Mark Hoover 330 wrote: So then, does anyone else have anything on the Co2 cushion? Because atmospheric CO2 increases take a long time to go back down naturally it doesn't make TOO much difference whether we emit 'X CO2' over the course of one year or ten years... so long as we aren't talking about century timeframes it is the total amount of CO2 emitted which is going to determine the eventual scope of the problem.
When viewed this way it is then possible to calculate an approximate amount of CO2 we can emit before we are likely to get a given result (e.g. cross a given warming threshold). This is more commonly called a "carbon budget" than 'CO2 cushion'. It is a real and valid concept.
HOWEVER, it is important to consider the details of what any given 'budget amount' is referring to. You can get radically different results based on what temperature you set as the pre-industrial baseline, what net temperature increase you are looking to avoid, how long you are allowing for the temperature increase, and dozens of other factors.
Thus, comparing any two 'remaining budget' amount numbers from different sources at different times is likely to be pointless.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Mark Hoover 330 wrote: I didn't engage b/c frankly I didn't get the math, from either of the folks in that post. What I think it boils down to is:
1. We need to keep a "Co2 cushion" (a search term that didn't yield any results just now on a couple of browsers) down in order to hit the 1.5 C goal of the Paris agreement
2. 2 years ago, we had... 10 years worth of cushion?
3. We've lost 5 years' worth of cushion in 2 years, per your post
4. We've only got 7 years of actual time left to hit the goal
5. Per the math of the previous post and what you're reposting here, we ACTUALLY only have 2.8 years worth of time left at current Co2 rates
Do I have all that right QB?
Yes. So then, does anyone else have anything on the Co2 cushion? As I said, I searched up that phrase but didn't come up with anything. The thing with calling it a "Carbon (or CO2) Budget" is that implies you need to spend it. Which we certainly do not want to do.
Calling it a "CO2 Cushion" implies if you deplete the cushion you have a hard landing, something to be innately avoided. No?
Regardless, we have about 2.8 years to get it together on a global scale else the Paris Agreement won't be worth the paper to wipe with. And if we take CBs fairly recent numbers for CO2 on how China is coming out of the pandemic slump, and I don't see why not, then there is no way we'll meet the +2.0°C year 2100; let alone the Paris Agreement goal.
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CB wrote: EV purchase costs being, relatively, high also isn't the question. They are selling ANYWAY. They are no longer uncommon 'novelty' vehicles because they are selling in large numbers even in the few countries that have adopted policies actively hostile to their introduction.
The suggestion that EV purchase costs need to drop significantly below comparable ICEs in more places (i.e. they already have in Norway) and low cost models become available in more places (e.g. China already has several dirt cheap EV models) in order to not be 'novelties' is ridiculous. When those price points are met EVs become the dominant option... like they have in Norway. Setting that as the bar for not being a 'novelty' is absurd.
The thing about EVs is this:
1) Hybrid EVs end up being fueled about as often as comparable ICE vehicle models. Not only are the manufacturer mileage numbers significantly higher than actual but people tend to rely on petrol over charge seemingly out of habit - especially for leased or company vehicles. Thus actual savings to the CO2 budget is minimal.
2) If EVs are comparable in price to ICEs, and a few times a year I want to take significant road trips (holidays, vacations and long weekend getaways), then I'll go with the one that takes 5 minutes to be refueled once a day whenever I want to stop for a break over the one that takes ~45 minutes twice a day and where I also must hope there's a place to recharge and a clean place to wiz.
3) EVs are still tiny-##### cars or, if they're not, they're expensive as #### luxury vehicles.
4) EV adoption is still fractional of the total transportation market and will be long after the remaining 10 months of CBs prediction expire.
5) Places like Norway are doing awesome eh? Might that be because they're subsidizing their verdant lifestyle using North Sea Oil and Natural Gas?
Hmmm?
:D
Quark Blast wrote: Calling it a "CO2 Cushion" implies if you deplete the cushion you have a hard landing, something to be innately avoided. No? No... because the difference between coming in just below the designated amount, whatever we call it, vs just above that amount is negligible. It isn't some magical number where things suddenly switch from 'cushioned' to 'hard landing'. The +2.0°C target, like the +1.5°C figure preferred by some scientists, is just an estimate of the point at which things will be 'really bad' <tm>. There will not be any great shift in 'badness' from just before the target to just after the target.
We should 'want to avoid' global warming impacts that have already happened... like massive wildfires, heat waves killing thousands, coastal erosion, famine, etc. As that is obviously impossible, we should then 'want to avoid' as much further damage as we possibly can.
Quark Blast wrote: If EVs are comparable in price to ICEs, and a few times a year I want to take significant road trips (holidays, vacations and long weekend getaways), then I'll go with the one that takes 5 minutes to be refueled once a day whenever I want to stop for a break over the one that takes ~45 minutes twice a day and where I also must hope there's a place to recharge and a clean place to wiz. So... you make your buying decisions primarily on things you might do "a few times a year"... rather than what you do nearly every day? See, most people would instead reason that rather than spending 5 minutes to refuel once a week or so it is preferable to not have to find a place to refuel at all and just recharge for the daily commute automatically from the comfort of their own home (or at work).
Quark Blast wrote: EVs are still tiny-##### cars or, if they're not, they're expensive as #### luxury vehicles. This claim has no basis in reality that I can see. EVs are the same size as other vehicles of the same type.
Quark Blast wrote: EV adoption is still fractional of the total transportation market This statement is essentially meaningless. 999999/1000000ths is a 'fractional total of the transportation market'. So long as one person still has a horse and buggy (let alone an ICE) EVs will not be 100% of the (ground) transportation market.
Again, that doesn't make them 'novelties'. In the original posts on this we talked about them no longer being novelties after a few hundred thousand had been sold with no objections stated. Now we're into multiple millions of EVs and QB is pretending that they will still be novelties until nearly everyone has one.
Quark Blast wrote: Places like Norway are doing awesome eh? Might that be because they're subsidizing their verdant lifestyle using North Sea Oil and Natural Gas? Um... no. As we have discussed before, that's just stupid. Other countries have oil and/or natural gas wealth without large percentage EV sales... or high EV sales w/o fossil fuel wealth. There is no connection between the two at all.
Quark Blast wrote: 4) EV adoption is still fractional of the total transportation 3/1 and 99/100 are both fractions, technically. I'm glad you agree we've got a lot of them!
Just to be clear: this is 100% to show QB what his arguments based on misrepresentations of what everyone else says are like to everyone else.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Calling it a "CO2 Cushion" implies if you deplete the cushion you have a hard landing, something to be innately avoided. No? No... because the difference between coming in just below the designated amount, whatever we call it, vs just above that amount is negligible. It isn't some magical number where things suddenly switch from 'cushioned' to 'hard landing'. The +2.0°C target, like the +1.5°C figure preferred by some scientists, is just an estimate of the point at which things will be 'really bad' <tm>. There will not be any great shift in 'badness' from just before the target to just after the target. Not some magical number* eh? While I don't know what exactly the magical number is, it's quite clear there is one.
You see you are "forgetting" consideration of Tipping Elements that, alone or combined, magically turn into Tipping Points. Tipping Points are triggered at the level of chaotic interaction and so the +1.5C year 2100 target was settled on so as to avoid even the possibility of hitting a Tipping Point.
james014Aura says *I* argue disingenuously? SMH...
