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Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #100 on: February 23, 2018, 09:43:33 PM »
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We are not  experiences more extremes.  Rather, we are seeing milder temperatures overall, which are resulting in an average increase.

So I gather you define extreme and mild according to how it feels to humans?  I would think that mild and extreme should be defined by the local climate effect of the increase, not how it feels to humans. In some places half a degree is enough to change precipitation patterns. In some places 2 degrees wouldnt even make a difference.

A good example is the regional changes in the Arctic. It is now close to 0 degrees in some places when it should be -30. According to your definition thats just a mild temperature and nothing to be concerned about. Yet, those "mild" temperatures are causing havoc in weather patterns all over the world.

I guess your big mistake is assuming that as temperatures rise, weather patterns will remain the same. It is not like  that at all.

Actually, it has nothing to do with that at all.  Previous posters (and indeed, most others) referred to extreme heat as being hotter than usual in the summer, and extreme cold as being colder than usual in the winter.  Conversely, a milder summer is cooler than usual, while a milder winter is warmer.  I guess your mistake is assuming definitions that do not apply.

Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #101 on: February 23, 2018, 10:03:00 PM »
We may be extinct in 10 years, we may not be. One thing we need to remember is the future is impossible to predict 100%.
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Alexander555

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #102 on: February 23, 2018, 10:09:21 PM »
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We are not  experiences more extremes.  Rather, we are seeing milder temperatures overall, which are resulting in an average increase.

So I gather you define extreme and mild according to how it feels to humans?  I would think that mild and extreme should be defined by the local climate effect of the increase, not how it feels to humans. In some places half a degree is enough to change precipitation patterns. In some places 2 degrees wouldnt even make a difference.

A good example is the regional changes in the Arctic. It is now close to 0 degrees in some places when it should be -30. According to your definition thats just a mild temperature and nothing to be concerned about. Yet, those "mild" temperatures are causing havoc in weather patterns all over the world.

I guess your big mistake is assuming that as temperatures rise, weather patterns will remain the same. It is not like  that at all.

Actually, it has nothing to do with that at all.  Previous posters (and indeed, most others) referred to extreme heat as being hotter than usual in the summer, and extreme cold as being colder than usual in the winter.  Conversely, a milder summer is cooler than usual, while a milder winter is warmer.  I guess your mistake is assuming definitions that do not apply.


About what milder summer are you talking ? Over here ( Europe) we have heat wave after heat wave. Every year we break a new record. And i can't remember a cold winter. If we are lucky we get some cold in the next weeks. And we are in the middle of the winter.

SteveMDFP

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #103 on: February 23, 2018, 10:21:18 PM »
We may be extinct in 10 years, we may not be. One thing we need to remember is the future is impossible to predict 100%.

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

― Yogi Berra

oren

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #104 on: February 23, 2018, 10:30:17 PM »
There was a post , upthread, telling us not to worry as higher Lat's were only progged to see a 3 to 4c raise in temps? I think the person needs to revisit how 'averages' work?
As I witness it we are seeing 'extreme' lurches in temps from the lows of polar plunges to the highs of summer heat domes? Over the year the extremes might average out as zero but will have had a major impact across the area suffering those extremes?

Not that far north of the UK is Svalbard and they have seen another winter of extreme temp excursions and I have to ask myself what the UK would think if they were happening here on a regular basis? To see a february day in the 70f's might wake folk up to how altered the planet is becoming? Sadly the recent SSW is set to plunge temps below freezing for a week so we will be fighting the 'where's the global warming eh?' tirade.....
Last low solar saw Russia bake in a summer long heatwave ( and wildfires ) , here we are again approaching solar min. Will we see a repeat? Will russia run low on grain again?

You are correct that an average may not correct reflect what is occurring around the globe.  However, your extremes are a little off. Current temperature anomalies are resulting from warming winter temperatures, but little change in summer temperatures. We are not  experiences more extremes.  Rather, we are seeing milder temperatures overall, which are resulting in an average increase.
I am sorry but this statement is simply incorrect. Winter is warming faster than summer, and nighttime is warming faster than daytime, but the AGW signal is still clearly present in all of these.
Quick googling finds this discussion from 2010, I am sure there is plenty more if you care to look.

The human fingerprint in the seasons
https://skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=474&p=4

Quote
Figure 1: Yearly temperature anomaly for Northern Hemisphere winter (light blue) and summer (light red) plus five year moving average for winter (thick blue) and summer (thick red). Data comes from CRUTemp, base period is 1961 to 1990.

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #105 on: February 23, 2018, 11:02:31 PM »
There was a post , upthread, telling us not to worry as higher Lat's were only progged to see a 3 to 4c raise in temps? I think the person needs to revisit how 'averages' work?
As I witness it we are seeing 'extreme' lurches in temps from the lows of polar plunges to the highs of summer heat domes? Over the year the extremes might average out as zero but will have had a major impact across the area suffering those extremes?

Not that far north of the UK is Svalbard and they have seen another winter of extreme temp excursions and I have to ask myself what the UK would think if they were happening here on a regular basis? To see a february day in the 70f's might wake folk up to how altered the planet is becoming? Sadly the recent SSW is set to plunge temps below freezing for a week so we will be fighting the 'where's the global warming eh?' tirade.....
Last low solar saw Russia bake in a summer long heatwave ( and wildfires ) , here we are again approaching solar min. Will we see a repeat? Will russia run low on grain again?

You are correct that an average may not correct reflect what is occurring around the globe.  However, your extremes are a little off. Current temperature anomalies are resulting from warming winter temperatures, but little change in summer temperatures. We are not  experiences more extremes.  Rather, we are seeing milder temperatures overall, which are resulting in an average increase.
I am sorry but this statement is simply incorrect. Winter is warming faster than summer, and nighttime is warming faster than daytime, but the AGW signal is still clearly present in all of these.
Quick googling finds this discussion from 2010, I am sure there is plenty more if you care to look.

The human fingerprint in the seasons
https://skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=474&p=4

Quote
Figure 1: Yearly temperature anomaly for Northern Hemisphere winter (light blue) and summer (light red) plus five year moving average for winter (thick blue) and summer (thick red). Data comes from CRUTemp, base period is 1961 to 1990.

