Rising Ocean Levels?

[Doc Dan]

https://science.psu.edu/news-and-events ... 8-2001.htm

I think the message is clear, plants make the earth habitable for humans and other species. We need to stop deforestation, plant trees and other air scrubbing plants, and they can naturally protect our planet. Let them do what they do best.

As you can see from this study, plants reduced the temperatures by removing green house gases, cleaning the air, and producing oxygen.

[curlyhairedboy]

To my understanding, the big issue with carbon is less that it's there in our atmosphere - there's a carbon cycle that plants and animals participate in to mutual benefit. Trees capture carbon to grow, then decompose or are burned to release it. It's a closed loop.

However, a lot of the problems emerge when we extract additional carbon from the ground and add it to the cycle. There's been some extinctions in Earth's past history where volcanic activity happened to uncover and burn coal reserves in the ground.

Fortunately, there are new technologies that can create carbon fuels from existing carbon rather than making carbon fuels from additional underground reserves. The future does not have to be carbon free, but it should at least aim to be carbon neutral - carbon used should equal carbon returned, with no additional carbon added.



Regardless of our path, the planet will be fine. Life as we know it on this planet will change significantly, that much we see already.

Private companies are already making plans based on climate change, and if it wasn't real, they wouldn't waste money getting ready for it. Beyond public interests, private enterprise already trusts the data enough to take it into account.

The time to act was 50 years ago. Today, if we not only halted, but reversed carbon emissions, we'd still be in for a wild ride. If it continues to be slow, that's fortunate as it helps us to ease into the necessary enormous population upheavals. If it's fast, there's going to be a lot of conflict and a lot of suffering.

[JD Spydo]

I'm very satisfied and frankly intrigued by many of the comments you guys have contributed. I do believe that rising ocean levels are in our future based on some things I've learned about. But whether they do or don't may not have a lot of bearing on our overall future on the planet.

For instance there was a time many centuries ago that ocean & sea levels were much lower. Many deep sea archaeologists have discovered entire cities off some shores that were at one time part of the land above the water level. Many of these cities, statues and artifacts that have been discovered in some cases over 300 feet below where our ocean levels are at now. With that being said I guess you have to surmise that the earth is in constant change to one degree or another. I still think that a polar shift might be what's on the immediate horizon>> but that's just a guess based on some of my own gut feelings. I do believe it's highly evident that there have been polar shifts in the past.

But it's still hard for me to believe in an overall global warming when parts of the globe are actually getting colder. Some parts of Europe just this year are having one of the coldest Spring Times in recorded history,. And I see it with my own eyes here in the continental USA.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Doc, do you think this is a good technological fix or could create new problems and side -effects?

There are a few advocates of humankind making "artificial manmade super plants" that are not genetically modified biology but rather, truly synthetic artificial non-biological plants that are made from "dry" strong materials like silicates, carbon composites, and even aluminum and iron/steel, that would function like a natural biological plant but be more durable: Imagine a self replicating "stone plant" made from materials like sapphire (aluminum oxide) and iron. It would use molecular extraction tools to extract the cheap and abundant iron and aluminum and oxygen from rock and dirt, which is everywhere, and then it would form solar electric cells and batteries within itself, and would spread and grow all over the Earth, under programmed human control.

These man made "gem and metal plants" would then be programmed to take excess and unwanted materials from the air and could also manufacture goods human beings desire.

While this sounds good, can you and others here see great potential dangers and downsides to this?

In 1956, Scientific American published an article/paper by Edward Moore, he mentioned the idea of artificial living plants that would float on the world's oceans and waterways, and would use mechanisms to extract minerals from seawater and energy from the sun and carbon and hydrogen from the air and form strong polymers and metal alloys and reproduce.

"In a 1956 article in Scientific American, he proposed "Artificial Living Plants," which would be floating factories that could create copies of themselves. They could be programmed to perform some function (extracting fresh water, harvesting minerals from seawater) for an investment that would be relatively small compared to the huge returns from the exponentially growing numbers of factories. " (From Wikipedia)

[Mad Mac]

In the meantime, what if instead of tariffs on imports, we require manufacturers to be certified "green" for lack of a better term. In other word, to sell your goods into this country you would have to be inspected randomly, unannounced to prove you are meeting all the same labor laws, OSHA, EPA etc requirements US manufacturers are required to meet.

We may not be able to make other countries change their laws, but we can require foreign companies to comply with our regulations to sell here. It would also level the playing field because they would have to raise their prices to pay for all the compliance measures and that would make US goods more price competitive.