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CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: If EVs are comparable in price to ICEs, and a few times a year I want to take significant road trips (holidays, vacations and long weekend getaways), then I'll go with the one that takes 5 minutes to be refueled once a day whenever I want to stop for a break over the one that takes ~45 minutes twice a day and where I also must hope there's a place to recharge and a clean place to wiz. So... you make your buying decisions primarily on things you might do "a few times a year"... rather than what you do nearly every day? See, most people would instead reason that rather than spending 5 minutes to refuel once a week or so it is preferable to not have to find a place to refuel at all and just recharge for the daily commute automatically from the comfort of their own home (or at work). I don't but most people do if they can afford to and you know that. People want a car they can use all the time. Or if they do buy a commuter vehicle they also by one for longer trips. If they can't afford two, they buy the one they can use all the time. Which, right now, sure as #### ain't an EV unless they buy a luxury EV and luxury EVs are out of consideration for the vast majority of car-owning humanity and will be for at least another 10 months.
And while it's true that Chevy Bolt sales increased last year over 2019, it's also true that it sold well behind many other models and this despite the Bonkers Deal Chevy Motor Co made available last year to increase sales.
Huh? Facts! Amazing aren't they?
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CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: EV adoption is still fractional of the total transportation market and will be long after the remaining 10 months of CBs prediction expire. This statement is essentially meaningless. 999999/1000000ths is a 'fractional total of the transportation market'. So long as one person still has a horse and buggy (let alone an ICE) EVs will not be 100% of the (ground) transportation market.
Again, that doesn't make them 'novelties'. In the original posts on this we talked about them no longer being novelties after a few hundred thousand had been sold with no objections stated. Now we're into multiple millions of EVs and QB is pretending that they will still be novelties until nearly everyone has one. EV sales still lag behind virtually every ICE auto on a model-for-model basis. For example: The Chevy Bolt is still being outsold by the Chevrolet Spark - 33,478 units to 20,754 units in 2020. Then, compared to the pickup trucks - Silverado at 150,394 units or the GMC Sierra at 179,239 units - and we see that it's not even close.
But go ahead, keep pretending for the next 10 months that EV sales aren't still novelty because - Hey! - we've got a CO2 budget to spend dammit!
:D
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CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Places like Norway are doing awesome eh? Might that be because they're subsidizing their verdant lifestyle using North Sea Oil and Natural Gas? Um... no. As we have discussed before, that's just stupid. Other countries have oil and/or natural gas wealth without large percentage EV sales... or high EV sales w/o fossil fuel wealth. There is no connection between the two at all. Norway's plans to raise carbon tax draw oil industry ire
Reuters wrote: Environment Minister Sveinung Rotevatn said when presenting the cabinet’s “Climate plan 2021-30”.
“We must make sure that it pays to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” he told a news conference.
Nope, no connection whatsoever!
Head in sand much?
:D
* And to head off small thoughts of taking me literally on the word magical; Yes! I'm using it metaphorically you ####### #######!
As if the vaccine rollout weren't evidence enough that governments can't do large problems well and timely, we have this chunk of evidence.
Why British Kids Went Back to School, and American Kids Did Not
Dragging pandemic policy into the culture war has been a disaster for the U.S., particularly its children.
Like you couldn't see this one coming!?!
Anyone who teaches, anyone who's being taught, anyone who knows a teacher or student well, can tell you that distance learning is much less about learning than it is about irrational fear.
#### even Germany (now in 10th place globally for Coronavirus infection) has been teaching the kinder per normal as much as the science allows.
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Or perhaps this will convince you:
Overdose deaths far outpace COVID-19 deaths in San Francisco
Seems like we might have a problem with policy over science eh?
SFG wrote: A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far. SFG wrote: The crisis fueled by the powerful painkiller fentanyl could have been far worse if it wasn't for the nearly 3,000 times Narcan was used from January to the beginning of November to save someone from the brink of death, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.
The data reflects the number of times people report using Narcan to the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, a city-funded program that coordinates San Francisco’s response to overdose, or return to refill their supply. Officials at the DOPE Project said that since the numbers are self-reported, they are probably a major undercount.
Last year, 441 people died of drug overdoses — a 70% increase from 2018 — and 2,610 potential overdoses were prevented by Narcan, a medication commonly sprayed up the nose to reverse an opioid overdose, according to data from the city Medical Examiner's office and the DOPE Project.
But it won't get worse right? Because our policy is somehow science based. Right?
SFG wrote: The crisis is deepening because fentanyl, which can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, flooded the city's drug supply, the newspaper said. Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted city services like housing and treatment, and left many people who rely on others to help save them if they overdose to use alone. Trust the government, they're operating only at the level of science.
Norway eyes sea change in deep dive for metals instead of oil
Quote: Norway's oil and gas reserves have made it one of the world's wealthiest countries but its dreams for deep-sea discovery now centre on something different.
This time, Oslo is looking for a leading role in mining copper, zinc and other metals found on the seabed and in hot demand in green technologies.
"One of the world's wealthiest countries"? Norway? Got their money from oil and gas?
Huh? Who's been saying that all along?
I wonder what the implications of that might be? National laws to tax the #### out of fossil fuels and mandates to buy EVs because; "####! We rich!"?
Yeah, something like that.
Do you suppose there will be much damage to the subsurface ecosystem from mining the #### out of the sea floor?
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Reuters wrote: Environmentalists including Britain’s David Attenborough have called for a moratorium on deep-seabed mining until more is known about species living on the seabed and the potential impact on them. Greenpeace in a recent report called for a permanent ban....
“I believe Norway can do this in a sustainable way, but we have to do it step by step, which has been a key success factor for developing our oil and gas industry,” Oil and Energy Minister Bru said.
Unintended consequences, wut?
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Reuters wrote: Deep-sea mining could generate up to $20 billion in annual revenue for Norway towards 2050 - compared to around $61 billion from oil and gas in 2019 Yeah... taking that kind of revenue hit is one hell of an incentive to keep selling oil and gas and also to not look so hard at the sea bed when extracting 'coin'.
Gotta get that latest Tesla ya know! And buy a summer/winter cottage near Skeikampen!
:D
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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote: Anyone who teaches, anyone who's being taught, anyone who knows a teacher or student well, can tell you that distance learning is much less about learning than it is about irrational fear. Sure, the Distance Learning modalities that began developing with the early usage of Teletechnet in the early 1970's; that have faced rigorous testing by accrediting bodies in multiple countries throughout the last 5 decades and have been peer reviewed 18 ways from Sunday are mostly motivated by the irrational fear of the 2020 Pandemic that they had somehow been prognosticating all of this time.
Why let context and detail get in the way of your tantrum to support your myopic little opinion?
Instructor give you a bad grade in your Zoom class?
dirtypool wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Anyone who teaches, anyone who's being taught, anyone who knows a teacher or student well, can tell you that distance learning is much less about learning than it is about irrational fear. Sure, the Distance Learning modalities that began developing with the early usage of Teletechnet in the early 1970's; that have faced rigorous testing by accrediting bodies in multiple countries throughout the last 5 decades and have been peer reviewed 18 ways from Sunday are mostly motivated by the irrational fear of the 2020 Pandemic that they had somehow been prognosticating all of this time.
Why let context and detail get in the way of your tantrum to support your myopic little opinion?
Instructor give you a bad grade in your Zoom class? If my opinion* is "little", how much smaller does that make a person who is internally compelled to respond with nothing more than insipid inane invective?