Your link in no way invalidates my statement.  See the epa heat wave and cold wave indices.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-08/documents/print_high-low-temps-2016.pdf

While there has been a steady decline in cold waves, there has been no discernible trend in heat waves.  Your graph simply shows the increase in nightly low temperatures, as stated in the epa link.  Also, in the past twenty years, only two states have set all-time record highs (SC and SD) and two have set record lows (ME and OK).  Sometimes you need to do research than just googling.

gerontocrat

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #106 on: February 23, 2018, 11:17:18 PM »
The last post uses data from the USA. The area of the USA is 9+million km2. The area of the earth is 510.1 km2. To base a claim about global climate on a contiguous part of the earth comprising 2 percent of the total area is not a good random sample. Australia might give a contrary view and again its location might be a major factor.

I'm off for a snowball fight with Lamar Seeligson Smith.
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harpy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #107 on: February 24, 2018, 01:09:33 AM »
Here are just 3 of the factors that will cause human extinction in the near term, detailed in Guy's essays and Presentations - and backed up by peer-reviewed scientific studies (or a quick google search about spent fuel rods):

1.  The melt down of hundreds of spent fuel rod containment facilities.  These facilities cannot be without power for more than a day or two before you have Fukishima events all over the world simultaneously.  Any number of events can cause one of these facilities to lose power for un unprecedented length of time, leading to an extinction level event without the below 2 factors.  I challenge everyone here to do some research into spent fuel rod containment facilities.  Even the QUICKEST facilities require FIVE YEARS of constant electricity supply to prevent catastrophic melt downs.  That's FIVE YEARS of constant electrical supply or you have an extinction level event within a week or two (at most - Fukishima only took a couple of days) after losing power, and there's hundreds of such sites all over Earth, some in extremely unstable regions. 

2.  Methane clathrate release in the arctic during a blue ocean event. Increases global average temperature by .5-1C within a short period of time.  Natalia Shokova et al details the amounts.  Dr. McPherson details this in his essay.  If those methane Clathrates are released even partially, we could experience a sudden increase in global average temperature in the northern hemisphere which will trigger even more positive feedback loops, and even more methane clathrate release.  Do some research into methane clathrates - they're not very deep, and there's gigatons and gigatons of them just sitting there.

  3.  The reversal of global dimming via coal power plant aerosols (and shipping aerosols from container ships). If civilization collapses, the collapse of global dimming will increase the temperature of earth by ANOTHER 1-3C within a month or two.  Civilization will collapse, and when it does there's a guaranteed 1-3C rise that will happen almost immediately.  Dr. McPherson links to the Global dimming study, check it out for yourselves.

When you factor in all 3 of these, and the fact that civilization cannot control any of these 3 factors particularly well, it's hard to imagine a situation where humans don't go extinct in a short period of time of any one of these 3 factors from occurring. 

Here's some extremely basic examples of how just these 3 factors alone (there's hundreds of other positive feedback loops that I'm not even considering here, this is just 3 of the big ones):

For example, if global dimming is eliminated, you have #2 take place, which leads to #3 which leads to certain extinction. 

Or if you have #2 take place, you likely lead to #3, which will lead to #1 taking place which leads to certain extinction. 

Finally, if you have #1 take place, you have #3 and then #2 take place, which ensures extinction.


Now just remember, there's hundreds of other positive feedback loops I haven't even discussed here. 

Quite frankly, I have yet to see a single post that refutes any one of these 3 factors.  All I see are "well that's an unknown, or that's never happened before, or we can't predict the future".  Most posts here are aimed at claiming that 10 years not right and that for that reason Dr. McPherson is wrong - but who cares if he's wrong by a couple of years?  There's evidence that these factors do exist, and we're just pushing the pedal down harder and harder on global emissions and doing nothing.  For this reason, it seems highly unlikely that we're going to survive as a species.   

In regards to Dr. McPherson's evidence - he's just presenting the global dimming study and Shakova et al.s study.  In regards to nuclear spent fuel rods, he's just talking about information that's publicly available.  Do a quick google search on spent fuel rods, you'll find links on the public domain.  The global dimming and methane clathrate papers have already been published - the information about temperature changes due to global dimming and methane clathrates has already been calculated and then verified via peer review.    Guy lists these papers right in his essay.  There are peer-review published papers documenting this evidence, and they've never been proven wrong.  Mostly just ignored.

This is a dire emergency.  We don't have until 2100 to fix our problems, we probably don't even have until 2020 - we need to fix them tomorrow, and even if by some miracle all the countries of the planet got together to figure out the global warming problem - it's probably too late at this point for the vast majority of humans on this planet.  If we don't do something about those spent fuel rods immediately, and figure out some way to cool the arctic immediately, we're all going to die in the near term. 

It's not going to be a pleasant death either - we're not all going to be holding hands and walking into the sunset together.  It's going to be horrendous, unimaginably horrifying and happen in a sudden catastrophic fashion - radiation sickness combined with starvation and dehydration is not a pleasant way to go.  The good news is that humans can survive without water during radiation sickness for only a couple of days, so the pain will be short.  I recommend an alternative plan for anyone reading, if you know what I mean.

« Last Edit: February 24, 2018, 01:58:48 AM by harpy »

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #108 on: February 24, 2018, 01:29:40 AM »
The last post uses data from the USA. The area of the USA is 9+million km2. The area of the earth is 510.1 km2. To base a claim about global climate on a contiguous part of the earth comprising 2 percent of the total area is not a good random sample. Australia might give a contrary view and again its location might be a major factor.

I'm off for a snowball fight with Lamar Seeligson Smith.

True, but do you have any data to contradict this (such as Australia)?  Incomplete data is not the same as contradictory.  Most of this world does not sufficient temperature data for comparison.

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #109 on: February 24, 2018, 01:57:31 AM »
Harpy, you a potential situation without explaining how it could possible occur.  Any explanation? Secondly, are you aware that over 500 atmospheric nuclear tests have been conducted, releasing several times the estimated radiation potential from the spent fuel rods.  That does not count the more than a thousand underground tests.  Yet, this has not resulted in mass extinction.

Archimid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #110 on: February 24, 2018, 01:58:58 AM »
Quote
1.  The melt down of hundreds of spent fuel rod containment facilities.

This will not happen until total collapse happens. The chance any of us is alive after the collapse requiered for this meltdown to occur is very low. So in some ways it is irrelevant.

I grant you that this will indeed place humans in danger of extinction, but there are many catastrophes that must happen before it becomes an issue.

Quote
2.  Methane clathrate release in the arctic during a blue ocean event.

Forget about methane chaltrate. A blue ocean event is likely to cause enough climate chaos to bring about scenario 1. The weird  and extreme weather already happening might be just a preview of things to come. 

