CB wrote: Reality: India is one of the few countries which IS on track to keep warming below +2°C. India is on track just like China isn't releasing chlorofluorocarbons. Because, you know, governments don't lie or even stretch the truth.
CB wrote: It took less than a decade for India to go from trending towards greater than 4°C to being on track for less than 2°C. The US, China, and much of the rest of the world had started moving in that direction and then stalled when the political winds changed... but the economic realities are becoming ever more difficult to ignore.
We're seeing desperate efforts to prop up fossil fuels in many parts of the world (e.g. US, Canada, Australia, Europe, etc) currently but, even with insane policies like subsidizing inactive coal plants, the market is still shifting to renewables. Just more slowly than it had been before fossil fuel shills took over.
The fact that we are not currently on track to keep global warming below 2°C continues to have nothing to do with what we can do in the future.
Yes, 1.5°C continues to be implausible and 2.0°C will slip away if we don't shift course in the next few years... but it continues to be likely that we WILL shift in the next few years. Money talks and investment capital has already shifted from fossil fuels to renewable power. Lobbyists and political flunkies will inevitably follow.
Remember, there are a billion+ people in India all wanting to be "middle class".
There are a billion+ more people in China all wanting to be "middle class".
The past is the best predictor of the future when it comes to human behavior. I have thousands of years of recorded human activity (plus thousands more from the archaeological record) telling me that global humanity has essentially no chance of making anything less than a +2°C for the year 2100 and an extremely high likelihood of a achieving a +2.5°C year 2100.
+1.5°C is most definitely not possible without scalable nuclear fusion plants (or other near-miracle technology getting developed in the next two decades).
Virtually every credible scientist agrees that we are currently at +1°C, minimum, with a reasonable argument for +1.3°C. Virtually every credible scientist agrees that once we stop polluting with coal and diesel and other fossil fuels the reduction in atmospheric particulates will add another 0.5°C, minimum. This leaves us with a simple calculation giving a +1.5°C to +1.8°C future factoring in absolutely nothing else about human growth (9 billion+* here we come) and modernization (the aforementioned move to "middle class") to sink the battle ship Paris Agreement or any other like it.
* Let us not forget what a "middle class" lifestyle entails - not least a frivolous waste of resources. Times that by 9 billion people and you have a real issue. Case in point, repeated here for emphasis.
BBC wrote: The lead scientist, Rabih Bashroush, calculated that five billion downloads and streams clocked up by the song Despacito, released in 2017, consumed as much electricity as Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic put together in a single year.
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Quark Blast wrote: Remember, there are a billion+ people in India all wanting to be "middle class".
There are a billion+ more people in China all wanting to be "middle class".
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* Let us not forget what a "middle class" lifestyle entails - not least a frivolous waste of resources. Times that by 9 billion people and you have a real issue. Case in point, repeated here for emphasis.
Repeating this argument over and over and over again does not make it any more convincing when you continue to fail to even try to address the counter arguments.
Yes, people want to improve their lifestyle... and not just in India and China. However, your insistence that this must perforce lead to out of control greenhouse gas emissions is contradicted by the evidence.
California, the fifth largest economy in the world (after the rest of the US, China, Japan, and Germany) got 22% of its electricity from wind and solar in 2017. Add another 24% from hydro and other renewables and 9% from nuclear, and the majority of California electricity generation now emits zero carbon dioxide during production. Most of the remainder (34%) comes from natural gas, which has lower CO2 emissions than coal.
If California can maintain their high standard of living while rapidly converting, there is no reason that developing countries can't go directly to renewables... as indeed India is actually doing.
Likewise, the US as a whole decreased CO2 emissions 28% from 2005 to 2017.
No massive loss of standard of living. No giving up travel, air-conditioning, etc. No end of western civilization as we know it. None of the nonsense you have repeatedly insisted would be required. Indeed, those results have been achieved with most of the country barely trying and a minority actively trying to sabotage cleanup.
Wind and/or solar are now the least expensive form of new power production for roughly half the planet. Within a few years one or the other will be the least expensive option nearly everywhere. That is why renewables are growing and emissions declining despite active efforts to stop this... they are just a better choice economically.
Quark Blast wrote: Sharoth wrote: ‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss
I f@#@ing hate living through the middle of the next mass extinction. I am glad that I don't have kids.
I actually posted/linked to this topic up thread here somewhere(I think). The Germans first discovered this and, once they published their findings, this phenomenon has been found around the world. I surmise that we have petrochemicals to thank.
Well, there really isn't enough to draw a conclusion as to the cause. All we know is that insect biomass has significantly reduced, and this is having trophic effects.
The primary culprit I would look at is actually habitat fragmentation. For example, the fragmentation of suitable habitat is probably the primary cause of the loss of bee populations. As their available space and food sources diminish, they become more susceptible to disease, toxins, or loss of a single food source (if a patch of wood/grass is home to the flowers they need and a farmer clears it for a field, they die cause there's no food).
Habitat fragmentation is a primary driver of the increase in lyme disease as well.
The reason I point that out is that not every problem in the environment will be related to climate change or fossil fuels. Some problems will remain, or even worsen, if we continue to expand farmland, human habitation, industrialization, or even transportation networks... even if all those things are carbon neutral.