:D
Getting "A's" in my classes BTW. As always. Thanks for asking! Sorry for the humblebrag++.
:)
Facts:
Several countries (e.g. Germany) have continued in-person teaching right on through the pandemic because the science tells them to. The risk involved in K-6 is essentially nonexistent and 7-16 is easily managed.
Distance learning isn't really a thing for several important college majors. Virtual chemistry lab? Ain't no thang.
Distance learning markedly hampers normal childhood socialization gained naturally through traditional in-person education.
The downsides of distance learning especially impact children in certain categories - ESL, ADHD, etc., not forgetting those who require remedial studies. But all students in grades 3-8 will, on average, "slide back" 3 months or more over a distance learning school year.
Distance learning is hell on working parents. Which is to say most parents.
Distance learning is especially hard on elementary school teachers. Among other issues, time spent preparing and teaching is right at double even though most cirruiculums are truncated.
Conversely (roughly) the top quartile are actually doing better overall but then the autodidact types have never been known to want for learning.
But you keep dreaming of your Teletechnet world and ignore inconvenient facts. And by all means keep up your facile "rebuttals".
* Bolstered by incontrovertible facts; not that facts are apt to dissuade certain mentalities of course.
++ Not sorry.
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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote:
Facts:
Distance learning isn't really a thing for several important college majors. Virtual chemistry lab? Ain't no thang.
Oh that’s a fact is it? Please do show me documentation of that fact that I can show to my faculty members currently using a Virtual Chemistry Lab component developed and accredited by SACSCOC six years prior to the pandemic.
“Quark Blast” wrote: Distance learning markedly hampers normal childhood socialization gained naturally through traditional in-person education.
The downsides of distance learning especially impact children in certain categories - ESL, ADHD, etc., not forgetting those who require remedial studies. But all students in grades 3-8 will, on average, "slide back" 3 months or more over a distance learning school year.
Distance learning is hell on working parents. Which is to say most parents.
Distance learning is especially hard on elementary school teachers. Among other issues, time spent preparing...
I’m sure you’ll link us all to the white papers for all of these claims? Or are these just more opinions of a self important student who has lots of opinions but no real world experience whatsoever. I’ve worked in Distance Education for the majority of your life - but yeah I’m sure that your unsupported claims must mean more than all the research I’ve seen in my two decades in the field.
Methinks it’s time you sit your little ass down and shut your mouth. Your arrogance long ago stopped being supportable by your “knowledge.”
dirtypool wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Facts:
Distance learning isn't really a thing for several important college majors. Virtual chemistry lab? Ain't no thang.
Oh that’s a fact is it? Please do show me documentation of that fact that I can show to my faculty members currently using a Virtual Chemistry Lab component developed and accredited by SACSCOC six years prior to the pandemic. I suppose one can learn something about chemistry outside of a lab but given the expense of, e.g., laboratory fume hoods and the difficulty (not to mention the legality) of storing hazardous (even deadly) reagents, I'll stick with the standard university model for learning chemistry.
Of course you're welcome to buy a University of Phoenix "degree" but I'm going to go with one that will actually help my career thanks.
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dirtypool wrote: “Quark Blast” wrote: Several countries (e.g. Germany) have continued in-person teaching right on through the pandemic because the science tells them to. The risk involved in K-6 is essentially nonexistent and 7-16 is easily managed.
...
Distance learning markedly hampers normal childhood socialization gained naturally through traditional in-person education.
The downsides of distance learning especially impact children in certain categories - ESL, ADHD, etc., not forgetting those who require remedial studies. But all students in grades 3-8 will, on average, "slide back" 3 months or more over a distance learning school year.
Distance learning is hell on working parents. Which is to say most parents.
Distance learning is especially hard on elementary school teachers. Among other issues, time spent preparing and teaching is right at double even though most curriculum are truncated.
Conversely (roughly) the top quartile are actually doing better overall but then the autodidact types have never been known to want for learning.
I’m sure you’ll link us all to the white papers for all of these claims? Or are these just more opinions of a self important student who has lots of opinions but no real world experience whatsoever. I’ve worked in Distance Education for the majority of your life - but yeah I’m sure that your unsupported claims must mean more than all the research I’ve seen in my two decades in the field. If I really thought your Google-Fu was so weak I would gladly help you out.
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dirtypool wrote: Methinks it’s time you sit your little ass down and shut your mouth. Your arrogance long ago stopped being supportable by your “knowledge.” Says the chap who cites no white papers!
:D
You evidence all the hallmarks of someone younger than me for sure. Now given that you've admitted to an age of something around 40 years, I think judging your form of argument as execrable is a bold kindness on my part. You're welcome!
:D
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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote: I suppose one can learn something about chemistry outside of a lab but given the expense of, e.g., laboratory fume hoods and the difficulty (not to mention the legality) of storing hazardous (even deadly) reagents, I'll stick with the standard university model for learning chemistry. So you think there is only one “standard university model of learning chemistry? So you aren’t actually an expert you just think you are. Thank you for the clarification
“Quark Blast” wrote: Of course you're welcome to buy a University of Phoenix "degree" but I'm going to go with one that will actually help my career thanks. Or you could go to an accredited four year state school where it has been available for years.
“Quark Blast” wrote: If I really thought your Google-Fu was so weak I would gladly help you out. You begin your search for scholarly peer reviewed works on Google? I thought you bragged about being a good student.
Though this does sound more in line with the way you post editorial opinion columns as evidence in this thread.
“Quark Blast wrote: Says the chap who cites no white papers! I made no claims needing evidence. This is the fundamental concept you seem to have not learned in your classes: when you make a claim you have to prove it.
“Quark Blast wrote: You evidence all the hallmarks of someone younger than me for sure. Yeah, someone must be younger than you to have the temerity to challenge your specious claims and ask you to provide evidence when you make them. That makes the kind of logical sense that proves you to be a world class intellect.
You evidence all the hallmarks of a child who got to college and thought that simply being a student made you an elite.
dirtypool wrote: I made no claims needing evidence. Finally! A statement from you we can all agree with!
:D
Back to the OP:
There's a rather obtusely written piece over at Wiley's online library that outlines what a total ####### #### the national lock-downs have been.
Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19
Newsweek gave us a more accessible version via followup interviews with the paper's authors.
COVID Lockdowns May Have No Clear Benefit vs Other Voluntary Measures, International Study Shows
In sum the researchers Drs Oh, Bhattacharya and Ioannidis, wrote: While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs{non‐pharmaceutical interventions}. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions. Indeed, formal proof of the winning approach that the Swedes took. Yay blue and gold!
Now we hear rumblings out of places like NY and CA claiming that we cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass.
Gee, ya think?
I especially liked the footnote from - Arnieus
Quote: If your goal was or is to destroy small businesses the lock downs were highly successful. Now if we can all get vaccinated before the next effectively mutated Coronavirus strain sweeps over us. It's gonna be a close one.
Too bad the AGW thing isn't close. Had we started down the right path circa 1999 I think we'd have it by now.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote:
There's a rather obtusely written piece over at Wiley's online library that outlines what a total ####### #### the national lock-downs have been.
Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19
The piece is from the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, Wileys is not the publisher. You would of course understand how journal collections work, being such a superior student as you so often claim.