Quote
3.  The reversal of global dimming due to coal power plant aerosols (and shipping aerosols from container ships).

Yeah that will suck.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

gerontocrat

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #111 on: February 24, 2018, 02:06:43 AM »
The 3 factors that will cause human extinction in the near term are as follows:

1.  The melt down of hundreds of spent fuel rod containment facilities. 

2.  Methane clathrate release in the arctic during a blue ocean event. Increases global average temperature by .5-1C within a short period of time.

3.  The reversal of global dimming due to coal power plant aerosols (and shipping aerosols from container ships).

This is a dire emergency.  If we don't do something about those spent fuel rods immediately, and figure out some way to cool the arctic immediately, we're all going to die in the near term.
Let us assume these events happen

Radiation. Wildlife has thrived in Chernobyl since the explosion even in the hottest places. There are people living there as well.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many died from radiation sickness. The lucky few had immune systems that coped. Some had children. Some of them were deformed but some were not. True, life expectancy was poor but an average life expectancy of just 35 is OK for long term human survival

Methane. Yes quite likely to happen.
Reduced air pollution. Happening now.

So yes, very possible that global temperature rise makes parts of the earth uninhabitable by humans.
So yes, hot spots of radiation levels fatal to humans.
So yes, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
So yes, large reductions in population and life expectancy.

But extinction? You underestimate the driving forces of all species - to survive and to reproduce. You underestimate the ability of humans to adapt to climates from arctic to tropics to desert.
You give us no reasons why some humans will not survive cataclysm.

Just saying we are all going to die as a consequence of these events is an insufficient basis for discussion.

Over and OUT.
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"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

Archimid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #112 on: February 24, 2018, 02:32:35 AM »
Daniel B.

  Let me try again.

Temperature anomalies by themselves are not the worst danger.  The changes in climate systems induced by the temperature anomalies are the worst danger.

Your argument and the one from other posters seem to imply something like a little heat is not so bad. That is only trivially true.

  It is true that if everything else is held constant, small temperature increases are not civilization killers, but everything else will not hold constant. The climate will change as temperature increases.

We haven't  seen any abrupt climate change yet because earth climate systems have inertia. We have been gnawing at that inertia for a century now. Some Earth systems are begining to show that the inertia is runing out, like the Arctic.

Once large systems like the Arctic "break" then we will necesarily see cascading abrupt climate change. If the Earth climate follows the same rules as every other natural system I know of, such change will be really bad for all of us. Rich or poor, northerner or southerner.

I do believe that once abrupt climate change commences (it might have already) we will fight it, adapt and eventually win, but not before things get really bad for most.

 
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

aperson

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #113 on: February 24, 2018, 02:37:50 AM »
The biggest problem in this thread is that people correctly document catastrophic outcomes that are real threats, but they don't indicate how those lead to *extinction*.

So I want to make this point clear again: Extinction is the death of every single member of the species. If one mating pair survives, it's not an extinction. It's a catastrophe.
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Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #114 on: February 24, 2018, 04:03:28 AM »
I think one thing we can all agree on is we are walking into a scary world.
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TerryM

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #115 on: February 24, 2018, 04:10:42 AM »
I don't believe that our current culture can cope with the climate change that's already in the pipeline. Billions will die, but no extinction.
Bruce is the only person I know of that is seriously exploring alternative food technologies, but he is assuredly not the only person learning and teaching new methods of feeding ourselves. He may not survive, and eating acorns may not be the path, but someone, somewhere will be able to subsist on whatever is left after the debacle, and he, or his followers will feed themselves, reproduce, and the species will persist.


Humans, cockroaches, jellyfish, & perhaps oak trees and piggies. Together into the future.
Terry

harpy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #116 on: February 24, 2018, 04:27:22 AM »
I don't believe that our current culture can cope with the climate change that's already in the pipeline. Billions will die, but no extinction.
Bruce is the only person I know of that is seriously exploring alternative food technologies, but he is assuredly not the only person learning and teaching new methods of feeding ourselves. He may not survive, and eating acorns may not be the path, but someone, somewhere will be able to subsist on whatever is left after the debacle, and he, or his followers will feed themselves, reproduce, and the species will persist.


Humans, cockroaches, jellyfish, & perhaps oak trees and piggies. Together into the future.
Terry

The biggest problem in this thread is that people correctly document catastrophic outcomes that are real threats, but they don't indicate how those lead to *extinction*.

So I want to make this point clear again: Extinction is the death of every single member of the species. If one mating pair survives, it's not an extinction. It's a catastrophe.


The major issue is not just climate change, it's the combination of climate change and radiation from the spent fuel rods from 450+ nuclear reactors melting down catastrophically and contaminating the entire globe.  The dose of radiation that's going to be emitted into the atmosphere will most likely kill off anything on the surface that cannot burrow under ground and stay there for hundreds of years.  The most dangerous radioactive isotopes have half lives that will contaminate the surface of the planet for hundreds of years. 

Bunkers exist, and this is a major argument on this thread for the avoidance of extinction.

Let's just explore that option for a short period of time here:

1.  All it takes is one cataclysmic event in the bunker, like a virus to wipe out the rest of the species.
Last time I checked, humans didn't evolve underground in bunkers.  I already posted this but I'll post it again because apparently ppl don't read my posts:  how are humans going to even survive a few decades underground and get all the required nutrients and vitamins from a diet of canned goods and meals ready to eat?    Decades to centuries...that's a long time, to date humans have NEVER lived underground in a bunker for even a fraction of that length of time.  no experiments have been done, at least not in the public domain to prove that humans can survive that long in a confined place.  Humans can barely survive in the international space station for a period of 6 months to 1 year, how do you expect them to survive in bunkers for centuries and centuries ?  This isn't a science fiction movie, this is reality.  In reality humans need to walk around, eat food, spend time in the sun and eat a variety of food sources in order to successfully breed.  Without modern infrastructure to go to hospitals and heal bacterial infections and recover from viruses, they will slowly die from self inflicted wounds, malnutrition, disease, and injury. 

