British researchers monitoring the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf say that only about 12 miles now connect the chunk of ice to the rest of the continent.http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/06/508536211/a-really-big-crack-in-an-antarctic-ice-shelf-just-got-bigger
"After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km [11 miles] during the second half of December 2016," wrote Adrian Luckman in a statement Thursday by the MIDAS Project, which is monitoring changes in the area.
The crack in question has been growing for years and is now a total of roughly 70 miles long. When the fissure reaches the far side of the shelf, an iceberg the size of Delaware will float off, leaving the Larsen C 10 percent smaller.
...
Ice shelves are important because they provide a buffer between the sea and the ice that sits on land, in this case on the Antarctic Peninsula. Without a healthy ice shelf, water from melting glaciers can flow straight to the sea, raising the sea level.
It's normal for the front of an ice shelf to crack and break off, known as calving. But it's unusual for that to happen faster than the ice shelf can refreeze.
Some scientists worry that the missing piece will destabilize the whole ice shelf. A smaller ice shelf, Larsen B, completely splintered in a little over a month in 2002, a process that started with a similar crack. Another ice shelf, Larsen A, had disintegrated a few years before.
"Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B," wrote Luckman.
"If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed," he told BBC News.
...
Wish we had a second Earth to run climate change experiments on, instead of this one.
Wish we had a second Earth to run climate change experiments on, instead of this one.
Venus
And of course these are measurements of extent, not volume. Some one must be measuring this.
And of course these are measurements of extent, not volume. Some one must be measuring this.
Nasa had a nice animation recently showing the decline in older, thicker ice over recent decades. The result is significant reduction in volume.
Of course, it's always good to point out that the melting of such ice does not lead to sea-level rise.
Of course, it's always good to point out that the melting of such ice does not lead to sea-level rise.
Not when that sea ice is holding land based, below sea level glacial ice sheets from disappearing into the sea, read Greenland and the WAIS.
I'm not sure why people are responding to my post with things loss of arctic sea ice does cause. I neither said nor implied that it had no effects; merely that it was worth pointing out that it does not have that particular effect.
And of course these are measurements of extent, not volume. Some one must be measuring this.
I'm not sure why people are responding to my post with things loss of arctic sea ice does cause. I neither said nor implied that it had no effects; merely that it was worth pointing out that it does not have that particular effect.
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
For example, in March 2008, a poll of Alberta’s 51,000 geologists...
There’s something special — and very counterintuitive — about the Arctic Ocean.
Unlike in the Atlantic or Pacific, where the water gets colder as it gets deeper, the Arctic is upside-down. The water gets warmer as it gets deeper. The reason is that warm, salty Atlantic-originating water that flows into the Arctic from the south is more dense, and so it nestles beneath a colder, fresher surface layer that is often capped by floating sea ice. This state of “stratification” makes the Arctic Ocean unique, and it means that waters don’t simply grow colder as you travel farther north — they also become inverted.
But in a paper in Science released Thursday, a team of Arctic scientists say this fundamental trait is now changing across a major part of the Arctic, in conjunction with a changing climate.
“I first went to the Arctic in about 1969, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Eddy Carmack, a researcher with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and one of the study’s authors. “Back then we just assumed the Arctic is as it is and it will be that way forevermore. So what we’re seeing in the last decade or so is quite remarkable.”
In a large area that they term the eastern Eurasian basin — north of the Laptev and East Siberian seas, which in turn are north of Siberia — the researchers found that warm Atlantic water is increasingly pushing to the surface and melting floating sea ice. This mixing, they say, has not only contributed to thinner ice and more areas of open water that used to be ice covered, but it also is changing the state of Arctic waters in a process the study terms “Atlantification” — and these characteristics could soon spread across more of the Arctic ocean, changing it fundamentally.
The study was led by Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, in collaboration with a team of 15 researchers from the United States, Canada, Russia, Poland, Germany and Norway.
...
Those changes are occurring across about a quarter of the deep Arctic Ocean (the part that lies out beyond the continental shelves that encircle it).
One key feature of the change is that a middle layer of the ocean in the Arctic dubbed the “halocline” — a cold layer below the fresher surface where the water’s saltiness increases rapidly — is thinning and weakening. The halocline had previously served as a cap, preventing mixing between the cold fresh surface waters and warmer, saltier Atlantic waters — in essence preserving the distinct layers in the ocean. But that cap is now growing thinner, the research suggests.
The result is that at least half of the sea ice decline in recent years in this region can be attributed to warm ocean waters climbing up from the depths, rather than to the warming atmosphere.
...
“This whole thing about the ocean’s role in sea ice retreat, it used to be minimal, but as sea ice retreats it’s one of those positive feedback mechanisms,” Carmack said. “And we’re talking a lot of heat in the Atlantic layer, it could melt all the ice in the Arctic if it were to pop up to the surface.”
...
[...] Diarists have keenly chronicled the comings and goings of cherry blossoms for centuries—records from Kyoto, the old capital, date back 1,200 years. This precious, ancient data set reveals a disturbing trend: in recent decades, the blossoms have emerged much sooner than they once did.
From its most recent peak in 1829, when full bloom could be expected to come on April 18th, the typical full-flowering date has drifted earlier and earlier. Since 1970, it has usually landed on April 7th. The cause is little mystery. In deciding when to show their shoots, cherry trees rely on temperatures in February and March. Yasuyuki Aono and Keiko Kazui, two Japanese scientists, have demonstrated that the full-blossom date for Kyoto’s cherry trees can predict March temperatures to within 0.1°C. A warmer planet makes for warmer Marches. The usual full-blooming date in Washington, DC, whose cherry-blossom festival is a relative newcomer (it launched in 1927), has also moved up by five days since the first recorded date in 1921.
...
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
I love looking at the comments. Someone actually was defending the 51k geologist claim which would be 1% of the Alberta population.
Then there is this...
"Wow. Great article. Especially the part of how millions of years ago the dinosaurs had much more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and warmer temperatures and yet there was no religious doomsday." Wow, kinda makes ya think, huh?
Doesn't the fingerprint left by the specific isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere indicate that the increase is largely due to "old" carbon i.e. oil, gas, coal?
I love looking at the comments. Someone actually was defending the 51k geologist claim which would be 1% of the Alberta population.
Then there is this...
"Wow. Great article. Especially the part of how millions of years ago the dinosaurs had much more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and warmer temperatures and yet there was no religious doomsday." Wow, kinda makes ya think, huh?
I would argue that humans are not adapted to the time of the dinosaurs. The Earth and life will survive but there is a significant chance that humans will not survive the change between environments. Even if we do, we are still talking about monumental death and devastation. Don't worry, the bugs will survive though.
There's also the faint young sun paradox to consider (the sun is giving off more heat now than it used to), plus the fact that sea levels were several dozens of meters higher than they are today.
Once the oceans have boiled away, that's it for complex life. Which will probably happen within 1 billion years (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaway-greenhouse-global-warming-venus-ocean-climate-science/). So that's the upper limit, without moving the planet or moving off of the planet.
Once the oceans have boiled away, that's it for complex life. Which will probably happen within 1 billion years (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaway-greenhouse-global-warming-venus-ocean-climate-science/). So that's the upper limit, without moving the planet or moving off of the planet.Okay, so adjust my numbers to 200 and 20 instead of 1000 and 100. It's still more than an order of magnitude to work with.
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
Climate change: Learning to think like a geologist
Paul MacRae, June 24, 2008
Most geologists aren’t part of Al Gore’s
“100 per cent consensus” of scientists that humans are the principal cause of global warming and that we have to take drastic steps to deal with it.
For example, in March 2008, a poll of Alberta’s 51,000 geologists found that only 26 per cent believe humans are the main cause of global warming. Forty-five per cent believe both humans and nature are causing climate change, and 68 per cent don’t think the debate is “over,” as Gore would like the public to believe.1
The position of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists is quite clear:
The earth’s climate is constantly changing owing to natural variability in earth processes. Natural climate variability over recent geological time is greater than reasonable estimates of potential human-induced greenhouse gas changes. Because no tool is available to test the supposition of human-induced climate change and the range of natural variability is so great, there is no discernible human influence on global climate at this time.2
In the last century, growth in human population has increased energy use. This has contributed additional carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases to the atmosphere. Although the AAPG membership is divided on the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO2 has on recent and potential global temperature increases, AAPG believes that expansion of scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate is important.
Why do geologists tend to be skeptics? Is it because they are, as Gore and the “consensus” charge, in the pay of the oil industry? Perhaps, but there may be other, more scientific reasons. As Peter Sciaky, a retired geologist, writes:
A geologist has a much longer perspective. There are several salient points about our earth that the greenhouse theorists overlook (or are not aware of). The first of these is that the planet has never been this cool. There is abundant fossil evidence to support this — from plants of the monocot order (such as palm trees) in the rocks of Cretaceous Age in Greenland and warm water fossils in sedimentary rocks of the far north. This is hardly the first warming period in the earth’s history. The present global warming is hardly unique. It is arriving pretty much “on schedule.”
One thing, for sure, is that the environmental community has always spurned any input from geologists (many of whom are employed by the petroleum industry). No environmental conference, such as Kyoto, has ever invited a geologist, a paleontologist, a paleo-climatologist. It would seem beneficial for any scientific investigatory to include such scientific disciplines.
Among all my liberal and leftist friends (and I am certainly one of those), I know not a one who does not accept that global warming is an event caused by mankind. I do not know one geologist who believes that global warming is not taking place. I do not know a single geologist who believes that it is a man-made phenomenon.3 Finally, a retired scientist who emailed me after reading one of my climate columns in the Times Colonist observed: “Most of my geology friends are skeptics — but it has become politically incorrect to voice such views.”
Current climate conditions are not unusual
Geologists tend to question the anthropogenic theory because their education tells them that current climate conditions are not unusually warm, based on either the past few thousand years, or the past few hundred thousand years, or the past tens of millions of years, or even the past hundreds of millions of years.
Figure 1. Temperatures since 1860. Source: R.M. CarterBit of an outdated graph. Here's temperature for several of the most important data sets up to 2013:
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/temp-since-1860-carter.jpg)
Temperatures since 1860. Source: R.M. Carter.
It’s possible to look at a graph of the past century and conclude: “Oh, my God, the planet is burning up!” After all, the temperature has been rising, more or less, since the 1850’s, with a dip from the 1940’s to the mid-1970’s. The chart to the right shows temperature and carbon dioxide levels from 1860 to now.4
But what if we take a longer view?
That presents quite a different picture. Only 400 years ago, the planet was quite cold, a period known as the Little Ice Age (roughly 1300-1850). Before that, though, during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 1000-1300), the planet was a degree or two Celsius warmer than today, to the point where Greenland was warm enough for settlement by the Vikings. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly a natural occurrences since industrial carbon emissions weren’t yet a factor. Figure 1 is a graph of the last thousand years based on work by climatologist H.H. Lamb.
Temperatures over the last 1,000 years: H.H. Lamb
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/anti-hockey-stick-image.jpg)
Figure 1. Lamb graph of temperature over the past 1,000 years
Curiously, the temperature graph preferred by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the famous “hockey stick,” smooths out the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age to create an impression that twentieth-century warming is “the warmest in 1,000 years” (Figure 2). Faced with the flaws in this graph, the IPCC has since dropped it and now claims the climate is the warmest in 400 years, which isn’t that impressive given that we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age.
IPCC hockey stick graph
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/hockey-stick.jpg)
Figure 2. IPCC hockey stick graph of the past 1,000 years
Over the past 4,000 years, the planet has also experienced warm and cool periods, again quite naturally. In fact, warm times seem to recur on a cycle of about 1,000-1,500 years, as Figure 3 shows.5 The 20th century’s warming appeared pretty much in line with this millennial cycle.
Warming every 1,000 years
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/warming-in-cycles-carter1.jpg)
Figure 3. Warming every 1,000 years or so. Source: R.M. Carter
Going back 8,000 years or so, we encounter the Holocene Optimum, which was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer than today’s temperatures — naturally.
Let’s expand our view once again, to the past 450,000 years (Figure 4). What do we see? A roller-coaster ride of glacials (cold times) and interglacials (warm times), on a cycle of about 100,000 years.
A glacial cycle every 100,000 years
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/450000-with-green-line.jpg)
Figure 4. A glacial cycle every 100,000 years
By the way, this is the chart, based on ice core readings taken in Antarctica, that Gore uses in his film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore doesn’t try to explain why this roller coaster has occurred,
since if changes in carbon dioxide levels were causing the cycle of glaciations and interglaciations, as Gore implies, then the logical question is what caused the changes in carbon dioxide levels?Wait... Didn't he basically already admit that we are releasing large quantities of CO2 when he posted the Carter graph? But for the explanation, see below.
Gore doesn’t say, because to do so would destroy his case, but here’s what science says: temperature changes precede carbon dioxide level changes by several hundred years, and temperature changes are caused by changes in solar intensity called the Milankovitch Cycles, not carbon dioxide. The Milankovitch Cycles, based on the earth’s changing position in relation to the sun, appear to be the ultimate drivers of climate over the past few million years.
The four previous interglacials were warmer than today’s
Another interesting observation that Gore doesn’t make because it would destroy his case: the four previous interglacials shown on his chart are all warmer than today’s interglacial (the green line in Figure 4 shows how today’s average temperature compares with that of the three previous interglacials).
Also, note that the interglacial peaks are very steep. Before an interglacial becomes a glacial, warming occurs relatively rapidly (if the warming was slow, the curve would be more rounded), and cooling also occurs rapidly.
If our planet is near the top of its interglacial cycle,We aren't, see above.
then we’d be getting — as part of a natural process — the rapid warming climatologists are so alarmed about.
And, we can expect rapid cooling when the balance tips (the steep downward slope). To worry about global warming at this stage in our planet’s geological history seems silly from the geologist’s perspective.
As further evidence that we may be near the high point of the climate cycle,
the planet has not warmed since 1998,
even though carbon dioxide levels have increased steadily. We may well be heading into a new glaciation while spending billions of dollars on reducing carbon emissions on the false premise that the planet is getting too warm.
During the glacials, much of the northern hemisphere (and Antarctica, of course) is covered with ice two and three kilometres thick. Within our roughly two-million-year-old ice age, the glacials last about 80,000 years. The warmer interglacials, which make global civilization possible, last only 10,000-20,000 years. Our interglacial, the Holocene, began about 13,000 years ago, so we’re well past the half-way point in this cycle of warming and looking at a new glacial in the next few centuries or millennia.
Warming is, therefore, from the geologist’s point of view, the least of our problems.
Temperatures have been falling for 65 million years
Suppose we take an even longer geological view: the last 65 million years. Here we see a temperature graph that looks like a double-diamond ski slope: the planet has been gradually but steadily cooling during this time (see Figure 5).6) Note how the climate has seesawed in the past two million years, and how close the tips of the warming periods are to the point where glaciations return.
Global temperatures falling
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/glacials-and-interglacials.jpg)
Figure 5. Global temperature falling for 70 million years
The temperature 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were obliterated by a comet, was about 22 degrees Celsius; today, the planet’s average temperature is about 12 degrees Celsius.
Carbon dioxide levels have also been falling over this time, but much more rapidly than the temperature (which should, in all but the most die-hard “consensus” climatologists’ minds, destroy the idea that carbon dioxide drives temperature).is bullshit. (https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate.htm) It's like a child's understanding of climate change. Of course, the relationship between CO2 and temperature is not linear as many other factors play a role in driving or influencing climate change (such as changes in solar irradiance, other GHGs, the earth's albedo (including ice cover changes due to glaciation, reconfiguration of the continents, and uplift, cloud cover, desertification, ...), changes in the biosphere, and so on).
For most of this time on our planet there were no polar ice caps and, yes, the sea levels were many metres higher than today. Humanity can deal with higher sea levels; we’ll have a lot more trouble coping with three-kilometre-high walls of glacial ice.
There are certain advantages to living in a coastal area; there's a lot of opportunity for industry and trade, and the climate is generally milder because the ocean is a big heat store. In the U.S. "coastal and ocean activities, such as marine transportation of goods, offshore energy drilling, resource extraction, fish cultivation, recreation, and tourism are integral to the nation's economy, generating 58% of the national gross domestic product (GDP)". Population densities in coastal areas are about three times higher than the global average. In the U.S., approximately 25 million people live in an area vulnerable to coastal flooding. And of course there are more and more people, with more and more money to spend worldwide. So I am not surprised that there would be an increase in coastal development. And I doubt that most wealthy investors are young enough that they are highly concerned about events that will start becoming important decades from now.
In the short run, beach front property (for example) is probably not such a bad investment. People like the beach, and that's unlikely to change any time soon, especially as the climate is getting warmer. In the long run, you might end up with wet feet, but there's plenty of time to sell between now and then.
[...]
I live in the Netherlands, where 2m of sea level rise is a really big deal. We might be able to adapt to one or two meters, because we are relatively rich, but probably not to the next 5 meters that will come from the likely melting of the Greenland ice sheet and parts of Antarctica over the subsequent centuries. The rise in sea level doesn't just stop after a hundred years. At some point, raising your dikes a bit more just doesn't do the trick anymore.
And what about the 200 million people who are predicted to be displaced in Bangladesh, a region of the world that is already overcrowded, with two nuclearized countries that have consistently been on the edge of war for years now? When I was last active in this debate, this was named by top U.S. military officials as one of the biggest threats to long term global stability.
And of course, we've all heard about the "sinking" island nations in the pacific that stand to lose their entire country. Also, keep in mind that the oceans are not flat, and as a result sea level rise can be more dramatic in one place than another.
And it's not just that the sea will encroach on our coasts; rising sea levels can seep into and contaminate freshwater aquifers that contain most of the worlds drinkable water, making them saltier. It'll change soil chemistry.
And sea level rise is not the only danger imposed by meltwater; the inpour of fresh water from the ice shelves (and smaller glaciers, and even the melting of sea ice) will make the Arctic surface water less saline, which will likely weaken the AMOC (which is driven in part by differences between deep ocean and surface salinity, and in part by temperature differences) and disrupt one of earth's major processes of heat redistribution (which is largely responsible for Europe's mild climate), which can have unpredictable effects (a similar disruption of the AMOC is implicated in Dansgaard-Oeschger events, rapid climate swings at the end of the last glacial period - though these are not thought to be likely to repeat themselves).
Finally, let’s look at the very long-range picture: earth over the past 600 million years (Figure 6). Again, we see fluctuations of temperature but, overall, the planet has been much warmer (and with much higher levels of carbon dioxide) than today, and yet life managed to evolve and flourish.
CO2 and temperature over 600 million years
(http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/co2-levels-over-time1.jpg)
Figure 6. Temperature and CO2 levels over 600 million years
The ‘temperature’ record is a hand-drawn schematic derived from the work of Chris Scotese, and the CO2 graph is from a model that uses tectonic and chemical weathering histories to estimate CO2 levels (Berner 1994; Berner and Kothavala, 2001). In neither case is there an abundance of measured data.
[...]
Scotese is an expert in reconstructions of continental positions through time and in creating his ‘temperature reconstruction’ he is basically following an old-fashioned idea (best exemplified by Frakes et al’s 1992 textbook) that the planet has two long-term stable equilibria (‘warm’ or ‘cool’) which it has oscillated between over geologic history. This kind of heuristic reconstruction comes from the qualitative geological record which gives indications of glaciations and hothouses, but is not really adequate for quantitative reconstructions of global mean temperatures. Over the last few decades, much better geochemical proxy compilations with better dating have appeared (for instance, Royer et al (2004)) and the idea that there are only two long-term climate states has long fallen by the wayside.
However, since this graphic has long been a favorite of the climate dismissives, many different versions do the rounds, mostly forwarded by people who have no idea of the provenance of the image or the lack of underlying data, or the updates that have occurred. Indeed, the 2004 version is the most common, having been given a boost by Monckton in 2008 and many others. Most recently, Patrick Moore declared that this was his favorite graph.
The planet didn’t experience “oblivion,” as the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, suggested at the Bali conference on climate change in 2007.
It’s curious that not one of the thousands of so-called climate experts at that conference saw fit to educate Ki-Moon on the geological facts before (or, apparently, after) his speech.
Geologists are fully aware that our planet is not unusually warm at the moment, it is unusually cold.
They also know that carbon dioxide is not the villain when it comes to warming — for most of earth’s history, temperature and carbon dioxide have shown only the most tenuous relationship, as Figure 6 shows.
The correlation today of rising carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures that worries climate scientists so much is likely just coincidence.
Overall, as Lamb observed,
“Seemingly objective statistics may produce a variety of verdicts which are actually arbitrary in that they depend on the choice of observation period.”7 Alarmists like Al Gore have chosen to focus on the past century, and therefore they worry about warming. Geologists take a longer time-frame and know that the planet has been much warmer in the past without “thermageddon,” that we are in an ice age, and that the biggest future problem we face is not warming but cooling.Yes, and most other climate scientists predicted warming (https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm). I think I know why he picked Lamb here (other than his old graph); he died in 1997, so there is no way for him to now speak out against climate change denial. Although (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/hubert-lamb):
He was well acquainted with the pioneering works of Svante Arrhenius in Sweden, and G.S. Callendar in England, and wrote in 1997 that, 'it is now widely thought that the undoubted warming of the world climate in the twentieth century is attributable to the increased concentration in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases' 2. However, he always referred back to the instrumental record, and his attitude to greenhouse warming remained guarded.Also, I have zero doubt that, if one were to ask any random sample of his present day colleagues at the CRU, they would unanimously accept the consensus that CO2 causes climate change. And they would not be kind to the deniers who stole their private emails and harassed many of them and tried to destroy their careers, to the point where Phil Jones admitted contemplating suicide (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html). Of course, that happened in 2009, after this blog was posted.
Who’s right, the geologists or the computer-based climate scientists?
There is no certainty in science (a fact that “consensus” climate science seems to have forgotten).
However, if we think like a geologist rather than a computer climate specialist, we know that today’s climate is well within past natural variability
— for example, previous interglacials and even previous warm cycles within this interglacial were warmer than today.See above.
In other words, the record of past climate history makes it very likely that today’s climate change is based on natural, cyclical factors, not human factors,No it doesn't. (https://skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm)
and that what we need to worry about is a planet that is colder, not warmer.
Notes
1 Gordon Jaremko, “Causes of climate change varied: poll.” Edmonton Journal, March 6, 2008. ?
2 L.C. Gerhard and B.M. Hanson, “Ad hoc committee on global climate issues: Annual report.” AAPG Bulletin, vol. 84, issue 4 (April 2000), pp. 466-471. Available at http://aapgbull.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/4/466. ?
3 Quoted in Alexander Cockburn, “Dissidents against dogma.” Counterpunch, June 9/10, 2007. Available at http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06092007.html. ?
4 It’s interesting to note that the rise in temperature from about 1900 to 1940 is just as steep as the rise from the 1970’s to now, with much lower carbon dioxide levels, so presumably that rise was “natural,” but, according to Gore et al., the current, similar rise must be human-made. The chart comes from R.M. Carter’s “The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change.” ?
5 Graph comes from R.M. Carter, “The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change.” For details on the millennial cycle, see S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. ?
6 From Brian S. John, editor, The Winters of the World: Earth Under the Ice Ages. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973, p. 183. ?
7 H.H. Lamb, Climate, History, and the Modern World. New York: Methuen, 1982, p. 16. ?
Model projections and observations comparison page
Filed under:
Climate modelling Climate Science Instrumental Record
— gavin @ 11 April 2017
We should have done this ages ago, but better late than never!
We have set up a permanent page to host all of the model projection-observation comparisons that we have monitored over the years. This includes comparisons to early predictions for global mean surface temperature from the 1980’s as well as more complete projections from the CMIP3 and CMIP5. The aim is to maintain this annually, or more often if new datasets or versions become relevant.
We are also happy to get advice on stylistic choices or variations that might make the graphs easier to comprehend or be more accurate – feel free to suggest them in the comments below (since the page itself will be updated over time, it doesn’t have comments associated with it).
On a predictably gorgeous South Florida afternoon, Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason sat in his office overlooking the white-linen restaurants of this affluent seaside community and wondered when climate change would bring it all to an end. He figured it would involve a boat.
When Cason first started worrying about sea-level rise, he asked his staff to count not just how much coastline the city had (47 miles) or value of the property along that coast ($3.5 billion). He also told them to find out how many boats dock inland from the bridges that span the city’s canals (302). What matters, he guessed, will be the first time a mast fails to clear the bottom of one of those bridges because the water level had risen too far.
“These boats are going to be the canary in the mine,” said Cason, who became mayor in 2011 after retiring from the U.S. foreign service. “When the boats can’t go out, the property values go down.”
Jim Cason, mayor of Coral Gables, in his office. He worries that rising insurance costs, reluctant lenders or skittish foreign buyers could hurt home prices well before sea-level rise gets worse.
If property values start to fall, Cason said, banks could stop writing 30-year mortgages for coastal homes, shrinking the pool of able buyers and sending prices lower still. Those properties make up a quarter of the city’s tax base; if that revenue fell, the city would struggle to provide the services that make it such a desirable place to live, causing more sales and another drop in revenue.
And all of that could happen before the rising sea consumes a single home.
As President Donald Trump proposes dismantling federal programs aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, officials and residents in South Florida are grappling with the risk that climate change could drag down housing markets. Relative sea levels in South Florida are roughly four inches higher now than in 1992. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts sea levels will rise as much as three feet in Miami by 2060. By the end of the century, according to projections by Zillow, some 934,000 existing Florida properties, worth more than $400 billion, are at risk of being submerged.
The impact is already being felt in South Florida. Tidal flooding now predictably drenches inland streets, even when the sun is out, thanks to the region’s porous limestone bedrock. Saltwater is creeping into the drinking water supply. The area’s drainage canals rely on gravity; as oceans rise, the water utility has had to install giant pumps to push water out to the ocean.
The effects of climate-driven price drops could ripple across the economy, and eventually force the federal government to decide what is owed to people whose home values are ruined by climate change.
Sean Becketti, the chief economist at Freddie Mac, warned in a report last year of a housing crisis for coastal areas more severe than the Great Recession, one that could spread through banks, insurers and other industries. And, unlike the recession, there’s no hope of a bounce back in property values.
...
“Nobody thinks it’s coming as fast as it is,” said Dan Kipnis, the chairman of Miami Beach’s Marine and Waterfront Protection Authority, who has been trying to find a buyer for his home in Miami Beach for almost a year, and has already lowered his asking price twice.
Some South Florida homeowners, stuck in a twist on the prisoner’s dilemma, are deciding to sell now—not necessarily because they want to move, but because they’re worried their neighbors will sell first.
...
Marla Martin, a spokeswoman for Florida’s association of realtors, said that while “of course climate change is on the radar for our members,” she hadn’t heard of clients selling homes because of sea-level rise.
“I think the scientists are still trying to get a handle on it,” she wrote in an email.
...
Russo says if she knew in 2015 what she knows now, she wouldn’t have purchased the house. People buying in her neighborhood today are probably just as clueless as she once was, she guesses. “I would bet money that the realtors are not telling them.”
Realtors in Florida face no legal requirement to warn potential buyers about those flood risks. Albert Slap, president of Coastal Risk Consulting, which helps homeowners and governments measure their exposure to flooding, said he thinks that will soon change: Just as the public demanded mandatory disclosure of asbestos and lead paint, people will insist on the same disclosure if a house suffers regular floods.
And when that happens, Slap said, many Florida home prices will tumble.
“Anybody in these floody areas, if they disclose to a buyer, the buyer probably won’t buy that property,” said Slap, whose company is doing work for the city of Miami Beach. “That’s going to drive the value down to zero, well before water is up to their front door.”
Slap said the answer isn’t a mass retreat from the coast, at least not yet, but rather a version of battlefield triage: figuring out which homes are worth saving, through elevation or other means, and which can’t be helped.
Stephanie Russo at her home in Key Largo. She said that if she knew how badly the area would flood when she was looking at the house, she wouldn't have bought it.
“The next black swan is the failure of housing finance to take climate change into account,” he said. “There will be a large number of homes that will lose substantial value, and will default on mortgages, if nothing is done to help them.”
...
Linear not only doesn't maximize the change, as you yourself just stated a larger number for quadratic, but it also fits the trend seen in cherry blossoms in Japan, which was posted a couple pages ago.To clarify, the linear and quadratic trends were no mt significantly different and both would have been rounded to 5 days.
So, it took me the entire day, and this may the last time I ever do this, but I went over this denialist wordvomit line by line:
Survey here (http://www.apega.ca/Environment/reports/ClimateChangesurveyreport.pdf).
So, it took me the entire day, and this may the last time I ever do this, but I went over this denialist wordvomit line by line:
Wow. Just wow. Well done!