Irontruth wrote: The reason I point that out is that not every problem in the environment will be related to climate change or fossil fuels. Absolutely.
I believe that we will likely stop global warming at somewhere between +2°C and +2.5°C over the late 19th century average due to the growing economic advantages of wind and solar power. However, that doesn't change the fact that we are causing environmental destruction in dozens of other ways... it just puts a limit on the most destructive of those impacts.
That said, if we can get to the point of abundant clean energy (which now seems at least possible) we could use that technology to solve most (all?) of the other problems. Unfortunately, it is more likely that we will use that abundant resource to accelerate our decimation of the more limited ones.
CB wrote: Yes, people want to improve their lifestyle... and not just in India and China. However, your insistence that this must perforce lead to out of control greenhouse gas emissions is contradicted by the evidence. I didn't say "out of control greenhouse gas emissions". Just enough to guarantee a +2.5°C year 2100, and give us a pretty good shot at significantly exceeding that.
CB wrote: No massive loss of standard of living. No giving up travel, air-conditioning, etc. No end of western civilization as we know it. None of the nonsense you have repeatedly insisted would be required. Indeed, those results have been achieved with most of the country barely trying and a minority actively trying to sabotage cleanup. When you take out the impact from the housing bubble economic slowdown, how much is left of your 28%? That and our methane emissions went way up with fracking. Don't forget those!
Irontruth wrote: Well, there really isn't enough to draw a conclusion as to the cause. All we know is that insect biomass has significantly reduced, and this is having trophic effects. Actually I think the case is better than that. As you can't really argue that Germany has become massively more fragmented over this time period, whereas the use of petrochemicals has increased. Both in absolute amounts and variety of chemicals being used.
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Here's a related item:
Five countries hold 70% of world's last wildernesses, map reveals
Which ones will maintain (not to even hope for improvement/expansion) their wilderness areas?
Russia? No.
China? No.
Brazil? No.
African nations? No.
Canada/Australia? Likely so. But with climate changing, who knows?
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Below are some more examples of things to consider. Things global humanity will need to do (indeed, needs to have already done in many cases) and mostly won't. And even if we do, we won't do them fast enough.
I'm slacking off on linking primary research since no one seems to read those sources carefully (or at all) when I provide them.
Brazil's environment, agriculture ministers criticize planned merger
This and many things like it. Bringing the world up to "middle class" won't be cheap on the environment. Maybe in 50 years but these people (China, India, Brazil, Russia, everyone else outside the West) won't wait at all.
Consider the carbon footprint of concrete and steel. Can't make that with solar power or a wind farm.
Consider all the transportation vehicles on the road. Well in excess of 90% are burning fossil fuels. This will be the case for at least another decade.
Consider there are about 1,000,000 people in the air right now. 100,000 commercial flights a day. Those numbers will only get worse year-over-year for decades to come in the push for "middle class" lifestyles. You don't fly jets on solar power.
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Essentially no one will do this:
Reversing climate change, one plate at a time
Princeton U wrote: “What we eat is one of the great ethical issues of our time,” Singer said. “We can eat meals that are heavy in animal products, and thereby contribute to warming the planet and to increasing the suffering of animals in factory farms, or we can eat mostly, or even entirely, food from plants, and thereby minimize our greenhouse gas emissions and avoid complicity in animal suffering. It’s our choice.” I'm no fan of Singer but sometimes he's right and you can't deny he's done his homework on this one.
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There are three options in tackling climate change. Only one will work
The G wrote: Remarkably, public expectations about the future indicate that only minor changes in the carbon-based aspects of our lifestyles are anticipated. It is as if people can continue to believe that they have an inalienable right to travel as far and as frequently as they can afford. That's a very clear summary of the situation.
The G wrote: Until recently, just over half the emissions were taken up by the sinks, with the balance accumulating in the atmosphere. This is no longer the case. The present upward path of global emissions from fossil fuel burning shows clearly that “sink-efficiency” has been noticeably decreasing since 2010. Yes, that's right. Even with reduced CO2 emissions the total atmospheric concentration will continue to rise. The sinks are full or at least stoppered up for some time. Saturated and can't take no more.
The G wrote: The overriding message located between the lines of the IPCC report is that we must lead our lives within the planet’s means. In all conscience, we are currently locked into a process that will inevitably result in passing on a dying planet to our children and their successors. I really can't disagree with that. Everything I know about climate science ratifies this conclusion.
Remember way up thread when I was being harangued for claiming there are still significant errors in the global warming climate models?
Here's just one good bit of evidence as to why the climate models are off:
Researchers say that the world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years. Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.
BBC wrote: But this new study says that every year, for the past 25 years, we have put about 150 times the amount of energy used to generate electricity globally into the seas - 60% more than previous estimates.
That's a big problem.
Calling it a "big problem" is a big understatement. We need a bigger adjective than big for this one.
This is like a 60% error for the world ocean. That is a huge error for any kind of climate model. And yeah, I expect some climate scientists to dispute that 60% figure. But I'll expect the disputation to be over something like 10%. That is, maybe the prior estimates were only off by 50%. Still a huge error.
I spent considerable effort documenting feedback loops that screw-up climate models, and I did mention errors of omission, but this is a good one. And by "good" I mean instructive. If one cares to pay attention.