2.  Due to radioactivity all over the surface of earth, it will take hundreds of years before anything that resembles food for humans is not full of cesium 134, cesium 137, strontium-90, and plutonium-241 (which decays into Americium-241), and the other radioactive isotopes that result from spent fuel rods melting down.  I've already posted links in above comments regarding the isotopes that are released.  The radiation load from the spent fuel rod meltdowns is massive - it's not Fukishima it's fukishima X 1,000,000 - no one even knows how many millions of tons of this highly unstable waste exists on the planet.  Do some research into spent fuel rod cooling ponds - many of these facilities are 5X at their recommended capacity right now, because there's no where else to put the stuff.  They are maintained via deisel generators that can run out of fuel, resulting in catastrophic meltdowns that will make Fukishima seem like a new years eve celebration.  The number of spent fuel rods is something in the order of multiple millions of tons of this stuff (that is metal that resembles lead in density - it's heavy and cannot be moved easily because it's thousands of degrees C), and once it gets hot it doesn't stop, sets the material on fire and evaporates water turning it into hydrogen gas causing explosions - then just a constant dose of radiation being emitted indefinitely from hundreds of locations all over the globe.

3. I think a discussion regarding technicalities, like having a couple of small pockets of humans here and there in bunkers living off of vitamin pills and protein powder is missing the broader theme here - the truth is that climate change is happening so rapidly at this point that anything larger than a small rat is going to go extinct.  With the radiation dose, small rats will die too.  Nothing can adapt quick enough to survive this extinction event......well - bacteria can, and small organisms like fungi, algae, and ...yes maybe jellyfish can as well - but nothing that humans would be able to identify as food.  Certainly not pigs, unless they're underground - but pigs need sun, and without sun pigs will be using up the vitamin pills that the humans need.  Pigs chickens, rabbits even - all require food themselves - how are you going to feed these things underground in a bunker with limited supplies of vitamins and minerals and food? 

Only the KT extinction resulted in climate change this rapid, and the result was 70% die off of all species, most of which were not much larger than moles and rats.

How do you expect something large like an ape to survive on a diet of radioactive cockroaches and radioactive jellyfish for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years, on an earth that continues to get warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer? The time lag for Co2 and temperature is hundreds and of years - the globe will continue to warm for a VERY long time, and that's not counting feedback loops.

4.  I'm not going to lie and say I think every single human will die near term- there's going to be some idiots who go into bunkers and think they can outlast climate change.  Technically, we won't be extinct until these idiots slowly die off over the decades and centuries (I doubt they'll last that long, but hey - you never know how perserverent humans can be - they might even breed and continue to propagate under these circumstances, but again it will all be for naught as the surface will remain radioactive for centuries, if not millennia). 

I suppose it's theoretically possible that while in the bunker these folks may figure out some way to produce food, or just eat other humans in such a way that they continue to survive for decades, if not hundreds of years. 


Climate change will outlast these feeble attempts at survival.  This isn't a nuclear winter they're waiting for to end, it's the death of an entire surface of a planet.  It took millions of years for earth to recover from the permian extinction, and that extinction event took thousands of years to unfold - not 250-300.  The permian extinction also didn't include megadoses of radiation emitted in a sudden fashion.   Does it seem possible that these bunker billionaires, military personnel, and politicians, etc etc -  will be able to survive for millions of years, first underground for centuries, and then subsequently on the surface of a planet that resembles mars with no food sources other than other humans, red green algae, slime molds, and ...maybe, if they're really lucky - some cockroaches, nematodes, and poisonous species of jellyfish?

I think not.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2018, 06:33:17 AM by harpy »

Bruce Steele

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #117 on: February 24, 2018, 05:04:11 AM »
Terry, There are millions of other people following traditional farming traditions , I just don't know them. We here tend to judge humanities challenges to a civilization as we know it  Those people far enough separated from our ideas of civilization are also somewhat protected from issues like radiation
It all comes down to how fast collapse happens and slow collapse is one version of our collective human future. Isolated humans will have to contend with climate change but they have the advantage of living a lifestyle that doesn't freak out when challenged by hard times. They aren't going to break out their stockpile of AK-47s and go on a rampage. I however will be toast if LA runs out of food. I do know several dozens of remote springs in the back country and I have a good enough grip on survival techniques to feed a small group of humans for awhile but my wife says she will never take that option.
If I can be any service to future generations I can only offer up my knowledge in a slow collapse scenario.
 Fast collapse is just going to be too damn chaotic to be much help.
 For now I am enjoying the challenges of farming without fossil fuels. I think I can stretch last years stored food well into spring and summer. I already have potatoes planted and spring is just around the corner. Life is good.
 That doesn't mean problems aren't coming ,it just means I think keeping calm, planning ahead and enjoying my time here on earth are as good as I can do. + I am going to figure out how to sink some carbon without utilizing fossil fuels to do so.



TerryM

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #118 on: February 24, 2018, 06:05:22 AM »
Bruce
Soon the agave season comes, and the sweetness of it's heart.
I know of some beautiful hot springs in Southern California where food could be cooked without lighting a fire. At one time they were only known to a few hundred hippies, and the parties were epic!
I'd probably opt for your wife's option. I'm old, enfeebled, and I like my iced Starbucks Lattes.
I'm surrounded by Mennonite and Old Amish farmers, but Toronto is only a two day walk.


When my elevator can't respond because the grid is permanently down, it'll be time for me to make an exit. I've a much improved trompe that I'd love to build a working model of, and I know enough about enzymes to build an efficient biogas system.
Not enough skills to pay for my upkeep when TSHTF, and that's OK.
Terry

Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #119 on: February 24, 2018, 07:24:38 AM »
I don't believe that our current culture can cope with the climate change that's already in the pipeline. Billions will die, but no extinction.
Bruce is the only person I know of that is seriously exploring alternative food technologies, but he is assuredly not the only person learning and teaching new methods of feeding ourselves. He may not survive, and eating acorns may not be the path, but someone, somewhere will be able to subsist on whatever is left after the debacle, and he, or his followers will feed themselves, reproduce, and the species will persist.


Humans, cockroaches, jellyfish, & perhaps oak trees and piggies. Together into the future.
Terry

The biggest problem in this thread is that people correctly document catastrophic outcomes that are real threats, but they don't indicate how those lead to *extinction*.

So I want to make this point clear again: Extinction is the death of every single member of the species. If one mating pair survives, it's not an extinction. It's a catastrophe.


The major issue is not just climate change, it's the combination of climate change and radiation from the spent fuel rods from 450+ nuclear reactors melting down catastrophically and contaminating the entire globe.  The dose of radiation that's going to be emitted into the atmosphere will most likely kill off anything on the surface that cannot burrow under ground and stay there for hundreds of years.  The most dangerous radioactive isotopes have half lives that will contaminate the surface of the planet for hundreds of years. 

Bunkers exist, and this is a major argument on this thread for the avoidance of extinction.

