reduction scenarios. If you really cared, you can go educate yourself about what you don't know. Suffice it to say, all your ideas involve incentives. Follow the money.

Synthesis, check;
3017amen, check;
Apollodorus, check;
TheMadFool, check;
Counterpunch, check.

I'd say that I have established it (I have) and you have not, but since you know what I'm thinking, then you must have established it too, right? — James Riley

I have no idea what you're thinking, but I get a mental image of a dead cat in a tumble dryer.

But then I guess you proved you don't know what I'm thinking because you think I'm thinking murder. — James Riley

And you're not? Okay then, for the last time of asking, how do you propose to reduce population from 8 billion to under 1 million?

Remember that I was talking about magma energy as a solution to climate change - and you suggested population reduction instead, so the time limit was always implied. There is no way to do that without committing genocide.

This proves that you don't know what you don't know. Teachable moment: From now on, don't tell other people what they are thinking. Ask instead. Doh! — James Riley

I've asked several times, and you have still not given an answer. That's because you don't have one. Just admit that your post was an unreasoning expression of hate.

This does make a lot of sense, the models are only a rough approximation of an underlying reality afterall. We kindof know the rough ballpark of where, how and when things will go wrong, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about the specifics, and about what the interaction are between the moving parts. Nevertheless better save than sorry, I agree. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, even before computer models were even possible, it had already been worked out that the earth would warm due to the amounts of pollution involved, and that even 1 degree of warming would be significant risk.

Computer models don't inform much more than this baseline analytic result worked out in the 70s.

They confirm this analytic result in demonstrating all sorts of catastrophic scenarios, but it's more of narrative than decision making value. In the 70s, the scientists that worked out the 1 degree of warming risk threshold, maybe couldn't tell a story about it other than they didn't know what would happen but the risk of experimenting on the entire globe isn't reasonable to take.

Computer models can provide stories ... but there are lot's of models, each model can be run thousands of times with different results, so it's still the same conclusion that the risk of running to the experiment to confirm which computer model got it "best" isn't reasonable to take.

These kind of long term, high impact/uncertain probability risks are difficult to sell politically I suppose, because you do know the impact of the policy measures on your constituency typically. — ChatteringMonkey

This is correct for most politicians, at any given time.

But the real question is why there isn't wide spread awareness and powerful movements, or then why the movements that do exist have so far failed. The denialist industry was and still is well funded, but it's not really a given they would win, and they've only really "won" in the US; here in Europe there's not really much climate denialism, but the policies are weak sauce; the "concerned" politicians of Europe never get together and do anything of significance.

I'm honestly not sure; it's not like the information is in secret books that an institution will systematically burn both the books and anyone possessing them. "Truth" seems to have gotten out far worse obstacles.

Things do seem to be picking up traction now, technologically, economically and politically. — ChatteringMonkey

Although I hope so, and I've been working in the field for 20 years, I am more pessimistic as you may have gotten.

It's been long predicted (by the people that do objective analysis) that once we start to feel the problems, it maybe too late.

First, 20 years of further warming is always inevitable, even if emissions suddenly stopped (which they obviously won't); so, even if we stopped now it would get worse for 20 years before stabilizing.

Second, actually "stopping" actually means stopping: no net emissions from mankind. A lot of journalists put the goal posts at stopping growth in emissions as what we need to do, and so write articles about not growing emissions "as much as expected" as some sort of victory and that with all the solar and wind and stuff we're getting close to zero growth (leading the reader to believe that's the goal, if we're getting close to it in an optimistic sense and the article doesn't mention any other metric).

However, all human caused net emission adds carbon to the atmosphere and increases warming. To actually stop warming we need to get net emissions to zero.

The size of this task is absolutely massive.

Therefore, all honest analysis I have seen by people (whatever their background) who have "gone deep" into the issue and clearly understand the subject matter and make coherent arguments, have all, over decades, come to the conclusion that business as usual until the affects are clearly felt, is basically too late. If we started feeling the affects and we were already down to 5% current levels of emissions, that would be one thing, but if we haven't even reversed growth in emissions, we are so far from the target it's simply not fathomable such a large change could happen in a decade or two.

These large infrastructure changes are 50 to 100 year time scales ... so, had we started in the 70s in a serious way we'd be probably net zero emissions by now, and had we started "more seriously" in the 90s, we'd be feeling some of the affects as we currently are, but less, and we'd be "on our way" to avoiding total catastrophe.