There are other errors this big I'll wager. Don't know what they are yet but I'll post them here when they come to light.
Quark Blast wrote:
Irontruth wrote: Well, there really isn't enough to draw a conclusion as to the cause. All we know is that insect biomass has significantly reduced, and this is having trophic effects. Actually I think the case is better than that. As you can't really argue that Germany has become massively more fragmented over this time period, whereas the use of petrochemicals has increased. Both in absolute amounts and variety of chemicals being used.
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Actually, I can argue it really easily. On some types of habitats, Germany has lost upwards of 80-90% of what remained since the 1960s. Better management of forests in the past 20 years will yield benefits in the coming decades, but there are large swathes of wet and mesic meadows that have been reduced to almost nothing.
Please don't feel like you have to pull something out of your ass. If you don't know something about a topic, don't feel like you have to act like you do.
I would agree that petrochemicals most likely also played a significant role, but you'll find that wetlands were something that really started to disappear in the latter portion of the 20th century, and they're the most important for filtering out things like petrochemicals. As wet and mesic meadows decline, it makes the populations of those remaining habitats more vulnerable to things like petrochemicals.
I'll repeat the recommendation for lyme disease as being a specific case that is pretty well understood and has a lot of data to back it up at this point.
Quark Blast wrote: Remember way up thread when I was being harangued for claiming there are still significant errors in the global warming climate models?
Here's just one good bit of evidence as to why the climate models are off:
Researchers say that the world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years. Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.
Taking a single, recently published, study as evidence that decades of work by hundreds of people all over the world has been wrong seldom ends well. Though it doesn't usually fall apart THIS quickly...
Scientists acknowledge key errors in study of how fast the oceans are warming
For the record, observed warming has been within the margin of error projected by climate models created 30+ years ago. Ergo, there either haven't been any "huge errors" or they have somehow cancelled each other out. Given the improvements to climate models in the interim, which have primarily consisted of whittling down uncertainty ranges and incorporating more nuanced details rather than correcting major false assumptions, the former seems FAR more likely.
Irontruth wrote: Actually, I can argue it really easily. On some types of habitats, Germany has lost upwards of 80-90% of what remained since the 1960s. Better management of forests in the past 20 years will yield benefits in the coming decades, but there are large swathes of wet and mesic meadows that have been reduced to almost nothing. Ignoring the unduly harsh scatological reference, the insect studies are showing incredibly steep declines in just the last 20-25 years, not half a century ago+.
Habitat fragmentation doesn't help but petrochemical use is the prime bugbear here.
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CB wrote: For the record... stuff For the record, I have already acknowledged the amount of error may well be less than 60%. But given the scale and care of this meta-study, it is vanishingly unlikely to be closer to a 5% error than 50%. Even if it is only a 20% underestimation error, the 1.5°C year 2100 is literally impossible without massive cheap/effective atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration.
This study isn't bad news, it's very bad news.
Carbon Credits is another idea like wind energy. Properly implemented, and thus very limited in scope, it can make sense. But mostly it doesn't.
Unless one is a very large landowner of an intact/continuous tract, locking up your forest so others can pollute does two things; one wrong and the other irrelevant.
The irrelevant thing is that it does nothing for the demand for lumber (using this as an example). The same amount of timber will get harvested. On a global scale it hardly matters where the timber is preserved (and thus capturing carbon) and where it is utilized. The total effect on atmospheric carbon is what matters.
The wrong thing is that it allows others to go on polluting unabated. CO2 in the atmosphere is exactly what we need to reduce. Drastically. Carbon credits are a lot of work to get right. Many tens of thousands of dollars to assess even a modest landowners holdings.
The only time where Caron Credits might be good is to preserve delicate biomes and/or connectivity between biologically significant areas.
Quark Blast wrote: Irontruth wrote: Actually, I can argue it really easily. On some types of habitats, Germany has lost upwards of 80-90% of what remained since the 1960s. Better management of forests in the past 20 years will yield benefits in the coming decades, but there are large swathes of wet and mesic meadows that have been reduced to almost nothing. Ignoring the unduly harsh scatological reference, the insect studies are showing incredibly steep declines in just the last 20-25 years, not half a century ago+.
Habitat fragmentation doesn't help but petrochemical use is the prime bugbear here.
. Can you show causation?
Quark Blast wrote: This study isn't bad news, it's very bad news. You really don't try to read or understand at all before 'responding', do you?
The whole point of my post which you are 'replying' to was that the people who wrote it concede that the 'very bad news' study was erroneous.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: This study isn't bad news, it's very bad news. You really don't try to read or understand at all before 'responding', do you?
The whole point of my post which you are 'replying' to was that the people who wrote it concede that the 'very bad news' study was erroneous. I understand better than you care to admit.
Looks to me like the amount of error is in the 30% range. With that type of "oops!" it means we cannot definitively raise the floor for the year 2100 from a +1.5°C minimum to a +2.0°C minimum, based on that study published in Nature.
Based on a number of other factors I've cited/linked/elucidated up thread, I believe we can set the floor at +2.5°C without need of the most recent paper in Nature.
The Oct. 31st Nature article is still very bad news because it means we definitively cannot reliably model ocean temperature absorption for long term climate studies.
