Languish.org

General Category => Off the Record => Topic started by: Syt on November 17, 2015, 05:50:30 AM

Title: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 17, 2015, 05:50:30 AM
It appears we don't have a climate change megathread yet, so here is one.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/congressman-continues-pressuring-noaa-for-scientists-e-mails/

QuoteCongressman continues pressuring NOAA for scientists' e-mails

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remains in the crosshairs of Congressman Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The issue is that Rep. Smith did not like the most recent update to NOAA's global surface temperature dataset, because it resulted in a larger warming trend since 1998—a time period that those who reject the conclusions of climate science are fond of claiming has seen no warming.

When last we checked in, the American Meteorological Society was weighing in with concern about Rep. Smith's subpoena seeking internal communications of NOAA scientists about this update. And Smith was asserting that it was done for political, rather than scientific reasons.

Updates like this one, which add in data or revise corrections for non-climatic factors like differences between measurement techniques, are common. And, after the changes, NOAA's dataset looks about the same as all the others. Although the data and methods he requested are publicly available, and NOAA scientists have provided explanations regarding the latest update, Rep. Smith wants to comb through their e-mails in order to uncover the political influence he assumes must exist.

NOAA has taken the position, as other scientific organizations have in the past, that deliberative communications between scientists should be protected from fishing expeditions, and has so far refused to comply.

After NOAA refused, Rep. Smith sent a letter reiterating the demand and making a few additional requests, including that four individuals from NOAA—two scientists, NOAA Chief of Staff Renee Stone, and Communications Director Ciaran Clayton—appear for closed-door interviews before the full House Committee. An aide for the committee told Ars that the transcripts of such interviews are generally not released and would not be released in this case. The rules also dictate that the committee members of one party cannot release transcripts without the permission of the other party. Whatever questions Rep. Smith wants to ask about the transparency of NOAA science will remain confidential.

But the public battle is continuing. On Friday, Rep. Smith sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker asking her to direct NOAA to comply with his subpoena for internal communications. The letter states that "Congressional oversight need not, indeed should not, begin only when evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, or other wrongdoing is unveiled."

The letter also complains that NOAA has apparently not yet scheduled the interviews with the two non-scientists and emphasizes that "the Committee's request for information and communications includes not just NOAA scientists but also NOAA policy and political staff." It adds that "NOAA's response appears to be targeted at manipulating the Committee's requests to lend support to the false narrative being promoted by outside organizations that the Committee is attempting to target and intimidate scientists."

As an example, Rep. Smith seems peeved that NOAA put out a press release about the study published in Science describing the update (which we covered). The letter continues, "NOAA also used Twitter to spread the news about the Karl study, tweeting 'NOAA study refutes notion of 'hiatus' in rate of #globalwarming in recent yrs.' This type of public relations effort seems better suited to an advertising campaign than a federal agency's sober report on the findings of a publicly-funded study."

NOAA routinely produces press releases for reports or newly published studies, and its Twitter account exists primarily to share links to those releases.


On the study mentioned in the penultimate paragraph:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/updated-noaa-temperature-record-shows-little-global-warming-slowdown/

QuoteUpdated NOAA temperature record shows little global warming slowdown

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.arstechnica.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F06%2Fnoaa_karl_etal-640x486.jpg&hash=f6fba7f990edcf34b8f79fabc7993bab6703754c)

Creating and maintaining a record of surface temperatures around the world isn't as easy as it sounds, even if you rightly don't think that sounds easy. Lots of work goes into combining different kinds of measurements in the most accurate way possible. When new studies provide slightly better accounting for some of the complications involved, the records need to get updated.

An update to the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's temperature record is out this week, and the researchers behind it say it has an impact on discussions about the slower rise of global average surface temperatures in recent years. That is, it doesn't look much slower.

In this case, the update was spurred by two efforts. The first was simply a new database of weather stations on land that more than doubles the number available by folding in many smaller collections. The second was research into sources of sea surface temperature measurements. A large number of buoys are now dedicated to making these measurements, but commercial ships have also been a major source of data. Those ships haven't always used the same methods, though, so researchers have to be careful to account for differences between the data those methods produce.