Let's just explore that option for a short period of time here:

1.  All it takes is one cataclysmic event in the bunker, like a virus to wipe out the rest of the species.
Last time I checked, humans didn't evolve underground in bunkers.  I already posted this but I'll post it again because apparently ppl don't read my posts:  how are humans going to even survive a few decades underground and get all the required nutrients and vitamins from a diet of canned goods and meals ready to eat?    Decades to centuries...that's a long time, to date humans have NEVER lived underground in a bunker for even a fraction of that length of time.  no experiments have been done, at least not in the public domain to prove that humans can survive that long in a confined place.  Humans can barely survive in the international space station for a period of 6 months to 1 year, how do you expect them to survive in bunkers for centuries and centuries ?  This isn't a science fiction movie, this is reality.  In reality humans need to walk around, eat food, spend time in the sun and eat a variety of food sources in order to successfully breed.  Without modern infrastructure to go to hospitals and heal bacterial infections and recover from viruses, they will slowly die from self inflicted wounds, malnutrition, disease, and injury. 

2.  Due to radioactivity all over the surface of earth, it will take hundreds of years before anything that resembles food for humans is not full of cesium 134, cesium 137, strontium-90, and plutonium-241 (which decays into Americium-241), and the other radioactive isotopes that result from spent fuel rods melting down.  I've already posted links in above comments regarding the isotopes that are released.  The radiation load from the spent fuel rod meltdowns is massive - it's not Fukishima it's fukishima X 1,000,000 - no one even knows how many millions of tons of this highly unstable waste exists on the planet.  Do some research into spent fuel rod cooling ponds - many of these facilities are 5X at their recommended capacity right now, because there's no where else to put the stuff.  They are maintained via deisel generators that can run out of fuel, resulting in catastrophic meltdowns that will make Fukishima seem like a new years eve celebration.  The number of spent fuel rods is something in the order of multiple millions of tons of this stuff (that is metal that resembles lead in density - it's heavy and cannot be moved easily because it's thousands of degrees C), and once it gets hot it doesn't stop, sets the material on fire and evaporates water turning it into hydrogen gas causing explosions - then just a constant dose of radiation being emitted indefinitely from hundreds of locations all over the globe.

3. I think a discussion regarding technicalities, like having a couple of small pockets of humans here and there in bunkers living off of vitamin pills and protein powder is missing the broader theme here - the truth is that climate change is happening so rapidly at this point that anything larger than a small rat is going to go extinct.  With the radiation dose, small rats will die too.  Nothing can adapt quick enough to survive this extinction event......well - bacteria can, and small organisms like fungi, algae, and ...yes maybe jellyfish can as well - but nothing that humans would be able to identify as food.  Certainly not pigs, unless they're underground - but pigs need sun, and without sun pigs will be using up the vitamin pills that the humans need.  Pigs chickens, rabbits even - all require food themselves - how are you going to feed these things underground in a bunker with limited supplies of vitamins and minerals and food? 

Only the KT extinction resulted in climate change this rapid, and the result was 70% die off of all species, most of which were not much larger than moles and rats.

How do you expect something large like an ape to survive on a diet of radioactive cockroaches and radioactive jellyfish for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years, on an earth that continues to get warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer? The time lag for Co2 and temperature is hundreds and of years - the globe will continue to warm for a VERY long time, and that's not counting feedback loops.

4.  I'm not going to lie and say I think every single human will die near term- there's going to be some idiots who go into bunkers and think they can outlast climate change.  Technically, we won't be extinct until these idiots slowly die off over the decades and centuries (I doubt they'll last that long, but hey - you never know how perserverent humans can be - they might even breed and continue to propagate under these circumstances, but again it will all be for naught as the surface will remain radioactive for centuries, if not millennia). 

I suppose it's theoretically possible that while in the bunker these folks may figure out some way to produce food, or just eat other humans in such a way that they continue to survive for decades, if not hundreds of years. 


Climate change will outlast these feeble attempts at survival.  This isn't a nuclear winter they're waiting for to end, it's the death of an entire surface of a planet.  It took millions of years for earth to recover from the permian extinction, and that extinction event took thousands of years to unfold - not 250-300.  The permian extinction also didn't include megadoses of radiation emitted in a sudden fashion.   Does it seem possible that these bunker billionaires, military personnel, and politicians, etc etc -  will be able to survive for millions of years, first underground for centuries, and then subsequently on the surface of a planet that resembles mars with no food sources other than other humans, red green algae, slime molds, and ...maybe, if they're really lucky - some cockroaches, nematodes, and poisonous species of jellyfish?

I think not.


I recently watched the movie downsizing with Matt Damon. In the movie the world was ending due to methane release. So all the little people moved into an underground complex beneath a mountain. With trees and light and crops. So basically it was a city underground providing all human needs. And in the movie it said it would keep that population alive for 8,000 years, until the world was livable again. Maybe we can do that but on a much bigger scale?? Sounds better than a bunker imo
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Paddy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #120 on: February 24, 2018, 09:04:56 AM »

And on top of these extremes you have the extreme population growth in the last 40 years. So the same drought will have a much bigger impact. A flood 40 years ago had a much bigger chance not to have a big impact because there was nobody living. Today they are building everywhere, they cut the vegetation or forests that keeps the soil together, so in many places it's just waiting for a disaster. And if you look at the number of big hurricanes in the Atlantic. The number went up by 200 % in a little more than 100 years. And the cradle of these atlantic hurricanes is in posittion for big changes. Because the atlantic will have to face the consequences in the first place from the arctic sea ice that is melting. Maybe a good time to evacuate the people living in the caribean.

Before you do anything so drastic, maybe have a look at disaster-related mortality today compared to 100 years ago. We're actually much more resilient to hurricanes etc than we used to be:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-natural-disasters
https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Deaths-by-catastrophe-type.png

Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #121 on: February 24, 2018, 09:26:33 AM »

And on top of these extremes you have the extreme population growth in the last 40 years. So the same drought will have a much bigger impact. A flood 40 years ago had a much bigger chance not to have a big impact because there was nobody living. Today they are building everywhere, they cut the vegetation or forests that keeps the soil together, so in many places it's just waiting for a disaster. And if you look at the number of big hurricanes in the Atlantic. The number went up by 200 % in a little more than 100 years. And the cradle of these atlantic hurricanes is in posittion for big changes. Because the atlantic will have to face the consequences in the first place from the arctic sea ice that is melting. Maybe a good time to evacuate the people living in the caribean.