QB, your last set of claims was about the effectiveness of distance learning. Those links may relate to earlier claims, or to the reasons why distance learning might be more desirable than usual, but they hardly relate to the effectiveness of distance learning. Do you want to drop those last claims and discuss the desirability of lockdowns instead?
avr wrote: QB, your last set of claims was about the effectiveness of distance learning. Okay...
avr wrote: Those links may relate to earlier claims, or to the reasons why distance learning might be more desirable than usual, but they hardly relate to the effectiveness of distance learning. Sorta...
avr wrote: Do you want to drop those last claims and discuss the desirability of lockdowns instead? Lockdowns are total ####. They can be used effectively for short periods in areas where containment of the population is practical (e.g. New Zealand anyone?). Otherwise there is no obvious and measurable benefit over telling people to social distance and to otherwise wear a mask when they can't.
Then, when you consider knock-on effects, like the slide in K-12 learning, you can easily see that lockdowns have an even narrower range of applicability than when looking at merely the immediate medical concerns around virus spread.
I do thank you for making a serious and sober attempt to steer the conversation back around to the OP.
With that in mind, we come to my overarching theme with regards to mitigating AGW. Namely, governments have a real hard time doing large scale projects well and quickly. That's at the scale of governments. Now notch it up to the scale of all governments, add in the too late start we're getting on this, and you have the perfect recipe for a total ########. The global pandemic response has been an immeasurable gift to the proof of my thesis.
Sadly I believe, based on the science, that we have long passed the time when a timely response to AGW was needed (circa 1999) and as such we are essentially locked-in to at least a +2.5°C year 2100. Though I speak rather emphatically, I have just the barest hope for the development of some near-miracle tech to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere at a scale significant enough to curtail the +2.5°C doom. Sometime over the next 30 years we will be able to make a measured guess at how CC&S is turning out but for now it's really too early to tell.
The classic example of a successful response involving all governments was banning CFCs to protect the ozone layer. It worked. Here in NZ I can go outside on a summer's day without being burned in 5 minutes, and that wasn't looking to be the case by now if the 1987 agreement hadn't been put in place successfully.
There's been some points where a coordinated response to climate change almost came about.
The Kyoto protocol in 1997 was supposed to be a starting point to build on but resistance from several nations (including NZ I'm sorry to say) stopped that happening. The former Soviet Bloc's industry collapsing in the early 90s and their desire for any kind of help just then gave us a chance there which we missed.
The Paris agreement in 2015 (& in particular what the EU was going to build on that with their trade agreements) was going to go forward from Kyoto, but resistance from just one nation (yes, the USA) undermined it. At some point, maybe while Biden's the US president or maybe even later I'm sure we'll have a real global response to climate change - too late to avoid some serious problems, yeah. CC & S may be useful some day but it's not ready for use yet; make plans without it IMO.
On lockdowns - as a last resort when the hospitals are about to be overwhelmed they're the only tool available. They work better when there's support so that people don't starve or get evicted from their homes during the lockdown. If you can put a good lockdown in place for a while and put in place quarantine for new arrivals (for everyone! even very rich or important people!) it's possible to eliminate covid-19 which is has been a serious economic boon to NZ (recent data suggests that the Aussies' lighter handed response is worse for the economy in the long run). Half-hearted, unsupported lockdowns or those with no endgame, yeah those don't seem to be a great idea.
Sweden BTW has had half a million cases and rising rapidly. It's not looking so good compared to its neighbours now (Denmark 189K, Norway 58K, Finland 40K).
Quark Blast wrote:
Lockdowns are total ####. They can be used effectively for short periods in areas where containment of the population is practical (e.g. New Zealand anyone?). Otherwise there is no obvious and measurable benefit over telling people to social distance and to otherwise wear a mask when they can't.
Months ago, you claimed that such lockdowns were ineffective (eg: New Zealand). Are you changing your stance now?
avr wrote: The classic example of a successful response involving all governments was banning CFCs to protect the ozone layer. It worked. Here in NZ I can go outside on a summer's day without being burned in 5 minutes, and that wasn't looking to be the case by now if the 1987 agreement hadn't been put in place successfully. And it took what? Fifteen years to implement with a signed final treaty and another twenty years to come into full force, with total eradication of their production by 2010. And then along comes the full industrialization of China and Oh Snap! it seems that CFC production is still a thing.
BBC wrote: One seller of CFC-11 estimated that 70% of China's domestic sales used the illegal gas. The reason was quite simple - CFC-11 is better quality and much cheaper than the alternatives....
Where are the rest of the emissions coming from?
The researchers are not sure. It's possible that the missing emissions are coming from other parts of China, as the monitoring stations just can't see them. They could also be coming from India, Africa or South America as again there is very little monitoring in these regions.
Does this have implications for climate change?
Yes - the authors say that these CFCs are also very potent greenhouse gases. One tonne of CFC-11 is equivalent to around 5,000 tonnes of CO2.
Climate bot
"If we look at these extra emissions that we've identified from eastern China, it equates to about 35 million tonnes of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere every year, that's equivalent to about 10% of UK emissions, or similar to the whole of London."
And CFC residence time in the atmosphere is on the order of 100 years.
So do you think we still have 35 years to negotiate the whole AGW thing and take effective action?
Do you think it will only take 35 years to work out? Because CO2 issues are a little more tricky than CFCs, no?
And to be clear:
I'm not arguing the whole AGW thing has to go perfectly. I'm asking, since I believe I have provided ample evidence that global humanity is starting in earnest on this issue at least two decades too late, is it reasonable to believe we'll get this together in time to avert a +2.5°C year 2100?
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avr wrote: There's been some points where a coordinated response to climate change almost came about.
The Kyoto protocol in 1997 was supposed to be a starting point to build on but resistance from several nations (including NZ I'm sorry to say) stopped that happening. The former Soviet Bloc's industry collapsing in the early 90s and their desire for any kind of help just then gave us a chance there which we missed.
And now with the Coronavirus giving us a similar opportunity to make sweeping changes, do you think the proposed changes will be....
A) Wisely chosen to get the most CO2 reduction effect for the $ invested?
B) Effectively implemented under the scale and time restraints given us?
C) In light of how poorly "scientific" green energy changes were rolled out in Germany, do you think this will go better on a global scale?
D) Basic incompetence aside, how much corruption do you think will seep into projects of this scale?
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avr wrote: The Paris agreement in 2015 (& in particular what the EU was going to build on that with their trade agreements) was going to go forward from Kyoto, but resistance from just one nation (yes, the USA) undermined it. At some point, maybe while Biden's the US president or maybe even later I'm sure we'll have a real global response to climate change - too late to avoid some serious problems, yeah. CC & S may be useful some day but it's not ready for use yet; make plans without it IMO. Some of the more brilliant minds looking at the whole AGW issue believe without industrial scale CC&S efforts that all the other efforts combined amount to whistling in the dark. I'm inclined to agree.
CO2 in the atmosphere is the issue and so CO2 out of the atmosphere is key to the solution.
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avr wrote: On lockdowns - as a last resort when the hospitals are about to be overwhelmed they're the only tool available. They work better when there's support so that people don't starve or get evicted from their homes during the lockdown. If you can put a good lockdown in place for a while and put in place quarantine for new arrivals (for everyone! even very rich or important people!) it's possible to eliminate covid-19 which is has been a serious economic boon to NZ (recent data suggests that the Aussies' lighter handed response is worse for the economy in the long run). Half-hearted, unsupported lockdowns or those with no endgame, yeah those don't seem to be a great idea. The thing with hospitals getting overwhelmed is that we've got months to see it coming. Like the vaccine issue, governments just can't seem to get it together on the whole.