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Removed a post and replies. If you're interested in coming here for conversation "google it" is not an appropriate response. Google is merely a search engine, not a source for citation.
Sara Marie wrote: Removed a post and replies. If you're interested in coming here for conversation "google it" is not an appropriate response. Google is merely a search engine, not a source for citation. My apologies. I did not intend to violate forum rules.
The matter in question was not in the least obscure or controversial and as I mentioned the right answer was at the top of the search results stack. I feel that if one is going to come to a conversation one ought to at least do minimal homework and Google is a great place to start.
Too bad I cannot edit my post instead of having it deleted as, apart from the bit that seems to have violated the forum rules, it was a very apt answer to my critics.
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No matter, here's another article that supports my position rather unambiguously:
China-backed coal projects prompt climate change fears
BBC wrote: Christine Shearer is an analyst with the group CoalSwarm, which tracks coal developments, and she is scathing about the implications.
"These projects are not compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C," she said, referring to the two targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
This was the article about the real dangers of petrochemicals for interested readers:
Neonicotinoids are the new DDT killing the natural world
The Guardian wrote: Neonicotinoids are already known as a major cause of the decline of bees and other pollinators. These pesticides can be applied to the seeds of crops, and they remain in the plant as it grows, killing the insects which eat it. The quantities required to destroy insect life are astonishingly small: by volume these poisons are 10,000 times as powerful as DDT. When honeybees are exposed to just 5 nanogrammes of neonicotinoids, half of them will die...
Neonicotinoids are highly persistent chemicals, lasting (according to the few studies published so far) for up to 19 years in the soil. Because they are persistent, they are likely to accumulate: with every year of application the soil will become more toxic...
This is the story you'll keep hearing about these pesticides: we have gone into it blind. Our governments have approved their use without the faintest idea of what the consequences are likely to be.
Quark Blast wrote: Sara Marie wrote: Removed a post and replies. If you're interested in coming here for conversation "google it" is not an appropriate response. Google is merely a search engine, not a source for citation. My apologies. I did not intend to violate forum rules.
The matter in question was not in the least obscure or controversial and as I mentioned the right answer was at the top of the search results stack. I feel that if one is going to come to a conversation one ought to at least do minimal homework and Google is a great place to start.
I Googled "What is Quark Blast talking about?" and got a link to a Quake level designer.
Quark Blast wrote: The Oct. 31st Nature article is still very bad news because it means we definitively cannot reliably model ocean temperature absorption for long term climate studies. Ah... so in your mind even the fact that you are wrong means that you are right.
Who can argue with that kind of 'logic'.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: The Oct. 31st Nature article is still very bad news because it means we definitively cannot reliably model ocean temperature absorption for long term climate studies. Ah... so in your mind even the fact that you are wrong means that you are right.
Who can argue with that kind of 'logic'. Either we can and have failed to correctly measure ocean heat absorption and so our long-term modeling is corrupt.
OR
We can't reliably measure ocean heat absorption and so our long-term modeling is corrupt.
Tell me CB which of those scenarios qualifies as something other than "very bad news" for long-term climate modeling?
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You know there's this:
Climate change: CO2 emissions rising for first time in four years
BBC wrote: To meet the goals of the Paris climate pact, the study says it's crucial that global emissions peak by 2020.
But the analysis says that this is now not likely even by 2030...
This year's report records the largest gap yet between where we are and where we need to be...
Right now, the world is heading for a temperature rise of 3.2C by the end of this century the report says.
If you squint real, real, real hard you might just see the good in that article. I missed it but it could be there.
The fact that you limit the 'possibilities' to things which are not true demonstrates why your conclusions are continually 'off'.
Reality: Our measurements of ocean heat absorption have been pretty good for decades and have become very accurate over the past ten years. This has allowed significant narrowing of uncertainty ranges in the climate models, but hasn't really changed the estimates of 'most likely' results.
Well despite all your super positive posts - about how solar, wind and EVs are taking over the world - CO2 emissions rose last year and will do so this year as well (though we won't officially know for another 12 months).
I base my opinions on the science and on well testified human behavior.
There's a fine line policy drivers need to walk. Be too negative (i.e. totally realistic) and the masses will say, "Why bother there's nothing we can do". Be too positive about how we're doing and people will say, "Why bother it's working".
Apparently I prefer the totally realistic communication mode. So too did my profs who teach on climate issues. I'll keep my company and you can keep yours.
You making a fundamental mistake in understanding what everyone else in this thread is saying.
We disagree with specific points that you make, and you take that to mean that we disagree with everything.
You should ask one of your professors why this might be poor reasoning.
Quark Blast wrote: There's a fine line policy drivers need to walk. Be too negative (i.e. totally realistic) and the masses will say, "Why bother there's nothing we can do". Be too positive about how we're doing and people will say, "Why bother it's working".
Apparently I prefer the totally realistic communication mode. So too did my profs who teach on climate issues.
Again, one study claimed a major error in ocean heat content measurements... for a couple of weeks before the authors retracted it on account of the overwhelming errors that were quickly pointed out.
Ergo, your insistence that we cannot adequately measure ocean heat content is NOT "totally realistic". Rather, it is completely unsubstantiated and almost certainly false.