QuoteSurvey here (http://www.apega.ca/Environment/reports/ClimateChangesurveyreport.pdf).
For some reason, the link does not work for me.
Regarding that leveling of temperature from 1940 to 1970, might it be due, at least in part, to WWII?
Isn't winter approaching down there?
I love the x-axis.
(http://i.imgur.com/6Drb6HU.png)
I like the info it gives... that emissions have stabilized and we aren't seeing a continued exponential growth trend. It just needs a better indicator of the change in scale (and 2010).I love the x-axis.
(http://i.imgur.com/6Drb6HU.png)
Who in the world would think to make a graph that way?
I like the info it gives... that emissions have stabilized and we aren't seeing a continued exponential growth trend. It just needs a better indicator of the change in scale (and 2010).I love the x-axis.
(http://i.imgur.com/6Drb6HU.png)
Who in the world would think to make a graph that way?
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
That isn't the info it gives, that's the info it very misleadingly suggests.I like the info it gives... that emissions have stabilized and we aren't seeing a continued exponential growth trend. It just needs a better indicator of the change in scale (and 2010).I love the x-axis.
(http://i.imgur.com/6Drb6HU.png)
Who in the world would think to make a graph that way?
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Well, here's a handful of us who were not misled.That isn't the info it gives, that's the info it very misleadingly suggests.I like the info it gives... that emissions have stabilized and we aren't seeing a continued exponential growth trend. It just needs a better indicator of the change in scale (and 2010).I love the x-axis.
(http://i.imgur.com/6Drb6HU.png)
Who in the world would think to make a graph that way?
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Well, here's a handful of us who were not misled.Except, you apparently were misled, because you thought it showed that emissions have stabilized, which it doesn't actually demonstrate.
Well, here's a handful of us who were not misled.On current world emissions, they say there is a max relative error of 10% ( in the IEA report (http://wds.iea.org/wds/pdf/Worldco2_Documentation.pdf)).
But the points of werecow and others are well taken: at a cursory glance it looks like the trend has mostly flattened, so that may overemphasize the state of things when considering other periods of short-term declines/non-growth have occurred in the past.
Aside...I assume these data points are all estimated by some formula estimating historical world population, type of fuel used, amount of fuels used, etc. Complex stuff!
Well, here's a handful of us who were not misled.Except, you apparently were misled, because you thought it showed that emissions have stabilized, which it doesn't actually demonstrate.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and China will reaffirm their commitment to the Paris climate change accord this week regardless of whether the U.S. pulls out of the pact, a senior EU official said Wednesday.
...
President Donald Trump is expected to pull the U.S. from the pact, a White House official said Wednesday, though there could be “caveats in the language” announcing a withdrawal, leaving open the possibility that his decision isn’t final.
...
In a joint statement issued following talks in the Spanish capital between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy, the two countries said taking action on climatic change was a priority for both nations.
...
Oh, baby!
(http://i.imgur.com/ODvQhmf.jpg)
The Feb 12th May 1st lines seem to point to the same place. I'm a bit confused there.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/340223-epa-head-to-launch-initiative-to-challenge-climate-science
EPA head launching initiative to 'critique' climate science
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is leading a formal Trump administration program to “critique” mainstream climate change science.
Pruitt is skeptical of the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity, via greenhouse gases, is far and away the primary cause of climate change. But he’s stated he believes the climate is changing and humans have some role.
The initiative will be a “back-and-forth critique” of climate studies, using scientists recruited by the government to take different positions on the matters, Climatewire reported Friday, citing a senior administration official.
"Climate science like other fields of science is constantly changing," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in a statement. "A new, fresh, and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing."
So now the EPA is the equivalent of the former Australian Vaccination Network.
Oh, baby!
(http://i.imgur.com/ODvQhmf.jpg)
I don't have any clue if this is real. . . .Seems strnage and connot be sure that the images represent what they claim
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/warnings-of-new-arctic-explosions-at-some-700-plus-sites-in-yamal-due-to-thawing-permafrost/
Warnings of new Arctic explosions at some 700-plus sites in Yamal due to thawing permafrost
Startling details have emerged of last week's methane gas blowout on an Arctic riverbank: a sudden and deafening bang from a large explosion of the ground near a reindeer encampment, fire shooting into the sky and raging for several minutes from the eruption, huge chunks of charred permafrost blown out of the ground, and a deep, eerie crater forming, some 50 metres deep which immediately filled with water.
Reindeer and dogs fled in fright. Sand and grass was blackened by the intense heat of the eruption which was described as 'a flame of fire and then a rising pillar of smoke'.
Scientists rushed to the scene on the Yamal Peninsula to examine the site in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, amid expert warnings that many can be expected as a warming climate leads to thawing permafrost and the release of potent methane gas which has lain frozen under the surface for thousands of years.
The ground is 'swelling' at more than 700 sites on Yamal - known to locals as 'the end of the world' - have been identified as potential explosion sites, but these are seen as the tip of an iceberg.
Many are hillocks or knolls, some are pingos
I keep seeing population growth being brought up as problem, without any hint of suggesting that we should try to stop population growth itself.Countries good women's rights and access to birth control see much lower population growth.
We could do a lot towards that end, if instead of spending billions on abstinence-only programs, we spent money on sex education and birth control access. And if we otherwise didn't ban supporting organizations that were involved in sex education and reproductive healthcare.
They found that about 30 percent of all land vertebrates — mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — are experiencing declines and local population losses. In most parts of the world, mammal populations are losing 70 percent of their members because of habitat loss.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/climate/mass-extinction-animal-species.html
Beginning to be afraid it may eventually involve culling the herd
Approximately the size of Delaware, almost 2,200 square miles, Larsen C is the third gigantic ice shelf to collapse from this section of Antarctica since 1995. On average, the Larsen C iceberg will be 625 feet thick across its immense expanse, but up to 695 feet of its ice may be hidden below the water’s surface. Break out the sleds, because that’s big enough to cover all 50 states in 4.6 inches of ice.http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/antarcticas-larsen-c-ice-shelf-finally-breaks-releases-giant-iceberg/
Huge article from NY Mag (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html). It's well written. It's a review of the angles on, "Climate Change: Worse And Sooner Than You Think."Michael Mann wrote a response (https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/1470539096335621) that urges a bit less doomsaying.
I don't have any clue if this is real. . . .Seems strnage and connot be sure that the images represent what they claim
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/warnings-of-new-arctic-explosions-at-some-700-plus-sites-in-yamal-due-to-thawing-permafrost/
Warnings of new Arctic explosions at some 700-plus sites in Yamal due to thawing permafrost
Startling details have emerged of last week's methane gas blowout on an Arctic riverbank: a sudden and deafening bang from a large explosion of the ground near a reindeer encampment, fire shooting into the sky and raging for several minutes from the eruption, huge chunks of charred permafrost blown out of the ground, and a deep, eerie crater forming, some 50 metres deep which immediately filled with water.
Reindeer and dogs fled in fright. Sand and grass was blackened by the intense heat of the eruption which was described as 'a flame of fire and then a rising pillar of smoke'.
Scientists rushed to the scene on the Yamal Peninsula to examine the site in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, amid expert warnings that many can be expected as a warming climate leads to thawing permafrost and the release of potent methane gas which has lain frozen under the surface for thousands of years.
The ground is 'swelling' at more than 700 sites on Yamal - known to locals as 'the end of the world' - have been identified as potential explosion sites, but these are seen as the tip of an iceberg.
Many are hillocks or knolls, some are pingos
Interesting. Not the first time Yamal has come up (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yamal_controversy).
I'm wondering what the market is like for domestic CO2 scrubbers.
Yes, I'm sure a sustainable level of grazing cattle will definitely be enough to sequester a few hundred billion tons of carbon.
[CITATION NEEDED]Yes, I'm sure a sustainable level of grazing cattle will definitely be enough to sequester a few hundred billion tons of carbon.
Most of the carbon in the atmosphere has come from soil use change from grazing millions (billions?) of free living ruminants world wide to arable agriculture. The only way to sequester enough atmospheric carbon to make a positive difference is through grazing. It isn't my idea, btw, and it isn't enough to just stop emitting CO2.
[CITATION NEEDED]Yes, I'm sure a sustainable level of grazing cattle will definitely be enough to sequester a few hundred billion tons of carbon.
Most of the carbon in the atmosphere has come from soil use change from grazing millions (billions?) of free living ruminants world wide to arable agriculture. The only way to sequester enough atmospheric carbon to make a positive difference is through grazing. It isn't my idea, btw, and it isn't enough to just stop emitting CO2.
Scientists say that more carbon resides in soil than in the atmosphere and all plant life combined; there are 2,500 billion tons of carbon in soil, compared with 800 billion tons in the atmosphere and 560 billion tons in plant and animal life. And compared to many proposed geoengineering fixes, storing carbon in soil is simple: It’s a matter of returning carbon where it belongs.
[CITATION NEEDED]Yes, I'm sure a sustainable level of grazing cattle will definitely be enough to sequester a few hundred billion tons of carbon.
Most of the carbon in the atmosphere has come from soil use change from grazing millions (billions?) of free living ruminants world wide to arable agriculture. The only way to sequester enough atmospheric carbon to make a positive difference is through grazing. It isn't my idea, btw, and it isn't enough to just stop emitting CO2.QuoteScientists say that more carbon resides in soil than in the atmosphere and all plant life combined; there are 2,500 billion tons of carbon in soil, compared with 800 billion tons in the atmosphere and 560 billion tons in plant and animal life. And compared to many proposed geoengineering fixes, storing carbon in soil is simple: It’s a matter of returning carbon where it belongs.
http://e360.yale.edu/features/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new_weapon_in_climate_fight
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/soil-carbon-‘a-saviour’-in-locking-up-carbon/8460928
(sorry, you'll need to copy and paste the second link)
New @UCSUSA report shows flooding in Miami & other FL cities will soon "inundate" land to point of uninhabitability http://cnn.it/2uS5z8o(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEjLIqvWAAAqwuP.jpg)
It’s often said that of all the published scientific research on climate change, 97% of the papers conclude that global warming is real, problematic for the planet, and has been exacerbated by human activity.
But what about those 3% of papers that reach contrary conclusions? Some skeptics have suggested that the authors of studies indicating that climate change is not real, not harmful, or not man-made are bravely standing up for the truth, like maverick thinkers of the past. (Galileo is often invoked, though his fellow scientists mostly agreed with his conclusions—it was church leaders who tried to suppress them.)
Not so, according to a review published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology. The researchers tried to replicate the results of those 3% of papers—a common way to test scientific studies—and found biased, faulty results.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming.
“Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post...
And it's not a problem that there are dissenters in science. Ideally we should keep challenging and confirming things as we go, and explore all paths.
But politics need to be based on the established science, i.e. the best knowledge to date.
New research out Monday seems at first glance to give climate doubters new ammunition in their war against climate science. In fact, it undercuts one of their essential criticisms.
The peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience released a surprising new paper finding that the world may have a little more room than previously thought to cut greenhouse gas emissions. A group of European scientists — foreigners, no less! — recalculated the Earth’s “carbon budget,” which is the amount of carbon dioxide humans can add to the atmosphere before risking dangerous temperature thresholds. They found that humanity’s remaining emissions allowance may be significantly larger than previous calculations. That means that the world may have a better chance of keeping warming to relatively benign levels if governments act with ambition now — or that they may have more time to dawdle before the problem gets bad.
The paper unsettled climate circles. Expert critics suggested to Post reporter Chris Mooney that the paper failed to account for atmospheric aerosols and other factors that can confound warming estimates. Scientists will not suddenly adopt the rosier assessment. That will take much more scrutiny, debate and research.
...
President Trump is only one of the powerful Americans who have called climate change a “hoax.” Depending on whom you hear, the notion that emitting massive amounts of heat-trapping gases has influenced the measured warming of the planet was cooked up by the Chinese to harm U.S. industry, liberal statists eager to eliminate air conditioning, credulous scientists seeking grant money or a mix of the above. More reasonable-sounding doubters are less outrageous but still argue that mainstream experts are failing to conduct their work with necessary modesty and care. That scientists’ research always seemed, year after year, to indicate that the problem is more dire than previously thought served only to confirm suspicions.
So much for that. The organs of the expert climate consensus do not suppress findings that buck previous conclusions. They merely ask that criticisms meet basic standards and survive the same review that all other serious papers must endure. That radical dissenting literature is not published in reputable journals says more about the intellectual rigor of extreme climate doubters than it does about the honesty of those who conduct and publish legitimate scientific research.
So much for the climate change ‘hoax’ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/09/19/so-much-for-the-climate-change-hoax/?utm_term=.49934ab972a4&tid=sm_tw)Quote from: Washington Post Op-edNew research out Monday seems at first glance to give climate doubters new ammunition in their war against climate science. In fact, it undercuts one of their essential criticisms.
The peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience released a surprising new paper finding that the world may have a little more room than previously thought to cut greenhouse gas emissions. A group of European scientists — foreigners, no less! — recalculated the Earth’s “carbon budget,” which is the amount of carbon dioxide humans can add to the atmosphere before risking dangerous temperature thresholds. They found that humanity’s remaining emissions allowance may be significantly larger than previous calculations. That means that the world may have a better chance of keeping warming to relatively benign levels if governments act with ambition now — or that they may have more time to dawdle before the problem gets bad.
The paper unsettled climate circles. Expert critics suggested to Post reporter Chris Mooney that the paper failed to account for atmospheric aerosols and other factors that can confound warming estimates. Scientists will not suddenly adopt the rosier assessment. That will take much more scrutiny, debate and research.
Jan Lenaerts
@lenaertsjan
Ice sheet mass loss from #GRACE: #Greenland exceeds projections, #Antarctica in between mid and upper RCP8.5 scenario (data: @NASASeaLevel)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxOFw40WEAEcf1F.jpg)
From: Twitter (https://twitter.com/lenaertsjan/status/798128755248164864)
Date: Nov 14, 2016QuoteJan Lenaerts
@lenaertsjan
Ice sheet mass loss from #GRACE: #Greenland exceeds projections, #Antarctica in between mid and upper RCP8.5 scenario (data: @NASASeaLevel)
From last year but RIP Greenland.
Edit:
Greenland looks cool under all that ice:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNuKz8sVAAEA13u.jpg)
I was thinking for home use.
In 100 years the CO2 levels might be permanently above 1000 ppm, meaning that there will no longer be any fresh air anywhere. And indoor air quality will be that much more difficult to maintain.
And it does affect problem solving skills (https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly-affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941/).
Cognitive scores were 20% higher on the Green+ days than on the moderate CO2 day when CO2 levels were higher (p-value < 0.0001), and 5% higher on the moderate CO2 day than on the Green day when outdoor air ventilation was reduced (p-value = 0.12).
If the air outside is always 1000 ppm, then it's going to be significantly higher in any confined space (containing living humans), and it will no longer be possible to get fresh air without actively scrubbing CO2. Or genetic engineering/cybernetics.Of course that level of CO2 can result in worse air quality, but a dozen house plants (especially with full spectrum light) will reduce the CO2 level in an enclosed building by 500 ppm, and if the plants are in soil the bacteria in the pot also removes most of the 900 other pollutants found in indoor air. If for some reason CO2 levels do reach dangerous levels, solutions are easy and inexpensive.
Nature also has this amazing ability to balance our idiotic pollution, or we would all be long ago expired and extinct.
Hopefully I'm wrong about the direct effect of CO2 levels on humans. That is more of a minor side issue in all this, though.No, health issues from air pollution is a major problem with modern power generation. It's actually a real problem.
Hopefully I'm wrong about the direct effect of CO2 levels on humans. That is more of a minor side issue in all this, though.No, health issues from air pollution is a major problem with modern power generation. It's actually a real problem.
CO2 levels are also a real problem, even if perhaps not because of direct air quality effects
I’ve never heard that CO2 was any health risk except at toxic levels—about two orders of magnitude higher than current levels. Below that level, our lungs are perfectly capable of keeping the CO2 out.
For the first time in the satellite record, it is unlikely #Arctic sea ice extent will break 12 million km^2 before the start of the new year.
2016 was the previous record low for the date. [JAXA data at https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/ ]
From Twitter (https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/947475641624129536):QuoteFor the first time in the satellite record, it is unlikely #Arctic sea ice extent will break 12 million km^2 before the start of the new year.
2016 was the previous record low for the date. [JAXA data at https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/ ]
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTEs7A6VoAEg51U.jpg)
Yes, the point is not the increase, it's the fact that 2017 is more than 2 sigma below average, and 2018 is lower still.
Which is dire. Meltwater from arctic ice drives the ocean currents which warm northern Europe. The Arctic's 'deicing' is a big deal for Europe.
Meltwater from arctic ice drives the ocean currents which warm northern Europe.
So my denialist dad just sent me this article that proves beyond a doubt that climate change is a grand conspiracy hoax perpetrated by all climate scientists.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/20/delingpole-noaa-caught-adjusting-big-freeze-out-of-existence/
A very similar post from 2017 was debunked by snopes here:
https://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/
If anyone comes across a debunking of this Feb 2018 one, please share it. It is scary that my Google results are pages and pages of web sites posting the Delingpole article as news, and no sites yet debunking it.
So my denialist dad just sent me this article that proves beyond a doubt that climate change is a grand conspiracy hoax perpetrated by all climate scientists.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/20/delingpole-noaa-caught-adjusting-big-freeze-out-of-existence/
If anyone comes across a debunking of this Feb 2018 one, please share it. It is scary that my Google results are pages and pages of web sites posting the Delingpole article as news, and no sites yet debunking it.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXf3wxTVQAAUpHM.jpg)
A Dutch journalist has uncovered Royal Dutch Shell documents as old as 1988 that showed the oil company understood the gravity of climate change, the company’s large contribution to it and how hard it would be to stop it.
The 1988 report titled “The Greenhouse Effect” calculated that the Shell group alone was contributing 4 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions through its oil, natural gas and coal products. “By the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation,” the report warned.
The report, written by members of Shell’s Greenhouse Effect Working Group [...] believed that the effects would become detectable late in the 20th or early 21st century.
It was based on a 1986 study, although the document reveals that Shell had commissioned “greenhouse effect” reports as early as 1981.
Shell’s working group knew three decades ago that climate change was real and formidable, warning that it would affect living standards and food supplies and have social, economic and political consequences.
The working group also warned that rising sea levels could impair offshore installations, coastal facilities, harbors, refineries and depots.
...
The 1988 report estimated that in 1981, 44 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions came from oil, 38 percent from coal and 17 percent from natural gas.
...
Mathematical models of the earth's climate indicate that if this warming occurs then it could create significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather. These changes could be larger than any that have occurred over the last 12,000 years. Such relatively fast and dramatic changes would impact on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies and could have major social, economic and political consequences."
Oil industry knew what's up.
[...]
What is the source?
Also how many years does it show? I'm curious but I don't really feel like counting the lines.
While in general conspiracies tend to be fake, organizations hiding data seems to be pretty common.That certainly showed up in the hack of the CRU emails.
While in general conspiracies tend to be fake, organizations hiding data seems to be pretty common.That certainly showed up in the hack of the CRU emails.
It didn't, actually.Yes, it did, and it is impossible not to read it in the emails.
It didn't, actually.Yes, it did, and it is impossible not to read it in the emails.
The fact is, the results have been independently replicatedYou seem to be writing about something else. I can easily see in the emails the efforts to avoid sharing the actual data. Information. That is what I wrote about.
The fact is, the results have been independently replicatedYou seem to be writing about something else. I can easily see in the emails the efforts to avoid sharing the actual data. Information. That is what I wrote about.
So yes, they were not as forthcoming with the data as maybe they should have been,That's a kind and blind view of what is in the emails.
The fact is, the results have been independently replicatedYou seem to be writing about something else. I can easily see in the emails the efforts to avoid sharing the actual data. Information. That is what I wrote about.
But lets say "reasons" are a valid excuse for withholding data and hiding information. It doesn't change the basic point, that organizations and individuals either refuse to release information, or hide it from others. That's actually not a bias, it's a realistic view of how the human world turns.
There are indeed valid reason why organisations like CRU cannot release certain information to the public or as part of FOI request.
E.g. often the temperature observations that are used to calculate global temps are provided by national weather-services (because they are the ones that have an observation network on the ground).
These weather services may permit CRU to use their data for scientific research, but not to distribute it any further. That is particularly true for privatized weather services who see this kind of data as a valuable asset that they don't want to release publicly.
The CRU are not at fault here they are just sticking to their contracts.
D.
So yes, they were not as forthcoming with the data as maybe they should have been,That's a kind and blind view of what is in the emails.
This ancient blog post from the time still is easy enough to understand.
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/12/the-significance-of-climategate
When pressed to share their basic data with other scientists, who might in true scientific method see if they could reproduce the conclusions, they refused.
And the Siberian tree rings turned out to have been cherry-picked (they weren’t cherry trees, though) to fit a premature conclusion
In the late 1800s, geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell first described a clear boundary running longitudinally through North America along the 100th meridian west that visibly separated the humid eastern part of the continent from the more arid western plains. Now, 140 years later, scientists have confirmed that such a sharp climatic boundary exists and that it is slowly shifting east due to climate change — a change that scientists say could have significant implications on farming in the region.
The new research, published in a pair of studies in the journal Earth Interactions late last month, found the divide is created by three factors: the Rocky Mountains stopping moisture from the Pacific Ocean reaching farther inland, Atlantic winter storms bringing moisture to the eastern half of the U.S., and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico moving north and curving eastward during the summer months. The only other clear, straight divide between humid and arid areas on the globe is the one separating the Sahara Desert from the rest of Africa, climate scientist Richard Seager of Columbia University, lead author of the new papers, said in a statement.
...
[...] 122.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
The reading came from Nawabshah, a city of 1.1 million people in southern Pakistan, and meteorologists say it is the highest temperature ever reliably recorded, anywhere in the world, in the month of April.
The World Meteorological Organization keeps global temperature records, but not by month, which means Monday in Nawabshah cannot be officially confirmed as the hottest April day. But experts on extreme temperatures say it probably is.
Christopher C. Burt, the author of “Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book” and a contributor to Weather Underground, said that 122.4 degrees, or 50.2 degrees Celsius, appeared to be the hottest reliably measured April temperature “in modern records for any location on Earth.” Only one reading might challenge it: 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 51 degrees Celsius, recorded in Santa Rosa, Mexico, in April 2011. But Mr. Burt said that measurement was “questionable because the site was a regional observation site and not of first order.”
...
...
As averaged over the Arctic Ocean domain (Figure 4d), the multiyear ice cover has declined from 61 percent in 1984 to 34 percent in 2018. In addition, only 2 percent of the ice age cover is categorized as five-plus years, the least amount recorded during the winter period.
...
Efforts to turn science into legislative or regulatory action were largely successful when it came to the Ozone hole and tobacco. Not so much today with global warming. If the internet and twitter and facebook and today's social networking had been around back then, would they have been as successful? Our knowledge basically came from the news networks of the day...ABC, CBS, NBS, PBS, and maybe CNN. But today it's different.
Changes in decadal surface air temperature anomalies (departure from the 1951-1980 average)(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdH2SmOUwAElNIt.jpg)
A Republican lawmaker on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee said Thursday that rocks from the White Cliffs of Dover and the California coastline, as well as silt from rivers tumbling into the ocean, are contributing to high sea levels globally.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) made the comment during a hearing on technology and the changing climate, which largely turned into a Q&A on the basics of climate research.
"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said at the hearing.
...
“We get flooded with just about every high tide,” the woman tells me. “And if the moon is big it’s worse.”
All along the east coast, from Portland, Maine, to Key West, “sunny day flooding” is increasingly frequent. Many places in the Sunshine State are so low lying that high tide – when coupled with something as innocuous as a full moon – can cause the streets to brim with water. Sometimes the tide simply rises above the seawalls and starts to spill into the roadways; in other cases it enters the neighborhood through the storm-water infrastructure belowground. The very pipes designed to reduce flooding by ushering rain out instead give salt water a chance to work its way in.
...
...
[...] One study published last year shows that from 2011 to 2015, sea level rose up to 5 inches — an inch per year — in some locales from North Carolina to Florida. [...]
...
“These coastal areas are more vulnerable than they realize to short-term rapid acceleration of sea level rise,” says Andrea Dutton, a University of Florida geologist who studies the history of sea level fluctuations. “If they’re hanging their hat on sea level rise projections looking at the potential over decades, they need to refocus and think about the potential for short-term variability in that rate.”
Around the world, sea levels are not rising equally like water in a bathtub. The oceans are more akin to a rubber kiddie pool where the water sloshes around unevenly, often considerably higher on one side than another.
...
...
Typical five-day heat waves in the U.S. will be 12°F warmer by mid-century alone, according to the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), which the White House itself reviewed and approved last November.
...
For instance, America (and much of the world) will start seeing monster “humid heat waves” — where the heat index hits a fatal 131°F — every other year by century’s end.
...
For instance, the average temperature over the country is projected to rise about 9°F by late in the century (2071-2100) in the high emissions scenario where the Paris climate agreement fails and climate action stalls. But the temperature of the warmest five-day period during a once-in-a-decade heat wave is projected to rise some 12°F just by mid-century (2036–2065) in that case.
The NCA scientists explain that to achieve the low-emissions scenario, not only does every nation — including ours — have to meet its Paris climate pledge. But we all also have to keep ratcheting down the targets “with continually increasing ambition” until global emissions of carbon pollution are near zero by century’s end.
...
Nuclear power plants in Europe have been forced to cut back electricity production because of warmer-than-usual seawater.
Plants in Finland, Sweden and Germany have been affected by a heat wave that has broken records in Scandinavia and the British Isles and exacerbated deadly wildfires along the Mediterranean.
Air temperatures have stubbornly lingered above 90 degrees in many parts of Sweden, Finland and Germany, and water temperatures are abnormally high — 75 degrees or higher in the usually temperate Baltic Sea.
That's bad news for nuclear power plants, which rely on seawater to cool reactors.
To add to the lack of rainfall, Norway’s wind power production fell sharply, it added, while consumption in the Nordic countries increased simultaneously.
In South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live, new research suggests that by the end of this century climate change could lead to summer heat waves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection.
There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the most dire consequences of global warming. However, under business-as-usual scenarios, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the study shows these deadly heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, including the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region’s food supply.
...
[...] the areas likely to be hardest hit in northern India, Bangladesh, and southern Pakistan are home to 1.5 billion people. These areas are also among the poorest in the region, with much of the population dependent on subsistence farming that requires long hours of hard labor out in the open and unprotected from the sun.
“That makes them very vulnerable to these climatic changes, assuming no mitigation,” says Eltahir, who spoke with MIT News from Singapore, where he is carrying out follow-up research on potential climate effects in that area. [...]
...
In today’s climate, about 2 percent of the Indian population sometimes gets exposed to extremes of 32-degree wet-bulb temperatures. According to this study, by 2100 that will increase to about 70 percent of the population, and about 2 percent of the people will sometimes be exposed to the survivability limit of 35 degrees. And because the region is important agriculturally, it’s not just those directly affected by the heat who will suffer, Eltahir says: “With the disruption to the agricultural production, it doesn’t need to be the heat wave itself that kills people. Production will go down, so potentially everyone will suffer.”
...
The deadliest place on the planet for extreme future heatwaves will be the north China plain, one of the most densely populated regions in the world and the most important food-producing area in the huge nation.
New scientific research shows that humid heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike the area repeatedly towards the end of the century thanks to climate change, unless there are heavy cuts in carbon emissions.
“This spot is going to be the hottest spot for deadly heatwaves in the future,” said Prof Elfatih Eltahir, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, who led the new study. The projections for China’s northern plain are particularly worrying because many of the region’s 400 million people are farmers and have little alternative to working outside.
...
(https://i.imgur.com/OAD2Jc2.png)
...
The more I read, the more I think that immediate radical action is warranted. Don't know what, but something.
The carbon stored in the Earth’s soil is now entering the atmosphere at a faster rate due to rising temperatures and an increase in the activity of microbes beneath the soil, a new study carried out by the researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has concluded.
Today, global warming is one of the most contentious and intensely debated topics on Earth. However, climate scientists agree that out planet is warming because of increasing volumes of greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, and a variety of other human activities. The impact of global warming includes rising sea levels, melting of the polar ice caps, increased occurrence of storms and a variety of severe weather events. Scientists believe that Earth’s average temperature, over the past 100 years, has increased between 0.4 and 0.8 degree C. If this trend continues, the average global temperatures could increase between 1.4 and 5.8 degree C by the year 2100.