For example:
Recently CA authorities said they'll be up to speed in vaccinations/day by the end of January. So, assuming that promise proves true, they solved the bottleneck issue in less than three weeks. Great. But to me the REAL issue is they had six ####### months! to prepare. At the very least they could've not taken the bulk of December off because "holidays". I'm thinking there was something more practical to be done there instead of having weeks off to put up lights and tinsel. Yeah?
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avr wrote: Sweden BTW has had half a million cases and rising rapidly. It's not looking so good compared to its neighbours now (Denmark 189K, Norway 58K, Finland 40K). But it looks just fine compared to Switzerland and Belgium - countries of comparable population size and demographic diversity. And Germany is now in 10th place for total infections. Last summer people on this forum were giving me ####, with Germany in the high 20-something place and being lauded for their bold scientific approach.
As I posted just up thread:
In sum the researchers Drs Oh, Bhattacharya and Ioannidis, wrote: While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs{non‐pharmaceutical interventions}. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions. Boom!
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Quark Blast wrote: And it took what? Fifteen years to implement with a signed final treaty and another twenty years to come into full force, with total eradication of their production by 2010. And then along comes the full industrialization of China and Oh Snap! it seems that CFC production is still a thing. Making the perfect the enemy of the good is being stupid. Really, really stupid, QB. The emissions of CFC are way down which is why we can pick up a trace from northern China. The ozone layer is recovering, this is a success.
BBC wrote: One seller of CFC-11 estimated that 70% of China's domestic sales used the illegal gas. And this we can confirm is not true - I'm sure one seller boosting their business said that, but the emissions data do not agree with them.
Quark Blast wrote: ...is it reasonable to believe we'll get this together in time to avert a +2.5°C year 2100? Hell no. We'll overshoot that and then some. The thing is, timely action is better than late action which is better than no action. I don't think you realise how bad the worst case is - the IPCC worst case is limited by political requirements imposed when the IPCC was set up and is not the real worst case. Nor does climate change (or the world) end in 2100.
re your ABCD; the Paris agreement learned from the attempts to corrupt the Kyoto protocol and blocks some loopholes and I expect further agreements to do more. People generally don't like being cheated by others and will work hard to avoid it. And your determined belief that agreements can't work is at odds with reality.
There are some people who think CC&S is the bees knees but results are lacking despite tests and investment. It could be like fusion energy, always 30 years from being practical. Far more practical is focusing on what is known to work, renewable energy and efficiency, maybe nuclear for the countries who'll subsidise their weapons that way anyway. Fully decarbonising electrical energy generation and maybe half the transport system should be enough to stabilise the climate (there are natural carbon sinks), though not at the same point it's currently at.
In case you missed it, I live in New Zealand. I know very well that covid-19 was eliminated here by means of two lockdowns. Again, your experts are at odds with reality. Boom.
Belgium is a fascinating case of failure in dealing with Covid-19. Actually worse than Trump's US. If all you can say for Sweden is that they did better than Belgium, don't imitate Sweden. I'm not familiar with Switzerland's record, but their location and role as a transport hub in Europe (especially from northern Italy!) suggests they are in a naturally worse position than Sweden.
As I understand it, in the US the federal government spaced out and failed to put the work in so that the states didn't know when they'd get vaccines or how much. Also no central budget to draw upon or staff from the federal govt to the states. Amazingly incompetent. It'll make it easy for Biden to look good by comparison. Other nations have in many cases done better - the US is not an example to follow here.
There are other islands that did ####-### to prevent the virus yet, because of their relatively isolated position in the world and the (temporary) death of tourism, their COVID numbers look awesome. NZ had a pee-wee league softball pitch compared to much of the rest of the world.
How's the NZ economy doing? Those tourism dollars come back yet? How long can you take a 20% hit to your GDP?
Since I want to avoid segueing into the Forbidden Topic here let me just say that inflation is coming for much of the West. There is just no ####### way we can pay off the amount of debt being racked up except to devalue currency.... a #### ton.
avr wrote: The thing is, timely action is better than late action which is better than no action. I don't think you realise how bad the worst case is - the IPCC worst case is limited by political requirements imposed when the IPCC was set up and is not the real worst case. Nor does climate change (or the world) end in 2100.
re your ABCD; the Paris agreement learned from the attempts to corrupt the Kyoto protocol and blocks some loopholes and I expect further agreements to do more. People generally don't like being cheated by others and will work hard to avoid it. And your determined belief that agreements can't work is at odds with reality.
I've made many posts indicating that I expect things to get worse because there are far more ways things can go bad than right. Not quite infinite but well more than I could enumerate here. Newly released scientific papers are a thing I cite regularly that bolster this point. I would cite ones that undercut it but I haven't found any yet.
Similarly I've posted many times that it's not my lack of belief in agreements theoretically working, it's the very short window we now have (about 2.8 years by my calculation) in order to hit the +1.5°C year 2100 target. I have faith in humanity, based on roughly 5,000 years of recorded human history + archaeology, that tells me we are trying to do too much in too little time*.
The year 2100 will be at least +2.5°C over the pre-industrial norm barring scaled near-miracle tech. I think it's "Really, really stupid" to make any plans believing otherwise about our collective nature.
* Feel free to prove me wrong. I'd be happy to be in gross error over this issue but I'm not seeing the data that says I am.
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Concerning NZ's GDP: it's down 2.2% (note where the decimal point is) for the year ending in September 2020. It looks like we can take the hit. Dunno where you got the 20% figure from but check figures before using them in future.
Your quotes made absolute claims (which you accentuated with 'Boom') which break immediately on contact with NZ's record. It's the problem with making absolute claims. They're fragile. If you're backing away from that to some more nuanced position you probably need new quotes. Also there are other islands which have not had a great record with covid, for example Sri Lanka or the UK. Seawater isn't the perfect barrier you imagine in the absence of quarantines and lockdowns.
Suggesting that because we can't hit some target we shouldn't bother is the Really, really stupid thing that I think you're doing QB. Doing nothing is the worst case scenario, worse than trying and getting unimpressive results.
avr wrote: Concerning NZ's GDP: it's down 2.2% (note where the decimal point is) for the year ending in September 2020. It looks like we can take the hit. Dunno where you got the 20% figure from but check figures before using them in future.
Your quotes made absolute claims (which you accentuated with 'Boom') which break immediately on contact with NZ's record. It's the problem with making absolute claims. They're fragile. If you're backing away from that to some more nuanced position you probably need new quotes. Also there are other islands which have not had a great record with covid, for example Sri Lanka or the UK. Seawater isn't the perfect barrier you imagine in the absence of quarantines and lockdowns.
Suggesting that because we can't hit some target we shouldn't bother is the Really, really stupid thing that I think you're doing QB. Doing nothing is the worst case scenario, worse than trying and getting unimpressive results.
Down 2.2% in September 2020. Last I checked it's January 2021.
How much of that gain was subsidized by national debt? Hard to tell but that matters a great deal medium to long term.
A service economy can rotate the deck chairs for a while to distract from the sinking ship but unless they're Floating Deck Chairs™ there's still a problem to be addressed.