Personally, I prefer this wacky thing called factual communication rather than evidence free opinions.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: There's a fine line policy drivers need to walk. Be too negative (i.e. totally realistic) and the masses will say, "Why bother there's nothing we can do". Be too positive about how we're doing and people will say, "Why bother it's working".
Apparently I prefer the totally realistic communication mode. So too did my profs who teach on climate issues.
Again, one study claimed a major error in ocean heat content measurements... for a couple of weeks before the authors retracted it on account of the overwhelming errors that were quickly pointed out.
Ergo, your insistence that we cannot adequately measure ocean heat content is NOT "totally realistic". Rather, it is completely unsubstantiated and almost certainly false.
Personally, I prefer this wacky thing called factual communication rather than evidence free opinions. "overwhelming errors" you say?
As I already pointed out their error was significant, such that they could no longer raise the floor (i.e. minimum temperature rise). But the error in our state-of-the-art heat absorption measurements is still on the order of 30%, down from the 60% the authors originally figured.
Their revised report wasn't out yet when I last looked so before you say something like "it is completely unsubstantiated and almost certainly false" you might want to wait for more factual communication on this issue.
France’s protesters are part of a global backlash against climate-change taxes
WP wrote: On Tuesday, France delayed for six months a plan to raise already steep taxes on diesel fuel by 24 cents a gallon and gasoline by about 12 cents a gallon. Macron argued that the taxes were needed to curb climate change by weaning motorists off petroleum products, but violent demonstrations in the streets of Paris and other French cities forced him to backtrack — at least for now.
“No tax is worth putting in danger the unity of the nation,” said Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who was trotted out to announce the concession.
What to do? Yeah, we already know that.
Pay for it out of our own pockets? Yeah, no!
WP wrote: Trudeau’s policy, however, is designed to withstand criticism. About 90 percent of the revenue from the backstop tax will be paid back to Canadians in the form of annual “climate action incentive” payments. Because of the progressive tax rates, about 70 percent of Canadians will get back more than they paid. If they choose to be more energy efficient, they could save even more money. This is clever because it gets around the tax-the-poor backlash that France is seeing but only one problem. On a global scale it won't lower CO2 significantly. It's hard to compare without better numbers but I'm quite certain this type of approach is weaker than the Paris Agreement.
Cars and coal help drive 'strong' CO2 rise in 2018
BBC wrote: The main factor in the near 3% rise has been coal use in China, driven by government efforts to boost a flagging economy.
But emissions from cars, truck and planes using fossil fuels continue to rise in all parts of the world.
Renewables have also grown this year, but are not keeping pace with the CO2 rise.
The research, carried out by the Global Carbon Project (GCP), says that this year's "strong" rise is projected to be 2.7%.
That's much bigger than 2017's 1.6%. This will worry scientists as they had seen CO2 emissions relatively flat for the three years before.
China burning more coal? That sounds familiar.
Non-EV vehicles on the rise all over the world? That sounds familiar.
BBC wrote: 2018's top ten has:
China on top,
followed by the US,
and the EU as a whole region.
After these three come:
India,
Russia,
Japan,
Germany,
Iran,
Saudi Arabia,
South Korea and
Canada.
A booming economy has seen India's emissions grow by 6.3%. Renewables are growing fast but from a low base.
The world is grasping mightily for a middle-class lifestyle? That sounds familiar.
BBC wrote: According to the experts, people are driving bigger petrol and diesel cars, travelling further than before, in more countries. Trains, planes and automobiles? Oh my! That sounds familiar too.
BBC wrote: People are simply not keeping the promises they made three years ago when the Paris climate agreement was signed.
...
"The rise in emissions in 2017 could be seen as a one-off, but the growth rate in 2018 is even higher, and it is becoming crystal clear the world is so far failing in its duty to steer onto a course consistent with the goals set out in the Paris Agreement in 2015."
Becoming crystal clear? This guy hasn't been reading my posts! I'll have to send him a link so he can get up to speed with what I've been saying these past three years.
BBC wrote: The costs of renewables continue to plummet. Morocco, Mexico, Chile and Egypt are now producing solar energy for three US cents or less per kilowatt hour. That's cheaper than natural gas. Indeed. Now all of humanity has to do is move to the desert and AGW simply goes away.
We all want to live in a desert, right?
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Guys?...
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Hey guys, where you at?
BBC wrote: Propelled by the pursuit of clean air, jobs and energy-independence among other benefits, the intrepid, collective efforts of young people, civil society, businesses, investors, cities and states are charting the course to net zero emissions by 2050. The course has been charted for 20 years or more. The question is:
Have we been tacking along that charted course?
The answer is:
No.
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Look, I don't mean to sound cynical (though it is hip), but how long are we going to watch CO2 emissions rise or stay flat before the real answers start being implemented? Cause if we wait another 10 years to get moving it'll be 30 years too late.
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Looks like the PFSC is still 15 years out from being functioning and scalable.
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But then ITER says it'll be better than 15 just to get to the functioning stage.
Still, if magic-tech like this can get scaled across the globe by 2050 the year 2100 might be ok.
Anyone here think we'll have hundreds-to-thousands of fusion plants in the year 2050?