According to scientists, dead leaves and fallen trees comprise a common source of carbon on Earth. The carbon present in decaying leaves and trees makes its way into the soil, where it is consumed by the microbes and is converted into carbon dioxide (CO2), which is eventually released into the Earth’s atmosphere. The PNNL study, which was based on the data gathered from a variety of ecosystems on Earth, found that with rising global temperatures, this process is speeding up, and is now much faster compared to the absorption of CO2 by plants through photosynthesis. The study concluded that the rate of transferring of carbon from soil to the atmosphere due to microbial activity has increased 1.2 percent over a period of 25 years, from 1990 through 2014.
A domino-like cascade of melting ice, warming seas, shifting currents and dying forests could tilt the Earth into a “hothouse” state beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be increasingly futile, a group of leading climate scientists has warned.
This grim prospect is sketched out in a journal paper that considers the combined consequences of 10 climate change processes, including the release of methane trapped in Siberian permafrost and the impact of melting ice in Greenland on the Antarctic.
The authors of the essay, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stress their analysis is not conclusive, but warn the Paris commitment to keep warming at 2C above pre-industrial levels may not be enough to “park” the planet’s climate at a stable temperature.
They warn that the hothouse trajectory “would almost certainly flood deltaic environments, increase the risk of damage from coastal storms, and eliminate coral reefs (and all of the benefits that they provide for societies) by the end of this century or earlier.”
...
Their new paper asks whether the planet’s temperature can stabilise at 2C or whether it will gravitate towards a more extreme state. The authors attempt to assess whether warming can be halted or whether it will tip towards a “hothouse” world that is 4C warmer than pre-industrial times and far less supportive of human life.
...
“We note that the Earth has never in its history had a quasi-stable state that is around 2C warmer than the preindustrial and suggest that there is substantial risk that the system, itself, will ‘want’ to continue warming because of all of these other processes – even if we stop emissions,” she said. “This implies not only reducing emissions but much more.”
Previous studies have shown that weakening carbon sinks will add 0.25C, forest dieback will add 0.11C, permafrost thaw will add 0.9C and increased bacterial respiration will add 0.02C. The authors of the new paper also look at the loss of methane hydrates from the ocean floor and the reduction of snow and ice cover at the poles.
...
As an example, the authors say the loss of Greenland ice could disrupt the Gulf Stream ocean current, which would raise sea levels and accumulate heat in the Southern Ocean, which would in turn accelerate ice loss from the east Antarctic. Concerns about this possibility were heightened earlier this year by reports that the Gulf Stream was at its weakest level in 1,600 years.
...
Sometimes I think we are just screwed
The past four years have been the four warmest ever recorded — and now, according to a new scientific forecast, the next five will also probably be “anomalously warm,” even beyond what the steady increase in global warming would produce on its own.
...
One key determinant of a year’s temperature is what scientists sometimes call the climate’s “internal variability,” as opposed to the contribution of human-released greenhouse gases. The new forecast for 2018 through 2022 arises from projecting how this internal or natural variability will play out.
During the global warming “hiatus” during the 2000s, for instance, these internal factors, such as oscillations in Earth’s oceans, helped keep the planet somewhat cooler than it might otherwise have been and blunted the pace of warming — launching a long-running scientific debate and 1,000 political talking points.
...
That's what you get for not accounting for 350% population growth (emissions have grown a little more beyond that, too).
Unless 1 counts as a few.
It is, I promise, worse than you think. [...]
...
[...] Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high-school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 252 million years ago; it began when carbon warmed the planet by five degrees, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane in the Arctic, and ended with 97 percent of all life on Earth dead. [...]
...
[...] Even if we meet the Paris goals of two degrees warming, cities like Karachi and Kolkata will become close to uninhabitable, annually encountering deadly heat waves like those that crippled them in 2015. At four degrees, the deadly European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer. At six, according to an assessment focused only on effects within the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the country east of the Rockies would be under more heat stress than anyone, anywhere, in the world today. [...]
...
Our lungs need oxygen, but that is only a fraction of what we breathe. The fraction of carbon dioxide is growing: It just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.
...
[...] Malaria, for instance, thrives in hotter regions not just because the mosquitoes that carry it do, too, but because for every degree increase in temperature, the parasite reproduces ten times faster. Which is one reason that the World Bank estimates that by 2050, 5.2 billion people will be reckoning with it.
...
[...] Every degree Celsius of warming costs, on average, 1.2 percent of GDP (an enormous number, considering we count growth in the low single digits as “strong”). This is the sterling work in the field, and their median projection is for a 23 percent loss in per capita earning globally by the end of this century (resulting from changes in agriculture, crime, storms, energy, mortality, and labor).
Tracing the shape of the probability curve is even scarier: There is a 12 percent chance that climate change will reduce global output by more than 50 percent by 2100 [...]
...
Great review of worst-case outcomes (w/audio version).
Great review of worst-case outcomes (w/audio version).
This is a great post, except the first line.
These are not "worst-case." They are very realistic and most likely outcomes.
Worst case is far worse. (The planet becomes inhospitable for life)
Scientists have been far too conservative in their predictions for Global Warming.
Our lungs need oxygen, but that is only a fraction of what we breathe. The fraction of carbon dioxide is growing: It just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.
Great review of worst-case outcomes (w/audio version).
This is a great post, except the first line.
These are not "worst-case." They are very realistic and most likely outcomes.
Worst case is far worse. (The planet becomes inhospitable for life)
Scientists have been far too conservative in their predictions for Global Warming.
And you're basing this on... what, exactly? By your own words, it can't be the science. What secret knowledge do you possess that leading climate scientists and the IPCC are lacking?
Nearly any climate scientist will tell you it's probably worse than they're saying.
Nearly any climate scientist will tell you it's probably worse than they're saying.
Not in my experience, and I've had email conversations with a number of them. Some will say that, but most just point out that even the moderate IPCC scenarios are plenty bad enough. I've had more than one climate scientist lament the fact that implausible doomsday scenarios are used as cannon fodder and straw men by the climate change deniers to ridicule the entire field as if they are representative of what serious climate scientists are thinking.
Nearly any climate scientist will tell you it's probably worse than they're saying.
Not in my experience, and I've had email conversations with a number of them. Some will say that, but most just point out that even the moderate IPCC scenarios are plenty bad enough. I've had more than one climate scientist lament the fact that implausible doomsday scenarios are used as cannon fodder and straw men by the climate change deniers to ridicule the entire field as if they are representative of what serious climate scientists are thinking.
I don't disagree with that. It's actually my point. They avoid the worst case or even the most likely scenarios and report the data as conservatively as possible because the doomsday scenarios are ridiculed.
These are not "worst-case." They are very realistic and most likely outcomes.You were arguing that things are worse than the science says, not that things are as bad as the IPCC says. The 'inhospitable for life'-type doomsday scenarios are avoided because they are basically complete pseudoscience at this point.
Worst case is far worse. (The planet becomes inhospitable for life)
Scientists have been far too conservative in their predictions for Global Warming.
But while the doomsday scenarios sound like wild-eyed extreme worst case, they can be as likely if not more likely than the too conservative estimates they report.
Nearly any climate scientist will tell you it's probably worse than they're saying.
Not in my experience, and I've had email conversations with a number of them. Some will say that, but most just point out that even the moderate IPCC scenarios are plenty bad enough. I've had more than one climate scientist lament the fact that implausible doomsday scenarios are used as cannon fodder and straw men by the climate change deniers to ridicule the entire field as if they are representative of what serious climate scientists are thinking.
I don't disagree with that. It's actually my point. They avoid the worst case or even the most likely scenarios and report the data as conservatively as possible because the doomsday scenarios are ridiculed.QuoteNo, they bring up the low end range because it is bad enough, and they want to keep the conversation focused on reaching a climate state that is not a potential disaster.
Focusing on a 5+ degree warming by 2100 scenario is both an arbitrary (and somewhat unlikely) outcome given the data we have, and counterproductive because it focuses on the wrong number when we want to talk about setting limits on climate change.
But in any case, you've now moved the goalposts to "it's as bad as the science says". Let me quote the post that I was arguing against:These are not "worst-case." They are very realistic and most likely outcomes.You were arguing that things are worse than the science says, not that things are as bad as the IPCC says. The 'inhospitable for life'-type doomsday scenarios are avoided because they are basically complete pseudoscience at this point.
Worst case is far worse. (The planet becomes inhospitable for life)
Scientists have been far too conservative in their predictions for Global Warming.
But while the doomsday scenarios sound like wild-eyed extreme worst case, they can be as likely if not more likely than the too conservative estimates they report.
No, they can't. You can keep asserting this, but even by your own assertion, the data simply does not support this.
If that's what the best prediction is based on the data, then that's what they should report. If the best prediction based on analysis of the data is higher or lower that's what they should report. My argument is that they are reporting more conservatively than they would otherwise because it's such a controversial and political topic, and while you are arguing that's not the case your arguments are actually supporting that claim.
I maintain that even these dire predictions are overly conservative and things will get worse faster than they predict. That's the part you're disagreeing with, right?
If that's what the best prediction is based on the data, then that's what they should report. If the best prediction based on analysis of the data is higher or lower that's what they should report. My argument is that they are reporting more conservatively than they would otherwise because it's such a controversial and political topic, and while you are arguing that's not the case your arguments are actually supporting that claim.
I didn't say it was the "best" prediction, it is just near the high end of the IPCC scenarios. And they obviously do report on it. However there is no "best" prediction, or even any "prediction" at all. There is only a range of (more and less plausible) scenarios, because the outcome depends on what actions we take to reduce or counteract emissions. However there is almost no support at all for a "the planet will become uninhabitable to life" scenario because it requires either massive feedbacks or tipping point scenarios (for which we have no evidence or plausible mechanism at all) or gargantuan future emissions (well outside the range of what is considered plausible by the experts in this field).
I maintain that even these dire predictions are overly conservative and things will get worse faster than they predict. That's the part you're disagreeing with, right?
I am saying that that position is not supported by the evidence by your own phrasing.
If that's what the best prediction is based on the data, then that's what they should report. If the best prediction based on analysis of the data is higher or lower that's what they should report. My argument is that they are reporting more conservatively than they would otherwise because it's such a controversial and political topic, and while you are arguing that's not the case your arguments are actually supporting that claim.
I didn't say it was the "best" prediction, it is just near the high end of the IPCC scenarios. And they obviously do report on it. However there is no "best" prediction, or even any "prediction" at all. There is only a range of (more and less plausible) scenarios, because the outcome depends on what actions we take to reduce or counteract emissions. However there is almost no support at all for a "the planet will become uninhabitable to life" scenario because it requires either massive feedbacks or tipping point scenarios (for which we have no evidence or plausible mechanism at all) or gargantuan future emissions (well outside the range of what is considered plausible by the experts in this field).
No argument there. That is the worst case scenario.
QuoteI am saying that that position is not supported by the evidence by your own phrasing.
I don't get what you mean with what's in bold, unless you're reading things into what I'm saying.
What, specifically, have I said that doesn't support that?
If that's what the best prediction is based on the data, then that's what they should report. If the best prediction based on analysis of the data is higher or lower that's what they should report. My argument is that they are reporting more conservatively than they would otherwise because it's such a controversial and political topic, and while you are arguing that's not the case your arguments are actually supporting that claim.
I didn't say it was the "best" prediction, it is just near the high end of the IPCC scenarios. And they obviously do report on it. However there is no "best" prediction, or even any "prediction" at all. There is only a range of (more and less plausible) scenarios, because the outcome depends on what actions we take to reduce or counteract emissions. However there is almost no support at all for a "the planet will become uninhabitable to life" scenario because it requires either massive feedbacks or tipping point scenarios (for which we have no evidence or plausible mechanism at all) or gargantuan future emissions (well outside the range of what is considered plausible by the experts in this field).
No argument there. That is the worst case scenario.
It may be the worst case scenario as reported by laymen. However atm it is not backed up by any real empirical evidence or plausible mechanism. In order for a "worst case" scenario to be meaningful in any way, it should be based on some vaguely plausible arguments or empirical evidence. I can come up with a non-science based even worse case, like "global warming is going to cause the universe to collapse in on itself", but that is obviously meaningless since it's not based on anything factual.QuoteI am saying that that position is not supported by the evidence by your own phrasing.
I don't get what you mean with what's in bold, unless you're reading things into what I'm saying.
What, specifically, have I said that doesn't support that?
You said multiple times that climate science scenarios are overly conservative. Obviously, you can't be basing that on climate science, since you're saying they're not reporting on the real worst case scenarios as you see them. So by your own words your worst case scenarios can't be based on climate science. Otherwise climate science would clearly not be overly conservative, since they would be describing these worst case scenarios.
So if we stopped or neutralized all other emissions, but the number of trees were reduced by ~335 billion/11%, we'd go over budget?
I wonder what the rate of expected tree loss to drought and fires is, along the lines of how fast Greenland melts given an average temperature.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
There is evidence of runaway greenhouse during the Permian–Triassic, I believe.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
There is evidence of runaway greenhouse during the Permian–Triassic, I believe.
Over at least 100 millenia, not a few centuries.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
There is evidence of runaway greenhouse during the Permian–Triassic, I believe.
Over at least 100 millenia, not a few centuries.
I am under the impression that conditions very rapidly became what would be extremely hostile for most life although took a long time to kill almost everything.
I guess my point isn't getting through, but I don't see much of a point in repeating myself ad infinitum.I got it, and I agree with you. There is zero evidence for any runaway feedback on the planet, no matter what level of CO2 in the atmosphere, there has never been any evidence of a runaway climate system.
There is evidence of runaway greenhouse during the Permian–Triassic, I believe.
Over at least 100 millenia, not a few centuries.
I am under the impression that conditions very rapidly became what would be extremely hostile for most life although took a long time to kill almost everything.
https://twitter.com/CoralMDavenport/status/1049102746207444992
https://twitter.com/CoralMDavenport/status/1049102746207444992
I think this is the definition of Game Over.
Good job, everyone, we killed a planet! Capitalism!
https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/1049170313294925824
https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/1049170313294925824
This can't be posted often enough
(https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FBfXln4NCQAAN5z2.jpg&f=1)
Is that really fair though? I mean, we are probably all shareholders, either directly or indirectly. I am, and you probably are too.
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Negotiations between EU institutions on a new bill that will set CO2 standards for cars and vans until 2030 will begin on Wednesday afternoon (10 October) after EU environment ministers achieved a common position late on Tuesday evening.
The compromise deal was reached at a Council of the EU meeting in Luxembourg that began in the morning and wrapped up only shortly before midnight.
Austrian environment minister Elisabeth Kostinger, who chaired the ministerial meeting, said that the deal was supported by 20 of the EU's 28 member states.
Four were against, while four abstained, she said – although a source from one of the member states said there was no formal vote. The distribution of member states was rather an estimate made by Kostinger, the source added.
At a press conference, Kostinger said the council wanted cars to emit 35 percent less CO2 by 2030 compared to 2020 - as opposed to the original proposal of 30 percent from the European Commission.
The council maintained the commission proposal of 30 percent less CO2 emissions by 2030 for vans.
Those targets are considerably lower than what the European Parliament proposed last week - MEPs said that the 2030 target for both cars and vans should be 40 percent reduction.
(It turns out capitalism was the Great Filter all along)
The West, even if you count everyone rather than just a simple majority, are still a small minority overall. And even then I doubt it.The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
Just because you're privileged enough to be able to put some away for later doesn't mean most people are.The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
No 401k, IRA or Pension?
You better hope Democratic candidates start winning, because your life will one day depend on your Social Security checks if you don't start one of those soon.
In fact, the vast majority of Americans have under $1,000 saved and half of all Americans have nothing at all put away for retirement.
Just because you're privileged enough to be able to put some away for later doesn't mean most people are.The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
No 401k, IRA or Pension?
You better hope Democratic candidates start winning, because your life will one day depend on your Social Security checks if you don't start one of those soon.QuoteIn fact, the vast majority of Americans have under $1,000 saved and half of all Americans have nothing at all put away for retirement.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/13/heres-how-many-americans-have-nothing-at-all-saved-for-retirement.html
Since when does working hard, and watching every penny equate with privilege?Because watching every penny doesn't magically grant you more pennies to save up. Do you seriously not get that millions of people can't afford to build savings?
Since when does working hard, and watching every penny equate with privilege?Because watching every penny doesn't magically grant you more pennies to save up. Do you seriously not get that millions of people can't afford to build savings?
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
No 401k, IRA or Pension?
You better hope Democratic candidates start winning, because your life will one day depend on your Social Security checks if you don't start one of those soon.
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
No 401k, IRA or Pension?
You better hope Democratic candidates start winning, because your life will one day depend on your Social Security checks if you don't start one of those soon.
I don't know what 401k or IRA is, and there's no such thing as Social Security checks and I have no Democratic candidates in my electorate. I have the mandatory Australian Government superannuation, if that's what you mean by a mutual investment fund. I'm pretty sure it's not, but you might know better how the Australian finance market works than I do.
The majority, who have no invested capital whatsoever, are assuredly not shareholders.
Don't the majority, in the West at least, at least have some moeny in mutual investment funds?
Can't speak for the majority, but I certainly don't.
No 401k, IRA or Pension?
You better hope Democratic candidates start winning, because your life will one day depend on your Social Security checks if you don't start one of those soon.
I don't know what 401k or IRA is, and there's no such thing as Social Security checks and I have no Democratic candidates in my electorate. I have the mandatory Australian Government superannuation, if that's what you mean by a mutual investment fund. I'm pretty sure it's not, but you might know better how the Australian finance market works than I do.
I was pretty sure all the regular posters knew where I was from by this time. Guess not. But I'm glad to have had the opportunity to remind you that America is not the whole world, and that the internet is global.
No, I don't get that, because it absolutely is a sign of privilege.Since when does working hard, and watching every penny equate with privilege?Because watching every penny doesn't magically grant you more pennies to save up. Do you seriously not get that millions of people can't afford to build savings?
Do you seriously not get that saving money is not a sign of privilege?
No, I don't get that, because it absolutely is a sign of privilege.Since when does working hard, and watching every penny equate with privilege?Because watching every penny doesn't magically grant you more pennies to save up. Do you seriously not get that millions of people can't afford to build savings?
Do you seriously not get that saving money is not a sign of privilege?
You can't save up something you don't have enough of to begin with.
(If you want to keep this discussion up, may I suggest another thread, this has nothing to do with climate)
(If you want to keep this discussion up, may I suggest another thread, this has nothing to do with climate)
Looking forward to it, since I think I might have a few things to say...
https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1052212588631785472
Too optimistic? I don't know. But worth thinking about, perhaps.
https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1052212588631785472
Too optimistic? I don't know. But worth thinking about, perhaps.
Pinker's solution is something that, to my knowledge has never been built, and no-one is even allowed to build it yet. His brand of mindlessness is one of those things that will lead us to the water wars.
A nuclear power plant takes 5 years just to build. We have 11 years to cut emission by 45%, and still have a global catastrophe. We have no time to start the regulatory proceedings for incrementally better technology that may be picked up by someone, somewhere.
Meanwhile, we have 100 corporations that are responsible for 71% of emissions, that gives a better solution. I am sure that their CEOs and Boards overlap with the list of parasites who lord over most of the planet's wealth. Two birds with one stone, I say.
The Australian coal-ition government (which has just lost its one seat majority in parliament on the weekend in a byelection in a previously very safe electorate to a conservative independent candidate. Most of the candidates, including the successful independent, were campaigning on the inadequacies of the government’s climate policies. Or rather their lack of any).
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1057694524053602305
Democrats are unlikely to pursue major climate change legislation if they win the House majority, despite a growing body of evidence suggesting time is running out to address the issue.
Democrats are unlikely to pursue major climate change legislation if they win the House majority, despite a growing body of evidence suggesting time is running out to address the issue.
This represents a shift in strategy from when House Democrats last controlled the chamber. In 2009, they passed cap-and-trade legislation, which subsequently died in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The game plan for next year, House Democrats say, is more incremental steps and hearings.
With President Trump in the White House and Republicans favored to keep the Senate next year, climate legislation would face stiff headwinds, and pushing it could spark backlash from the right — both now and after the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
Considering those “constraints,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Democrats should “focus on the practical and the opportunistic” to make short-term progress while fighting for bolder measures — “the aspirational goals” — over the longer term.
“It’s going to be, I think, more of an opportunistic strategy, where, in various pieces of legislation, across the board, we’re going to insert measures that address climate change,” said Connolly, a leader in the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition.
...
UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That. (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html)
(https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/11/11-climate-change-flood.w700.h467.jpg)
Just two years ago, amid global fanfare, the Paris climate accords were signed — initiating what seemed, for a brief moment, like the beginning of a planet-saving movement. But almost immediately, the international goal it established of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius began to seem, to many of the world’s most vulnerable, dramatically inadequate; the Marshall Islands’ representative gave it a blunter name, calling two degrees of warming “genocide.”
The alarming new report you may have read about this week from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which examines just how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be than 2 — echoes the charge. “Amplifies” may be the better term. Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, the report declares, should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue. Nearly all coral reefs would die out, wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure. Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.” The New York Times declared that the report showed a “strong risk” of climate crisis in the coming decades; in Grist, Eric Holthaus wrote that “civilization is at stake.”
If you are alarmed by those sentences, you should be — they are horrifying. But it is, actually, worse than that — considerably worse. That is because the new report’s worst-case scenario is, actually, a best case. In fact, it is a beyond-best-case scenario. What has been called a genocidal level of warming is already our inevitable future. The question is how much worse than that it will get.
Chance of avoiding one degree of global warming: zero.
Chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming: 93%, but only if emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced by 60% over the next 10 years.
Chance of avoiding three degrees of global warming: poor if the rise reaches two degrees and triggers carbon-cycle feedbacks from soils and plants.
Chance of avoiding four degrees of global warming: poor if the rise reaches three degrees and triggers a runaway thaw of permafrost.
Chance of avoiding five degrees of global warming: negligible if the rise reaches four degrees and releases trapped methane from the sea bed.
With all the remaining forests burning, and the corpses of people, livestock and wildlife piling up in every continent, the six-degree world would be a harsh penalty indeed for the mundane crime of burning fossil energy.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1065400254151954432
Wow, is that how that works?
How did it not get canned?
How did it not get canned?
Gross incompetence? Plus it was scheduled to be released next year but for some reason was released when ready.
World carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to have risen 2.7 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to three studies released Wednesday from the Global Carbon Project (http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/) , an international scientific collaboration of academics, governments and industry that tracks greenhouse gas emissions. The calculations, announced during negotiations (http://cop24.gov.pl/) to put the 2015 Paris climate accord into effect, puts some of the landmark agreement’s goals nearly out of reach, scientists said.
“This is terrible news,” said Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, which models greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures but was not part of the research. “Every year that we delay serious climate action, the Paris goals become more difficult to meet.”
The studies concluded that this year the world would spew 40.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide, up from 39.8 billion tons last year. The margin of error is about one percentage point on either side.
The U.S., which had been steadily decreasing its carbon pollution, showed a significant rise in emissions — up 2.5 percent — for the first time since 2013. China, the globe’s biggest carbon emitter, saw its largest increase since 2011: 4.6 percent.
Study lead author Corinne Le Quere, a climate change researcher at the University of East Anglia in England, said the increase is a surprising “reality check” after a few years of smaller emission increases. But she also doesn’t think the world will return to the even larger increases seen from 2003 to 2008. She believes unusual factors are at play this year.
For the U.S., it was a combination of a hot summer and cold winter that required more electricity use for heating and cooling. For China, it was an economic stimulus that pushed coal-powered manufacturing, Le Quere said.
...
"Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has gone into overdrive," said Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University and lead author of the study. "Greenland melt is adding to sea level more than any time during the last three and a half centuries, if not thousands of years," he said.
Ice loss from Greenland is the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise, which is predicted to lead to inundation of low-lying islands and coastal cities around the world over the next several decades and centuries.
At the moment, conservative estimates of global sea level rise predict an additional half a meter or more by the end of the century, according to German news agency Deutsche Welle (DW). Alun Hubbard, a professor of glaciology at Aberystwyth University in Wales, told DW that even an increase of half a meter is "a terrible disaster for humanity – especially coastal regions of the planet."
...
Specifically, the melt rate over the past two decades was 33 percent higher than the 20th-century average, and 50 percent higher than in the pre-industrial era before the mid-1800s.
...
How long before the real estate crisis of collapsing coastal property values?
How long before the real estate crisis of collapsing coastal property values?
I would really like to hear what people think about this. It has got to be coming very soon, I would think.
The bill would legalize hemp cultivation and could be a catalyst for explosive growth in a nascent industry that some forecast could top $20 billion by 2022.
Industrial hemp is used to make everything from apparel, foods and pharmaceuticals to personal care products, car dashboards and building materials.
Making one tonne of steel emits 1.46 tonnes of CO2 and 198kg of CO2 is emitted make one tonne of reinforced concrete. One square metre of timber framed, hemp-lime wall (weighing 120kg), after allowing for the energy cost of transporting and assembling the materials actually stores 35.5kg of CO2.
Presumably, since they're also using kg.
Just don't go cutting down forests to grow hemp.
Herer’s mixing of cannabis hemp with industrial hemp is a little unfortunate, for according to Hemp Global Solutions, hemp could be a good short term climate tool, because the crop is rapid-growing for carbon dioxide uptake, less vulnerable to climate variations than agro-forestry, and might be a good cash crop for farmers. HGS calculates each ton of hemp grown represents 1.63 tons of CO2 absorption.
I think that wood statistic really drives home just how much we're not going to solve the problem with hemp products.
I think that wood statistic really drives home just how much we're not going to solve the problem with hemp products.
The original proposal of compacting all human biomass into a single, large cube may be more realistic.
ABSTRACT
As the world warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation. Past Earth system states offer possible model systems for the warming world of the coming decades. These include the climate states of the Early Eocene (ca. 50 Ma), the Mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma), the Last Interglacial (129–116 ka), the Mid-Holocene (6 ka), preindustrial (ca. 1850 CE), and the 20th century. Here, we quantitatively assess the similarity of future projected climate states to these six geohistorical benchmarks using simulations from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E2-R (GISS), and the Community Climate System Model, Versions 3 and 4 (CCSM) Earth system models. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, by 2030 CE, future climates most closely resemble Mid-Pliocene climates, and by 2150 CE, they most closely resemble Eocene climates. Under RCP4.5, climate stabilizes at Pliocene-like conditions by 2040 CE. Pliocene-like and Eocene-like climates emerge first in continental interiors and then expand outward. Geologically novel climates are uncommon in RCP4.5 (<1%) but reach 8.7% of the globe under RCP8.5, characterized by high temperatures and precipitation. Hence, RCP4.5 is roughly equivalent to stabilizing at Pliocene-like climates, while unmitigated emission trajectories, such as RCP8.5, are similar to reversing millions of years of long-term cooling on the scale of a few human generations. Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.
In 1999, the NBC/WSJ poll showed that just 15 percent of Republicans believed that climate change had been established as a serious problem requiring an immediate response. Today that proportion remains unchanged at 15 percent, while the share of Democrats and independents who expressed urgent concern has risen sharply.
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries. Surely that will only get worse. In particular Australia, which is mostly desert. Already the people there are clustered mostly around the south-eastern coast, I assume because of the hostile climate of the rest of that continent.It's mostly due to the accessibility of water. Because Australia is such a large, old continent, there's not a lot of water inland. Lack of water tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Less standing water, less evaporation, less rain, repeat. There's plenty of water in the tropics and most of the coasts are pretty good, but water is by far the biggest barrier to habitation in central Australia.
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries. Surely that will only get worse. In particular Australia, which is mostly desert. Already the people there are clustered mostly around the south-eastern coast, I assume because of the hostile climate of the rest of that continent.It's mostly due to the accessibility of water. Because Australia is such a large, old continent, there's not a lot of water inland. Lack of water tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Less standing water, less evaporation, less rain, repeat. There's plenty of water in the tropics and most of the coasts are pretty good, but water is by far the biggest barrier to habitation in central Australia.
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries. Surely that will only get worse. In particular Australia, which is mostly desert. Already the people there are clustered mostly around the south-eastern coast, I assume because of the hostile climate of the rest of that continent.It's mostly due to the accessibility of water. Because Australia is such a large, old continent, there's not a lot of water inland. Lack of water tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Less standing water, less evaporation, less rain, repeat. There's plenty of water in the tropics and most of the coasts are pretty good, but water is by far the biggest barrier to habitation in central Australia.
It’s not so much lack of water but irregularity of water (rainfall). For example, there’s Goyder’s line in South Australia, which runs roughly parallel to the coast, north of which annual rainfall is less than 250 mm, too little to support agriculture, but sufficient for grazing, which was the government recommendation. And then in 1865, there were very good rains, and farmers rushed northwards to establish new farms. And then the rainfall returned to normal.
It’s expected that Goyder’s line will move south with global warming, putting some South Australian farms out of business.