Not only are we now basically "screwed", as the infrastructure changes we need simply can't happen over night, but, an easy corollary of this prediction is that once we start feeling the affects, it disrupts economic systems taking away capital and "social energy" that could otherwise be directed towards the problem. Supply chains, financial systems, political tensions, all become disrupted, leading to a less stable world, less able to deal with the underlying problem.

An easy example is trains. A very large portion of transport (car, truck and plane) can be moved onto trains and trams, running on electricity, which, even powered by fossil fuels, is still far more energy efficient and can be burned far cleaner (it's much easier to control particle and other emissions from a power plant than millions of cars).

In terms of blank-page engineering, it's really easy to design an efficient train-tram-metro transportation based system that can displace a significant amount of emissions, even if still powered by fossil!

But it's a 2 birds with 1 stone situation, because transitioning an electric train based system powered by fossil fuels to being powered by sustainable electricity requires no changes to the transportation system. So, emissions for the transport are already lower, and it's easy to transition the system to low emissions by simply adding low-emissions electricity to the grid.

However, if you take such a blank-page engineering design and then overlay it on the current transport system and work out the costs and time to go from one to the other, the values are very large.

Assuming politics is not an issue, that there's "the will", it still involves a decade of simply planning and then multiple decades of building such a system and then a solid decade to transition to using the new system efficiently, for a country like the US (all while needing to maintain the previous system in the interim). Countries with truly robust rail networks have literally 2 centuries of continuous rail development, not only of the rail but also of organizing society in a way that's efficient for rail (many Europeans don't have a car; because they can easily move to places where they don't need a car, because things have been designed over centuries for people without cars), and it's actually ambitious to try to do likewise in a half century, with few technically possible ways of going much faster.

Hence, the electric car! Which still takes a lot of energy to make, needs new infrastructure ... and doesn't solve the truck or plane problem at all (whereas trains can move containers, and high-speed trains can also move people far faster than cars and so realistically compete with plane journeys in terms of time, especially when airports are outside of the city center and boarding times are long and weight restrictions exist and so on, and there's more space on the train, and it's much cheaper, especially if the plane's needed to internalize the real costs of the pollution).

Therefore, if we reach a point where infrastructure cannot be realistically changed, it won't be changed, but if it is not sustainable, neither will it be sustained.

Thanks very much for the detailed analysis. It's horrifying.

It's also quite distressing not knowing too well when a point of "no matter what we do, we are 100% fu*ked" will come. But it's likely sooner rather than later.

We've kind of reached the peak at which a typical species goes extinct, right? Something like 100,000 years or so. But taking most of life with you consciously, is a new phenomena...

This is correct for most politicians, at any given time.

But the real question is why there isn't wide spread awareness and powerful movements, or then why the movements that do exist have so far failed. The denialist industry was and still is well funded, but it's not really a given they would win, and they've only really "won" in the US; here in Europe there's not really much climate denialism, but the policies are weak sauce; the "concerned" politicians of Europe never get together and do anything of significance.

I'm honestly not sure; it's not like the information is in secret books that an institution will systematically burn both the books and anyone possessing them. "Truth" seems to have gotten out far worse obstacles. — boethius

People tend to be myopic, it's hard motivate them with something that is gradual and in the longterm. If some accident happens they typically do want to jump into action.

There's the denialists definitely, but not so much in Europe indeed. I also do think green parties, and the left in general, have been bad strategically in selling their ideas to the public... to much finger pointing blame game, and to little constructive motivating vision put forward.

The real problem I think, at least in Europe, is just a general lack of agency in politics which goes a lot further than just the climate change-issue. They seem to have simply forgotten the art of coming together, making a deal and organizing their party and society to execute it... you know what politician are supposed to do. Its all just skin-deep, marketing games to attract voters for the next election it seems.

Although I hope so, and I've been working in the field for 20 years, I am more pessimistic as you may have gotten. — boethius

I'm kind of oscillating back and forth the more I get into it, but I do see reasons to be somewhat optimistic.

It has been dragging for a long time, and for someone invested in the topic as long as you have been I get that this doesn't exactly fill you with optimism, but I think once things start moving, they might move a lot faster than one thinks. I don't think the conversion to renewables is a linear process. A lot of resistance need to be overwon at all fronts initially. But once the technology is sufficiently improved, the prices start dropping, the science is more clear, there are some nasty events clearly linked to global warming (floods in Europe now, heat wave in Canada) etc etc... people start seeing the urgency of it and politicians and business see the writing on the wall. It all kind of reinforces eachother and gets accelerated.