Be nice wouldn't it?
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Do you just need us to congratulate you for understanding how dire the problem is?
Irontruth,
To be fair there are some others out there that lack that understanding and often policy makers...
When a Killer Climate Catastrophe Struck the World's Oceans
The Atlantic wrote: “If we are truly the stupidest intelligent species ever, we probably could do the same thing,” says Curtis Deutsch, a co-author on the study. “As it is, we’re headed toward 3 to 4 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, which is nothing to sniff at. But 10 degrees isn’t that off the charts.” 3 or 4 degrees? I like the way this guy thinks. And he's a scientist with bona fides, and rock'n it at a good institution.
The Atlantic wrote: “This study suggests we should be worrying much more about hypoxia than about ocean acidification,” Deutsch says. “There’s vastly more resources being put into [studying] organisms’ responses to pH in seawater than there is into understanding temperature-dependent hypoxia. I think that the field has basically allocated those resources in exactly the wrong way.” Huh? Seems we're studying the wrong thing. I've never heard of such a claim.
Oh wait, I have. From me. Legit about a zillion times on this thread.
The Atlantic wrote: In a paper published last week in Nature Geoscience, Black and his co-authors describe not only the extreme warming of the climate around 252 million years ago, but also the extreme climate whiplashes that throttled the planet on much shorter timescales. These environmental seesaws, the researchers show, were induced by volcanic sulfur dioxide from the Siberian Traps, which would have briefly cooled the planet and masked the warming before being rained out of the atmosphere and allowing the planet to jump back into the high-CO2 inferno. Similarly, if humans embark on a geoengineering project of shooting sulfur dioxide into the air to head off all of the problems of warming, without drastically reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere—and if they ever give up on this project after it starts, for whatever reason, at any time in the next few thousand years—Black can imagine a similar disaster unfolding.
“So if you think about the Siberian Traps and the end-Permian mass extinction as a feasibility study for global warming and sulfur geoengineering, the results of that study were … not the best,” he said, referring to, quite literally, the worst thing that’s ever happened. “It’s worth asking ourselves whether we really want to make our current predicament even more like the end-Permian mass extinction.”
As we've known for some time now --> Kiel Declaration <-- ocean acidification isn't really the problem for the world ocean with global warming.
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Beef-eating 'must fall drastically' as world population grows
Current food habits will lead to destruction of all forests and catastrophic climate change by 2050, report finds
The Guardian wrote: More than 50% more food will be needed by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) report, but greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture will have to fall by two-thirds at the same time. The extra food will have to be produced without creating new farmland, it says, otherwise the world’s remaining forests face destruction. Meat and dairy production use 83% of farmland and produce 60% of agriculture’s emissions. The report recommends that 2 billion people across countries including the US, Russia and Brazil cut their beef and lamb consumption by 40%, limiting it to 1.5 servings a week on average. Most of the world’s citizens would continue to eat relatively little beef in the WRI scenario.
The Guardian wrote: But Searchinger said: “The world’s poor people are entitled to consume at least a little more.” The 40% reduction is a smaller cut than in other studies. “We think that is a realistic goal,” he said. “In the US and Europe, beef consumption has already reduced by one-third from the 1960s until today.” A 40% reduction in beef eating is a "realistic goal" huh?
Somehow, and it's not mere cynicism, I doubt that.
We'll eat less beef like we'll stop it with the putting CFC-11 into the atmosphere and we won't burn more coal this year than last. Oh... wait...
Thomas Seitz wrote: Irontruth,
To be fair there are some others out there that lack that understanding and often policy makers...
Thomas Seitz,
You seem to be under the impression that these are just widely cast musings.
No, all these comments from him are directed at people in this thread. When he gets called out on it, he tries to dodge and prevaricate, but he routinely makes snide remarks about how he's the only person in the thread who realizes certain dangers (even though using the search function provided on the page proves him wrong).
It's the equivalent of me saying to you, Thomas...
Because I can't remember a time you've done division, it's obvious that you don't understand basic algebra.
Iron,
Actually, I pretty much suck at math...but your point is taken.
Quark Blast wrote:
The Atlantic wrote: “This study suggests we should be worrying much more about hypoxia than about ocean acidification,” Deutsch says. “There’s vastly more resources being put into [studying] organisms’ responses to pH in seawater than there is into understanding temperature-dependent hypoxia. I think that the field has basically allocated those resources in exactly the wrong way.” Huh? Seems we're studying the wrong thing. I've never heard of such a claim.
Oh wait, I have. From me. Legit about a zillion times on this thread.
Link a post where you've talked about hypoxia in this thread (prior to this post that I'm quoting).
Though, anyone who wants to do a quick check will already know that you haven't mentioned it once prior to this. So, either you are confusing this thread with another discussion, or you are lying.
Given your propensity for self-aggrandizement the odds aren't in favor of you being truthful. If you can't link a post though, you'll make me look like a fool.
Note, I'm not arguing against the Atlantic article. I'm calling you out on your claim that you've talked about this idea (temperature-dependent hypoxia) in this thread.
*was kind of hoping Iron would make a funny comment about me not being able to math well...but is glad he's sticking to his points*
Context people, it's all about context:
Quark Blast wrote: Huh? Seems we're studying the wrong thing. I've never heard of such a claim. What is the context of that quote you ask?