One point to note - the map shows than each country has an equal uniform risk due to global warming. Some regions within countries will be at greater risk. And some regions may gain.
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries. Surely that will only get worse. In particular Australia, which is mostly desert. Already the people there are clustered mostly around the south-eastern coast, I assume because of the hostile climate of the rest of that continent.It's mostly due to the accessibility of water. Because Australia is such a large, old continent, there's not a lot of water inland. Lack of water tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Less standing water, less evaporation, less rain, repeat. There's plenty of water in the tropics and most of the coasts are pretty good, but water is by far the biggest barrier to habitation in central Australia.
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries. Surely that will only get worse. In particular Australia, which is mostly desert. Already the people there are clustered mostly around the south-eastern coast, I assume because of the hostile climate of the rest of that continent.It's mostly due to the accessibility of water. Because Australia is such a large, old continent, there's not a lot of water inland. Lack of water tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Less standing water, less evaporation, less rain, repeat. There's plenty of water in the tropics and most of the coasts are pretty good, but water is by far the biggest barrier to habitation in central Australia.
Perhaps I misunderstand something, but shouldn't that be a point to make Australia even less hospitable in a significantly warmer world? At the map above, it is top-rated. And I get it that being a wealthy, stable democracy really helps. But still. It has a very hot climate, and what's more, the ozone layer is thinner there than in the northern hemisphere, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I suppose the coastal areas will remain inhabitable for humans. But even there it's still pretty warm even today.
...
THE WHEAT BELT IS PUSHING POLEWARD AT UP TO 160 MILES PER DECADE
Australia, renowned for its interior deserts and coastal beaches, is also one of the planet’s largest wheat exporters — just after Canada, Russia, and the U.S. But the arable land at the nation’s southern edge is shrinking, and its potential for growing wheat declining.
In the 1860s, surveyor George Goyder drew a line to show where the edge of Australia’s arable land ended. More than a century later, Goyder’s line is still considered an important feature in determining the country’s “cropping belt.” But climate change is making that land drier, effectively pushing the line further south.
Any given patch of land has a “theoretical potential” for the amount of wheat it can support, given its soil, the climate, and other factors. Reductions in rainfall and warmer temperatures have already reduced the theoretical potential of southern Australia by 27 percent since 1990. So far, farmers have managed to adapt to the changing conditions and squeeze the same amount of wheat out of their lands. By tweaking things such as their seeds and harvesting practices, they have gone from harvesting 38 percent of their theoretical maximum in 1990 to 55 percent in 2015. But that can only go on so long — farmers can typically only reach about 80 percent of any given parcel of land’s maximum potential. Once they hit that limit, Australian farmers probably won’t be able to counteract the effects of the changing climate any longer. Zvi Hochman, of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), says he expects to see actual yields start to drop around 2040. Places like the farming community of Orroroo, currently right on top of Goyder’s line, will be “significantly impacted,” writes Julia Piantadosi of the University of South Australia in Adelaide — they won’t be able to keep farming the way they are doing today.
...
Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning — the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse.
As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk — and soon. By 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks (more than 67,000) could have issues every year, affecting not only the people who rely on them for sewage treatment, but the region’s water supply and the health of anyone who wades through floodwaters.
...
In total, there are about 108,000 properties within the county that still use septic, about 105,000 of which are residential. The vast majority (more than 65,000) of the septic systems are in unincorporated Miami-Dade.
...
Yeah, I suppose the coastal areas will remain inhabitable for humans. But even there it's still pretty warm even today.
The south east is fairly mild. You do get hot days, but not as bad as the rest of the country.
Even in summer, it rains where I am 3 to 4 days a week and rarely gets above 30 (86F). 3 times so far this summer and I'd expect probably another 5 days for the rest of summer.
Above 100F (38C) is even rarer. My area has only experienced that once ever (39C in 2013)
Yeah, I suppose the coastal areas will remain inhabitable for humans. But even there it's still pretty warm even today.
The south east is fairly mild. You do get hot days, but not as bad as the rest of the country.
Even in summer, it rains where I am 3 to 4 days a week and rarely gets above 30 (86F). 3 times so far this summer and I'd expect probably another 5 days for the rest of summer.
Above 100F (38C) is even rarer. My area has only experienced that once ever (39C in 2013)
This doesn't sound very different from Sweden, even though your summer season is probably longer than ours. I expected Australia to be significantly warmer compared to around here.
Yeah, I suppose the coastal areas will remain inhabitable for humans. But even there it's still pretty warm even today.
The south east is fairly mild. You do get hot days, but not as bad as the rest of the country.
Even in summer, it rains where I am 3 to 4 days a week and rarely gets above 30 (86F). 3 times so far this summer and I'd expect probably another 5 days for the rest of summer.
Above 100F (38C) is even rarer. My area has only experienced that once ever (39C in 2013)
This doesn't sound very different from Sweden, even though your summer season is probably longer than ours. I expected Australia to be significantly warmer compared to around here.
Remember that Dave is talking about a small area of the coast. Inland it gets MUCH warmer.
Remember that Dave is talking about a small area of the coast. Inland it gets MUCH warmer.
I have a geologist friend that presented me with the argument that the problem with the man causes climate change hypothesis is that it only looks at a small period , and that most of the change today can be explained by something called milankovitch cycles and presented me this article http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=62
Is there any response to this sort of argument ?? If so where can I find articles that talk about this matter ? Most of the people against the idea of global warming have been cranks, but this friend is a serious geologist not just random guy on the internet. Thanks in advance =)
I would remind him that he is NOT a climatologist.
Then talk about the science of global warming itself. Because of he can't created tests that refute the basic science, then he has to accept climate change if he actually think scientifically.
Please feel free to run this by an actual practicing climatologist.
Something like:
anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) is a fact.
1) Visible light strikes the earth Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes. Could anyone devise a test? Yes
2) Visible light has nothing for CO2 to absorb, so it pass right on through. Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes. Could anyone devise a test? Yes
3) When visible light strike an object, IR is generated. Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes. Could anyone devise a test? Yes
4) Green house gasses, such as CO2, absorb energy(heat) from IR. Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes. Could anyone devise a test? Yes
5) Humans produce more CO2(and other green house gasses) then can be absorbed through the cycle. Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes. Could anyone devise a test? Yes
Each one of those has been tested, a lot. You notice deniers don't actual address the facts of AGW? Don't have a test that shows those facts to be false?
So now you have to answer:
Why do you think trapping more energy(heat) in the lower atmosphere does not impact the climate?
In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
Scientists at the non-profit organisation Climate Central estimate that 275 million people worldwide live in areas that will eventually be flooded at 3C of global warming.
...
His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming.
...
The Puerto Rico work is one of just a handful of studies assessing this vital issue, but those that do exist are deeply worrying. Flying insect numbers in Germany’s natural reserves have plunged 75% in just 25 years. The virtual disappearance of birds in an Australian eucalyptus forest was blamed on a lack of insects caused by drought and heat. Lister and his colleague Andrés García also found that insect numbers in a dry forest in Mexico had fallen 80% since the 1980s.
“We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet,” Lister said. “It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this.”
...
True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
Well, in fairness, we've been doing that for quite a while and it has mostly worked out for us so far. I just wonder how far we can push that. Can we raise dikes 2m? 5? 10? What's the limit, if any?True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
I think you have a point. That map of estimates is probably not flawless. Personally I think the prospect of being dependent on walls against the sea is not very comforting.
Article: The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree-world-cities-drowned-global-warming)
From: The Guardian
Date: 2017 NOV 3QuoteScientists at the non-profit organisation Climate Central estimate that 275 million people worldwide live in areas that will eventually be flooded at 3C of global warming.
Lot of great infographics in this one.
Well, in fairness, we've been doing that for quite a while and it has mostly worked out for us so far. I just wonder how far we can push that. Can we raise dikes 2m? 5? 10? What's the limit, if any?True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
I think you have a point. That map of estimates is probably not flawless. Personally I think the prospect of being dependent on walls against the sea is not very comforting.
Well, in fairness, we've been doing that for quite a while and it has mostly worked out for us so far. I just wonder how far we can push that. Can we raise dikes 2m? 5? 10? What's the limit, if any?True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
I think you have a point. That map of estimates is probably not flawless. Personally I think the prospect of being dependent on walls against the sea is not very comforting.
Sure, but what if there is a failure somewhere? Just my bias, and I understand that the Dutch have little choice in the matter. I'd just not like the idea of depending on fending off a huge natural force like that. But globally, this is probably going to happen more often, especially around large cities that are commercially important, or parts of the cities at least. Manhattan is going to be protected at all costs, and I doubt that the Japanese will simply allow Osaka to be swallowed by the sea.
We could not find Atlantis, so we created it. ;)Well, in fairness, we've been doing that for quite a while and it has mostly worked out for us so far. I just wonder how far we can push that. Can we raise dikes 2m? 5? 10? What's the limit, if any?True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
I think you have a point. That map of estimates is probably not flawless. Personally I think the prospect of being dependent on walls against the sea is not very comforting.
Sure, but what if there is a failure somewhere? Just my bias, and I understand that the Dutch have little choice in the matter. I'd just not like the idea of depending on fending off a huge natural force like that. But globally, this is probably going to happen more often, especially around large cities that are commercially important, or parts of the cities at least. Manhattan is going to be protected at all costs, and I doubt that the Japanese will simply allow Osaka to be swallowed by the sea.
Well some people live on an active volcano. Some live on a major faultline. Some live in extremely hostile climates. And we live underwater. What can I say? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, in fairness, we've been doing that for quite a while and it has mostly worked out for us so far. I just wonder how far we can push that. Can we raise dikes 2m? 5? 10? What's the limit, if any?True. Still, there is probably a limit to how high we can raise our dikes and dunes. And leaving aside the increased danger of floods, we are one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in the world, and saltwater intrusion is going to be a big issue for us. They're already talking about genetic engineering to make plants more salt tolerant.In case you are wondering where you should be in terms of climate change, here (https://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-countries-escape-climate-change-map-2018-1) is a map:
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
I'm surprised at the good scores of Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Sure they are politically stable developed first-world countries, but they are already very warm countries.
I wonder what their criteria were. I realize that my country (The Netherlands) is well off economically and we're unlikely to experience the most deadly weather extremes that some other countries will, but the fact that sea level rise is a big issue for us had me thinking we would be at least in the yellow.
I don't know. But I could speculate. Maybe that the Netherlands is already dealing with pushing back the sea as it is, it is a wealthy country and a politically stable democracy help a lot?
I think you have a point. That map of estimates is probably not flawless. Personally I think the prospect of being dependent on walls against the sea is not very comforting.
Sure, but what if there is a failure somewhere? Just my bias, and I understand that the Dutch have little choice in the matter. I'd just not like the idea of depending on fending off a huge natural force like that. But globally, this is probably going to happen more often, especially around large cities that are commercially important, or parts of the cities at least. Manhattan is going to be protected at all costs, and I doubt that the Japanese will simply allow Osaka to be swallowed by the sea.
Well some people live on an active volcano. Some live on a major faultline. Some live in extremely hostile climates. And we live underwater. What can I say? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Experts predict up to 1,500 individual private flights in and out of airfields serving Swiss ski resort for World Economic Forum
David Attenborough might have urged world leaders at Davos to take urgent action on climate change (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/21/david-attenborough-tells-davos-the-garden-of-eden-is-no-more), but it appears no one was listening. As he spoke, experts predicted up to 1,500 individual private jets will fly to and from airfields serving the Swiss ski resort this week.
Political and business leaders and lobbyists are opting for bigger, more expensive aircrafts, according to analysis by the Air Charter Service, which found the number of private jet flights grew by 11% last year.
“There appears to be a trend towards larger aircraft, with expensive heavy jets the aircraft of choice, with Gulfstream GVs and Global Expresses both being used more than 100 times each last year,” said Andy Christie, private jets director at the ACS.
This is partly due to the long distances travelled, he said, “but also possibly due to business rivals not wanting to be seen to be outdone by one another”. Last year, more than 1,300 aircraft flights were recorded at the conference, the highest number since ACS began recording private jet activity in 2013.
Americans’ climate change concerns surge to record levels, poll shows (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/22/climate-change-concern-americans-poll)
Total of 72% polled now say global warming is personally important to them, Yale said, as 73% accept it is happening
Americans’ concerns about climate change have surged to record levels, new polling shows, following a year marked by devastating storms, wildfires and increasingly dire warnings from scientists.
A total of 72% of polled Americans now say global warming is personally important to them, according to the Yale program on climate change communication. This is the highest level of concern since Yale starting polling the question in 2008.
Overall, 73% of Americans accept that global warming is happening, outnumbering those who don’t by five to one. This acceptance has strengthened in recent years, rising by 10% since March 2015. The proportion that grasps that humans are the primary cause of warming is smaller, with 62% understanding this to be the case.
Still going to take some thousands of years to melt all of Greenland at that rate, but I wonder how much faster it could get. Especially once the Arctic Ocean goes ice free in summer.
All countries need to do more to prevent the planet overheating – but do not give in to climate change pessimism just yet (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/climate-change-donald-trump-paris-agreement-a8654456.html)
A new UN report says global emissions of greenhouse gases need to be cut by 55 per cent by 2030 to stop average temperatures rising by 1.5C
And, although the Paris targets are hard to achieve in little more than a decade before 2030, they are undoubtedly achievable. The clarity and simplicity of the targets mean that it is becoming easier to mobilise global public opinion and the governments of large industrialised nations behind them.
Eating meat has ‘dire’ consequences for the planet, says report (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/commission-report-great-food-transformation-plant-diet-climate-change/)
To feed a growing global population and curtail climate change, scientists say we need to radically change our food systems.
THERE'S AN ENTIRE industry built around dieting. Most of its products are intended to help people lose weight, gain muscle, or live longer.
But as the global human population steadily climbs, scientists are scrambling to devise a diet plan that can feed 10 billion people by 2050.
A new report, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, claims to do just that. It recommends a largely plant-based diet, with small, occasional allowances for meat, dairy, and sugar. The report was compiled by a group of 30 scientists from around the world who study nutrition or food policy. For three years, they deliberated with the intent of creating recommendations that could be adopted by governments to meet the challenge of feeding a growing world population.
QuoteEating meat has ‘dire’ consequences for the planet, says report (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/commission-report-great-food-transformation-plant-diet-climate-change/)
To feed a growing global population and curtail climate change, scientists say we need to radically change our food systems.
THERE'S AN ENTIRE industry built around dieting. Most of its products are intended to help people lose weight, gain muscle, or live longer.
But as the global human population steadily climbs, scientists are scrambling to devise a diet plan that can feed 10 billion people by 2050.
A new report, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, claims to do just that. It recommends a largely plant-based diet, with small, occasional allowances for meat, dairy, and sugar. The report was compiled by a group of 30 scientists from around the world who study nutrition or food policy. For three years, they deliberated with the intent of creating recommendations that could be adopted by governments to meet the challenge of feeding a growing world population.
That top image is, in fact, a mine. It’s a copper mine. This particular mine is BHP’s Escondida Mine, one of the 10 largest in the world.
Before this continues, to repeat … that’s a copper mine. In 2015, we used about 19 million tons of copper. Getting that copper out took digging big holes in the ground, just like the one in that first picture. It also involved using millions of pounds of blasting agent, carrying rock to crushers, spraying that crushed rock with millions of gallons of sulfuric acid, then letting the resulting toxic sludge sit around in leach fields to extract the copper.
[...]
On the other hand, the world produces about 650,000 tons of lithium each year. Lithium exists mostly in the form of concentrated salts. Almost all that lithium—greater than 95 percent of it—is produced through a process of pumping underground brine to the surface and allowing it to evaporate in big pans. It’s separated from the brine using electrolysis.
There’s nothing you would think of as mining. No blasting. No trucks driving around carrying loads of crushed rock. No sprays of sulfuric acid.
The primary sources of lithium are from the Atacama Desert in Chile, and the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia. These are two of the deadest places on Earth. It’s not exactly that nothing lives there, but …
“In 2003, a team of researchers published a report in the journal Science in which they duplicated the tests used by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers to detect life, and were unable to detect any signs in Atacama Desert soil in the region of Yungay.”
Not all of the Salar de Atacama (the big Atacama salt flat) is this dead. There are some pools there with very salt-resistant shrimp, and weirdly enough, flamingos come to this desolate, otherwise empty place. So you know what they did? They made the area where the flamingos go a national reserve. It’s both desolate and lovely. They don’t extract lithium there.
...
And getting oil out of the tar sands? That’s not done with a neat little well. There are two primary ways of extracting oil from tar sands. One is to force steam into the sands through a series of horizontal wells. Then another series of wells is drilled to extract the oil freed by the steam. And all it takes is about 1,500 cubic feet of natural gas to make the steam that drives out a single barrel of oil.
But that steam extraction? It accounts for a small fraction of the oil extracted from the Athabasca tar sands. Most of it comes from a process that looks like this:
(http://images.dailykos.com/images/248740/large/dreamstime_m_42945980.jpg?1462577336)
And like this:
(http://images.dailykos.com/images/248758/large/GettyImages-92360003.jpg?1462578690)
Some of those numbers for Escondida are ridiculously over exaggerated.
Most copper ore in the world (even at Escondida) is not treated with Sulphuric acid. Most is treated in flotation cells, as it is a much more efficient, and a cheaper way to get the copper out.
At Escondida the 19 million tonnes of Copper (for 2015) may be right, but only 1.3 million tonnes of that Copper used Sulphuric acid (still bad for the environment)
It should be noted that Sulphuric Acid is a by-product from Copper Smelting. So it using a waste product, and it is used in a contained system.
https://copperalliance.org.uk/knowledge-base/education/education-resources/copper-mining-extraction-oxide-ores/
In my 30 years of Copper Mining here in Australia, we have never use any acid in our treatment plants. Only limestone, Xanthates and Frother agents.
Speaking at a World Soil Day event in 2016, Maria-Helena Semedo, deputy director-general of natural resources at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said that if current soil degradation rates were not reversed, all the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years.
This means that there may only be 60 or so harvests left to reap from the world’s soil. She says some of the main causes of soil destruction include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation, which increases erosion, and global warming.
Estimates published by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, suggest that the world is losing roughly 20ha of topsoil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming.
In a recent interview with UK newspaper, The Independent, Prof Raj Patel, research professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said that industrial agriculture was bringing about the mass extinction of life on Earth.
...
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
...
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.
...
The new analysis selected the 73 best studies done to date to assess the insect decline. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit. For example, the number of widespread butterfly species fell by 58% on farmed land in England between 2000 and 2009. The UK has suffered the biggest recorded insect falls overall, though that is probably a result of being more intensely studied than most places.
...
“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.
He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.
...
Article: How many harvests are left in your soil? (https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/opinion/blog/letter-from-the-editor/many-harvests-left-soil/)
From: Farmer's Weekly
Date: 2017 SEPT 8QuoteSpeaking at a World Soil Day event in 2016, Maria-Helena Semedo, deputy director-general of natural resources at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said that if current soil degradation rates were not reversed, all the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years.
This means that there may only be 60 or so harvests left to reap from the world’s soil. She says some of the main causes of soil destruction include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation, which increases erosion, and global warming.
Estimates published by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, suggest that the world is losing roughly 20ha of topsoil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming.
In a recent interview with UK newspaper, The Independent, Prof Raj Patel, research professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said that industrial agriculture was bringing about the mass extinction of life on Earth.
...
Article: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature?CMP=twt_gu)
From: The Guardian
Date: 2019 FEB 10QuoteThe world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
...
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.
...
The new analysis selected the 73 best studies done to date to assess the insect decline. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit. For example, the number of widespread butterfly species fell by 58% on farmed land in England between 2000 and 2009. The UK has suffered the biggest recorded insect falls overall, though that is probably a result of being more intensely studied than most places.
...
“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.
He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.
...
I don't know about you lot but I'm feeling pessimistic.
No plastic bottles, utensils or cups? That’s what some lawmakers are proposing (http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2019/02/09/hawaii-lawmakers-chewing-ban-plastic-utensils-bottles-food-containers/)
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Plastic bags are out. Plastic straws are on their way out.
Now Hawaii lawmakers want to take things a big step further.
They’re considering an outright ban on all sorts of single-use plastics common in the food and beverage industry, from plastic bottles to plastic utensils to plastic containers.
Senate Bill 522 has already passed through two committees and is on its way to two more.
Supporters say it’s an ambitious and broad measure that would position Hawaii as a leader in the nation ― and ensure that Hawaii’s oceans have a fighting chance as the global plastic pollution problem worsens.
Article: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature?CMP=twt_gu)
From: The Guardian
Date: 2019 FEB 10QuoteThe world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
...
The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.
...
The new analysis selected the 73 best studies done to date to assess the insect decline. Butterflies and moths are among the worst hit. For example, the number of widespread butterfly species fell by 58% on farmed land in England between 2000 and 2009. The UK has suffered the biggest recorded insect falls overall, though that is probably a result of being more intensely studied than most places.
...
“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.
He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.
...
I don't know about you lot but I'm feeling pessimistic.
This may seem like it's coming out of left field, but fuck Freeman Dyson so hard.
I just got done finishing a book of essayist by famous scientists. While it had a few gems, the editor had the audacity to put in a Dyson essay towards the end where he castigates climate scientists for focusing too much on the "climatic" effects of CO2 emissions and not enough on the "biological". He puts forward some really basic biology about plant respiration and CO2 capacity, as if climate scientists have somehow been ignoring their middle-school science classes. To be clear it's a foregone conclusion to him that all of these biological effects are good. If there was anything of value whatsoever in the essay, it was as a snapshot of Nobel syndrome* and stubborn physicists trying to downplay the real expertise that exists in other disciplines.
*Yes I realize he never won one.
This may seem like it's coming out of left field, but fuck Freeman Dyson so hard.
I just got done finishing a book of essayist by famous scientists. While it had a few gems, the editor had the audacity to put in a Dyson essay towards the end where he castigates climate scientists for focusing too much on the "climatic" effects of CO2 emissions and not enough on the "biological". He puts forward some really basic biology about plant respiration and CO2 capacity, as if climate scientists have somehow been ignoring their middle-school science classes. To be clear it's a foregone conclusion to him that all of these biological effects are good. If there was anything of value whatsoever in the essay, it was as a snapshot of Nobel syndrome* and stubborn physicists trying to downplay the real expertise that exists in other disciplines.
*Yes I realize he never won one.
This may seem like it's coming out of left field, but fuck Freeman Dyson so hard.
I just got done finishing a book of essayist by famous scientists. While it had a few gems, the editor had the audacity to put in a Dyson essay towards the end where he castigates climate scientists for focusing too much on the "climatic" effects of CO2 emissions and not enough on the "biological". He puts forward some really basic biology about plant respiration and CO2 capacity, as if climate scientists have somehow been ignoring their middle-school science classes. To be clear it's a foregone conclusion to him that all of these biological effects are good. If there was anything of value whatsoever in the essay, it was as a snapshot of Nobel syndrome* and stubborn physicists trying to downplay the real expertise that exists in other disciplines.
*Yes I realize he never won one.
Did he write about soil sequestration in his essay? I think I heard his name mentioned in this regard.
Dyson has long argued, most recently in The New York Review of Books, that genetically engineered trees might, as well as producing biofuel, combat climate change. He notes that about 8 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is temporarily converted into vegetation each year by photosynthesis. Capturing some of this with trees designed and harvested for the purpose could, he suggests, reduce the amount of that gas in the air rather quickly, and so ameliorate greenhouse warming.(they go on to say something to the effect of "we should research this as one option among many".)
Ecologists are apt to see enormous problems with Dyson's notion—for example, the loss of agricultural land that would presumably result from creating vast plantations of such trees; the energetic costs of planting, harvesting, and producing fertilizer for the trees; the amount of water needed for irrigation; and the large-scale disruption of existing ecosystems. It is also unclear how much potential for improving carbon fixation rates there may really be. Not least of all, the idea seems sociologically naive. Some 12 percent of the annual net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is the result of deforestation. If we can't prevent existing forests from being destroyed, how can we persuade people to plant forests of genetically modified trees?
The seasonal cycle in atmospheric CO2 shows that the lifetime of a CO2 molecule in the air before it is exchanged with another in the land biosphere is about 12 years. Therefore if the trees could simply be persuaded to drop diamonds instead of leaves, repairing the damage to the atmosphere could be fast, I suppose. The problem here, unrecognized by Dyson, is that the business-as-usual he’s defending would release almost as much carbon to the air by the end of the century as the entire reservoir of carbon stored on land, in living things and in soils combined. The land carbon reservoir would have to double in size in order keep up with us. This is too visionary for me to bet the farm on.
the CO2 in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and topsoil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs.I'll also quote the response:
Some highlights from the myriad studies totally debunking this claim:(there's also a lengthy response in there to his statement that "the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects" that you may find relevant.)
- Soils store three times as much carbon as plants and the atmosphere... Consequently, the Kyoto Protocol permits the signatory countries to count soils and forests against greenhouse gas emissions as so-called carbon sinks. [University of Zurich]
- The response of soil microbial communities to changes in temperature increases the potential for more carbon dioxide to be released from the world's soils as global temperatures rise, scientists have revealed. [University of Exeter]
- Increased plant growth caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is associated with higher rates of carbon dioxide release from soil. If rising carbon dioxide enhances soil carbon storage at all, the effect will be small. Soil carbon may not be as stable as previously thought, and soil microbes exert more direct control on carbon buildup than global climate models represent. [U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science
- An increase in human-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could initiate a chain reaction between plants and microorganisms that would unsettle one of the largest carbon reservoirs on the planet - soil. Researchers developed the first computer model to show at a global scale the complex interaction between carbon, plants and soil. [Princeton University]
- New research has found that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause soil microbes to produce more carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change. This research challenges our previous understanding about how carbon accumulates in soil. [Northern Arizona University]
- Scientists from UC Irvine and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have developed a new computer model to measure global warming's effect on soil worldwide that accounts for how bacteria and fungi in soil control carbon. [University of California Irvine & National Center for Atmospheric Research]
- The planet's soil releases about 60 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, which is far more than that released by burning fossil fuels. Short-term warming studies have documented that rising temperatures increase the rate of soil respiration. As a result, scientists have worried that global warming would accelerate the decomposition of carbon in the soil, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and accelerating global warming. [Carnegie Institution]
- Vast stores of carbon in U.S. forest soils could be released by rising global temperatures, according to a study by UC Irvine and other researchers in a recent online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [University of California – Irvine]
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says (https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change)
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change
Investors should move out of fossil fuels, says Michael Brune, executive director of US environmental organisation the Sierra Club. “Not only is it morally risky, it’s economically risky. The world is moving away from fossil fuels towards clean energy and is doing so at an accelerated pace. Those left holding investments in fossil fuel companies will find their investments becoming more and more risky over time.”
There is a “growing wave of companies that are acting in the opposite manner to the companies in this report,” says Brune. Nearly 100 companies including Apple, Facebook, Google and Ikea have committed to 100% renewable power under the RE100 initiative. Volvo recently announced that all its cars would be electric or hybrid from 2019.
And oil and gas companies are also embarking on green investments. Shell set up a renewables arm in 2015 with a $1.7bn investment attached and a spokesperson for Chevron says it’s “committed to managing its [greenhouse gas] emissions” and is investing in two of the world’s largest carbon dioxide injection projects to capture and store carbon. A BP spokesperson says its “determined to be part of the solution” for climate change and is “investing in renewables and low-carbon innovation.” And ExxonMobil, which has faced heavy criticism for its environmental record, has been exploring carbon capture and storage.
But for many the sums involved and pace of change are nowhere near enough. A research paper published last year by Paul Stevens, an academic at think tank Chatham House, said international oil companies were no longer fit for purpose and warned these multinationals that they faced a “nasty, brutish and short” end within the next 10 years if they did not completely change their business models.
ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.
China (Coal) 9,622 119,312 128,933 14.3
Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) 4,263 36,298 40,561 4.5
Gazprom OAO 4,652 30,569 35,221 3.9
National Iranian Oil Co 2,468 18,037 20,505 2.3
ExxonMobil Corp 1,833 15,952 17,785 2.0
Coal India 892 15,950 16,842 1.9
Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) 2,055 14,749 16,804 1.9
Russia (Coal) 1,216 15,524 16,740 1.9
Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1,212 13,805 15,017 1.7
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) 1,479 12,564 14,042 1.6
BP PLC 1,072 12,719 13,791 1.5
Chevron Corp 1,215 10,608 11,823 1.3
Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) 1,108 9,971 11,079 1.2
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co 1,135 9,635 10,769 1.2
Poland Coal 884 9,596 10,480 1.2
Peabody Energy Corp 266 10,098 10,364 1.2
Sonatrach SPA 1,490 7,507 8,997 1.0
Kuwait Petroleum Corp 767 8,194 8,961 1.0
Total SA 778 7,762 8,541 0.9
BHP Billiton Ltd 588 7,595 8,183 0.9
Kind of what you'd expect, but I see little hope of changing these companies' policies without some major changes to our economic policies and energy infrastructure.