Before you do anything so drastic, maybe have a look at disaster-related mortality today compared to 100 years ago. We're actually much more resilient to hurricanes etc than we used to be:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-natural-disasters
https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Deaths-by-catastrophe-type.png

Nature is supposed to kill us, but we have been escaping death due to medicine, technology etc... this is bad, why? It's bad because we have lost our connection to the world..Once a card falls on the house of cards, you have to be ready for it to crumble.
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El Cid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #122 on: February 24, 2018, 10:35:07 AM »
El Cid, what about the prospect of declining crop yields in key agricultural areas of the world, as are projected. What about this graph of projected precipitation in one of the world's breadbaskets, the Western North American region https://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2017/07/WesternUSA-precipitation.png


I do not want to be the Pollyanna here, but from what I have seen in regenerative agriculture I conclude:

1. Sequestering Carbon into the soil is a difficult but viable way and I think that if we really started working on it, the potential is much bigger than current scientific papers project.
2. The good thing about soil with higher C (OM) content is that you need much less water as the water holding capacity of the soil increases by a lot, so you are more drought-resistant
3. And as surprising as it is, plants are generally "healthier" and more able to withstand cold or heat waves.

So I believe that regenerative agriculture will be one of the most important ways in the next decades that will help us feed mankind and at the same time reduce the atmosheric Co2.
I do think it is totally possibble to feed all of us at least until 2050-70 even under RCP8.5 scenario. With no hunger, no collapse in civilization.

My only great worry is Africa, where populations are projected to quadruple by 2100 from 2000 levels. It could lead to famine, wars and mass migration on a grand scale that could disrupt not only that continetn but others as well.

Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #123 on: February 24, 2018, 11:24:01 AM »
I am seeing so much denial really on here. It's how people think tho, we don't want to admit we are going extinct. It's not how we are wired (most of us). I've woken up. I'm about to invest in a 2K Sq foot bunker and i'm mentally preparing myself. I recommend you all do the same. Even if this is all bs, its best to be prepared!
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Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #124 on: February 24, 2018, 03:18:23 PM »
I remember over 50 years ago that people were talking about building underground bunkers and stocking it with years (decades) of canned food.  That was in order to survive the inevitable nuclear war.  Those were the crazies or the people who had given up, and could not envision a better future.  Funny how what goes around comes around. 

Archimid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #125 on: February 24, 2018, 03:25:25 PM »
I always wonder why the villagers didn't remove the shepperd after the first false alarm. That was stupid of them. But even more stupid was not responding to the wolf threat even when they knew wolves are real and have a taste for sheep.  Hopefully that herd wasn't  an important source of calories for the village.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Sleepy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #126 on: February 24, 2018, 03:55:59 PM »
I remember over 50 years ago that people were talking about building underground bunkers and stocking it with years (decades) of canned food.  That was in order to survive the inevitable nuclear war.  Those were the crazies or the people who had given up, and could not envision a better future.  Funny how what goes around comes around.

Crazies are different today.

Wonder what this Guy would've said nowadays:


About the top 10% on this planet (us) failing to mitigate at 10-15% per year, and these:
Omnia mirari, etiam tritissima.
-
Science is a jealous mistress and takes little account of a man's feelings.

harpy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #127 on: February 24, 2018, 04:43:36 PM »
I am seeing so much denial really on here. It's how people think tho, we don't want to admit we are going extinct. It's not how we are wired (most of us). I've woken up. I'm about to invest in a 2K Sq foot bunker and i'm mentally preparing myself. I recommend you all do the same. Even if this is all bs, its best to be prepared!

Denial and stubbornness are impressive aspects of human behavior.  These two factors are a large part of the reason that our species has managed to expand to all areas of the planet (infinite growth, human ingenuity!), and it's also the reason we're not preparing for our extinction (infinite growth will last indefinitely, human ingenuity will save us regardless of the climate!). They're characteristics of our species that have evolved to permit us to survive unusually dire situations, but with modern technology they've boomeranged and are now leading to our imminent demise.


Humans can survive in a bunker for a period of time, but if you re read my post you'll recall that humans did not evolve in bunkers, and cannot survive in confined spaces with any sort of quality of life. Many who live in situations like maximum security prison (which is basically what you're existence is going to be) die miserable early deaths from illness.    Think of that situation, WITHOUT modern medicine - life expectancy will drop precipitously.  I hope you have windows, you're going to need them from going insane.

Remember what I wrote earlier:  the surface of earth is going to be contaminated for hundreds of years, and plutonium will be all over the surface for even longer. Even if you and your family survive the first couple hundred years of Cesium 134, 137 - your children will still have to deal with plutonium.  If you ingest plutonium in large enough quantities, you're pretty much guaranteed cancer - and if you eat an animal that ate plutonium, you're still going to get cancer.  Expect an absolutely miserable existence for hundreds - thousands of years.  After that, global warming and feedback loops will continue for thousands and thousands of years, getting worse and worse over time.  You're not looking to survive a nuclear winter here, you're trying to survive a multi million year process.

Interestingly, the truth is that right now, near term catastrophic extinction is avoidable.  If all of the large governments and military organizations worked together to remove spent fuel rods from flimsy cooling ponds powered by diesel generators, and worked on a plan to bury them in the bottom of the ocean near the subduction plates - or even just dump them somewhere with current and depth, the catastrophic melt downs that will contaminate the surface of the planet can be avoided.  This is, of all the problems we face, the easiest to solve, technically.  Just dump hundreds of millions of tons of spent fuel rods in the ocean - the alternative is the extinction of nearly every life form on this planet when the diesel fuel runs out.

So long as these spent fuel rods DON't melt down, I'd argue that we may in fact have longer than 10 years.  Is this going to happen?  Of course not, that would make too much sense.  There's too much money to be made!  Look at that stock market!  Infinite growth doesn't have a budget for trillions of dollars needed to safely transport these spent fuel rods to the pacific ocean and bury them in subduction zones! 


Good luck, you'll live longer than the rest of us on this forum.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2018, 05:33:23 PM by harpy »

gerontocrat

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #128 on: February 24, 2018, 05:15:32 PM »
Dear Harpy,

Increasing the font size does not make your argument more convincing.
Indeed, for this person, it is a right old turn-off. It reduces the discussion to a mere shouting match - my font's bigger than your font - yah-boo and sucks to you.

By the way, you will never convince me that the radiation from unlooked after spent fuel rods will kill us all. Many, but not all.