Excellent question.
Answer:
There have been too many cases for me to list them all but up thread from here, most any distance you care to browse, we see citations where scientists are bashing away at a part of the puzzle that turns out to be not so important with a little wider view.
Things like:
Trying to nail down heat absorption to the 4th or 5th digit past the decimal when there is a gross error in our method of about 30%.
Or like:
Assaying the ####! out of sea water pH and running predictions on biotic response to the theoretical flux in acidity when a rise base temperature causing anoxia is orders of magnitude more important.
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Thomas Seitz, I'm sorry you're bad at math but really that's what computers were invented for.
I'm down for talking about the issues surrounding climate change... after you stop making the discussion about yourself.
For example:
Hey guys, check out this interesting article from The Atlantic. It seems that scientists are discovering more things that we should be worried about.
But you do this:
Hey guys, this article from The Atlantic proves that I'm the only one in this thread who really knows what is going on.
Can you spot the difference and why some people might find one of these very irritating?
Nice pivot! ...sadly to no effect
East Antarctica's glaciers are stirring
BBC wrote: Nasa says it has detected the first signs of significant melting in a swathe of glaciers in East Antarctica.
The region has long been considered stable and unaffected by some of the more dramatic changes occurring elsewhere on the continent.
But satellites have now shown that ice streams running into the ocean along one-eighth of the eastern coastline have thinned and sped up.
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Previously, scientists had been aware that the region's Totten Glacier was experiencing melting, most probably as a result of its terminus being affronted by warm water coming up from the deep ocean. Pretty much everything else in that part of the continent was considered stagnant, however.
The new satellite elevation and velocity maps change this view. They make it clear that nearby glaciers to Totten are also starting to respond in a similar way.
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"I think we can anticipate that over the next five to 10 years, we're going to have a lot of observationally driven discoveries, such as what Catherine is making, because of the new data that's coming online," said Alex Gardner, a glaciologist with Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Yay!?
Like the guy I quoted up thread recently who said matter of factly, "As it is, we’re headed toward 3 to 4 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century", here we have yet more matter of fact proof that our modeling of climate change is grossly inadequate.
Will east Antarctica glaciers fall off the continent by century's end?
Well no but the amount of melting recently discovered is already well more than they expected to see there by century's end. And the melting hasn't even got started compared to what we'll see by the year 2100 there.
I figure if there is a coherent global scientific society still around in the year 2100, then our state of the art modeling will be seen as necessary for the time but laughably bad by the standards in 2100.
Yes. Scientists will continue to discover things which will expand the amount of knowledge we have, and combined with ever increasing computing power, this will result in ever improving models.
Has someone been arguing against that idea?
Point being, and you may have overlooked this as I've mentioned it once or twice before, is that policy for what to do about AGW is by definition/design inadequate to the task.
We can't get there from here. If we want to keep the year 2100 at +1.5° C (or even +2.0°C) we needed to have started on our current path about 20 years ago at least. The kerfuffle in France is indisputable evidence that current policy won't get us there.
Barring near-miracle tech being developed and scaled up in the next 10 to 25 years we won't even get a +2.5°C year 2100.
No, it isn't indisputable evidence. In fact it is highly disputable.
As a historian-in-training, I don't buy anyone's analysis of an event as being "indisputable"... especially within weeks of that event, let alone years, decades or even centuries.
My go-to example of this is John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The analysis of why Brown did what he did has shifted from idealistic revolutionary, to insane religious zealot, and back again... so many times, that the theory being espoused by the person doing the analysis says more about them than it does about John Brown.
I find your analysis of the yellow vest protests and their implications to be simplistic, reductionist, and ignorant of a broad array of political theories, not to mention missing broad swaths of context.
People are so bad at understanding what has actually happened in the past, that anyone who is predicting the future (in regards to human history), clearly is going to be wrong. Short term, maybe. But I suspect even an extremely experienced/knowledgeable person on US politics would have a better chance of winning the lottery than correctly predicting who the president will be in 2028. So your claim to be able to predict what actions will be taken by nations around the world over the next 2-3 decades I find to be highly dubious.
In 1903, the Wright brothers were the first people to fly a manned craft. 57 years later, Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in space. In essence, you are trying to predict the amount of technological innovation, and the political climate of the international community from a similar distance away. That is clearly patently absurd.
An analogy if you will. There's a jar of gumballs, and since the gumballs can be represented by positive integer, that number is either even or odd. Right now, you are telling me that (without counting) that you know for a fact that the number is even. My reply is that I don't believe you. It doesn't mean I think that the number is odd, but that I find your claims of predictive power to be lacking. You might be right, but if you are, it is purely by chance.
The kerfuffle in France is indisputable evidence that human beings are short sighted and selfish.
Without a near-miracle technology being fully developed and scaled to take CO2 out of the atmosphere by 2050 (or sooner!), we in the western world will all have to take about a 40% lifestyle cut to keep the year 2100 AGW at or below +1.5°C.
The rest of the world gets to stay where they are economically and not have so many progeny.
The communications revolution, especially smart phones and the ease of setting up a nationwide cell network, lets everyone know how luxurious the "western" lifestyle is. Everyone (in essence) wants that lifestyle (or wants to maintain it) and will do what they can to achieve that.