I partially agree, but if we achieve the political power to overthrow them, then we'll have the power to do lots of things that we should be doing and aren't.
the end of the world is certain
That's putting it mildly.the end of the world is certain
I'm not optimistic about the future, but I find this hyperbolic.
You won't hear me disagreeing with that. I'm just wondering how. And questioning Quetz's glimmer of optimism, unfortunately.
Volvo Cars to go all electric from 2019 (https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6732728)
Volvo is to put an electric motor in every new model it produces from 2019 as it seeks to lead legacy carmakers' shift to electric propulsion.
The company announced the decision, which it described as "historic", in a press release on Wednesday morning.
"It's a crucially important decision for Volvo going into a more carbon-free mobility, but also I think it's a great move to strengthn our brand," Chief Executive Håkan Samuelsson told Swedish Radio.
He said the company was responding to customer demand.
"They are asking and requiring all-electric cars in a greater extent. And If we are going to come down further in CO2 levels, we have to go electric."
The Chinese-owned company will continue to make combustion-engine Volvos but only from models put on the market before 2019.
If we stopped emitting greenhouse gases right now, would we stop climate change? (http://theconversation.com/if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-right-now-would-we-stop-climate-change-78882)
Despite significant advances in renewable energy sources, total demand for energy accelerates and carbon dioxide emissions increase. As a professor of climate and space sciences, I teach my students they need to plan for a world 4℃ warmer. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency states that if we don’t get off our current path, then we’re looking at an Earth 6℃ warmer. Even now after the Paris Agreement, the trajectory is essentially the same. It’s hard to say we’re on a new path until we see a peak and then a downturn in carbon emissions. With the approximately 1℃ of warming we’ve already seen, the observed changes are already disturbing.
Change the law to ensure the rich people can't hide from the rest of society, and to make sure we can make use of all available resources.
As climate crisis sets in, Norway taps into new oil (https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology-industry-and-energy/2019/01/climate-crisis-sets-norway-taps-new-oil)
More fields are coming into production and peak oil is expected in year 2023. Arctic waters are priority No 1, the country’s Petroleum Directorate says.
...
The Norwegian oil and gas production is now about to significantly increase, Nyland said. After 15 years of falling production, the output is bouncing back and a new peak oil is expected in 2023. The volumes of oil and gas will that year be almost on the level of 2004, the Directorate’s new shelf report shows.
«The activity level on the Norwegian Shelf is high. Production forecasts for the next few years are promising and lay a foundation for substantial revenues, both for the companies and the Norwegian society,» Nyland said.
«The high level of exploration activity proves that the Norwegian Shelf is attractive. That is good news!» the Director General underlined in Thursday’s press conference.
You guys see this bullshit right in your home state?
https://ncse.com/news/2019/01/bill-targeting-climate-change-education-connecticut-0018845
You guys see this bullshit right in your home state?
https://ncse.com/news/2019/01/bill-targeting-climate-change-education-connecticut-0018845
Yeah, we're going to need some kind of international carbon tax to slow this down.
No one wants to unilaterally cut production, and they can always argue it won't make that much of a difference vs. other sources and countries, that it's better than coal, etc. There needs to be a specific and proportional cost to polluting, to redirect investments.
Yeah, we're going to need some kind of international carbon tax to slow this down.
No one wants to unilaterally cut production, and they can always argue it won't make that much of a difference vs. other sources and countries, that it's better than coal, etc. There needs to be a specific and proportional cost to polluting, to redirect investments.
Sweden has shown that climate action and economic growth are absolutely linked (https://www.government.se/opinion-pieces/2017/06/sweden-has-shown-that-climate-action-and-economic-growth-are-absolutely-linked/)
...
It was long a common perception that climate efforts led to increased costs and that the aim of companies' climate efforts was to live up to requirements and avoid risks. In recent years, this perception has changed – companies have realised that ambitious climate efforts present opportunities. The Haga Initiative is a network of companies that wants to show that the business sector is part of the solution in the climate transition. Each of the fifteen heads of the companies that make up the Haga Initiative can describe how both customers and employees are more loyal to companies that take responsibility for the climate, and how climate efforts lead to technological development, innovations and new products that in turn result in new and better business opportunities. The Initiative's vision is actually working out so well that these companies have already achieved the previous climate objective of a 40 per cent reduction in emissions, and have now raised the bar – they intend to be fossil-free by 2030.
Swedish experience shows that predictability and effective policy levers play an important role in companies' transition potential. Despite having the world's highest carbon tax for more than 20 years and an unusually strict climate policy, seen in an international perspective, Swedish companies are at the forefront and have retained and reinforced their international competitiveness. At national level we now see that since 1990, emissions in Sweden have decreased by 25 per cent while GDP has increased by 69 per cent. Just as in many other parts of the world, we see that the link between the curves for carbon emissions and increased GDP has been broken. A shining example is the development in the renewable energy industry, where we can see how a significant fall in price can be linked to a dramatic increase in employment and growth.
These Swedish climate success stories are not surprising to those following the research. More than ten years ago, prominent economist Nicholas Stern stated that the costs of not taking action against climate change will be much higher than if the world takes decisive action now. Based on Mr Stern's realisation that it will be more expensive to take action later, the New Climate Economy research commission stated in a report that it is less expensive to take action now, since many climate measures also lead to major benefits to society. Just recently the OECD published a report concluding that the G20-countries thorugh acting on climate change can increase growth by 1% by 2021 and 2.8% by 2050. At company level, Harvard Professor Robert G. Eccles has shown that companies with a focus on sustainability perform better and have a higher market value than other companies.
But we have been seeing these things – every year, hotter and hotter – for a while now. You think it’s really just about people experiencing it on the ground?
I think there are a few things going on. First of all, the unprecedented weather. It is no longer this distant, almost theoretical construct. It is something very real that people are feeling.
And I think the public is getting it. They are expecting more from their policymakers. They are demanding, increasingly, that politicians focus on this issue. Look at the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made climate change a featured part of her political identity. Her message is really connecting with younger folks. Politicians are actually seeing that you can win by campaigning on climate change.
There’s a race between two tipping points. The tipping point of the public consciousness, which we want to see, and the tipping point in the climate system that we don’t want to see and that we’re coming perilously close to. For example, the melting of major ice sheets and the global sea-level rise that would entail.
It’s a race between our ability to mobilise the public and policymakers to action and the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change we will see the further we go down this road of fossil fuel burning. That’s really the challenge, to turn this ship around as quickly as possible.
And a little bit overwhelming. You’ve been talking about this for a while. What is it like for you to give this dire warning all the time?
If I didn’t think there was hope, it would be very difficult. But I do think there is hope. I am cautiously optimistic that we are seeing some change now. Not enough to avert some pretty bad climate impacts, but we’re seeing enough to convince me that we’re getting onto the path we need to get on.
There are no physical obstacles to averting catastrophic warming of the planet. The only obstacles at this point are political ones. And those are surmountable.
The science that we are doing is a threat to the world’s most powerful and wealthiest special interests. The most powerful and wealthiest special interest that has ever existed: the fossil fuel industry.
They have used their immense resources to create fake scandals and to fund a global disinformation campaign aimed at vilifying the scientists, discrediting the science, and misleading the public and policymakers. Arguably, it is the most villainous act in the history of human civilisation, because it is about the short-term interests of a small number of plutocrats over the long-term welfare of this planet and the people who live on it.
So, once again, to be in a position to be fighting on the right side of a battle between good and evil – which frankly it is – is a privilege.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le0n4mCRkzY
This is an overview of Svante Arrhenius' 1896 article analyzing the climatic relevance of atmospheric carbon dioxide for average global ground temperatures. His research constitutes pioneering work in modelling Earth's climate by incorporating the greenhouse effect and accordingly points out fundamental mechanisms that contribute to climate changes.
Svante Arrhenius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius) lived 1859 to 1927. If the world had taken heed back then, we would have saved ourselves so many problems.
Svante Arrhenius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius) lived 1859 to 1927. If the world had taken heed back then, we would have saved ourselves so many problems.
Be careful what you wish for. He thought doubling CO2 would be a good thing, and this has unfortunately been a (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00431672.2017.1248744?journalCode=vwws20) talking (http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/12/20/father-of-global-warming-thought-that-exposing-children-to-electricity-would-make-them-smart/) point (https://twitter.com/SteveSGoddard/status/413742614777573376) of the anti-gw crowd. Probably didn't help that he lived around where you do. }|:op
How do you guys deal with Anti-AGW people who can't understand they're conspiracy nuts?
Yeah, I respond to their posts, not their person.How do you guys deal with Anti-AGW people who can't understand they're conspiracy nuts?
It has certainly happened. In general, they don't seem to understand scientific conensus, and engage in personal attacks against climate scientists.
IMO, many hardcore denialists can't be persuaded to change their mind. Better to focus on the general public.
How do you guys deal with Anti-AGW people who can't understand they're conspiracy nuts?
The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials.
Article: White House to set up panel to counter climate change consensus, officials say (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-to-select-federal-scientists-to-reassess-government-climate-findings-sources-say/2019/02/24/49cd0a84-37dd-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?noredirect=on)
From: Washington Post
Date: 2019 FEB 24QuoteThe White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials.
OH COME ON
Stratocumulus clouds cover 20% of the low-latitude oceans and are especially prevalent in the subtropics. They cool the Earth by shading large portions of its surface from sunlight. However, as their dynamical scales are too small to be resolvable in global climate models, predictions of their response to greenhouse warming have remained uncertain. Here we report how stratocumulus decks respond to greenhouse warming in large-eddy simulations that explicitly resolve cloud dynamics in a representative subtropical region. In the simulations, stratocumulus decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO2 levels rise above 1,200 ppm. In addition to the warming from rising CO2 levels, this instability triggers a surface warming of about 8 K globally and 10 K in the subtropics. Once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO2 concentrations drop substantially below the level at which the instability first occurred [...]
The GOP megadonor family that gave more than $15 million to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign maintained its position as a key funder of climate change denial in 2017, dishing out nearly $5 million to nonprofits and think tanks that peddle misinformation about the global crisis, according to their latest tax records.
Article: Possible climate transitions from breakup of stratocumulus decks under greenhouse warming (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1)
From: Nature
Date: 2019 FEB 25QuoteStratocumulus clouds cover 20% of the low-latitude oceans and are especially prevalent in the subtropics. They cool the Earth by shading large portions of its surface from sunlight. However, as their dynamical scales are too small to be resolvable in global climate models, predictions of their response to greenhouse warming have remained uncertain. Here we report how stratocumulus decks respond to greenhouse warming in large-eddy simulations that explicitly resolve cloud dynamics in a representative subtropical region. In the simulations, stratocumulus decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO2 levels rise above 1,200 ppm. In addition to the warming from rising CO2 levels, this instability triggers a surface warming of about 8 K globally and 10 K in the subtropics. Once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO2 concentrations drop substantially below the level at which the instability first occurred [...]
New modeling suggests 1,200 PPM will trigger additional 8C warming, mechanism won't reverse till CO2's back to pre-industrial.
edit: Fun chart
(https://i.imgur.com/y6HcGaq.png)
...
[...] Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by a startling 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped more subtly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.
...
In 2012, lawmakers in North Carolina banned the use of scientific predictions of accelerated sea level rise in coastal policy-making.
That should be "liquid of unknown origin deposits salt into North Carolina soil".
https://www.businessinsider.com/north-carolina-passed-laws-against-science-sea-level-rise-2018-9QuoteIn 2012, lawmakers in North Carolina banned the use of scientific predictions of accelerated sea level rise in coastal policy-making.
If you don't speak Swedish:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswvwg
Nice interview about climate change.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1102929346342371330
Is it too late for us? Scientists have spent decades sounding the alarm on the devastating effects of climate change. And for decades, society decided to do pretty much nothing about it. In fact, over the past 30 years, we’ve done more damage to the climate than in all of human history! Now, there’s a real chance we may have waited too long to avoid widespread tragedy and suffering. In his book “The Uninhabitable Earth”, David Wallace-Wells depicts a catastrophic future far worse than we ever imagined...and far sooner than we thought. It is undoubtedly a brutal truth to face, as you will hear in this episode, but if there’s any hope to avert the worst case scenarios, we have to start now.WITHpod@gmail.com
Under regime designs for low and medium concentration stabilization levels (i.e. 450 and 550 ppm CO2-eq, category A and B; see Chapter 3, Table 3.10) GHG emissions from developed countries would need to be reduced substantially during this century. For low and medium stabilization levels, developed countries as a group would need to reduce their emissions to below 1990 levels in 2020 (on the order of –10% to 40% below 1990 levels for most of the considered regimes) and to still lower levels by 2050 (40% to 95% below 1990 levels), even if developing countries make substantial reductions. The reduction percentages for individual countries vary between different regime designs and parameter settings and may be outside of this range. For high stabilization levels, reductions would have to occur, but at a later date (see Box 13.7).
Sharp and potentially devastating temperature rises of 3C to 5C in the Arctic are now inevitable even if the world succeeds in cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, research has found.
Winter temperatures at the north pole are likely to rise by at least 3C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, and there could be further rises to between 5C and 9C above the recent average for the region, according to the UN.
Such changes would result in rapidly melting ice and permafrost, leading to sea level rises and potentially to even more destructive levels of warming. Scientists fear Arctic heating could trigger a climate “tipping point” as melting permafrost releases the powerful greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, which in turn could create a runaway warming effect.
...
What is often frustrating is that we actually have the technology right now to do what we need to do. All we really need is the political will. Build more nuclear plants, expand renewable energy, update the grid and add more storage, create incentives for greater efficiency and electric vehicles, and don’t let industry externalize the costs of pollution.
All of this is going to happen anyway. These are the technologies of the future. We might as well try to get ahead of the curve and become leaders rather than followers. Our economy will actually benefit from taking this path, and it is extremely cost effective to mitigate climate change rather than pay for the consequences. Really, it’s just political stubbornness at this point, and an industry that does not want to adapt.
The cancer is already advanced, but is not yet terminal. Now is the time to act.
What is often frustrating is that we actually have the technology right now to do what we need to do. All we really need is the political will.
It's definitely solvable. It's not about engineering challenges, it's not about lack of knowledge or having enough skilled workers. It's about humans with power who deliberately prevent action on climate change, and who manage to deceive hundreds of millions of people into supporting them.
It's about humans with power who deliberately prevent action on climate change, and who manage to deceive hundreds of millions of people into supporting them.
Here's Carl Sagan's original essay on the dangers of climate change (https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-carl-sagans-original-essay-on-the-dangers-of-cl-1481304135)
Ballantine has issued a shiny new edition of Sagan's book Cosmos, with a foreword from Cosmos reboot host Neil deGrasse Tyson. We've got an excerpt, which reveals how deeply Sagan was concerned about climate change in 1980 when the book was originally published.
...
Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.
QuoteHere's Carl Sagan's original essay on the dangers of climate change (https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-carl-sagans-original-essay-on-the-dangers-of-cl-1481304135)
Ballantine has issued a shiny new edition of Sagan's book Cosmos, with a foreword from Cosmos reboot host Neil deGrasse Tyson. We've got an excerpt, which reveals how deeply Sagan was concerned about climate change in 1980 when the book was originally published.
...
Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.
He was worried about it back in 1980? I wonder what he would have thought about our current state of affairs, had he still been alive today.
The impact of climate change, combined with population growth, means the country is facing an "existential threat", Sir James Bevan told the Waterwise Conference in London.
He wants to see wasting water become "as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby".
"We all need to use less water and use it more efficiently," he said.
Sir James Bevan was appointed chief executive of the Environment Agency - the public body responsible for protecting the environment and wildlife in England - in 2015 after a career as a diplomat.
He told his audience that, in around 20 to 25 years, England would reach the "jaws of death - the point at which, unless we take action to change things, we will not have enough water to supply our needs".
...
what horrifying aspect of this technology am I missing?
what horrifying aspect of this technology am I missing?
Good question. My understanding is that the challenge is always cost (energy and financial), sometimes also ecological impact from the high salinity output. Maybe cost & impact constrains scalability?
Gonna have to take a look for desalination-related conference talks later.
I'd like to know more about:
- State of R&D
- Scalability
- Cost, especially wrt economies of scale
Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.
Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.
...
Enter desalination. The Ashkelon plant, in 2005, provided 127 million cubic meters (166 million cubic yards) of water. Hadera, in 2009, put out another 140 million cubic meters (183 million cubic yards). And now Sorek, 150 million cubic meters (196 million cubic yards) [...]
...
Inside Sorek, 50,000 membranes enclosed in vertical white cylinders, each 4 feet high and 16 inches wide, are whirring like jet engines. The whole thing feels like a throbbing spaceship about to blast off. The cylinders contain sheets of plastic membranes wrapped around a central pipe, and the membranes are stippled with pores less than a hundredth the diameter of a human hair. Water shoots into the cylinders at a pressure of 70 atmospheres and is pushed through the membranes, while the remaining brine is returned to the sea.
Desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but the kind of advanced technologies being employed at Sorek have been a game changer. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in the 1990s. Sorek can produce a thousand liters of drinking water for 58 cents. Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to households in most U.S. cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los Angeles (US$58).
The International Desalination Association claims that 300 million people get water from desalination, and that number is quickly rising. IDE, the Israeli company that built Ashkelon, Hadera and Sorek, recently finished the Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, a close cousin of its Israel plants, and it has many more in the works. Worldwide, the equivalent of six additional Sorek plants are coming online every year. The desalination era is here.
...
Even more ambitious is the US$900 million Red Sea–Dead Sea Canal, a joint venture between Israel and Jordan to build a large desalination plant on the Red Sea, where they share a border, and divide the water among Israelis, Jordanians and the Palestinians. The brine discharge from the plant will be piped 100 miles north through Jordan to replenish the Dead Sea, which has been dropping a meter per year since the two countries began diverting the only river that feeds it in the 1960s. By 2020, these old foes will be drinking from the same tap.
...
...
[...] the new installations have also brought new problems, such as the accumulative effect of large quantities of salt being dumped back into the sea as a by-product of the desalination process.
...
This year, the country’s fifth desalination plant goes online in Ashdod. Along with the four older plants, some 582 million cubic meters of water will be produced annually – meeting about two-thirds of Israel’s domestic needs. It will not be the last plant, though, with the Israel Water Authority planning to establish another in Western Galilee and another four large facilities along the coast by 2025. Zoning plans for these coastal projects have already been approved.
...
Alongside the advantages, desalination plants have also had a significant impact on the environment and, indirectly, on consumer health.
Although they supply high quality water, it is devoid of some key minerals found in normal water, like magnesium. Magnesium shortages can raise the risk of heart disease, with some experts pointing to a significant shortage of this important mineral in the water.
“Initial results of Israeli studies point to an elevated mortality risk of myocardial infarction in areas where there is wide use of desalinated water,” said public health expert Prof. Yona Amitai, speaking recently at a Bar-Ilan University conference on regulating water supply.
Amitai urged that “more studies be done to examine the possibility of adding magnesium to the water.”
As well as being bad for people, magnesium deficiency can also hurt agricultural products. Researchers at the agricultural administration have already found a significant drop in the supply of this mineral in orchards where desalinated water is used. However, they said the problem can be overcome by adding fertilizer containing magnesium to the water.
...
Well, one of the problems will be that, while water for most large coastal cities could easily be provided in this way, it would not do much to preserve irrigation in the vast middle of a continent.
It is certainly a problem if it is seen as an alternative to conservation.
Dude, stop obsessing over one word. You’re annoyingly as fuck.
Maybe cost & impact constrains scalability?
Uh, I think you guys are talking past each other
Lat appeared to be responding to this oversight regarding scalability constraints:Maybe cost & impact constrains scalability?
You appear to be responding to this as an artifact of 'Black & White' thinking.
It is certainly a problem if it is seen as an alternative to conservation.
Yeah, I'd say that the main downside to desalination would be becoming reliant on it.How would that be a problem? It’s supply is endless.
If instead of optimizing water usage and being able to rely on local water sources, usage keeps growing and growing, you're going to be much worse off if the infrastructure is damaged (and/or someone decides they need the remote supplies more than you do).
Abundance is great as long as you can keep it abundant, rather than consider it a challenge.
There is no downside to a reliable and controlled abundance of fresh water to supply populations living in a desert.
There is no downside to a reliable and controlled abundance of fresh water to supply populations living in a desert.
Almost no downside. You still have to deal with the super salty water that's left over. (I suspect it could be dealt with by pumping the saline far out to sea and dispersing it across a relativel large area so it isn't outright toxic.) I don't think that's a reason to not move forward with desalination. It's just a pollution cost that shouldn't be externalized.
Not sure exactly what that means.
If you’re suggesting it could lead to reliance on an unreliable source, that’s a remote issue. This is not an exotic technology reliant on rare materials etc. it does use a lot of energy, but at the same time the areas where the technology is being developed are the same areas that are developing renewable energy.
There is no downside to a reliable and controlled abundance of fresh water to supply populations living in a desert.
The book is extremely effective in shaking the reader out of that complacency. Some things I did not want to learn, but learned anyway: every return flight from London to New York costs the Arctic three square metres of ice; for every half degree of warming, societies see between a 10 and 20% increase in the likelihood of armed conflict; global plastic production is expected to triple by 2050, by which point there will be more plastic than fish in the planet’s oceans.
...
There is a widespread inclination to think of climate change as a form of compound payback for two centuries of industrial capitalism. But among Wallace-Wells’s most bracing revelations is how recent the bulk of the destruction has been, how sickeningly fast its results. Most of the real damage, in fact, has taken place in the time since the reality of climate change became known.
...
There’s also a temptation, when thinking about climate change, to focus on denialism as the villain of the piece. The bigger problem, Wallace-Wells points out, is the much vaster number of people (and governments) who acknowledge the true scale of the problem, and still act as if it’s not happening. Outright climate denialism as a political force, he argues, is essentially a US phenomenon – which is to say, essentially, a phenomenon of the Republican party – and the US is responsible for only 15% of the world’s emissions. “To believe the fault for global warming lies exclusively with the Republican party or its fossil-fuel backers is a form of American narcissism.”
...
It’s not without its hopeful notes: in a sense, none of this would even be worth talking about if there were nothing we could do about it. As Wallace-Wells points out, we already have all the tools we need to avoid the worst of what is to come: “a carbon tax and the political apparatus to aggressively phase out dirty energy; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in the global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture”. The fact that the route out of this hell is straightforward does not mean, of course, that it won’t be incredibly arduous, or that we should be confident of making it.
QuoteThe book is extremely effective in shaking the reader out of that complacency. Some things I did not want to learn, but learned anyway: every return flight from London to New York costs the Arctic three square metres of ice;
The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.
Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.
Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.
In the run-up to the US midterm elections last year $2m was spent on targeted Facebook and Instagram ads by global oil giants and their industry bodies, promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production, according to the report published on Friday by InfluenceMap.
Separately, BP donated $13m to a campaign, also supported by Chevron, that successfully stopped a carbon tax in Washington state – $1m of which was spent on social media ads, the research shows.
At what point can we charge the CEOs and board members for crimes against humanity? Making the planet inhabitable for personal gain is literally a crime against the whole of humanity.QuoteThe largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.
Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.
Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.
In the run-up to the US midterm elections last year $2m was spent on targeted Facebook and Instagram ads by global oil giants and their industry bodies, promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production, according to the report published on Friday by InfluenceMap.
Separately, BP donated $13m to a campaign, also supported by Chevron, that successfully stopped a carbon tax in Washington state – $1m of which was spent on social media ads, the research shows.
Link (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/22/top-oil-firms-spending-millions-lobbying-to-block-climate-change-policies-says-report)
QuoteThe book is extremely effective in shaking the reader out of that complacency. Some things I did not want to learn, but learned anyway: every return flight from London to New York costs the Arctic three square metres of ice;
Wait, what does that mean? The ice shelf is not equally thick throughout its extent. Is it an average square meter? How much is that?
All three of those companies are investing heavily into research and development of alternative fuel sources.
Not sure if that's enough to let their CEOs off the hook. But if they are able to develop sustainable and workable alternative sources, a carbon tax could make them more profitable.
All three of those companies are investing heavily into research and development of alternative fuel sources.
Not sure if that's enough to let their CEOs off the hook. But if they are able to develop sustainable and workable alternative sources, a carbon tax could make them more profitable.
You don't get to lobby against action on climate change and not be considered hostile. If they want to show that they care, then they should lobby in favor of a carbon tax and other direct measures against emissions. Or lobby for getting money out of politics, so that we don't have to care what they're saying and only what they're doing.
So ultra-rich people can continue to remain unaffected until they're dead or cyborgs.
Maybe. It makes me think of that Narcissist's Prayer:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Except rewritten for Climate Change:
It isn't happening
And if it is, it isn't that bad.
And if it is, it isn't our fault.
And if it is, it is 50 to 75 years out.
...
Instead of anything that looks like progress, maybe we just get another line.
...
Starting April 1, Burger King is selling a new kind of Whopper that it claims is identical in taste to its traditional beef patty, with just one difference: It contains zero beef.
No, that’s not an April Fools’ joke (though some people, including in the Vox newsroom, wondered if it might be).
The new beefless burger is a partnership with the startup company Impossible Foods, which will supply patties made with heme, a protein cultivated from soybean roots that mimics the texture of meat — convincingly, by the sounds of it.
“People on my team who know the Whopper inside and out, they try it and they struggle to differentiate which one is which,” Fernando Machado, Burger King’s chief marketing officer, told the New York Times.
This is a huge deal for those who want to see meat alternatives replace actual meat because of concerns over animal cruelty or climate change. If this scales up, it could help save hundreds of thousands of animals from suffering on factory farms, and it could fight global warming by reducing the number of methane-producing cattle. It could also combat other problems like antibiotic resistance.
Burger King is giving the Impossible Burger a trial run in 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area, and if that goes well, the fast-food chain will make the product available in all its 7,200 branches across the US, according to Machado. That could signal the start of a noticeable drop in meat consumption nationwide if other chains follow Burger King’s lead. Which they are reasonably likely to do.
White Castle has already begun selling a slider version of the patty produced by Impossible Foods. And in January, Carl’s Jr. restaurants started offering a veggie burger made by another plant-based meat company, Beyond Meat.
...
Mainstream meat-substitutes on the rise.
Article: Burger King’s new Whopper is 0% beef. That’s a big deal. (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/1/18290762/burger-king-impossible-whopper-plant-based-meat)
From: Vox
Date: 2019 APR 01Quote...
Starting April 1, Burger King is selling a new kind of Whopper that it claims is identical in taste to its traditional beef patty, with just one difference: It contains zero beef.
No, that’s not an April Fools’ joke (though some people, including in the Vox newsroom, wondered if it might be).
The new beefless burger is a partnership with the startup company Impossible Foods, which will supply patties made with heme, a protein cultivated from soybean roots that mimics the texture of meat — convincingly, by the sounds of it.
“People on my team who know the Whopper inside and out, they try it and they struggle to differentiate which one is which,” Fernando Machado, Burger King’s chief marketing officer, told the New York Times.
This is a huge deal for those who want to see meat alternatives replace actual meat because of concerns over animal cruelty or climate change. If this scales up, it could help save hundreds of thousands of animals from suffering on factory farms, and it could fight global warming by reducing the number of methane-producing cattle. It could also combat other problems like antibiotic resistance.
Burger King is giving the Impossible Burger a trial run in 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area, and if that goes well, the fast-food chain will make the product available in all its 7,200 branches across the US, according to Machado. That could signal the start of a noticeable drop in meat consumption nationwide if other chains follow Burger King’s lead. Which they are reasonably likely to do.
White Castle has already begun selling a slider version of the patty produced by Impossible Foods. And in January, Carl’s Jr. restaurants started offering a veggie burger made by another plant-based meat company, Beyond Meat.
...
Positive implications on several issues, climate change included.
I just heard that Canada is warming at double the global rate, with disproportionate effects in the West and far North.
So yay, I guess?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47638586
A technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air has received significant backing from major fossil fuel companies.
Sorry if this was already posted.Quotehttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47638586
A technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air has received significant backing from major fossil fuel companies.
I hope this works because I don't see governments and people in the next few years making any significant changes to their oil consumption behavior.
So how does this system work?
CO2 is a powerful warming gas but there's not a lot of it in the atmosphere - for every million particles of air, there are 410 of CO2.
While the CO2 is helping to drive temperatures up around the world, the comparatively low concentrations make it difficult to design efficient machines to remove the gas.
Carbon Engineering's process is all about sucking in air and exposing it to a chemical solution that concentrates the CO2. Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel.