At any rate NZ good luck in dealing with the virus is largely attributable to their relatively isolated position in the world and the death of tourism, not amazing government policy. My point was that globally economic backwaters that are also isolated from global economy are having a much easier time of it - case in point = Burundi, over twice the population of NZ and less than 1/10th the deaths.
NZ has not had an economic collapse in the past 3 months. I haven't got figures for that because the December quarter figures won't be released for another 2 months, but by all accounts the recovery from the Covid crash is still ongoing. A 20% fall in GDP was never true.
There was an increase in the national debt but it is not still increasing. Drop this point QB, you're just getting embarrassing to read. Ignorance is only an excuse the first time.
If you have exchanged your claim that being on an island is golden for isolation being excellent at stopping Covid, you have discovered how lockdowns work. Well done.
NZ's GDP was down by 16%, but overall growth in September reduced those losses to 2%.
NZ's service industry was up 11% in September, and the manufacturing sectors were up 26%.
Source.
It's the largest quarterly rise on record for NZ.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
So none of the numbers are 20%? Not what it was down to, not what it increased by?
Strange...
avr wrote: NZ has not had an economic collapse in the past 3 months. I haven't got figures for that because the December quarter figures won't be released for another 2 months, but by all accounts the recovery from the Covid crash is still ongoing. A 20% fall in GDP was never true.
There was an increase in the national debt but it is not still increasing. Drop this point QB, you're just getting embarrassing to read. Ignorance is only an excuse the first time.
If you have exchanged your claim that being on an island is golden for isolation being excellent at stopping Covid, you have discovered how lockdowns work. Well done.
The UK strain and a couple of others are spreading around the globe at present so don't celebrate too quickly.
Also you didn't answer my question:
How much of that gain was subsidized by national debt?
If the gain in GDP is only apparent (i.e. from government debt spending), then not much has been gained.
As for how well lockdowns work, well the paper cited fairly recently up thread tells us they don't. If that paper isn't proof enough for you then the stats for Burundi, a landlocked country that did #### ### compared to the NZ measures, and yet.... yet!... their data is better than NZ no doubt. Huh?*
* And by "huh?" I mean ha!
There are hundreds of nations. Picking one or even a few that did better means nothing; it's just the cherry-picking fallacy. More useful - that is, useful at all - would be the mean, median, and mode (plus standard deviation) of countries by various criteria, by both one criterion at a time and by various criteria agreed to be relevant to the dicussion. Emphasis on "and".
Except I suspect that if those numbers, which are far more likely to be useful, were to actually support you, then you would have cited them yourself. I'm on a potatophone right now and have limited time besides, or I'd pull up the USEFUL data right now.
james014Aura wrote: There are hundreds of nations. Picking one or even a few that did better means nothing; it's just the cherry-picking fallacy. <snip whiny nonsense> Oh I agree wholeheartedly! For every New Zealand (look how scientifically awesome we are) there is a Burundi (look how little we did and yet we even more awesome).
Let's instead focus on the larger context of a simple measure like the supposed amazing GDP increase seen in NZ late last year.
The NZ economy is no small measure based on tourism. You can inflate GDP with deficit spending to fluff up the service economy but not for long. Tourism isn't coming back this year. When it does come back the route to NZ is almost entirely air travel. Air travel will be considerably more expensive as this decade goes forward what with all Paris Agreement talk. That's not good news for the future of the NZ economy. Let's hope for their sake that their quality of life isn't critically dependent on a growth economy like most of the rest of the 'West' is.
I see no source regarding that claim that for every NZ, there's a Burundi. Since you ignored my statement requesting ACTUAL STATS, I will now presume the lack of said stats from you to be evidence of absence, rather than merely absent evidence. Accordingly, I am disregarding your argument.
Edit: Also, stop misrepresenting my words as their opposite. I was condemning your choice of ONE cherry-picked example as a rebuttal of a previously-established topic (NZ).
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Burundi. Not the nastiest place in Africa, that's probably the Democratic Republic of Congo at the mo (with which Burundi shares a border), though others have a claim. It may be the first time Burundi has been held up as a place for a country in the OECD to imitate though.
Taking a look around the internet, the USA's CDC has a level 4 warning (the maximum) for Covid-19 in Burundi. How do we square this with a low level of reported cases? The first item of note is that the Human Rights Watch organisation mentions restricted testing, fear of retaliation by health workers if they report on the situation, prisoners dying after respiratory problems without tests and similar. Then there's a significantly higher rate of Covid (about 10x) just across the border in Rwanda (closely related cultures and there's a lot of movement between those two countries). I don't believe we can trust stats out of Burundi, even if some deluded deniers have picked up on those stats for their cause.
Government debt in NZ comes to US$71.1 billion as of the September quarter. No, we don't have figures for the December quarter yet; it'll be higher but some programs to mitigate the impact of Covid have been scaled down. NZ GDP is about US$196 billion; this is an acceptable debt to GDP ratio internationally, though worse than the pre-Covid figures. Equivalent figures for the US are 27.8 (debt) and 20.8 (GDP) trillion US dollars.
And with that, avr's shown why the cherry-picked Burundi example is not a refutation of the NZ discussion.
avr wrote: Burundi. Not the nastiest place in Africa, that's probably the Democratic Republic of Congo at the mo (with which Burundi shares a border), though others have a claim. It may be the first time Burundi has been held up as a place for a country in the OECD to imitate though.... Ouch! ....NOT gonna touch that. Yeesh!
avr wrote: Government debt in NZ comes to US$71.1 billion as of the September quarter. No, we don't have figures for the December quarter yet; it'll be higher but some programs to mitigate the impact of Covid have been scaled down. NZ GDP is about US$196 billion; this is an acceptable debt to GDP ratio internationally, though worse than the pre-Covid figures. Equivalent figures for the US are 27.8 (debt) and 20.8 (GDP) trillion US dollars. I already know I don't have a financial future here in America thanks. There will be no retirement for most anyone under 50 and it will be a serious struggle to be counted among the "haves" because there will be a large majority "have nots" as we go down the path of massive debt.
Anyway, if you're prejudiced against Burundi and the way they've handled the pandemic, compare NZ to Vietnam then.
Boom!
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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote: I already know I don't have a financial future here in America thanks. Your sparkling personality casts doubt on your financial future pretty much anywhere in the world.
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Quark Blast wrote:
Anyway, if you're prejudiced against Burundi and the way they've handled the pandemic, compare NZ to Vietnam then.
Boom!
What is your point with bringing up Vietnam?
Are you trying to say that NZ did a bad job? NZ's 7 day average has been 0 since the start of October. Not sure where you think the room for improvement is.
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If you regard all knowledge as prejudice then this does explain some of your statements.
Vietnam? Quarantines on arrival and travel restrictions ongoing, and there were lockdowns in April (nationwide) and August (just Hải Dương city) to kill off the first and second waves of Covid respectively. Not unlike NZ which had one nationwide lockdown followed by a second in Auckland and which has its own program of quarantines and inbound travel restrictions. But I expect you know this, you've mentioned using wikipedia. If you're trying to make an argument here, make it.
The US has rejoined the Paris climate accords, which is good news. Far from a perfect solution, it's still a valuable framework that can be built on while still producing some immediate results as well.
dirtypool wrote: Quark Blast wrote: I already know I don't have a financial future here in America thanks. Your sparkling personality casts doubt on your financial future pretty much anywhere in the world. Are you, through projection, accidentally admitting you're unemployed?