Toodle-pip,

Gerontocrat.
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harpy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #129 on: February 24, 2018, 05:17:55 PM »
Dear Harpy,

Increasing the font size does not make your argument more convincing.
Indeed, for this person, it is a right old turn-off. It reduces the discussion to a mere shouting match - my font's bigger than your font - yah-boo and sucks to you.

By the way, you will never convince me that the radiation from unlooked after spent fuel rods will kill us all. Many, but not all.

Toodle-pip,

Gerontocrat.

Fair enough, I'm still new here - I'll take your suggestion. 

Well, millions of tons of spent fuel rod material melting down catastrophically and radiation that lasts for hundreds of years spreading around the world will most likely not kill the folks in bunkers surrounded by concrete walls.  But as I've written, they'll all die from suicide, disease, injury, murder, and malnutrition over the decades as they all go insane and run out of supplies that cannot be replenished.  Until they die, our species is technically not extinct - it's more like the last Tasmanian Tiger in the zoo, just waiting to die from unnatural causes.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2018, 05:38:03 PM by harpy »

harpy

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #130 on: February 26, 2018, 01:06:41 AM »
Here's a rough estimate of the amount of radiation that would be released if all the spent fuel rods melted down simultaneously.

1.  Chernobyl itself released more radiation than all detonated nuclear bombs in history.

2.  Fukishima had the potential to release 66 X the amount of radiation of Chernobyl.

3.  Multiply that number by multiple hundreds and we arrive at what earth is going to look like within a decade, if things keep going at their current rate - OR if militaries all over the world don't immediately make plans to dump this spent fuel into the pacific ocean in the very near future. 

 In the event of societal collapse of some form, a nuclear war may break out - if a nuclear bomb is dropped on a nuclear reactor, you're looking at 66X Chernobyl, and the vaporization of the spent fuel rods combined with the high altitude smoke of the nuclear blast would result in this radiation traveling all over the world. 

So during a nuclear conflict, the world will have to cope with a nuclear winter AND thousands of Chernobyl's worth of radiation being released simultaneously around the world...  yeah, good luck surviving that if you're not in a bunker.

Not trying to scare anyone, but this is reality.  This information is not my own pet theory - it's simply a realistic calculation based on information provided from Fukishima.  Do we want to acknowledge that we're all going to die from radiation sickness if the grid goes down, or if we want to keep pretending the threat doesn't exist?

I provide a solution:  dump all of these spent fuel rods into the pacific ocean and bury them somewhere near the subduction zones.  Obviously this isn't going to happen, and the grid will go down, these spent fuel rods will melt down and we're all going to die.  Even worse, this is going to happen in the near term.  This is not some distant threat.  This is an immediate existential threat and no one seems to be taking it seriously.

I feel like I'm wasting my time and my effort writing these comments, it's not like this is going to change anything.  Our fate is sealed, and I think most everyone on this thread has more or less acknowledged that at minimum, most humans on this planet are going to die in the near term.


« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 04:13:00 AM by harpy »

CDN_dude

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #131 on: February 26, 2018, 04:24:04 AM »
El Cid, what about the prospect of declining crop yields in key agricultural areas of the world, as are projected. What about this graph of projected precipitation in one of the world's breadbaskets, the Western North American region https://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2017/07/WesternUSA-precipitation.png


I do not want to be the Pollyanna here, but from what I have seen in regenerative agriculture I conclude:

1. Sequestering Carbon into the soil is a difficult but viable way and I think that if we really started working on it, the potential is much bigger than current scientific papers project.
2. The good thing about soil with higher C (OM) content is that you need much less water as the water holding capacity of the soil increases by a lot, so you are more drought-resistant
3. And as surprising as it is, plants are generally "healthier" and more able to withstand cold or heat waves.

So I believe that regenerative agriculture will be one of the most important ways in the next decades that will help us feed mankind and at the same time reduce the atmosheric Co2.
I do think it is totally possibble to feed all of us at least until 2050-70 even under RCP8.5 scenario. With no hunger, no collapse in civilization.

My only great worry is Africa, where populations are projected to quadruple by 2100 from 2000 levels. It could lead to famine, wars and mass migration on a grand scale that could disrupt not only that continetn but others as well.

Ok, sustainable ag is really not my area, so those were genuine questions. Thanks for your response. I do agree with your last point that other conflicts in society may inhibit stable food production apart from the more direct impact of climate/weather. Regenerative ag could be a boon for politically stable societies, the question is, how many of those will remain going forward? Also, if we think of this issue as just food in general, there are other issues, like the decline of fish and salinization of rice paddies etc. that could be very disruptive in Asia. Anyway, regarding the subject of this thread, I do not believe that the challenges in food production will lead to our extinction, which I probably should have been more clear about. But high food prices, increased famine across Africa and parts of Asia, will lead to huge social strife, which is bad enough.

sidd

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #132 on: February 26, 2018, 06:04:13 AM »
Re: spent fuel risk to humans

I don't think human extinction from that risk is likely.

I seem to recall there's about half a billion curies in spent fuel about. It takes about a millicurie to reliably kill a human, so say 5 billion potential fatalities if one could reliably insert a millicurie into that many humans.

Most of the spent fuel is in dry cask storage because space in pools is at a premium. Every refuelling cycle (several years) the fresh, hot rods get dragged outta the core and dumped in the spent fuel pools. But there's a finite amount of space, so at the same time a load of rods that have cooled off some is taken out and transferred to dry casks. Nukes are decades old on average, so they have been thru several refuelling cycles. 

If your wet pool develops a leak you cant fix, you get fukushima type object. If your core catches fire (graphite) you get a Chernobyl or Windscale. But not too many graphite moderated reactors left.

To reliably get all the radiactivity spread efficiently, you need a big enuf bang to reach the stratosphere. This would be quite difficult to arrange. Dry casks are pretty solid, you can hit one with a locomotive and it don't rupture. So mebbe a nuclear explosion at each dry cask storage + one each at the reactors and wet storage might do it.

But extinction ? thats tough. Cheetahs went thru a bottleneck estimated at less than a hundred breeding pairs.

sidd


Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #133 on: February 26, 2018, 10:08:18 AM »
"If not enough water flows into the reactor’s core, the fuel rods will boil the water away faster than it can be replaced, and the water level will decrease. Even when the reactor is turned off so nuclear reactions no longer occur, the fuel rods remain extremely radioactive and hot and need to be cooled by water for an extended period of time. Without enough water, the fuel rods get so hot that they melt. If they begin to melt the nuclear reactor core and the steel containment vessel, and release radiation into the environment, nuclear meltdown occurs." (phys.org)

"You better be at least 50 miles from a nuclear power plant, and preferably not in a downwind location based on the prevailing winds."