Humans have always been like this. We will be like this for many generations more (unless we self-genocide), and during that time we will push the average global temperature well beyond +1.5°C.
One may not find my conclusion indisputable. I recommend such a person argue from the evidence and not simply bash away at my stellar inference.
:)
All you've done is repeat yourself. Repeating the exact same argument in the exact same style isn't convincing. I've already laid out why I don't find it convincing.
I don't agree with your premise about the yellow vest protest. Therefore, any conclusion you draw from that I find faulty, because you started with a bad premise. You haven't shown evidence of why your analysis is correct, just more assumptions.
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Hi there. The current kerfuffle (what a delicious word!) in France :
1) is probably much bigger seen on TV from across the Atlantic that on site. They did tag a known monument and burnt exactly 55 cars two weeks ago. Big deal but not civil war, really.
2) is not specifically tied to ecology, but about taxes in general, buying power and distribution of wealth. The issue is being adressed. Among other things, price increases on gas prices have been postponed for one year (see u in 2020) to quiet things down.
Though, it's somehow to the conspiracy themed OP : you should see the BS-storm floating around on the social networks !
Smarnil le couard wrote: Hi there. The current kerfuffle (what a delicious word!) in France :
1) is probably much bigger seen on TV from across the Atlantic that on site. They did tag a known monument and burnt exactly 55 cars two weeks ago. Big deal but not civil war, really.
2) is not specifically tied to ecology, but about taxes in general, buying power and distribution of wealth. The issue is being adressed. Among other things, price increases on gas prices have been postponed for one year (see u in 2020) to quiet things down.
Though, it's somehow to the conspiracy themed OP : you should see the BS-storm floating around on the social networks !
They burned 55 cars in Paris maybe. The total across France was in the mid-hundreds. Government protests in the USA amounted to 0 cars burned in the same time period.
But that's all beside my point.
This thing in France blew up because the government was (rightly?) trying to make everyone pay for the switch to a "greener" economy. Thing is most people don't want to pay more. Thing is most people in the "west" need to cut their budget about 40% to meet the Paris Agreement numbers.
Bottom line: That won't happen this side of martial law.
Again, all you're doing is making assumptions. I don't accept them.
The world sent about 23,000 delegates and other participants to the COP24 conference in Katowice. The vast majority of those participants flew there. Because, you know, there doesn't yet exist a technology for people to conference remotely.
The high point of Katowice was that the rules for verification are genuinely transparent. No way to participate and hide how much your country is emitting. And we all know China wouldn't lie about how much they emit because they've never lied about CFC11 chemicals or how many coal-fired power plants they're still building.
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Emissions climbed in Asia and Europe, but declined in the U.S.
SA wrote: Asia accounted for two-thirds of the increase in global carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions also climbed in the European Union.
Those increases stood in contrast to the United States, which posted the largest year-over-year decline in carbon emissions of any advanced economy.
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The IEA figures were not particularly surprising, analysts said, as a strong global economy and low energy prices prodded emissions higher. Growth in emerging economies like China and India has driven global emissions growth for much of the last decade, they noted.
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Demand for oil remained as robust as ever. Oil demand rose 1.5 million barrels per day, or by 1.6 percent. That was twice the average annual growth rate witnessed over the last decade.
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“What it underscores is why transportation as a sector is politically so difficult because you’re requiring everyone to do something,” said Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
You see? People want to live the "western" and/or "middle-class" lifestyle. The Internet tells them constantly this is what they can have no matter how rural or undeveloped the place they live. And who can blame them?
The transportation sector is the biggest slice of this problem and it keeps growing. Telling people they have to cut back will work out most places like it did in France this past month. Which is to say, it works out not at all.
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It’s time to face the inescapable truth: We’re running out of time on climate change
WP wrote: Overall, global emissions are projected to rise by 2.7 percent this year, up more than a point from last year’s growth rate. China’s emissions are up 5 percent, and India’s 6 percent. India, meanwhile, has lots of poor people struggling to emerge from miserable poverty, who will naturally use more energy as they improve their standard of living. Yet that country is poised to exceed its Paris commitment.
The United States is not, and the country does not have the excuse that its economy is still developing. U.S. emissions are up by 2.5 percent from last year, and it is one of seven major nations lagging on their Paris goals. Canada is also behind, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced an ambitious carbon-tax plan. The European Union, too, needs to do more to meet its Paris commitment, but its emissions were down this year, and the bloc has worked hard to cut its carbon footprint.
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The reason for the United States’ surge in emissions appears to have been higher energy use to heat and cool homes this year. As the world warms, people will want to use more air conditioning — producing more emissions unless the country gets its energy from low- or zero-carbon sources. This is just one of the many, many factors that make it more sensible to combat climate change before it worsens rather than waiting until it becomes an emergency.
As if we're not already in an emergency state. This is what I mean about the difficulty inherent in this issue. Politics aside (<-- and I mean that), telling people how it really is will cause most to just get theirs while they can. Tell them it's going good when it's not and they won't change.
This article by the WP errs in a third way. It waffles back and forth over the issue giving no clear direction or degree of effort needed. Sadly.
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