As for the Paris Agreement:
So what? We've got about 2.8 years worth of CO2 "budget" to spend before any hope of a +1.5°C year 2100 statistically evaporates by even the most optimistic estimates.
avr wrote: If you regard all knowledge as prejudice then this does explain some of your statements.
Vietnam? Quarantines on arrival and travel restrictions ongoing, and there were lockdowns in April (nationwide) and August (just Hải Dương city) to kill off the first and second waves of Covid respectively. Not unlike NZ which had one nationwide lockdown followed by a second in Auckland and which has its own program of quarantines and inbound travel restrictions. But I expect you know this, you've mentioned using wikipedia. If you're trying to make an argument here, make it.
You're the one calling Africa "nasty", not me.
I cited a paper that explains in some detail why lockdowns don't do what you're claiming they do. Argue that if you can't be civil about other nations.
Quark Blast wrote: avr wrote: If you regard all knowledge as prejudice then this does explain some of your statements.
Vietnam? Quarantines on arrival and travel restrictions ongoing, and there were lockdowns in April (nationwide) and August (just Hải Dương city) to kill off the first and second waves of Covid respectively. Not unlike NZ which had one nationwide lockdown followed by a second in Auckland and which has its own program of quarantines and inbound travel restrictions. But I expect you know this, you've mentioned using wikipedia. If you're trying to make an argument here, make it.
You're the one calling Africa "nasty", not me.
I cited a paper that explains in some detail why lockdowns don't do what you're claiming they do. Argue that if you can't be civil about other nations. I've been through your arguments and demolished them point by point. If that's broken you to the point of sending unfounded insults and demanding that I do it all again, I'm sorry QB but I won't. Good bye.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote: dirtypool wrote:
Your sparkling personality casts doubt on your financial future pretty much anywhere in the world.
Are you, through projection, accidentally admitting you're unemployed? No, suggesting that if you behave like the petulant man-baby in the real world that you present yourself as on this forum then your employment prospects are pretty grim.
This post here.
That's the one that emphasizes the science, the objective facts, that if lockdowns do anything over simple changes in habit like masks and social distancing protocol, then it can't be yet measured.
Quark Blast wrote: This post here.
That's the one that emphasizes the science, the objective facts, that if lockdowns do anything over simple changes in habit like masks and social distancing protocol, then it can't be yet measured.
The study uses the US as an example of lockdowns, a country where a significant portion of the country either didn't lock down at all, or significant populations in areas that did lockdown ignored the lockdown orders.
As an example, here in Minnesota the governor declared restaurants should close to in person dining during the thanksgiving/christmas period, but hundreds of restaurants publicly refused. Sure, there was a lockdown order in place, but in practice there was not actually a lockdown.
States like Florida routinely refused to even issue lockdown orders, and that's one of the more populous states in the country. It's a place with 1.6m cases and 25k deaths. Florida has five times the population of NZ, but almost exactly 1000x as many deaths.
That study is poorly designed.
I would generally agree that aggressive testing, contact tracing, mask wearing and social distancing are sufficient, but lockdowns are also effective when the government enacts them well and the population follows the guidelines.
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QB
Please seek therapy, it is blatantly obvious that this unhealthy and misguided rambling you post here (and likely other internet forums and message boards where you can bait people into arguing with you) is a cry for help that was already answered by the lowest common denominator on the internet and it's damaged your mind and twisted you into a raving lunatic who blasts out unvetted talking points you found elsewhere. You've been made a victim, that much is clear... and honestly, I pity you. You worry about employment while practically frothing at the mouth barking out insults in between copy/pasted links you found on some decidedly astroturfed alt-right web communities before just... ignoring the responses to you. How do even have time for gainful employment when you're marinating in disinformation meant to confuse and enrage you all day?
Even IF this is some kind of bizarre roleplay where you're living out a fantasy of being stark raving mad and playing a troll of sorts to rile people up, this isn't good for you in the least.
I only hope you still have loved ones who can intervene or that you have the courage by yourself to get the help you so desperately need because the asinine path you are on and the cohorts whom you've chosen to associate yourself with are only pushing you further and further away from reality and a healthy mental state.
Themetricsystem wrote: QB
Please seek therapy, it is blatantly obvious that this unhealthy and misguided rambling you post here (and likely other internet forums and message boards where you can bait people into arguing with you) is a cry for help that was already answered by the lowest common denominator on the internet and it's damaged your mind and twisted you into a raving lunatic who blasts out unvetted talking points you found elsewhere. You've been made a victim, that much is clear... and honestly, I pity you. You worry about employment while practically frothing at the mouth barking out insults in between copy/pasted links you found on some decidedly astroturfed alt-right web communities before just... ignoring the responses to you. How do even have time for gainful employment when you're marinating in disinformation meant to confuse and enrage you all day?
Even IF this is some kind of bizarre roleplay where you're living out a fantasy of being stark raving mad and playing a troll of sorts to rile people up, this isn't good for you in the least.
I only hope you still have loved ones who can intervene or that you have the courage by yourself to get the help you so desperately need because the asinine path you are on and the cohorts whom you've chosen to associate yourself with are only pushing you further and further away from reality and a healthy mental state.
Thanks Boomer!
Now that the homework is knocked down I've been doing some reading to keep up on the AGW thing. It was easier when it was part of several of my classes but now it's down largely to personal interest. And with that intro, here's a short discussion of a new model presented by the journal Nature.
An earth system model shows self-sustained melting of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020
Sure, but is this a robust model or just an academic exercise?
Good question and the authors have that covered:
Nature wrote: Self-sustained melting of the permafrost is a robust phenomenon in ESCIMO. It only disappears when man-made emissions are stopped counterfactually as early as in the 1960es. Or by choosing parameter values that do not recreate historical developments. We encourage other model builders to explore these conclusions in their models, and report on their findings. .
Nature wrote: Scenario 2 (see Fig. 1, dotted curves) was made to check whether humanity could avoid continuing warming from the self-sustained chain of circumstances of decreasing ocean albedo, increasing water vapour feedback and increasing melting of the permafrost by cutting man-made GHG emissions earlier than in Scenario 1. The answer is no. Is Scenario 2 better than Scenario 1?
Well yes but...
Given that Scenario 2 is impossible this side of global extinction for humanity, I'd say this puts a rather nice floor to the AGW thing. Things like this paper, but not just this paper, are why I think a +2.5°C year 2100 is the absolute best we can hope for.
This model alone doesn't quite get us to a +2.5°C year 2100 but this model leaves out other considerations (see next paper, or about 100 other papers I've cited up thread over the years), and when you factor in those other processes and models presented in them we have essentially zero chance of getting below a +2.5°C year 2100 without near-miracle tech for power generation and CC&S.
Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect
From the original article:
Nature wrote: Our planet’s energy balance is sensitive to spatial inhomogeneities in sea surface temperature and sea ice changes, but this is typically ignored in climate projections. Here, we show the energy budget during recent decades can be closed by combining changes in effective radiative forcing, linear radiative damping and this pattern effect. The pattern effect is of comparable magnitude but opposite sign to Earth’s net energy imbalance in the 2000s, indicating its importance when predicting the future climate on the basis of observations. After the pattern effect is accounted for, the best-estimate value of committed global warming at present-day forcing rises from 1.31 K (0.99–2.33 K, 5th–95th percentile) to over 2 K, and committed warming in 2100 with constant long-lived forcing increases from 1.32 K (0.94–2.03 K) to over 1.5 K, although the magnitude is sensitive to sea surface temperature dataset. Further constraints on the pattern effect are needed to reduce climate projection uncertainty. Ignoring data for climate modeling? No! No one does that! Especially not "typically". Oh wait, these reputable climate scientists are saying that very thing in a peer-reviewed published paper aren't they?