For a long time, the standard method was to pull up a bucket of water and drop a thermometer in it. But over time—and especially around World War II—this was increasingly abandoned for measurements made of water in the engine room intake pipe. Intake pipes give you a slightly warmer temperature than the buckets, and so a correction has to be applied to make the two comparable.

Scientists hadn't used those corrections for data after World War II, but recent research discovered that the bucket method didn't completely go away. As a result, the sea surface temperature database now includes a correction to deal with this up to the present day. This makes a non-trivial difference.

The researchers also developed an improved correction for systematic differences between buoy measurements and ship measurements by examining measurements made by ships while they were near buoys. The buoy measurements averaged 0.12 degrees Celsius cooler, necessitating an adjustment, but the measurements are also higher quality and come with a smaller margin of error.

Because buoys are becoming more prevalent, the effects of these adjustments were stronger in recent years, bringing average temperatures up a tick compared to years previous.

Incorporating these changes results in small shifts in the global average surface temperature estimates. Some years moved upward a bit; some years moved downward. The change over the entire record, which extends back to 1880, is miniscule. But over short time periods, this wiggling can alter trends a bit.

This paper focuses on the period after the anomalously warm El Niño year of 1998, a starting point that has inspired some politicians to claim that the Earth hasn't warmed since. That already wasn't true, but the updated numbers make that even more obvious. In the previous version of the dataset, the average trend from 1998 to 2014 was 0.059±0.063 degrees Celsius warming per decade. Now, however, it is 0.106±0.058 degrees Celsius per decade.

(Of course, given that 1998 was warmer than surrounding years, that start date gives you the smallest trend. The trend over 2000 to 2014, for example, increases to 0.116 degrees Celsius per decade. Such is the danger of cherry-picking endpoints over short periods.)

Specifically, the paper revisits a statement from the most recent IPCC report, which was first published in 2013. The report compared the most recent trend to the trend going back to 1950, noting that the trend between 1998 and 2012 was half to one-third the trend between 1951 and 2012. That statement was based on the old NOAA numbers, which yielded trends of 0.039 degrees Celsius per decade and 0.117 degrees Celsius per decade, respectively. Using the updated numbers, that gap closes considerably: 0.086 degrees Celsius per decade (1998-2012) compared to 0.129 degrees Celsius per decade (1951-2012).

As a result, the researchers write that the IPCC's description of a much slower trend after 1998 is "no longer valid." For example, the new 2000 to 2014 trend is actually very slightly greater than the 1950 to 1999 trend.

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.arstechnica.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F06%2Fnoaa_temp_update1-640x275.png&hash=b07440f378dd3b007603c8403c8c6b60ddd78467)

Of course, NOAA isn't the only game in town, and a couple of other datasets—like NASA's—estimated higher temperatures for the last few years. We covered a 2013 analysis that used satellite data to fill in around the sparse weather stations in the Arctic, calculating even warmer global averages than NASA. NOAA's Huai-Min Zhang told Ars that the 2000 to 2014 trend in their updated dataset is comparable to that analysis, making it a little steeper than NASA's.

However, NASA uses the same land station and sea surface temperature databases as NOAA—when they incorporate these updates (which NASA's Reto Ruedy told Ars will eventually happen after careful testing), the NASA record will likely experience similar shifts. That would probably move NASA's numbers for recent years back on top. (The two groups handle the sparse sampling of the Arctic differently, and NASA's method of filling in between stations rather than leaving out the blanks gives the rapidly warming Arctic a little more weight in the global average.)

Got all that? Basically, it seems that the recent slowdown in surface warming has been exaggerated by our imperfect records. But while the researchers write that "newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from [NOAA] do not support the notion of a global warming 'hiatus,'" we also know that ocean patterns have held down surface temperatures in recent years. And we know that we have to account for those ocean patterns, as well as solar and volcanic activity, in order to bring recent temperatures up to the average trend of climate model projections.

Of course, there will be predictable accusations of "fudging data" made by those who invariably reject the results of climate science. For that reason, it's worth remembering that the net result of all the adjustments climate scientists make to these records is less warming over the last century.