Considering there are 450 nuclear power plants in the world, I think this issue is serious. most of the plants are in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. 50 nuclear power plants are under construction currently, with around 300 coming near term.

"If there is a prolonged interruption of cooling due to emergency situations, the water in the spent fuel pools may boil off, possibly resulting in radioactive elements being released into the atmosphere." (Union of concerned scientists).

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johnm33

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #134 on: February 26, 2018, 11:27:47 AM »
Some people seem to think radiation is harmless others are more pessimistic. https://yourradiationthisweek.org/

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #135 on: February 26, 2018, 10:36:05 PM »
Regarding the spent fuel rods, there is a lot of talk about what would happen if they all melted down simultaneously, but no explanation as to what might cause it.  My question to all the Mad Maxes is what might cause all these to melt down at once? 

sidd

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #136 on: February 26, 2018, 11:45:07 PM »
Correction: The amount of radiation in spent fuel is enuf to kill about 500 billion humans if each were dosed with a millicurie ...

sidd

Iceismylife

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #137 on: February 26, 2018, 11:54:41 PM »
Regarding the spent fuel rods, there is a lot of talk about what would happen if they all melted down simultaneously, but no explanation as to what might cause it.  My question to all the Mad Maxes is what might cause all these to melt down at once?
In 2008 we almost went there.  The flow of money broke down internationally.  If the money doesn't flow then the cooling water doesn't as well.

The underlying macroeconomic picture isn't that different now as apposed to then. 

Sea level is going to start going up big time soon.  That could trigger a bubble pop.

Take your pick, it is the trigger you don't see coming that gets you not the one you do see coming.

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #138 on: February 27, 2018, 03:28:43 AM »
Of course if you do not know the trigger, how can you possibly know the consequences?

Iceismylife

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #139 on: February 27, 2018, 03:36:21 AM »
Of course if you do not know the trigger, how can you possibly know the consequences?
Say that standing on 10,000,000kgs of ammonium nitrate.

Wherestheice

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #140 on: February 27, 2018, 10:27:26 AM »
i have decided to just live life. If we go extinct, so be it. I certainly dont want to worry about it if it is the end.
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Iceismylife

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #141 on: February 27, 2018, 10:16:56 PM »
i have decided to just live life. If we go extinct, so be it. I certainly dont want to worry about it if it is the end.
The problem is far less pressing if we shut down the reactors now.

I've had to many relatives die from radiation exposure.


Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #142 on: February 27, 2018, 11:52:58 PM »
Of course if you do not know the trigger, how can you possibly know the consequences?
Say that standing on 10,000,000kgs of ammonium nitrate.

And stockpiles of ammonium nitrate have resulted in how many deaths?

Iceismylife

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #143 on: February 28, 2018, 12:03:29 AM »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

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

Quote
And stockpiles of ammonium nitrate have resulted in how many deaths?

But that doesn't matter. The point is this. It doesn't matter what sets off the Ammonium nitrate. But the consequences are easy to figure out.

Daniel B.

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #144 on: February 28, 2018, 04:26:58 AM »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

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

Quote
And stockpiles of ammonium nitrate have resulted in how many deaths?

But that doesn't matter. The point is this. It doesn't matter what sets off the Ammonium nitrate. But the consequences are easy to figure out.

Yes.  143 deaths over the past 30 years.  Exactly how does this compare to extinction?

El Cid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #145 on: February 28, 2018, 08:14:38 AM »




Ok, sustainable ag is really not my area, so those were genuine questions. Thanks for your response.

I would like to stress that sustainable agriculture is not equal to regenerative agriculture. The former aims "just" to be sustainable, to keep the status quo so to speak, however, regenerative agriculture aims to improve the current situation by sequestering carbon, increasing the organic matter content of the soil which should partially counterbalance Co2 emissions, reduce external inputs, improve soil life and plant health, and thereby make plants more drought/heat resistant. Unfortunately, this is currently going on a very low scale, still being somewhat experimental but I believe that the potential is huge especially considering that land use effects on climate change might have been underestimated in the past...

Coffee Drinker

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #146 on: February 28, 2018, 08:43:40 AM »
Biggest threat to humanity is still an asteroid impact or super volcano with collapse of agriculture.

Avalonian

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #147 on: February 28, 2018, 09:08:51 AM »
Biggest threat to humanity is still an asteroid impact or super volcano with collapse of agriculture.

Depends how you assign threat. If those happen, they'd be a very big problem... but the odds of humans ever seeing either are pretty tiny. Climate change on the other hand is perhaps less dramatic, but likely to be nearly as disruptive in the long term, and is practically guaranteed; in my books, that makes it a far bigger threat.

oren

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #148 on: February 28, 2018, 11:58:16 AM »
Biggest threat to humanity is still an asteroid impact or super volcano with collapse of agriculture.

Depends how you assign threat. If those happen, they'd be a very big problem... but the odds of humans ever seeing either are pretty tiny. Climate change on the other hand is perhaps less dramatic, but likely to be nearly as disruptive in the long term, and is practically guaranteed; in my books, that makes it a far bigger threat.
Very well said.

Archimid

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Re: Near Term Human Extinction
« Reply #149 on: February 28, 2018, 01:42:36 PM »
How many years with 300 billion worth of natural disasters can the US withstand? What about other countries?

 If the Arctic holds 30 more years, then global warming alone will make years like 2017 happen again and worse. That alone leads to a dimished capacity to withstand and rebuild, that eventually leads to the end of society as we know it. Can we make a transition where loses are minimized and nuclear facilities protected? Sure, but there will be severe loses, specially since we are making the transition blind, without preparation, pretending it is all a hoax or a problem for 2100.

If the Arctic doesn’t hold, then 2017 will look like a walk in the park.  I really don’t want to talk about it in depth, but think of a giant cyclone fed by meandering jet streams, that can last weeks or months in one place. Monsters like that positioned along the east coast of the US could make it impossible to service nuclear facilities. Specially if California is dealing with deadly heat waves and the midwest with a dust bowl. At the same time, Canada and Siberia would probably will probably take turns with wildfires that make the ones over the last few years look like camp fires, and episodes of ferocious, not too cold, snow storms, followed by floods.

Basically, what we are already seeing, but all over the world, every year and whatever new things the transition to a new earth with just one frozen pole will bring.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.