The EU have announced climate measures this week I think, which one would call, for any other issue, 'unprecedented and draconian'.

China's climate commitments seem less ambitious at first glance, they are still building coal plants and didn't commit to start actually reducing emissions until 2030. But, so I've gathered, they would rather undercommit to a target and seem to usually overshoot their targets when it comes to renewables. They seem to be ramping up production of solarpanels on a scale hard to imagine.

And in the US at least Trump is gone, so there's certainly that.

The surest sign that things are moving though, is that even some of the fossil fuel companies seem to be convinced that they need to exit fossil fuels ASAP or perish.

What I'm more pessimistic about is that reduction of emissions does get harder to more you get to zero. We may have the political will to reduce to relatively low emissions, but what do those bottom percentages entail in terms of measures?

And yes, more importantly, it is/may already be to late to avoid some of the consequence of climate change. If those consequences are bad enough, the real danger is that it will disrupt societies to the extend that they can't do it anymore or that it causes all sorts of knee-jerk our-own-people-first kind of reactions.

Near volcanoes it will therefore be high because that's igneous rock. Let's assume there's no temperature drop, how much rock do you need to power a city like New York? How many holes? — Benkei

Good question. I don't know, but I do know there is sufficient magma energy to power New York City, and every other city for that matter. An answer would depend on the efficiency of the technology, and that remains a question.

How about the engineering part? What existing machines come close and how are you going to make them suitable for those environments? How much is it going to cost? Is it economically viable? How does it compare to other renewable energy sources? — Benkei

With regard to the engineering, I think exploiting each geothermal energy source will present a specific engineering challenge, and that practice makes perfect. General principles and techniques will emerge from, and guide the practice, and the energy developed can be applied to carbon capture and desalination while capacity is built to take over from fossil fuels.

Two or three times current global energy demand cannot put a dent in the heat energy of the planet, because the energy emitted by the earth every day is many, many times greater. Assuming we soon developed the technology to harness an effectively limitless quantity of energy, I imagine we'd achieve post materiality hundreds of years hence. Ultimately, resources are a function of the energy available to create them. But surely that's a better problem to be faced with than starving in the ruins of civilisation.

The problem is that at this stage you have an idea but no plan. So if you're serious about it, you need to take it much further than these vague ideas. There's plenty of energy in currents and waves of the sea as well. Harnessing is another matter.

Point is, you can't expect others to take this seriously until you manage to conclusively answer at least some of my previous questions in detail.

The problem is that at this stage you have an idea but no plan. — Benkei

I'm not sure that's what I have at all. To my mind, I have a problem, and a likely solution. It's not a vague solution; technical detail is lacking, but it's a specific idea, likely adequate to the problem, and if so, the least disruptive solution, with maximum benefit at least cost.

I have my limitations, but politically, it is the right answer - because, otherwise huge sacrifices in diametric opposition to the natural interests of people and capitalist democracies, are required in advance of - in order to achieve environmental benefits. That's not a road we want to go down. It leads nowhere.

This is about more than how to solve climate change, but about how not to go about it - and that's a matter of political philosophy, surprisingly! Can you provide any insight into the question, of to what degree the overwhelming left wing bias on this forum, or rather - my intention to solve climate change in a manner that doesn't require smashing capitalism first, has contributed to the generally negative reception for what seems to me a pretty darn good and right-minded idea?

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. So then where do the variations come in is what I don't understand. Is it just a matter of slightly delaying the increase of temperature then, to buy more time until you get to the next stable state?

There is an angle I have been thinking about here. We are not going from one stable state to another in the short term. We may reach a stable state again in the future, but the instability in the meantime will be unpredictable, have numerous unforeseen effects and last what to us is a long time perhaps 10,000yrs, perhaps a couple of million years, we just don’t know.

The stable state we evolved in might have taken a long time to settle out, also, we don’t know what unsettled states are like. Already we are seeing torrential rainfall events, as in Germany last week, or unprecedented heatwaves near the artic circle as has been experienced all around the arctic circle during the last month. Irregular desertification, the irregular distribution of tornado alleys and high humidity, high temperature regions in the tropics in which humans cannot survive without air conditioning.

We don’t know if the rapid changes going on will affect seismic, or volcanic activity. Or have unforeseen effects in the oceans. Tsunami’s could become commonplace in some areas, along with earthquakes.

In short we are in for a rollercoaster ride for some time to come.