I just heard that Canada is warming at double the global rate, with disproportionate effects in the West and far North.
So yay, I guess?
It's the same in Sweden.
In a way, I guess that if the Earth warms a total of 2 C, maybe it's better (or less bad) if the northern-most parts get the most of it? That would mean less warming near the equator, and northern Europe and northern North America don't run the risk of becoming uninhabitable for humans.
We also have another factor that will help mitigate rising sea levels somewhat: Post-glacial rebound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound)
I just heard that Canada is warming at double the global rate, with disproportionate effects in the West and far North.
So yay, I guess?
It's the same in Sweden.
In a way, I guess that if the Earth warms a total of 2 C, maybe it's better (or less bad) if the northern-most parts get the most of it? That would mean less warming near the equator, and northern Europe and northern North America don't run the risk of becoming uninhabitable for humans.
We also have another factor that will help mitigate rising sea levels somewhat: Post-glacial rebound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound)
I mean, I guess that's kind of good for the equatorial regions as long as they're not near a coastline, but it also means more and faster ice melt, and more heat absorption by the ocean, and perhaps in the future a shift in the thermohaline circulation. Which would not be a good thing. And keep in mind that the climate models take this into account, and the 1.5oC is a global average, so it doesn't make the scenarios any better.
So the jet stream and ocean currents, which combine to create stable climates in the northern hemisphere, have been relatively stable for millennia. But so has average temperatures and ocean temperatures.
Now that temperatures are rising there his no telling how drastic the effect will be on those systems (or it it will have any effect).
In addition to global warming we could soon see drastic climate change in large parts of the globe. Northern Europe could re-enter an ice age.
Northern africa could become a rain forrest.
The American plains could be the next Siberia. Or the new Sahara.
So the jet stream and ocean currents, which combine to create stable climates in the northern hemisphere, have been relatively stable for millennia. But so has average temperatures and ocean temperatures.
Now that temperatures are rising there his no telling how drastic the effect will be on those systems (or it it will have any effect).
In addition to global warming we could soon see drastic climate change in large parts of the globe. Northern Europe could re-enter an ice age.
Northern africa could become a rain forrest.
The American plains could be the next Siberia. Or the new Sahara.
Most of Australia could be inhabitable. Oh wait it already is ;)
More of Australia could be inhabitable.
Australia is projected to make it ok.
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
Australia is projected to make it ok.
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
So that's mostly a wealth map.
Australia is projected to make it ok.
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
So that's mostly a wealth map.
Australia is projected to make it ok.
(https://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/44ad7689566747f28514454c6de08e56/5a5660aca75e2062138b495e.png?preset=article-image)
So that's mostly a wealth map.
It makes sense, since wealthy countries are more likely to be able to make the necessary payments needed to adapt to global warming, and mitigate the worst consequences.
This review is worth reading: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells review – our terrifying future (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/27/the-uninhabitable-earth-review-david-wallace-wells)
The margins of my review copy of the book are scrawled with expressions of terror and despair, declining in articulacy as the pages proceed, until it’s all just cartoon sad faces and swear words.
Berlin: Barack Obama hails protests by youths against climate change, says 'the sooner you start, the better' (https://www.timesnownews.com/international/article/berlin-barack-obama-hails-protests-by-youths-against-climate-change-says-the-sooner-you-start-the-better/395808)
"Things change when we strongly mobilise," he said. "Our planet on which we live is in danger. We can't succeed by sitting back and waiting for someone else to do it". Obama, who left the White House in 2017 after two terms, was in Germany to promote his foundation.
He signed the Paris climate accord in 2015 which calls for capping global warming at "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but the planet is currently on track to heat up by double that figure. His successor Donald Trump decided in June last year to exit the accord.
Last week President Trump threatened to close the U.S. southern border because record numbers of Central American migrants are arriving there – including 100,000 apprehended in March. “I’m not playing games,” Trump warned. “We can’t hold people anymore.”
But what’s lost in Trump’s border-security bluster is that there’s something unusual about this wave of Central American migrants. Most are not from Honduras or El Salvador. Most are instead from Guatemala. And immigrant advocates say the main force driving them to flee here is climate change.
...
"Corn, beans – when I was younger we often had full harvests,” says Abraham. “Now, nothing.”
...
At least his corner of Guatemala, which is part of El Corredor Seco, The Dry Corridor. Scientists say climate change has been hostile to agriculture in that region – so much so that last year farmers there say they lost 90 percent of their crops. At the same time, severely depressed prices for Guatemalan coffee have left those campesinos with little or alternative cash source to buy food.
“The number of Guatemalan families, new arrivals, is increasing a lot,” says Amanda Escalante, a family aid coordinator at the nonprofit Guatemalan Maya Center in Lake Worth. “I see the unusual level of desperation, extreme poverty.”
Escalante believes the Guatemalans she’s helping now are part of the world’s new and growing cohort of displaced people: climate change refugees.
“This is a reality,” she insists. “If there is no agriculture in Guatemala how can they survive?”
But how has climate change made Guatemala’s Corredor Seco so unsurvivable? What distinguishes this prolonged, dust bowl-style crisis from, say, routine cycles of drought?
“It’s the unusual climate volatility,” says Dan McQuillan, agricultural programs manager for the nonprofit Catholic Relief Services and an expert on farming in Guatemala.
“Volatility is really what affects farming systems.”
McQuillan, who spoke with WLRN from his base in Calgary, Canada, says climate change volatility is so damaging because it brings not just temperature rise and drought, but things like erratic bursts of hard rain – even during drought. And that can kill crops not for just a harvest cycle but for years to come.
“The soil is baked hard as concrete and the rain comes pouring down, battering the crop, then just runs off,” says McQuillan. “We’re seeing a tremendous amount of erosion and loss of the productive top soil.”
...
Did Obama do much for climate while in the White House, apart from signing the Paris Accord? Or rather, did he not do something that was possible for him to do, given the Republican Congress?
Did Obama do much for climate while in the White House, apart from signing the Paris Accord? Or rather, did he not do something that was possible for him to do, given the Republican Congress?
Certainly. As usual, those on the right think he overstepped (and now we are seeing that position put into force by the current administration) and those on the left complain that he didn't do enough. His first term was one of status quo vis a vis Bush era policies while the US got back on its feet from the recession. His second term was characterized by a lot of policies implemented by various federal departments without the teeth of law (which the GOP congress was certainly not about to provide what with all the investigations into Clinton's emails and the tragic death of PFC Ben Ghazi - inside joke).
A few highlights...
* Clean Power Plan
* Better Building Challenge
* Climate data Initiative
* Higher efficiency standards for automobiles, appliances, federal buildings
* Federal subsidies for solar manufacturing
* Curbed drilling on federal lands and off-shore
* Allowed for 10 gigagwatts of solar and wind production on federal land
* Initiated a comprehensive national methane strategy
* Committed the US to reducing carbon by 3 billion metric tonnes by 2030
* Terminated federal financing for new coal plants
...
Previous and existing generations have emitted nearly all the carbon dioxide needed to take the world to 1.5C or 2C, meaning future generations will have to severely cut the emissions from flying, meat consumption and other activities in their lifetimes. The children and young people taking part in the youth strikes (born 1997-2012) will have carbon budgets just one sixth those of their baby boomer grandparents (1946-1964).
...
There is a currently a wide gap between the average annual emissions of a US citizen (16.9 tonnes) and an Indian citizen (1.9 tonnes). The analysis showing that children born now would have a lifetime carbon budget 90% lower than their grandparents assumes the relative gap would remain.
But in a second analysis, Carbon Brief posited a future carbon budget that would be the same for every citizen on the planet. This would mean that the budget for a child born today in the US is even lower, 97% lower than that of that of their grandparents. For someone born today in Europe, their budget would be 94% lower.
...
Did Obama do much for climate while in the White House, apart from signing the Paris Accord? Or rather, did he not do something that was possible for him to do, given the Republican Congress?
Certainly. As usual, those on the right think he overstepped (and now we are seeing that position put into force by the current administration) and those on the left complain that he didn't do enough. His first term was one of status quo vis a vis Bush era policies while the US got back on its feet from the recession. His second term was characterized by a lot of policies implemented by various federal departments without the teeth of law (which the GOP congress was certainly not about to provide what with all the investigations into Clinton's emails and the tragic death of PFC Ben Ghazi - inside joke).
A few highlights...
* Clean Power Plan
* Better Building Challenge
* Climate data Initiative
* Higher efficiency standards for automobiles, appliances, federal buildings
* Federal subsidies for solar manufacturing
* Curbed drilling on federal lands and off-shore
* Allowed for 10 gigagwatts of solar and wind production on federal land
* Initiated a comprehensive national methane strategy
* Committed the US to reducing carbon by 3 billion metric tonnes by 2030
* Terminated federal financing for new coal plants
You beat me to it.
Lindzen has his own pet hypothesis, called the "iris hypothesis". He basically argues that the earth's clouds work like an iris, i.e. that they provide a strong negative cloud feedback. He's not a pseudoscientist but he is on the fringe. Clouds are really complicated because the different types of clouds have different effects (blocking and absorbing more incoming versus outgoing radiation, having different levels of reflectivity, having interactions with things like soot and sulphate aerosols that can form condensation nuclei and change the optical properties of the cloud, and so forth (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40641-017-0060-3)) and they are small enough that modelling them has been difficult. It's still an area of contention today. However, modelling work and observations have so far failed (https://www.skepticalscience.com/infrared-iris-effect-negative-feedback.htm) to confirm his hypothesis (and some of his more recent work has been suspiciously flawed), and in fact, nowadays the cloud feedback is thought to be a net positive feedback. You can find more info on him here (https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm).
It seems redolent of other pseudoscience movements like the panspermia evangelists who misinterpret actual scientific findings and present that as evidence for their views.
Does it seem as if his reasoning is motivated by some particular agenda?
Climate Change increases probability of extreme weather events like this. The worse it gets, the more normal this gets.
COMMUNISM
He's part of the CATO institute and has cooperated with Heartland and some of the more notorious misinformation spreaders like Anthony Watts from wattsupwiththat.
Climate change is a "critical threat" to Australia's interests according to almost two-thirds of Australians — ranked as a more serious concern than international terrorism, North Korea's nuclear program or cyber attacks from other countries.
This is the first time climate change has led the list of potential threats in the long-running Lowy Institute poll since the question was first included in 2006.
The poll also confirmed Australians were more concerned about climate change this election than at any time since Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007 — when both major parties proposed an emissions trading scheme.
New polling from a respected foreign policy thinktank underscores the point that 2019 is the climate change election, with a majority of Australians saying global warming is a critical threat.
The poll undertaken for Lowy says 64% of adults rank climate change number one on a list of 12 threats to Australia’s national interests, up six points from last year’s survey and a jump of 18 points since 2014.
The 2019 result is the first time climate has topped the list of threats since Lowy began the research in 2006. After climate change, cyberattacks ranks second, terrorism third and North Korea’s nuclear program fourth.
The Lowy result is consistent with private research undertaken by environmental groups and by the major political parties, which suggest climate change is surfacing as a concern in parts of the country normally sanguine about the issue.
The Overshoot (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2019/05/the-overshoot/)
At the moment, renewables are still only a tiny fraction of global power generation. But we’re approaching a much bigger and more disruptive milestone: very soon, it will be cheaper to build new renewable energy than to operate existing fossil fuel plants.
This will happen as soon as 2020 in some places, and it will be true virtually everywhere by 2030. It will happen in the immense, industrializing population centers of China and India. It will be true in deep-blue coastal cities and deep-red rural counties of the U.S.
QuoteThe Overshoot (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2019/05/the-overshoot/)
At the moment, renewables are still only a tiny fraction of global power generation. But we’re approaching a much bigger and more disruptive milestone: very soon, it will be cheaper to build new renewable energy than to operate existing fossil fuel plants.
This will happen as soon as 2020 in some places, and it will be true virtually everywhere by 2030. It will happen in the immense, industrializing population centers of China and India. It will be true in deep-blue coastal cities and deep-red rural counties of the U.S.
Very interesting blogpost.
Trees are adaptable, but only within certain limits, and right now they’re dying at a consistent rate two to nearly four-times what was seen before 2000.
About four to five per cent of the Aspen Hogg studies as an example species is dying each year.
In the most extreme cases, tree stands that used to house birds and forest animals are flat out disappearing with mortality rates nearing 100 per cent. Where trees once stood, there is now Prairie grasslands.
With dry conditions and standing dead trees, there are two imminent threats that arise. The first are pests and disease ravaging the already-stressed trees, which are now more susceptible to attack. The mountain pine beetle has been able to spread its range from B.C. to Alberta across the Rockies because warmer winters allow it to thrive.
The second threat announces itself each summer with socked-in red skies in Western Canada as the forest transforms into a tinderbox, resulting in record wildfires.
QuoteThe Overshoot (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2019/05/the-overshoot/)
At the moment, renewables are still only a tiny fraction of global power generation. But we’re approaching a much bigger and more disruptive milestone: very soon, it will be cheaper to build new renewable energy than to operate existing fossil fuel plants.
This will happen as soon as 2020 in some places, and it will be true virtually everywhere by 2030. It will happen in the immense, industrializing population centers of China and India. It will be true in deep-blue coastal cities and deep-red rural counties of the U.S.
Very interesting blogpost.
That's good news. Although I'm sure the fossil fuel lobby won't just lay down quietly.
Carbon-capture technologies are now attracting major investment, including from oil companies, one of the better signs that the technology is viable and scalable. I’m not thrilled by the idea that the same corporations which profited by ruining the planet could profit again by saving it, but I’d much rather save the Earth than see it burn for spite.
QuoteCarbon-capture technologies are now attracting major investment, including from oil companies, one of the better signs that the technology is viable and scalable. I’m not thrilled by the idea that the same corporations which profited by ruining the planet could profit again by saving it, but I’d much rather save the Earth than see it burn for spite.
I can't speak for other countries, but over here, climate change is widely accepted across the political spectrum (except the populist far-right), and heavy industry, financial industry, etc, pretty much all agree on the seriousness of the problem, and put in various amounts of work to combat it. It is a source of optimism for me.
The UK has gone a week without burning any coal to make electricity - the first coal-free week since 1882.
Britain has relied on burning coal for power since the Industrial Revolution, which began in the UK in the 18th Century and spread to other parts of the world.
The Industrial Revolution saw new factories being built and a massive increase in the use of fossil fuels. The world's first coal-fired power station was opened in London in 1882.
Burning fossil fuels has a big impact on the environment and many countries, including the UK, are cutting emissions in an effort to tackle climate change.
Carbon capture to store carbon permanently is what we need. Carbon capture to create fuel to burn is pointless. It's not carbon neutral unless all fuels were made that way, including any fuel that has to be spent on the process of capturing carbon.
If we're going to subsidize private entities capturing carbon, then we should (as we should in general) tax them as much molecule for molecule for the emissions on the other side of it. If they can manage to come out even, good on them. But if they want to come out ahead, they should make sure that it stays captured.
Travel trends for 2019: getting off the touristed path (https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/travel-trends-for-2019-getting-off-the-touristed-path/40625c8c-8a11-5710-a052-1479d2754788)
It’s no secret that some of the world’s most amazing destinations are feeling the tourism squeeze. But that’s no reason to stay put: as communities cope with travellers’ all-too-loving embrace, being a good tourist just means getting strategic about where to go and when.
Every traveller is on a journey, though it’s becoming clearer that some paths are so well trodden that they’re at risk of wearing out. Even when we try to venture off the tourist track it can be hard not to bump into others doing the same thing. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to put away your packing cubes and ignore your itchy feet; it’s just a new opportunity to consider your impact on the places you cherish.
There are many ways to spread the travel love, and beating the crowds doesn’t mean skipping the iconic spots. Sustainable travel can come in many forms. Stay in an under-explored neighbourhood in a must-see city and you’ll get to live like a local and support the community. Skip the day trip – which will only leave you without a feel for the place – and spend more time in local shops and cafes, picking up some incredible, and meaningful, souvenirs.
Yeah, they try to have their cake and eat it too all the time.QuoteCarbon-capture technologies are now attracting major investment, including from oil companies, one of the better signs that the technology is viable and scalable. I’m not thrilled by the idea that the same corporations which profited by ruining the planet could profit again by saving it, but I’d much rather save the Earth than see it burn for spite.
I agree with the essence of the quote, but I suspect I'm a little more spiteful. Maybe a lot. And burning those fossil fuels and then developing expensive technologies for recapturing the carbon just seems wasteful in light of your earlier post. But I guess we're gonna need those anyway now.I can't speak for other countries, but over here, climate change is widely accepted across the political spectrum (except the populist far-right), and heavy industry, financial industry, etc, pretty much all agree on the seriousness of the problem, and put in various amounts of work to combat it. It is a source of optimism for me.
Not me... There's a lot of talk but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot political will for the kind of action that is needed at this stage.
The problem is massive, and it will probably take centuries to undo the damage we have done, the parts that can be undone, at least. Still, all the more reason to start it now. And all those initiatives from various corners are steps in the right direction.
THE EXTINCTION CRISIS (https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/)
It's frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We're currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2].
Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us — humans. In fact, 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and global warming [3]. Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species' extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others bound to that species in a complex ecological web, numbers of extinctions are likely to snowball in the coming decades as ecosystems unravel.
PLANTS
Through photosynthesis, plants provide the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat and are thus the foundation of most life on Earth. They're also the source of a majority of medicines in use today. Of the more than 300,000 known species of plants, the IUCN has evaluated only 12,914 species, finding that about 68 percent of evaluated plant species are threatened with extinction.
Well, I don't know about hopelessly naive... I may just be a pessimist on this issue. I think people have kind of gotten the message, and politicians in many countries pay lip service to it, but I see a lot of thumb twiddling when it comes to actually curbing emissions. In fact, emission rates are still going up (https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/12/05/carbon-dioxide-earths-atmosphere-soars-highest-level-millions-years/2215508002/) - let alone actually reducing the CO2 that's already in the atmosphere. The Paris Agreement was a step in the right direction, but it was a wishy-washy agreement with no enforcement mechanisms and as such largely impotent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Criticism).
On Wednesday, Parliament approved a new law banning single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws and cotton buds sticks.
560 MEPs voted in favour of the agreement with EU ministers, 35 against and 28 abstained.
The following products will be banned in the EU by 2021:
Single-use plastic cutlery (forks, knives, spoons and chopsticks)
Single-use plastic plates
Plastic straws
Cotton bud sticks made of plastic
Plastic balloon sticks
Oxo-degradable plastics and food containers and expanded polystyrene cups
New recycling target and more responsibility for producers
Member states will have to achieve a 90% collection target for plastic bottles by 2029, and plastic bottles will have to contain at least 25% of recycled content by 2025 and 30% by 2030.
The agreement also strengthens the application of the polluter pays principle, in particular for tobacco, by introducing extended responsibility for producers. This new regime will also apply to fishing gear, to ensure that manufacturers, and not fishermen, bear the costs of collecting nets lost at sea.
Burger King is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide, after a successful trial run testing the meatless burger in St. Louis. The chain announced in a statement today that it plans to test in more markets before distributing the burger nationally by the end of this year.
The Impossible Whopper is made with startup Impossible Foods’ plant-based patties, which are designed to look and taste like meat. The patties are also designed to “bleed,” just like the real thing, which can be attributed to the use of heme, a soy-based compound found in plants and meat. The burgers have 15 percent less fat and 90 percent less cholesterol than regular Whoppers, and Burger King’s taste test experiments claim that customers and employees can’t tell the difference.
Meatless options are gaining popularity at more fast food restaurants. White Castle offers Impossible Burgers, which uses another meat-free patty recipe from Impossible Foods, and Carl’s Jr. sells a veggie burger made by Beyond Meat, a competitor to Impossible Foods.
I am a microcosm of this macroscopic idea. I know that plastic is a problem, but I hate washing dishes, so I use disposable plastic cups. I feel guilty for this, but I haven't mustered up the oomph to change my behavior. I think society is the same way. Most people agree that something should be done, and most people recognize what they are doing is a problem, but they just don't want to change. I have faith in humanity as individuals to continue this behavior until we are all dead. However, I am optimistic that these same people would support governmental regulation to curb their own behavior. I would vote for a change that limits my ability to use plastic cups for example, even though I don't have the willpower to stop using them on my own. So, while I am pessimistic about a human's ability to curb environmental catastrophe, I am optimistic about humankind's collective desire to do something. Alright, maybe I'm not optimistic, but I am hopeful.
Game over, IMHO.
Tell me how we get back to 350 ppm, please.
Tell me how we get back to 350 ppm, please.
Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Hit $5.2 Trillion (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-hit-210000114.html)
The world spent a staggering $4.7 trillion and $5.2 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2015 and 2017, respectively, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. That means that in 2017 the world spent a whopping 6.5 percent of global GDP just to subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels.
China was “by far, the largest subsidizer” in 2015 at $1.4 trillion, the IMF said. The U.S. came in second at $649 billion. In other words, the U.S. spent more on fossil fuel subsidies in 2015 than it did on the bloated Pentagon budget ($599 billion in 2015). Russia spent $551 billion, the EU spent $289 billion, and India spent $209 billion. Emerging markets in Asia accounted for 40 percent of the total while the industrialized world accounted for 27 percent, with smaller percentages found in other regions.
The subsidy figure the IMF uses incorporates a variety of supports for fossil fuels, including not pricing for local air pollution, climate change and environmental costs, as well as undercharging for consumption taxes and undercharging for supply costs.
By fuel, coal is receives the most largesse, account for 44 percent of the global total. Oil was shortly behind at 41 percent, and natural gas and electricity output received 10 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
Tell me how we get back to 350 ppm, please.
Hire 1% of the population to plant trees, possibly with a large biologist contingent.
And scale up investments in and research of other ways of moving the carbon out of the atmosphere and oceans.
As Soldier of Fortran (and many climate scientists) have pointed out, planting trees is not a solution. Covering the Great Plains with bison, wolves and cougars might help. That's where a large part of that carbon that is in the atmosphere came from.
As Soldier of Fortran (and many climate scientists) have pointed out, planting trees is not a solution. Covering the Great Plains with bison, wolves and cougars might help. That's where a large part of that carbon that is in the atmosphere came from.
As Soldier of Fortran (and many climate scientists) have pointed out, planting trees is not a solution.
In the 19th century, as land-hungry pioneers steered their wagon trains westward across the United States, they encountered a vast landscape of towering grasses that nurtured deep, fertile soils.
Today, just 3 percent of North America’s tallgrass prairie remains. Its disappearance has had a dramatic impact on the landscape and ecology of the U.S., but a key consequence of that transformation has largely been overlooked: a massive loss of soil carbon into the atmosphere. The importance of soil carbon — how it is leached from the earth and how that process can be reversed — is the subject of intensifying scientific investigation, with important implications for the effort to slow the rapid rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
According to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air to become CO2. Now, armed with rapidly expanding knowledge about carbon sequestration in soils, researchers are studying how land restoration programs in places like the former North American prairie, the North China Plain, and even the parched interior of Australia might help put carbon back into the soil.
Absent carbon and critical microbes, soil becomes mere dirt, a process of deterioration that’s been rampant around the globe. Many scientists say that regenerative agricultural practices can turn back the carbon clock, reducing atmospheric CO2 while also boosting soil productivity and increasing resilience to floods and drought. Such regenerative techniques include planting fields year-round in crops or other cover, and agroforestry that combines crops, trees, and animal husbandry.
Recognition of the vital role played by soil carbon could mark an important if subtle shift in the discussion about global warming, which has been heavily focused on curbing emissions of fossil fuels. But a look at soil brings a sharper focus on potential carbon sinks. Reducing emissions is crucial, but soil carbon sequestration needs to be part of the picture as well, says Lal. The top priorities, he says, are restoring degraded and eroded lands, as well as avoiding deforestation and the farming of peatlands, which are a major reservoir of carbon and are easily decomposed upon drainage and cultivation.
...
Scientists say that more carbon resides in soil than in the atmosphere and all plant life combined; there are 2,500 billion tons of carbon in soil, compared with 800 billion tons in the atmosphere and 560 billion tons in plant and animal life. And compared to many proposed geoengineering fixes, storing carbon in soil is simple: It’s a matter of returning carbon where it belongs.
Through photosynthesis, a plant draws carbon out of the air to form carbon compounds. What the plant doesn’t need for growth is exuded through the roots to feed soil organisms, whereby the carbon is humified, or rendered stable. Carbon is the main component of soil organic matter and helps give soil its water-retention capacity, its structure, and its fertility. According to Lal, some pools of carbon housed in soil aggregates are so stable that they can last thousands of years. This is in contrast to “active” soil carbon, which resides in topsoil and is in continual flux between microbial hosts and the atmosphere.
“If we treat soil carbon as a renewable resource, we can change the dynamics,” says Goreau. “When we have erosion, we lose soil, which carries with it organic carbon, into waterways. When soil is exposed, it oxidizes, essentially burning the soil carbon. We can take an alternate trajectory.”
...
Even at our current level of knowledge, many see great potential for storing carbon in soil. Lal of Ohio State says that restoring soils of degraded and desertified ecosystems has the potential to store in world soils an additional 1 billion to 3 billion tons of carbon annually, equivalent to roughly 3.5 billion to 11 billion tons of CO2 emissions. (Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning are roughly 32 billion tons.)
Many call Lal’s carbon soil storage figures low. This could reflect the fact that soil carbon is generally measured in the top 15 to 30 centimeters, whereas soil at depth may store carbon at much higher rates. For example, in land with deep-rooted grasses the soil can go down five meters or more. Research by Australian and British scientists published last year in the journal Plant and Soil examined soils in five southwestern Australia sites at depths as great as nearly 40 meters. These findings add impetus to explore strategies such as working with deep-rooted perennial grasses to secure carbon at depth.
Those who champion soil carbon for climate mitigation frequently look to grasslands, which cover more than a quarter of the world’s land. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, grasslands also hold 20 percent of the world’s soil carbon stock. Much of this land is degraded, as evidenced in the U.S. Great Plains and places like northern Mexico, Africa’s Sahel, and Mongolia.
...
Seth Itzkan — founder of Massachusetts-based Planet-TECH Associates, a consulting firm specializing in restoration ecology — advocates Holistic Planned Grazing (HPG), a model developed by Zimbabwean wildlife biologist Allan Savory. In this practice, livestock are managed as a tool for large-scale land restoration, mimicking the herding and grazing patterns of wild ruminants that coevolved with grassland ecosystems. Animals are moved so that no plants are overgrazed, and grazing stimulates biological activity in the soil. Their waste adds fertility, and as they move in a herd their trampling aerates soil, presses in seeds, and pushes down dead plant matter so it can be acted upon by soil microorganisms. All of this generates soil carbon, plant carbon, and water retention. Savory says HPG doesn’t require more land — in fact it generally supports greater animal density — so it can be applied wherever livestock are raised.
Speaking at a World Soil Day event in 2016, Maria-Helena Semedo, deputy director-general of natural resources at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said that if current soil degradation rates were not reversed, all the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years.
This means that there may only be 60 or so harvests left to reap from the world’s soil. She says some of the main causes of soil destruction include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation, which increases erosion, and global warming.
Estimates published by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, suggest that the world is losing roughly 20ha of topsoil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming.
In a recent interview with UK newspaper, The Independent, Prof Raj Patel, research professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said that industrial agriculture was bringing about the mass extinction of life on Earth.
...
That said, wildlife and soils do deserve attention. No disagreement there....
As Soldier of Fortran (and many climate scientists) have pointed out, planting trees is not a solution. Covering the Great Plains with bison, wolves and cougars might help. That's where a large part of that carbon that is in the atmosphere came from.
It's a solution, if not the solution. Plant bison, whatever works.
Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment)
From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’
The Guardian has updated its style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world.
Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned.
“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”
“Increasingly, climate scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” she said.
This will play into the hands of the denialist propaganda mills, which will doubtless spin it as an attempt by "alarmists" to change the story. They will simply tack it onto their old lie about "global warming" being dropped in favor of "climate change" to give the whole thing new life. Expect to see it soon wherever climateball is played.QuoteWhy the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment)
From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’
The Guardian has updated its style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world.
Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned.
“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”
“Increasingly, climate scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” she said.
'We have to learn to live with fire': How wildfires are changing Canadian summers (https://www.cbc.ca/radio/we-have-to-learn-to-live-with-fire-how-wildfires-are-changing-canadian-summers-1.5135539)
2.5 million hectares of land is charred every year, an expert predicts that will double
A change in weather patterns, stoked by climate change, has a wildfire expert predicting "a hot, smoky future" for Canadian summers.
The spectre of wildfires looms in B.C., Alberta and Ontario — provinces that have been repeatedly scorched by catastrophic fires in recent years.
Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, is warning that a dramatic rise in temperature and a changing climate have pushed things over the edge and will continue to cause unprecedented wildfires.
"We can't always rely on our experience and the history of what we've seen in fire; we're moving into new territory," he told CBC Radio's special Smoked Out.
An average of about 2.5 million hectares of land is charred every year during Canada's annual wildfire season, he says.
"That's half the size of Nova Scotia, and it's doubled since the early '70s due to our changing climate," said Flannigan, who's also the director of the Western Partnership for Wildland Fire Science in Edmonton.
Climate change's role in reshaping wildfires
His research suggests the size of land consumed by wildfires will double or quadruple — again — as the earth heats up.
According to Natural Resources Canada, about 3.4 million hectares of land was consumed by wildfires in 2017 — well beyond the annual average. Ministry data shows in recent years fire destruction has steadily climbed in terms of area covered.
In 2013, for example, some 6,300 forest fires burned over 4.2 million hectares. The following year, nearly 4.6 million hectares was scorched by about 5,200 wildfires.
(https://i.imgur.com/bYZI0H6.jpg)
Canada makes up nine per cent of the world's forests, yet much of that landscape is being threatened by unprecedented wildfires. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)
"We have to learn to live with fire, coexist with fire, because fire is not going to disappear," Flannigan said.
"There will always be fuel to burn, there will always be ignitions and there will always be conducive weather."
Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, according to Canada's Changing Climate Report.
The study, commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada and released last month, found that Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed 1.7 C since 1948 — with higher rates seen in the North, the Prairies and northern B.C.
By 2045, Sweden is to have zero net emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and should thereafter achieve negative emissions. Negative emissions will mean that Sweden overall helps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That is, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by Sweden is less than the amount of greenhouse gases reduced through the natural ecocycle, or through climate projects pursued by Sweden abroad. However, emissions from activities in Sweden must be at least 85 per cent lower than in 1990. Based on current population forecasts for Sweden, this means that emissions in Sweden will be less than one tonne per person by 2045.
As for the goal of zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045, it will also be possible to achieve parts of these goals by 2030 and 2040 through supplementary measures, such as increased uptake of carbon dioxide by forests or investments in various climate projects abroad. Such measures may be used to achieve a maximum of 8 and 2 percentage points, respectively, of the emission reduction goals by 2030 and 2040. That is, by 2030 emissions from activities in Sweden should be at least 55 per cent lower than in 1990, and by 2040 at least 73 per cent lower than in 1990.
The third pillar of the framework is a climate policy council. The climate policy council will be tasked with supporting the Government by providing an independent assessment of how the overall policy presented by the Government is compatible with the climate goals. The council will evaluate whether the direction of various policy areas will increase or reduce the likelihood of achieving the climate goals.
The Trump administration has told a major US government department to end predicting what the long-term effects of climate change will be on the country.
Director of the US Geological Survey (USGS) James Reilly – a White House-appointed former oil geologist – ordered that scientific assessments only use computer-generated models that track the possible impact of climate change until 2040, according to The New York Times.
Previously the USGS modelled effects until the end of the century, the second half of which is likely to see the most dramatic impacts of global warming.
The order is likely to impact the US government’s National Climate Assessment, an interagency report produced every four years which outlines the projected impact of climate change in every corner of US society.
...
In case we need anymore evidence that the globe is disastrously warmed, a pattern of conditions is impacting the world’s agricultural systems and threatening food supplies in the U.S. and abroad. Because legislators will continue to deny the what’s literally happening before their eyes (*cough* Climate Change), U.S. farmers have now turned to the Twitter hashtag #NoPlant19 to bring attention to the extremely wet spring that’s made it difficult plant corn and soybeans.
The U.S. is currently in the midst of its wettest 12 months on record, with regions of the Great Plains and Midwest — where much of the nation’s corn and soy is produced — bearing the brunt of this spring’s rainfall. Not only are homes being damaged as a result of the extreme flooding, but the conditions are making it damn near impossible for farmers to plant their crops.
On average over the past four years, farmers in the states that represent a majority of the nation’s harvest would have planted 90 percent of their corn and 66 percent of their soy by May 26, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. That makes a lot of sense since crop yields tend to decline when corn is planted after May 10 and farmers typically wrap up their planting efforts by May 31. However 2019’s crops are far behind schedule. As of May 26, only 58 percent of the nation’s corn had been planted and just 29 percent of its soy. Farmers are rightly worried and consumers should be too. Crop shortages will likely result in higher prices for consumers and since corn and soy are basically in every part of the American diet, that could be a real problem.
...
Wouldn't generally warmer temperatures also mean that you could plant later than in previous years?
Wouldn't generally warmer temperatures also mean that you could plant later than in previous years?
Once the flood waters reside.
The issue isn't just warming, it's also more extreme weather that causes problems. In this case, floods.
Also one of the reasons that the early plantings are more productive than later plantings is that they avoid scorching in the summer heat.
So, warmer temperatures could mean you have to plant earlier than in previous years. As long as your land isn't underwater.
Wouldn't generally warmer temperatures also mean that you could plant later than in previous years?
Once the flood waters reside.
The issue isn't just warming, it's also more extreme weather that causes problems. In this case, floods.
Also one of the reasons that the early plantings are more productive than later plantings is that they avoid scorching in the summer heat.
So, warmer temperatures could mean you have to plant earlier than in previous years. As long as your land isn't underwater.
Agreed.
A warmer Earth might mean that there’ll be both losers and winners. A very much warmer Earth means that there’ll be just losers.
Wouldn't generally warmer temperatures also mean that you could plant later than in previous years?
Once the flood waters reside.
The issue isn't just warming, it's also more extreme weather that causes problems. In this case, floods.
Also one of the reasons that the early plantings are more productive than later plantings is that they avoid scorching in the summer heat.
So, warmer temperatures could mean you have to plant earlier than in previous years. As long as your land isn't underwater.
Agreed.
A warmer Earth might mean that there’ll be both losers and winners. A very much warmer Earth means that there’ll be just losers.
Of course, it won't only be bad in every single instance. But the net result for the planet is very likely going to be negative, by a long shot.
From what I have read, the northern-most countries of the world (like Canada and those in northern Europe) will be spared from some of the worst effects of global warming, and a warmer climate will certainly bring some benefits to those countries. But even for these countries, the net effect is still going to be negative. Just less net negative than for other parts of the world.
But these countries are rich, highly developed democracies. They will very likely be able to adapt to the net negative effects.
Norway is a cold country that you might think would be better off with a warmer climate. But the last few years have been pretty bad for agriculture because of the unusual weather patterns. We had a long drought last year which meant a lot of failed crops, then a slightly early spring this year before it turns freezing again which does damage to crops that had already started growing. It seems it's easier for the changes to do damage than to benefit.
Following the drought we had unusually much rainfall, which doesn't negate the drought, it just means more flooding. https://cicero.oslo.no/en/posts/climate-news/western-norway-to-see-more-heavy-rain-and-flooding-in-the-future
Norway is a cold country that you might think would be better off with a warmer climate. But the last few years have been pretty bad for agriculture because of the unusual weather patterns. We had a long drought last year which meant a lot of failed crops, then a slightly early spring this year before it turns freezing again which does damage to crops that had already started growing. It seems it's easier for the changes to do damage than to benefit.
Following the drought we had unusually much rainfall, which doesn't negate the drought, it just means more flooding. https://cicero.oslo.no/en/posts/climate-news/western-norway-to-see-more-heavy-rain-and-flooding-in-the-future
The following are among the expected effects:
- Increased precipitation in the entire country. A general increase in precipitation is expected in the entire country. Also the number of instances of intensive precipitations is expected to increase. The precipitation is expected to increase the most in northern and western Sweden. In the mountain areas, the precipitation can increase up to 25 percent. That means a large addition of water in an area today that already has a lot of precipitation.
- Increased risk for floodings. Increased precipitation and more intensive rainfalls increase the risk for floodings.
- Shortage of water and drought in southern Sweden. Changes in precipitation and increased evaporation can lead to increased summer drought in southern Sweden. At the same time, the number of cloudburst is expected to increase and become more intensive even in southern Sweden.
- Temperature zones move northwards. The growing period is expected to increase between one and two months except for farthest down south in which the increase can become up to three months.
...
For Sweden, the effects of a warmer climate can in some parts be positive. The average temperature only needs to increase one degree in order for southern Sweden to have the climate that now prevails in central Germany. The farming prospects increase when the climate becomes milder, something that increases the possibilities for increased yield in farming and forestry.
Mild winters on the other hand increases the risk that we receive pests and vectors that the cold so far has spared us from. Wetter winters also mean increased risk for flooding along watercourses and lakes. Higher sea levels contributes to increased coastal erosion in Scania and can in combination with storms increase the risks of flooding in the coastal cities of southern Sweden.
...
Viewed from a global point of view, the expected negative effects of climate change for society dominates over the positive. Sweden will never be able to isolate itself from the effects of disturbances and weather events that take place in other parts of the world.
And of course, we in the far north are likely to be less affected than further south.
The power switch: tracking Britain's record coal-free run (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/may/25/the-power-switch-tracking-britains-record-coal-free-run)
Britain has set a new record for going without coal-powered energy, but how long will it last and when will we ditch the dirty fuel entirely?
Coal is currently generating 0% of Britain's power. The coal-free run has lasted 17 days and 2 hours so far.
...
Phasing out the heavily polluting fuel is a key step in the transition towards a net-zero carbon economy and essential to averting catastrophic climate change.
Britain is rapidly phasing out coal
The government last year unveiled its plan to shut down all remaining coal plants by 2025, a move that was welcomed by environmental groups.
The rapid collapse of coal power in Britain has in part been predicated on the introduction of a “carbon price floor” in 2013, which slashed the fuel’s profitability.
Temperatures passed 50 degrees Celsius in northern India as an unrelenting heatwave triggered warnings of water shortages and heatstroke.
The thermometer hit 50.6 degrees Celsius in the Rajasthan desert city of Churu over the weekend, the weather department said.
All of Rajasthan suffered in severe heat with several cities hitting maximum temperatures above 47 Celsius.
...
About 200 million people live in northern India.
...
'No way to stop it': millions of pigs culled across Asia as swine fever spreads (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/06/millions-of-pigs-culled-across-asia-african-swine-fever-spreads-thailand-)
Experts say region is losing the battle to stop the biggest animal disease outbreak the planet has ever faced
South-east Asia is battling to contain the spread of highly contagious African swine fever, known as “pig Ebola”, which has already led to the culling of millions of pigs in China and Vietnam.
African swine fever, which is harmless to humans but fatal to pigs, was discovered in China in August, where it has caused havoc, leading to more than 1.2m pigs being culled. China is home to almost half of the world’s pigs and the news sent the global price of pork soaring.
There is no vaccination for African swine fever, which causes pigs to internally haemorrhage until they die, so the only option to contain the disease is to kill any contaminated animals. Some estimates say that in China up to 200m animals may eventually be slaughtered. The virus can last for several weeks on anything from clothes to vehicles, allowing for it to easily travel long distances.
It has spread like wildfire across Asia, causing growing devastation to the pig farmers of Vietnam and Cambodia and putting Thailand, Asia’s second-biggest pork producer, on “red alert”. Cases have increased in Mongolia, North Korea and Hong Kong in recent weeks, while South Korea is blood testing pigs at the border.
Yes, it's a good step, but they're phasing out coal in favour of natural gas. It's a bit cleaner than coal, but it's still a non-renewable fossil fuel. It's only an interim solution.It’s no solution at all because it further depletes what little is left of the carbon budget, only at a slower rate. Once we emit that carbon, we can’t get it back—at least not until carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becomes economically and technically viable on an immense scale. If we're to stop global warming even at something beyond 2 deg. C this century (a figure no longer practically achievable, IMO), we need to stop wasting the carbon budget, not take comfort from being a bit slower about wasting it.
Schools and colleges across the US have been accused of censoring students who have attempted to use their graduation speeches to speak out on the unfolding climate crisis.
A youth-led movement called Class of 0000 is encouraging students to read out a prepared text at their graduation ceremonies that warns of “catastrophic climate change” and tells elected leaders to “have plan to get to zero emissions, or get zero of our votes”.
More than 350 students set to speak at ceremonies as valedictorians, or in other roles, have pledged to read the message, but many have complained that educational authorities have barred them from doing so as the global climate emergency is deemed too political to mention.
In the US education system, a valedictorian is typically a student with the highest academic performance in the class. This student delivers a farewell speech for the class at its graduation.
Emily Shal, an 18-year-old senior, was told by her school that the climate message was “too controversial” for her graduation speech as class president. Shal read the speech at a talent show before the graduation ceremony and said she still received backlash from school authorities.
“The administration were very mad, they were pissed,” said Shal, who attends Whittier Tech high school in Haverhill, Massachusetts. [...]
...
Once we emit that carbon, we can’t get it back—at least not until carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becomes economically and technically viable on an immense scale.That makes no sense. The majority of carbon added (from any source) is removed, and quickly. If this were not the case we should be at 540 ppm already. (estimated)
So why is it in the interest of the school authorities to cover up recognition of reality?
Once we emit that carbon, we can’t get it back—at least not until carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becomes economically and technically viable on an immense scale.That makes no sense. The majority of carbon added (from any source) is removed, and quickly. If this were not the case we should be at 540 ppm already. (estimated)
Once we emit that carbon, we can’t get it back—at least not until carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becomes economically and technically viable on an immense scale.That makes no sense. The majority of carbon added (from any source) is removed, and quickly. If this were not the case we should be at 540 ppm already. (estimated)
So why is it in the interest of the school authorities to cover up recognition of reality?
Fear. Blowback could hurt their careers. Across the country, excessive and over-the-top 'ass covering' is a problem.
The most common defensive posture is, "I was just following the rules," and it's like a perpetual work-to-rule protest.
e.g. Oh, Oliver was suspending for getting beat up? Well, we have a ZERO TOLERANCE policy on FIGHTING.
Mindlessly following over-broad rules strips you agency. All you did was do your job correctly as per the rules. It's a blame-shifting strategy. If you want to argue against punishing kids for plastic butter knives in their lunch bags, getting beat up or having inhalers then they can just wave their arms around while bloviating and now you're talking about bringing weapons to school, getting into fist fights and bringing drugs to school.
It's one of things I'd like to see changed.
The Earth's carbon cycle had been pretty much in balance for hundreds of thousands of years before we started dumping huge amounts of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. The stuff we've been adding is responsible for the increase from ~280 PPM to the current 410+ PPM. That added portion will be there for thousands of years until the process of weathering has had time to move it to the bottom of the ocean and the balance is restored. That’s what I mean by "we can’t get it back." Once that quantity is up there, it’s staying, absent any new technology that can remove it on a grand scale at a bearable cost.Once we emit that carbon, we can’t get it back—at least not until carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becomes economically and technically viable on an immense scale.That makes no sense. The majority of carbon added (from any source) is removed, and quickly. If this were not the case we should be at 540 ppm already. (estimated)
Is it just that I have started to pay more attention to it, or has climate change received significantly more public attention in the past few years?Perhaps the effects are getting harder for the public to ignore, particularly the floods and wildfires. It certainly isn’t due to increased coverage by major news media, who are still giving it scant notice relative to the colossal implications of the story.
What story in human history is more momentous than a genuinely existential threat to civilization?
The Earth's carbon cycle had been pretty much in balance for hundreds of thousands of years
Yes, the signal is noisy, but a trend line through it would be pretty flat until recently, wouldn’t it? CO2 minima and maxima were produced by glaciations and deglaciations and damped by natural feedbacks such that the max never got much above 280. I would call it balanced, but I guess it would be in the same sense that a teeter-totter is.The Earth's carbon cycle had been pretty much in balance for hundreds of thousands of years
Hm, I get what you're saying, but I don't know if "balanced" is the word I'd use, as that makes it sound like it was more or less static... but of course the swings between the glacial/interglacial periods are highly significant; ~20,000 years ago it was over 100 ppm less than pre-industrial.
[/pedantry]
However, we have not yet identi®ed the cause of these variations in CO2. How do the orbitally driven cycles in solar radiation set this particular positive feedback into motion?https://courses.washington.edu/pcc588/readings/Sigman_Boyle-Glacial_CO2_Review-Na00.pdf
This question has persisted for two decades, motivating intensive research by palaeoclimatologists and palaeoceanographers. From this research, we now recognize many processes that could regulate atmospheric CO2 on the timescales of glacial/interglacial transi- tions, and it may well be that the actual cause of glacial/interglacial CO2 change is among them. However, evaluating the importance of these mechanisms with data from the recent geological and glaciological record has been a challenging and controversial task, leading as yet to no consensus on a fundamental mechanism.
Yes, the signal is noisy, but a trend line through it would be pretty flat until recently, wouldn’t it? CO2 minima and maxima were produced by glaciations and deglaciations and damped by natural feedbacks such that the max never got much above 280. I would call it balanced, but I guess it would be in the same sense that a teeter-totter is.The Earth's carbon cycle had been pretty much in balance for hundreds of thousands of years
Hm, I get what you're saying, but I don't know if "balanced" is the word I'd use, as that makes it sound like it was more or less static... but of course the swings between the glacial/interglacial periods are highly significant; ~20,000 years ago it was over 100 ppm less than pre-industrial.
[/pedantry]
It probably isn’t news to you, but while I was googling around trying to remember what the underlying mechanisms of CO2 concentration changes associated with glacial cycles were, I discovered that we still aren’t very sure. I thought we knew this, but apparently all we're confident of is that it did happen, not exactly how:QuoteHowever, we have not yet identi®ed the cause of these variations in CO2. How do the orbitally driven cycles in solar radiation set this particular positive feedback into motion?https://courses.washington.edu/pcc588/readings/Sigman_Boyle-Glacial_CO2_Review-Na00.pdf
This question has persisted for two decades, motivating intensive research by palaeoclimatologists and palaeoceanographers. From this research, we now recognize many processes that could regulate atmospheric CO2 on the timescales of glacial/interglacial transi- tions, and it may well be that the actual cause of glacial/interglacial CO2 change is among them. However, evaluating the importance of these mechanisms with data from the recent geological and glaciological record has been a challenging and controversial task, leading as yet to no consensus on a fundamental mechanism.
Some Final Words
There are still a number of unresolved questions that remain in the astronomical theory of climate change, even during the more familiar Quaternary timeframe. For instance, while we know changes in the orbit pace ice ages, the precise way the three Milankovitch variations conspire to regulate the timing of glacial-interglacial cycles is not well known.
For example, about 800,000 years ago a shift of the dominant periodicity from a 41,000 yr to 100,000 yr signal in glacial oscillations occurred (called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, see e.g., Clark et al., 2006), and while a lot of ideas exist for why this should be the case, there's no bulletproof answer to this. Explaining the 100,000 yr recurrence period of ice ages is difficult because although the 100,000 yr cycle dominates the ice-volume record, it is small in the insolation spectrum. Therefore, there's still a lot to be done here.
It seems that the Earth listens to the Northern Hemisphere when deciding to have an ice age. If the North and South are alternatively near and far from the Sun during summer, why has glaciation been globally synchronous? What connections are there between Northern insolation and Antarctic climate at the obliquity and precession timescales? What are the competitive roles between a further distance from the sun during summer and a longer summer, following Kepler's law? These quesrions are still not resolved (for a flavor of the discussion, see Huybers, 2009...see also Kawamura et al 2007; Huybers and Denton, 2008; Cheng et al 2009; Denton et al 2010 ). This problem also involves work at the interface of carbon cycle and ice sheet dynamics, processes that are in their infancy in terms of modeling.
The administration’s proposal would undo one of the most significant environmental regulations put in place under President Obama — rules that sought to cut down on vehicle emissions, improve fuel efficiency and forestall the worst effects of climate change.
The regulations require car manufacturers to build increasingly efficient vehicles so that by 2025 the nation’s cars and trucks would average more than 50 miles per gallon.
At least some countries will ban sale of new fossil fuel cars 2020-2030, and some cities (and Costa Rica) will ban them entirely.
Man, how the fuck are we ever going to tackle this problem if we have to keep fighting uphill battles over gas guzzlers and lightbulbs. I'm not one to have a defeatist attitude on this issue, but some days...
WAITROSE TRIALS 'BRING YOUR OWN' CONTAINER SCHEME TO REDUCE PLASTIC WASTE (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/waitrose-plastic-container-bring-your-own-trial-a8942876.html)
Waitrose is trialling a "bring your own" container scheme that encourages customers to buy and refill produce.
The supermarket chain, which is part of John Lewis & Partners, will start selling items such as cereals, pasta, coffee and rice in large dispensers as part of the concept, which it hopes will effectively reduce waste from plastic packaging.
Cleaning products and alcohol will also be available through dispensers.
WASHINGTON — Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, said on Friday he would donate $500 million to a new campaign to close every coal-fired power plant in the United States and halt the growth of natural gas.
The new campaign, called Beyond Carbon, is designed to help eliminate coal by focusing on state and local governments. The effort will bypass Washington, where Mr. Bloomberg has said national action appears unlikely because of a divided Congress and a president who denies the established science of climate change.
“We’re in a race against time with climate change, and yet there is virtually no hope of bold federal action on this issue for at least another two years,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement before the announcement, which he made in a commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Mother Nature is not waiting on our political calendar, and neither can we.”
President Trump has made reviving what he has called “clean, beautiful coal” a cornerstone of his energy agenda.
It will fund lobbying efforts by environmental groups — in state legislatures, City Councils and public utility commissions — that aim to close coal plants and replace them with wind, solar and other renewable power. Part of the cash also will go toward efforts to elect local lawmakers who prioritize clean energy.
QuoteIt will fund lobbying efforts by environmental groups — in state legislatures, City Councils and public utility commissions — that aim to close coal plants and replace them with wind, solar and other renewable power. Part of the cash also will go toward efforts to elect local lawmakers who prioritize clean energy.
I guess it's better than nothing, but I was hoping for something more significant, like buying coal plants and shutting them down, or targeting the workers and finding other jobs for them. Instead it's just another lobbying group.
America's renewable energy capacity is now greater than coal
New York (CNN Business)America's coal industry has already been left in the dust by natural gas. Now it's under immense pressure from the renewable energy boom.
The renewable energy sector had slightly more installed capacity than coal in April, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report.
SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit research group supporting sustainable energy. The breakthrough reflects the plunging cost of solar and wind as well as heightened environmental concern about coal.
"Coal has no technology path," said Jeff McDermott, managing partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, a boutique investment bank focused on clean energy. "It's got nowhere to go but extinction."
The clean energy revolution is on the verge of a tipping point.
Also in April, the renewable energy sector was projected to have generated more electricity than coal, according to a separate report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That transition was partially driven by seasonal issues.
At the same time, America has drastically cut back on its appetite for coal. Since peaking in 2008, US coal consumption has plunged 39% to the lowest level in 40 years, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
...
[...] Observed maximum thaw depths at our sites are already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090 under RCP 4.5.
Key Points:
- Observed thermokarst development in very cold permafrost at 3 monitoring sites along a 700 km transect in the Canadian High Arctic.
- Rapid landscape response to above average summer warmth is due to limited thermal buffering from overlying ecosystem components and near‐surface ground ice.
- Change was greatest at Mould Bay where thawing index values were 240 % above historic normals causing ~90 cm of subsidence in 12 years.
Article: Climate change drives widespread and rapid thermokarst development in very cold permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019GL082187)
From: Geophysical Research Letters
Date: 2019 JUN 10Quote...
[...] Observed maximum thaw depths at our sites are already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090 under RCP 4.5.
Key Points:
- Observed thermokarst development in very cold permafrost at 3 monitoring sites along a 700 km transect in the Canadian High Arctic.
- Rapid landscape response to above average summer warmth is due to limited thermal buffering from overlying ecosystem components and near‐surface ground ice.
- Change was greatest at Mould Bay where thawing index values were 240 % above historic normals causing ~90 cm of subsidence in 12 years.
lmao owned
Bjorn Lomborg: So, I think the first thing to really realize is that I'm not talking about this as me. I'm simply trying to take some of the best people who have been working on this, typically with the U.N. Climate Panel [United Nations IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. So, when you are asking what is my assessment, I'm simply answering: What is it that the U.N. Climate Panel is telling us. Because, I'm just working in economics. I'm not the science guy who has been looking at this. There's lots of economists who have been looking at this. What they find is: Global warming is a problem; it's not the end of the world. By the 2070s, the net impact of global warming will be somewhere between the equivalent of 0.2 and 2% of GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. So, it's the equivalent of probably 1 recession over the next 50 years. By the end of the century, unmitigated global warming might cost somewhere between 2 and 4% of global GDP. Remember: by then we'll probably be somewhere between 5 and 10 times richer; so, out of a 1000% increase, we'll still have to pay 2 to 4%. That's certainly a problem: certainly not the end of the world.
Going off the excerpt, seems like he's downplaying the upper-bound on how bad this could get.
Like, last I checked:Warming, instability, melting and other metrics keep exceeding projections. Projections keep getting worse. There's a steady stream of dire research coming out and we can only hope it's all wrong. And, to top it off, the world's not doing nearly enough. What we're doing now would've been great in the '80s.
- Current Lock-In: +1.5C (2.7f) by 2100
- Current Worst-Case: ~+5C (9f) by 2100. This is vastly worse than 'one recession.'
- (Bonus) Absolute Worst-Case I Can Assemble Using Articles I've Read Recently:
- Worst Case #1 (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by-2036/): Current trajectory gives +2C (3.6f) in 2036
- Worst Case #2 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state): +2C (3.6f) accelerates slide to +4C (7.2f)
- Worst Case #3 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1): +4.5C (8.1f) triggers additional 8C (14.4f) via stratocumulus cloud dissolution
- Overall Scenario: +2C (3.6f) by 2036 leads to +12.5C (22.5f) and that's Doomsday territory.
His, "one recession," remark also fails to account for other risks. Geopolitical instability everywhere will be increased. Like, glacier-fed revers in SE Asia will be drying up, leaving over a billion people high and dry. This includes hundreds of millions in India-Pakistan who rely on shared rivers and this will be a nasty situation.
Especially for US readers, temperatures should always include Fahrenheit. Not just because it's what most people outside of science relate to, but also because the C temperatures on a smaller scale may seem to downplay the true effect.
Such as by glacier-fed rivers in SE Asia drying up, leaving over a billion people high and dry.
Especially for US readers, temperatures should always include Fahrenheit. Not just because it's what most people outside of science relate to, but also because the C temperatures on a smaller scale may seem to downplay the true effect.People reading about a scientific issue on a science and skepticism forum are not "outside science".
I'm 100% sure that the next update from the bulletin of atomic scientists will move the doomsday clock closer to midnight than ever before. Maybe we are one minute and a half from midnight... or even just one minute...
Especially for US readers, temperatures should always include Fahrenheit. Not just because it's what most people outside of science relate to, but also because the C temperatures on a smaller scale may seem to downplay the true effect.People reading about a scientific issue on a science and skepticism forum are not "outside science".
Evidence like what? Your lone complaint here in this thread?I think there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.Especially for US readers, temperatures should always include Fahrenheit. Not just because it's what most people outside of science relate to, but also because the C temperatures on a smaller scale may seem to downplay the true effect.People reading about a scientific issue on a science and skepticism forum are not "outside science".
(FWIW, even :steve: prefers F)In some situations so do I, but that doesn't mean I can't relate to C.
I'm 100% sure that the next update from the bulletin of atomic scientists will move the doomsday clock closer to midnight than ever before. Maybe we are one minute and a half from midnight... or even just one minute...
I thought that clock was Nuclear War Doomsday. Not the slow burn of Global Warming.
A new abnormal: It is still two minutes to midnight
Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.
The doomsday clock is ridiculous for the same reason that terror alerts that are always red are: they reject nuance and the ability to communicate information in favor of perpetual alarmism, with the result that people become inured to them.
Our last summer was the hottest on record in Australia, and we can expect the record breaking weather to continue for at least the next 20 years, new climate change research has found.
Regardless of action on climate change, monthly temperature records will continue to be smashed for the next two decades, but what happens beyond then depends on whether or not we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Immediate action to drastically reduce emissions would rein in the temperature record-breaking from around 2040, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0498-5) today.
But the rate of record-smashing will continue to rise throughout the 21st century if emissions keep increasing at the current rate.
(FWIW, even :steve: prefers F)
Such as by glacier-fed rivers in SE Asia drying up, leaving over a billion people high and dry.
To expand on this point:
(https://i.imgur.com/xvicJn3.jpg)
By 2100, those glaciers will be mostly gone. Hope we develop efficient, scalable desal soon.
Holy fucking shit... there isn't a single scientific report update that shows that things could stabilize or get better... This trend reveals something very serious and profound with all the previous weather studies... they suffer from a severe optimistic bias. Basically 100% of the updates that process new data show that current metrics are worse than the models predicted...Yes.
