next made-in-China product: global warming?

[Ayatollah So]

Hey, if you can find a way to stop volcanic eruptions, knock yerself out. I'm sure you'll make a million bucks, even if nobody cares about the CO2 effects.

Meanwhile...

Maybe in addition to researching alternative energy sources, we should research agricultural adaptations to warmer (and wetter, in some spots, drier in others) climates. And research dike-building around coastal cities. Etc.

 

[Jesus Civs]

One volcanic eruption emits more C02 then the world gives out in one year. What are we going to do plug up the volcanes and make sure they never erupt?

Yes. We could pour loads of concrete into them!

I read an article in this week's New Scientist and it talks about the lenght of time that CO2 stays in the atmosphere and from there they went to talk about how long this global warming will last.

They said it may well last upto 100,000 years, which means delaying the next ice age considerable. This undermines the stability of the planet greatly.

Another thing they talked about was the ocean's ability to absorb CO2. The more the ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere above its normal rate, the more acidic it becomes, therefore it cannot absorb as much CO2.

The effect of this means it all gets to stay in the atmosphere and we get another gear in the global warming race!

 

[Bill3000]

Don't worry, the United States will still be the CO2/Global Warming bad guy, even when China overtakes us, cause, as Kyoto pointed out, its okay if its China or India. Hell, even if the EU overtook us, we'd still be the bad guys.

To be honest, most of the criticism of the US rejecting the Kyoto treaty that I've seen is over in-principal stuff, rather than the US being the bad guys. A crappy treaty doesn't mean that you can't agree on the issue in principal, after all.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

One volcanic eruption emits more C02 then the world gives out in one year. What are we going to do plug up the volcanes and make sure they never erupt?

But they also emit huge amounts of sulphates which tend to act as a cooling agent through the creation of cloud cover. It appears as though volcanos are net coolers.

 

[El_Machinae]

One volcanic eruption emits more C02 then the world gives out in one year. What are we going to do plug up the volcanes and make sure they never erupt?

This is very, very not true.

 

[Slaughter]

China is just a big problem waiting a solution. A Nuclear Solution, I might say. Nothing good ever came outta China since Fireworks, anyway.