Too bad someone on this thread hasn't been warning us of scientific practices like "typically" leaving out pertinent data for their models.
:D
Here's a more accessible version of the data:
Paying for emissions we've already released
phys.org wrote: The planet is committed to global warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) just from greenhouse gases that have already been added to the atmosphere. This is the conclusion of new research by scientists from Nanjing University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Texas A&M University, which appears in the latest edition of Nature Climate Change.....
Specifically, the team found that future warming with radiative forcing fixed at present-day levels (equivalent to freezing the atmospheric composition as it is today) has a most likely value of +2.3 degrees C (4.1 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. This exceeds the limits set in the Paris Agreement, in which the world's countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial temperatures, while pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).
"The bad news is that our results suggest that we have most likely already emitted enough carbon dioxide to exceed 2°C," said Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M researcher and co-author of the study. But he pointed out that there is good news. Once net emissions get to near zero, the rate of continued, committed warming will be very slow. "So if we can get net emissions to near zero soon, it may take centuries to exceed 2 degrees C."
"The uncertainty on estimates of committed warming is large, but we can have high confidence that committed warming is larger than one would expect based on assuming the past is prologue," Zelinka added. "This finding increases the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve the Paris Agreement targets."
So we have this^ effect. We have the +0.5°C warming effect from reduced particulate pollution that comes with a greener energy future. Another +0.5°C warming effect that comes from the elimination of jet contrails. We have many other effects, some dozens cited up thread over the previous years, and another couple to follow.
Why is it again that we are still striving for a +1.5°C year 2100?
A machine-learning approach to predicting Africa’s electricity mix based on planned power plants and their chances of success
Nature Energy wrote: Energy scenarios, relying on wide-ranging assumptions about the future, do not always adequately reflect the lock-in risks caused by planned power-generation projects and the uncertainty around their chances of realization. In this study we built a machine-learning model that demonstrates high accuracy in predicting power-generation project failure and success using the largest dataset on historic and planned power plants available for Africa, combined with country-level characteristics. We found that the most relevant factors for successful commissioning of past projects are at plant level: capacity, fuel, ownership and connection type. We applied the trained model to predict the realization of the current project pipeline. Contrary to rapid transition scenarios, our results show that the share of non-hydro renewables in electricity generation is likely to remain below 10% in 2030, despite total generation more than doubling. These findings point to high carbon lock-in risks for Africa, unless a rapid decarbonization shock occurs leading to large-scale cancellation of the fossil fuel plants currently in the pipeline. So using an AI/ML look at the data of actual power plant completions and it shows a very unlikely scenario of "rapid transition" for the energy generation situation over this entire continent. There is a caveat in the paper for "a rapid decarbonization shock". And let us suppose that this shock occurs.
My question is:
How much of a delay in green tech will this "high carbon lock-in risk" for Africa cause? Only 10 years? Maybe 20? Longer? Each year adds another fraction of a degree to the year 2100 average global temperature.
How many other continents will have something similar occur?
How many of these incremental increases to global temperature can we have before a Tipping Point is reached?
I've listed several more here today. But wait! I'm not done.
:D
How do we get to zero carbon energy?
This article is a good summary of one of my recurring points - the scale of the issue.
The U.S. can be powered 100% by renewable energy. How do we get there?
PV wrote: What will it take to unify the grid and unlock the full renewable potential of this region and the U.S.?
Wood Mackenzie says we need to double the network of our existing transmission lines from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles. Not only would this help unify the grid, but it’d also establish a transmission infrastructure that could actually transfer the amount of energy required to power the U.S. completely on renewable energy alone....
Forecasting load demand and generating 100% of our power through renewable energy is certainly a challenge. The best way to overcome it? Overbuild… by a lot.
In Jacobson’s 2015 study, the authors estimate that the average U.S. energy demand will reach 2.6 TW by 2050. How much energy capacity do we need to account for that much energy demand? About 2.5 times as much, or 6.5 TW of total energy capacity. Today, we’re at about 1.2 TW.
....there are many generator mixes to help us reach 100% renewable energy when overbuilding energy capacity by 2.5 times as much as what’s needed. The point remains, if we want to hit 100% renewable energy while excluding alternative methods of getting there, such as nuclear, natural gas, etc., then this is one way of building a sustainable energy system.
What isn't explained is that doubling the transmission infrastructure also includes upgrading at least the interconnect points in the current system. So it's really more than a doubling because we don't just need a bigger grid but also a smart grid. Note: just upgrading the current 200k miles of infrastructure to a smart grid is no small endeavor.
There's also some nonsense about hydro and geothermal, PV wrote: Hydroelectric and geothermal energy can be ramped up and down to meet demand while providing a more stable backbone to VRE.
What happens in the event of a storm or other natural disaster?
For one, coal, natural gas, and oil operations can be severely disrupted during an emergency event and require a lot of manpower to bring back online, especially if there is a natural gas or oil spill that not only disrupts our power supply but also pollutes the environment around it.
We've had decades of natural disasters, so the what-about-ism bit there is painfully disingenuous.
As for hydro and geothermal, it is well known that geothermal isn't a real thing outside of Iceland and perhaps for another .05% of humanity elsewhere around the globe. Hydro has the distinction of being under siege for issues surrounding water quality (especially thermal pollution) and its impact on anadromous fishes, among other concerns. In short, hydro isn't going to be growing anywhere in the developed world and is slated for net reduction in power output over a great many areas this century.
Coal is on the way out from natural gas. Natural gas isn't going anywhere for decades.
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PV wrote: Analysts at Wood Mackenzie crunched the numbers and found that it’ll cost around $4.5 trillion, assuming current technology. The real kicker? The price tag doesn’t change if the U.S. completes the transition in 10 years or 20.
And what if we keep nuclear energy in the mix? It’d still cost in the ballpark of $4 trillion.
Our current national debt is about $28 trillion. It'll be well over 30 by the end of this year. What's another $4 trillion invested, right? Simple as writing a check, right?
PV wrote: First, we need to dramatically build out wind and solar capacity.
Second, we need to add plenty of storage for energy availability.
Third, we need to overhaul the grid by doubling the miles of high-voltage transmission lines from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles.
The next question remains. If it’s going to cost the same in 10 years as it will in 20, what’s the point in waiting?
Again, sounds simple but it isn't. Talk is easy and cheap.
How about they answer some questions like I posed above?
Any idea what the carbon footprint is of:
- Nearly 500,000 wind turbines
- 80,000,000 rooftop PV systems
- 3 hydroelectric power plants in Alaska
- Other ######### ideas like 8,800 tidal turbines
??? Anyone???
Environmental concerns anyone?
Lawsuits slowing or stopping these efforts anyone?
I ask because we have approximately 2.8 years of CO2 "budget" left and I don't think we can get all that built in 2.8 years, and 20 years would be pushing it. Now add those one to two decades of CO2 emissions to the CO2 emissions wrapped into building all that green infrastructure and we've blown our part for a year 2100 temp well past the +2.5°C mark.
Now for the kicker:
About 7 billion other people need to put in this level of effort as well.
No problem, right? Barely an inconvenience.
:D
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