Himalayan glaciers melting at alarming rate, spy satellites show
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/himalayan-glaciers-melting-alarming-rate-spy-satellites-show/
Possibly because they themselves have been too optimistic, assuming that we'd do more than less than nothing to reduce emissions. Human emissions were too high when they were 22 gigatons 30 years ago, and now they've been reduced by negative 68%.Nope. Most of the predictions are of the “if we don’t do something then...” variety.
This issue of the ecological breakdown is being exceedingly hard for me to digest. I'm in a moment of my life that I am seriously wondering about the possibility of having children in the near future... But a scientific and logic analysis clearly shows that this might be unethical... If you know that in the next 50 years society will start collapsing, having children could mean creating human beings knowing in advance that they will have a life of major suffering... suffering and despair that can be completely avoided by not allowing them to be born.
Do any of you guys have some input regarding this issue? Is there anyone going through a similar mental conflict? (On top of that, having a child is the #1 thing that you could possible do with the highest impact on the environment...)
Do any of you guys have some input regarding this issue? Is there anyone going through a similar mental conflict? (On top of that, having a child is the #1 thing that you could possible do with the highest impact on the environment...)
Was listening to Econtalk (a Libertarian-focused interview show) last week when they had Bjorn Lomborg on.
http://www.econtalk.org/bjorn-lomborg-on-the-costs-and-benefits-of-attacking-climate-change/
I don't really follow climate change news that closely but I'm guessing Lomborg is a well known climate change skeptic?
Though perhaps "skeptic" isn't the correct term since he seems to acknowledge that it's happening but that it's not that big of a deal.Quote
Bjorn Lomborg: So, I think the first thing to really realize is that I'm not talking about this as me. I'm simply trying to take some of the best people who have been working on this, typically with the U.N. Climate Panel [United Nations IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. So, when you are asking what is my assessment, I'm simply answering: What is it that the U.N. Climate Panel is telling us. Because, I'm just working in economics. I'm not the science guy who has been looking at this. There's lots of economists who have been looking at this. What they find is: Global warming is a problem; it's not the end of the world. By the 2070s, the net impact of global warming will be somewhere between the equivalent of 0.2 and 2% of GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. So, it's the equivalent of probably 1 recession over the next 50 years. By the end of the century, unmitigated global warming might cost somewhere between 2 and 4% of global GDP. Remember: by then we'll probably be somewhere between 5 and 10 times richer; so, out of a 1000% increase, we'll still have to pay 2 to 4%. That's certainly a problem: certainly not the end of the world.
Holy fucking shit... there isn't a single scientific report update that shows that things could stabilize or get better... This trend reveals something very serious and profound with all the previous weather studies... they suffer from a severe optimistic bias. Basically 100% of the updates that process new data show that current metrics are worse than the models predicted...Yes.
Himalayan glaciers melting at alarming rate, spy satellites show
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/himalayan-glaciers-melting-alarming-rate-spy-satellites-show/
I believe that scientists have deliberately been too cautious and conservative in their predictions for reasons other than science.
And another problem is that most people outside of climate science are treating the climate like a linear system because they're not very familiar with nonlinear ones in their day to day lives. That's a very dangerous assumption.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/20/politics/kate-brown-oregon-republican-senators-police-climate-change/index.html
Lock em up!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I guess what I'm saying is, if potential suffering is your only measure for the worth of a human life you should seriously consider how and when you'll euthanize yourself. I'm not being sarcastic or poking at you. I've had my life radically altered by cancer and had to consider this very thing.
For those who want my opinion; I would say that if you don't think that there's a very good chance, beyond reasonable doubt, that you're going to be able to provide a good life for any (additional) children you have, then you shouldn't create them. But you can still consider fostering or adoption, and use what resources that are available to you to help care for the children who already exist.
Hoping we'll have prepared some engineered microbes that can produce a few terratons of oxygen per year, if the entire rest of the ecosystem collapses.
I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Do you realize how far away are we from getting ready to do this?I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Using sulfate aerosols to cause a global dimming is one proposed method of geoengineering. If I remember correctly, though, if you want sulfate aerosols (or precursors) to do anything to the climate you need to inject it into the stratosphere, otherwise it'll just come down as acid rain almost immediately.
I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Using sulfate aerosols to cause a global dimming is one proposed method of geoengineering. If I remember correctly, though, if you want sulfate aerosols (or precursors) to do anything to the climate you need to inject it into the stratosphere, otherwise it'll just come down as acid rain almost immediately.
I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Using sulfate aerosols to cause a global dimming is one proposed method of geoengineering. If I remember correctly, though, if you want sulfate aerosols (or precursors) to do anything to the climate you need to inject it into the stratosphere, otherwise it'll just come down as acid rain almost immediately.
The ancient loop of di hydrogen sulfide is totally different than sulphates in the stratosphere. That system is well known and described foot only increasing albedo (mostly coastal) and as a ccn, irrigating those coasts. It is also a huge contributor to sulfur in soil.
Totally bad idea, IMHO
I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Using sulfate aerosols to cause a global dimming is one proposed method of geoengineering. If I remember correctly, though, if you want sulfate aerosols (or precursors) to do anything to the climate you need to inject it into the stratosphere, otherwise it'll just come down as acid rain almost immediately.
The ancient loop of di hydrogen sulfide is totally different than sulphates in the stratosphere. That system is well known and described foot only increasing albedo (mostly coastal) and as a ccn, irrigating those coasts. It is also a huge contributor to sulfur in soil.
Are you talking about this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLAW_hypothesis)? Then this (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254429031_The_CLAW_hypothesis_A_review_of_the_major_developments) might be of interest.Totally bad idea, IMHO
Probably true.
Plants are being extinct 500 times faster than the natural rate. FIVE. HUNDRED. TIMES. FASTER.
It doesn't make this news any better but it seems that most of this extinction is not due to climate change but to human intervention, deforestation, logging, destruction of habitat.
Here's a new one from the denialist crew. I've seen them pimp this several times over the last few days.
Glacier National Park glaciers are actually growing – officials quietly remove its ‘Gone by 2020’ signs
https://tinyurl.com/y23u25sj
So the NPS has probably been told to take down any signs about climate change by the Trump Administration and this is evidence that science is wrong.
Here's the best science from the article: "Teams from Lysander Spooner University visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing – not shrinking-since about 2010. "
Oooooooooooooookay!
Plants are being extinct 500 times faster than the natural rate. FIVE. HUNDRED. TIMES. FASTER.
It doesn't make this news any better but it seems that most of this extinction is not due to climate change but to human intervention, deforestation, logging, destruction of habitat.
I was reminded at the recent lecture on microbes and climate (but not addressed by the lecturer) about di hydrogen sulfide and the negative loop with regards to albedo. Thanks Dr Lovelock for another discovery.
Using sulfate aerosols to cause a global dimming is one proposed method of geoengineering. If I remember correctly, though, if you want sulfate aerosols (or precursors) to do anything to the climate you need to inject it into the stratosphere, otherwise it'll just come down as acid rain almost immediately.
The ancient loop of di hydrogen sulfide is totally different than sulphates in the stratosphere. That system is well known and described foot only increasing albedo (mostly coastal) and as a ccn, irrigating those coasts. It is also a huge contributor to sulfur in soil.
Are you talking about this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLAW_hypothesis)? Then this (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254429031_The_CLAW_hypothesis_A_review_of_the_major_developments) might be of interest.Totally bad idea, IMHO
Probably true.
Thanks for CLAW review. I'll give it a more serious read soon.
In his 2006 book The Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock proposed that instead of providing negative feedback in the climate system, the components of the CLAW hypothesis may act to create a positive feedback loop.[7]
Under future global warming, increasing temperature may stratify the world ocean, decreasing the supply of nutrients from the deep ocean to its productive euphotic zone. Consequently, phytoplankton activity will decline with a concomitant fall in the production of DMS. In a reverse of the CLAW hypothesis, this decline in DMS production will lead to a decrease in cloud condensation nuclei and a fall in cloud albedo. The consequence of this will be further climate warming which may lead to even less DMS production (and further climate warming). The figure to the right shows a summarising schematic diagram.
Evidence for the anti-CLAW hypothesis is constrained by similar uncertainties as those of the sulfur cycle feedback loop of the CLAW hypothesis. However, researchers simulating future oceanic primary production have found evidence of declining production with increasing ocean stratification,[8][9] leaving open the possibility that such a mechanism may exist.
Denmark’s new government raises climate change to highest priority (https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/06/26/denmarks-new-government-raises-climate-change-highest-priority/)
In a deal with other left parties, the Social Democrats agreed to raise the country’s climate targets and place the green transition at the heart of policy
Denmark’s government announced a “new political direction” based on an ambitious climate manifesto, released on Wednesday.
Social Democrat leader Mette Frederiksen, 41, became the country’s new prime minister on Wednesday, after she secured a political deal with three other left-wing parties to form a one-party minority government.
Under the agreement, the new government pledged to introduce binding decarbonisation goals and strengthen its 2030 target to reduce emissions by 70% below the 1990 level – the current target is 40%.
The left-wing alliance acknowledged this was “a very ambitious target” and that the last five points of emissions reduction to 70% would be “particularly difficult to reach”.
But the alliance warned “the world and Denmark are in a climate crisis” and that limiting global temperature rise is “not just the right thing to do, it’s also the most economically responsible one”.
McDonald's Israel to introduce vegan burgers (https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-mcdonalds-israel-to-serve-vegan-burgers-1001290977)
The Big Vegan is made of wheat and soybeans.
McDonald's Israel, the largest fast food chain in the country, will introduce a hamburger made of wheat and soybeans in six weeks.
The hamburgers, which were developed by Swiss food manufacturer Nestle, are already on sale at McDonald's outlets in Europe. The price for the product, which will be called Big Vegan, is unknown. It will be launched at a few branches in the Tel Aviv area as a pilot, and a decision about whether to offer it in all of McDonald's branches will be taken later.
Then the next step is to stop offering the beef burgers.
Then the next step is to stop offering the beef burgers.
Then the next step is to stop offering the beef burgers.
Agreed.
Better yet, make it into law. We need to massively reduce meat-eating. As much as possible of the land currently used for grazing should be used for farming.
Max Hamburgers are phasing out meat (https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/max-fasar-ut-rott-kott-var-tredje-burgare-ska-vara-gron/). They recently introduced plantbeef (which is delicious), and they aim for that within three years, at least every second hamburger of theirs should be green.
Donald Trump has again dismissed the need to tackle climate change by saying the US has the cleanest air and water “ever”.
The president, speaking at the G20 Summit in Japan, also claimed that wind power “does not work” because it has to be heavily subsidised.
“We have the cleanest water we have ever had, we have the cleanest air we’ve ever had, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the tremendous power of what we’ve built up over a long period of time and what I’ve enhanced and revived,” he said.
“I’m not sure that I agree with certain countries with what they are doing, they are losing a lot of power. I am talking about the powering of a plant.
“It doesn’t always work with a windmill. When the wind goes off, the plant isn’t working. It doesn’t always work with solar because solar’s just not strong enough, and a lot of them want to go to wind, which has caused a lot of problems.
“Wind doesn’t work for the most part without subsidy. The United States is paying tremendous amounts of subsidies for wind. I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”
...
Defending his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accord, Mr Trump denied he was “ignoring” the problem but claimed that trying to take action on global warming would affect the American economy.
“We have the best numbers we’ve ever had recently, and I’m not looking to put our companies out of business,” he said.
“I’m not looking to create a standard that is so high that we’re going to lose 20 to 25 per cent of our production.”
The president has previously described climate change as a “hoax” and dismissed the problem as a “change in the weather”.
In previous interviews and on campaign rallies he has claimed the US has “among the cleanest climates”.
However, earlier this week vice-president Mike Pence, when asked if climate change was a threat, said “America has the cleanest air and water in the world”.
...
Then the next step is to stop offering the beef burgers.
Agreed.
Better yet, make it into law. We need to massively reduce meat-eating. As much as possible of the land currently used for grazing should be used for farming.
Max Hamburgers are phasing out meat (https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/max-fasar-ut-rott-kott-var-tredje-burgare-ska-vara-gron/). They recently introduced plantbeef (which is delicious), and they aim for that within three years, at least every second hamburger of theirs should be green.
Meat is not the issue.
Why eating less meat is the best thing you can do for the planet in 2019 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/21/lifestyle-change-eat-less-meat-climate-change)
Eating meat has a hefty impact on the environment from fueling climate change to polluting landscapes and waterways
Recycling or taking the bus rather than driving to work has its place, but scientists are increasingly pointing to a deeper lifestyle change that would be the single biggest way to help the planet: eating far less meat.
A swathe of research released over the past year has laid bare the hefty impact that eating meat, especially beef and pork, has upon the environment by fueling climate change and polluting landscapes and waterways.
Industrialized agriculture and the onset of the worst species extinction crisis since the demise of the dinosaurs means that livestock and humans now make up 96% of all mammals. But despite consuming the vast majority of farmland, meat and dairy accounts for just 18% of all food calories and around a third of protein.
The mighty hoofprint of farmed meat isn’t just inefficient. Deforestation to make way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertilizer use, creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the world’s cars, trucks and airplanes. Meat rearing practices risk mass extinctions of other animals, as well as spawn significant pollution of streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.
In October, scientists warned that huge reductions in meat eating are required if the world is to stave off dangerous climate change, with beef consumption in western countries needing to drop by 90%, replaced by five times more beans and pulses.
Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown)
Major study also finds huge changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying Earth’s ability to feed its population
Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses.
The research also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet’s ability to feed the 10 billion people expected to be on the planet in a few decades.
Food production already causes great damage to the environment, via greenhouse gases from livestock, deforestation and water shortages from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. But without action, its impact will get far worse as the world population rises by 2.3 billion people by 2050 and global income triples, enabling more people to eat meat-rich western diets.
One of the most common arguments I hear from Global Warming deniers is: Scientists predicted x, but x never happened.
Is there any comprehensive study that looks back at actual claims and predictions made by scientists and compares them to what has been actually come about?
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Yes, I've seen these too. Here is a recent example:
http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/
One problem with lists like this is that they contain so many cherry-picks. Of course, scientists are always getting things wrong, but they also are constantly getting things right as well. Why not show us the
correct predictions?
Another question I have about such lists is: how representative of the entire science community are each of these predictions? Take the first example from the AEI list: "Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
Who is George Wald? Were his views typical of the time he made them or was he viewed by his peers as a crank?
These lists are meant to show that because scientists have been wrong about future predictions in the past they must be wrong about their climate change predictions now.
That is some sloppy reasoning.
There is also another cherry-pick going on here: what about the failed predictions made by scientists who claim that global warming is over-blown or nothing to worry about or not caused by human emissions of CO2?
One of our writers, Dana Nuccitelli, has a series of posts highlighting the successful predictions made by climate scientists as well as the failed predictions of the "contrarian" scientists:
https://skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Predictions_150
He put these in book form as well:
https://www.amazon.com/Climatology-versus-Pseudoscience-Exposing-Predictions/dp/1440832013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426825773&sr=8-1&keywords=nuccitelli
You asked about a study about these claims.
The closest thing is another work featuring Nuccitelli as one of the authors:
http://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014_Abraham-et-al.-Climate-consensus.pdf
And he explains the paper in this post:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/apr/11/climate-change-research-quality-imbalance
Hope these links cover all your questions. Let me know if you have more!
The Skeptical Science team
In all her years working at Bodega Bay, the marine reserve research coordinator Jackie Sones had never seen anything like it: scores of dead mussels on the rocks, their shells gaping and scorched, their meats thoroughly cooked.
A record-breaking June heatwave apparently caused the largest die-off of mussels in at least 15 years at Bodega Head, a small headland on the northern California bay. And Sones received reports from other researchers of similar mass mussel deaths at various beaches across roughly 140 miles (225km) of coastline.
While the people who flocked to the Pacific to enjoy a rare 80F (27C) beach day soaked up the sun, so did the mussel beds – where the rock-bound mollusks could have been experiencing temperatures above 100F at low tide, literally roasting in their shells.
...
Article: Heatwave cooks mussels in their shells on California shore (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/28/california-mussels-cooked-heat)
From: The Guardian
Date: 2019 JUN 28QuoteIn all her years working at Bodega Bay, the marine reserve research coordinator Jackie Sones had never seen anything like it: scores of dead mussels on the rocks, their shells gaping and scorched, their meats thoroughly cooked.
A record-breaking June heatwave apparently caused the largest die-off of mussels in at least 15 years at Bodega Head, a small headland on the northern California bay. And Sones received reports from other researchers of similar mass mussel deaths at various beaches across roughly 140 miles (225km) of coastline.
While the people who flocked to the Pacific to enjoy a rare 80F (27C) beach day soaked up the sun, so did the mussel beds – where the rock-bound mollusks could have been experiencing temperatures above 100F at low tide, literally roasting in their shells.
...
RIP everything that can't survive the new weather.
Trees only sequester carbon as long as they are alive, unless of course we bury them underground in airtight enclosures before they decompose. Or use the wood for something that would otherwise work as long-term sequestration.
Increasing the biomass of trees/forest would be a one-off change. According to their numbers, 200 Giga-tonnes of carbon (not CO2), that's basically twenty years of emission at current rate.
Yeah but the point is that we'd have to bury them ourselves, or else they'd decompose on the surface and release all that carbon again.
Last year, there were 484 official heat waves across India, up from 21 in 2010. During that period, more than 5,000 people died. This year's figures show little respite.
In June, Delhi hit temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit), the highest ever recorded in that month. West of the capital, Churu in Rajasthan nearly broke the country's heat record with a high of 50.6 Celsius (123 Fahrenheit)
Then the next step is to stop offering the beef burgers.
Agreed.
Better yet, make it into law. We need to massively reduce meat-eating. As much as possible of the land currently used for grazing should be used for farming.
Max Hamburgers are phasing out meat (https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/max-fasar-ut-rott-kott-var-tredje-burgare-ska-vara-gron/). They recently introduced plantbeef (which is delicious), and they aim for that within three years, at least every second hamburger of theirs should be green.
Meat is not the issue.
https://apple.news/A23SveexGQRG7byBxGoaZhQQuoteLast year, there were 484 official heat waves across India, up from 21 in 2010. During that period, more than 5,000 people died. This year's figures show little respite.
In June, Delhi hit temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit), the highest ever recorded in that month. West of the capital, Churu in Rajasthan nearly broke the country's heat record with a high of 50.6 Celsius (123 Fahrenheit)
A signatory to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the country has pledged to cuts its carbon emissions by 33% to 35% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration announced plans to add 500 gigawatts of renewable energy to the country's power grid by 2030. By that year, renewable energy should account for at least 40% of India's installed power capacity. The country is also planting forests to help mop up carbon emissions.
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
'Biggest compliment yet': Greta Thunberg welcomes oil chief's 'greatest threat' label (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/05/biggest-compliment-yet-greta-thunberg-welcomes-oil-chiefs-greatest-threat-label)
Activists say comments by Opec head prove world opinion is turning against fossil fuels
Greta Thunberg and other climate activists have said it is a badge of honour that the head of the world’s most powerful oil cartel believes their campaign may be the “greatest threat” to the fossil fuel industry.
The criticism of striking students by the trillion-dollar Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) highlights the growing reputational concerns of oil companies as public protests intensify along with extreme weather.
Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of Opec, said there was a growing mass mobilisation of world opinion against oil, which was “beginning to … dictate policies and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry”.
He said the pressure was also being felt within the families of Opec officials because their own children “are asking us about their future because … they see their peers on the streets campaigning against this industry”.
Although he accused the campaigners of misleading people with unscientific arguments, the comments were welcomed by student and divestment campaigners as a sign the oil industry is worried it may be losing the battle for public opinion.
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
When you stick to the knowable, direct emissions, the climate burden of cattle fall away. The EPA estimates that 9% of all direct emissions in the U.S. are due to agriculture, compared with 20% from industry, 28% from electricity and 28% from transportation. Just 3.9% are due to livestock. That’s half the CO2 attributable to concrete.
And yet we read:
- Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth)
- Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown)
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
From everything I have read, it is significantly more than 3%.
The burning of fossil fuels for energy and animal agriculture are two of the biggest contributors to global warming, along with deforestation. Globally, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 60% of human greenhouse gas emissions, with deforestation at about 18%, and animal agriculture between 14% and 18% (estimates from the World Resources Institute, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and Pitesky et al. 2009).
[...]
Beef is a bigger problem than other sources of meat
Producing beef requires significantly more resources (e.g. land, fertilizer, and water) than other sources of meat. As ruminant animals, cattle also produce methane that other sources (e.g. pigs and chickens) don't.
Eschel et al. 2014 estimated that producing beef requires 28 times more land, 6 times more fertilizer and 11 times more water than producing pork or chicken. As a result, the study estimated that producing beef releases 4 times more greenhouse gases than a calorie-equivalent amount of pork, and 5 times as much as an equivalent amount of poultry.
[...]
There are often suggestions that going vegan is the most important step people can take to solve the global warming problem. While reducing meat consumption (particularly beef and lamb) reduces greenhouse gas emissions, this claim is an exaggeration.
An oft-used comparison is that globally, animal agriculture is responsible for a larger proportion of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (14-18%) than transportation (13.5%). While this is true, transportation is just one of the many sources of human fossil fuel combustion. Electricity and heat generation account for about 25% of global human greenhouse gas emissions alone.
Beef cattle drink 20 or 30 litres of water a day and return 99% of that back to the soil.If water is taken from wells and aquifers and pissed out on the ground, it can be as wasteful as using that same water for a golf course or just dumping it out somewhere. You always seem to forget that most of the world's beef isn't produced like it is in New Zealand.
Fossil fuel exports make Australia one of the worst contributors to climate crisis (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/fossil-fuel-exports-make-australia-one-of-the-worst-contributors-to-climate-crisis)
Australia looking to become an emissions superpower, the Australian Conservation Foundation says
Australia is responsible for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and could be contributing as much as 17% by 2030 if the pollution from its fossil fuel exports is factored in, research says.
Under climate accounting rules that record carbon dioxide released within a country, Australia is responsible for about 1.4% of global emissions. The analysis by science and policy institute Climate Analytics found more than twice that, another 3.6%, are a result of Australia’s coal, oil and gas exports.
If all proposed fossil fuel developments went ahead, including Adani’s Carmichael mine, other proposed coal developments in the Galilee Basin and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in Western Australia, and other countries adopted policies consistent with the Paris agreement, Australia could be linked to up to 17% of carbon pollution.
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
From everything I have read, it is significantly more than 3%.
Regarding this discrepancy between 3% or significantly more than 3% you have to pay attention to exactly what is being measured. The 3% probably refers to direct emissions. When you include indirect emissions related to meat production (mainly from growing food for cattle and shipping the animals or the meat) you get amounts around 14% (iirc). You also get different amounts depending if you are talking about global emissions, or US emissions, or some other group of countries. Also, when people criticize the amount of meat produced it is not only based on gas emissions, water use is also a big factor.
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
From everything I have read, it is significantly more than 3%.
Regarding this discrepancy between 3% or significantly more than 3% you have to pay attention to exactly what is being measured. The 3% probably refers to direct emissions. When you include indirect emissions related to meat production (mainly from growing food for cattle and shipping the animals or the meat) you get amounts around 14% (iirc). You also get different amounts depending if you are talking about global emissions, or US emissions, or some other group of countries. Also, when people criticize the amount of meat produced it is not only based on gas emissions, water use is also a big factor.
That claim is not valid, because if you use all the direct and indirect emissions related to meat production, you need to compare that to all direct and indirect of other other sources of emissions. Other wise it's a false comparison.
It's very likely that the indirect emissions related to producing and transporting autos and their parts and fuel, for example, is significantly higher than the indirect emissions from agriculture.
LLS estimates the global contribution of anthropogenic GHG emissions from the livestock sector at 7100 Tg CO2-eq/yr, which is approximately 18% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (FAO et al., 2006). For comparison, global fossil fuel burning accounts for 4000–5200 Tg CO2-eq/yr (FAO et al., 2006). According to FAO et al. (2006), the major categories of anthropogenic
GHG emissions are:
1. Enteric fermentation and respiration (1800 Tg CO2-eq / yr
2. Animal manure (2160 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
3. Livestock related land-use changes (2400 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
4. Desertification linked to livestock (100 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
5. Livestock related release from cultivated soils (230 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
6. Feed production (240 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
7. On-farm fossil fuel use (90 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
8. Postharvest emissions (10–50 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
Bullshit. You are just pulling shit out of your ass. Any numbers I see almost always add in indirect costs.
Besides that, what kind of criticism is it to say "other numbers don't calculate the whole cost, so the number that does is wrong."
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
From everything I have read, it is significantly more than 3%.
Regarding this discrepancy between 3% or significantly more than 3% you have to pay attention to exactly what is being measured. The 3% probably refers to direct emissions. When you include indirect emissions related to meat production (mainly from growing food for cattle and shipping the animals or the meat) you get amounts around 14% (iirc). You also get different amounts depending if you are talking about global emissions, or US emissions, or some other group of countries. Also, when people criticize the amount of meat produced it is not only based on gas emissions, water use is also a big factor.
That claim is not valid, because if you use all the direct and indirect emissions related to meat production, you need to compare that to all direct and indirect of other other sources of emissions. Other wise it's a false comparison.
It's very likely that the indirect emissions related to producing and transporting autos and their parts and fuel, for example, is significantly higher than the indirect emissions from agriculture.
No, it's the percentage of the total estimated anthropogenic emissions (http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/PiteskyClearingAir.pdf):QuoteLLS estimates the global contribution of anthropogenic GHG emissions from the livestock sector at 7100 Tg CO2-eq/yr, which is approximately 18% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (FAO et al., 2006). For comparison, global fossil fuel burning accounts for 4000–5200 Tg CO2-eq/yr (FAO et al., 2006). According to FAO et al. (2006), the major categories of anthropogenic
GHG emissions are:
1. Enteric fermentation and respiration (1800 Tg CO2-eq / yr
2. Animal manure (2160 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
3. Livestock related land-use changes (2400 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
4. Desertification linked to livestock (100 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
5. Livestock related release from cultivated soils (230 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
6. Feed production (240 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
7. On-farm fossil fuel use (90 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
8. Postharvest emissions (10–50 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
Granted, 2006 is a bit dated, but it's not going to magically go from 3 to 14 percent of total anthropogenic emissions just because you calculate the specifics of some other sector differently (unless that drastically changes the estimate of the total, of course, but that seems unlikely).
Probably closer to 3% net. Not much worse than grains and veggies. And people gotta eat.
From everything I have read, it is significantly more than 3%.
Regarding this discrepancy between 3% or significantly more than 3% you have to pay attention to exactly what is being measured. The 3% probably refers to direct emissions. When you include indirect emissions related to meat production (mainly from growing food for cattle and shipping the animals or the meat) you get amounts around 14% (iirc). You also get different amounts depending if you are talking about global emissions, or US emissions, or some other group of countries. Also, when people criticize the amount of meat produced it is not only based on gas emissions, water use is also a big factor.
That claim is not valid, because if you use all the direct and indirect emissions related to meat production, you need to compare that to all direct and indirect of other other sources of emissions. Other wise it's a false comparison.
It's very likely that the indirect emissions related to producing and transporting autos and their parts and fuel, for example, is significantly higher than the indirect emissions from agriculture.
No, it's the percentage of the total estimated anthropogenic emissions (http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/PiteskyClearingAir.pdf):QuoteLLS estimates the global contribution of anthropogenic GHG emissions from the livestock sector at 7100 Tg CO2-eq/yr, which is approximately 18% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (FAO et al., 2006). For comparison, global fossil fuel burning accounts for 4000–5200 Tg CO2-eq/yr (FAO et al., 2006). According to FAO et al. (2006), the major categories of anthropogenic
GHG emissions are:
1. Enteric fermentation and respiration (1800 Tg CO2-eq / yr
2. Animal manure (2160 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
3. Livestock related land-use changes (2400 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
4. Desertification linked to livestock (100 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
5. Livestock related release from cultivated soils (230 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
6. Feed production (240 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
7. On-farm fossil fuel use (90 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
8. Postharvest emissions (10–50 Tg CO2-eq / yr)
Granted, 2006 is a bit dated, but it's not going to magically go from 3 to 14 percent of total anthropogenic emissions just because you calculate the specifics of some other sector differently (unless that drastically changes the estimate of the total, of course, but that seems unlikely).
It's the other side of the equation where they don't go that detail.
If you can't calculate the total indirect input of the other sectors you cannot accurately or validly attribute a percentage.
Given the number of autos and truck on the road and planes in the air in any given moment and the amount of infrastructure needed to support them, I think it's quite likely that the number would drastically change.