Getting this exactly right isn't easy, and scientists have to cross every "t" they can find to produce accurate estimates of the fever Earth's climate system is running. If you're curious enough about the details, t-crossing can be pretty interesting—but if you take a few steps back, the big picture will look nearly the same. And yes, the big picture shows that the Earth didn't miraculously stop warming in 1998.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 17, 2015, 09:28:38 AM
What kind of idiot do you have to be to put Lamar Smith in charge of a House Committee? Man you people never learn about Texas politicians.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 17, 2015, 10:43:24 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 17, 2015, 09:28:38 AM
What kind of idiot do you have to be to put Lamar Smith in charge of a House Committee? Man you people never learn about Texas politicians.

Are politicians ignorant of some Texas politicians' wilfully ignorance?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 06:14:52 PM
Since the actual measurements of global temperature didn't show any actual warming the climate fraudsters had to "adjust" the data to comport with their climate models.  Now that people are wondering how the fuck they came up with this very convenient adjustment they are clamming up and refusing to release the process that led to this conclusion, even though they are legally obligated to do so since this is publicly funded.

Well, the actually measured change of temperature is shown below:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fearthobservatory.nasa.gov%2FFeatures%2FGlobalWarming%2Fimages%2Fmsu_1978-2010.png&hash=b1d0aea8385d0ecd9bdc41c1a593ee7cc1d1132f)

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 06:27:28 PM
The OP article claims the data and methodology are publicly available.  Presumably when you say "process" you are referring to something.

Also not sure the graph you provided proves unadjusted temperatures are not rising.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: lustindarkness on November 17, 2015, 06:29:29 PM
Is that the Boston Marathon course elevation profile? Looks brutal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 06:39:33 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 06:27:28 PM
The OP article claims the data and methodology are publicly available.  Presumably when you say "process" you are referring to something.

Also not sure the graph you provided proves unadjusted temperatures are not rising.

The problem is that they cherry pick their data (in this case ocean buoys) and make some very specific adjustments to bring it in line with their alarmist claims while ignoring all data that contradicts it.  Why don't satellite weather data, by far the most complete and accurate measurement of global climate since 1977 show any global warming.

In the scientific method you establish a theory and then set out to disprove it.  Only if you cannot disprove it have you proven your theory. Climate change "scientists" do not use the scientific method, routinely ignore facts and cherry pick data (or outright Doctor it) to reach their conclusion.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 06:50:43 PM
Source?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 06:51:12 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 06:39:33 PM
The problem is that they cherry pick their data (in this case ocean buoys) and make some very specific adjustments to bring it in line with their alarmist claims while ignoring all data that contradicts it.  Why don't satellite weather data, by far the most complete and accurate measurement of global climate since 1977 show any global warming.

Have you read their publicly available methodology and come to these conclusions yourself?

I have not, nor do I have the scientific expertise to evaluate it, and can't refute anything you say (or anything the other side says) on the merits, though I do understand the argument for adjusting observed temperatures to account for things like urban heat islands.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 07:10:25 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 06:51:12 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 06:39:33 PM
The problem is that they cherry pick their data (in this case ocean buoys) and make some very specific adjustments to bring it in line with their alarmist claims while ignoring all data that contradicts it.  Why don't satellite weather data, by far the most complete and accurate measurement of global climate since 1977 show any global warming.

Have you read their publicly available methodology and come to these conclusions yourself?

I have not, nor do I have the scientific expertise to evaluate it, and can't refute anything you say (or anything the other side says) on the merits, though I do understand the argument for adjusting observed temperatures to account for things like urban heat islands.

Yes I have, they've adjusted water temperatures to fit their models based on differences from ship vs buoy measurements, which doesn't explain the lack of global warming in the satellite data.  Particularly since their models had predicted higher temperature growth in the troposphere vs ground level.  It is again an effort to fit the data to their model, not consistent with the scientific method.  Every year it is the same circus as they are proven wrong over and over again and continuously have to make "adjustments" to the data to fit it into their narrative.  It's like jehovah witness trying to scientifically explain away they dinosaurs carbon dating.

Starting with your conclusion and then cherry pick your data is not scientific, hence, they aren't engaged in since but anti-science.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 07:17:53 PM
Are you familiar with Dunning-Kruger effect?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 07:20:54 PM
The basic problem as I see it Hans, is that you are asking us to believe that tens of thousands of scientists are engaged in a massive conspiracy to mislead the public (for what? their salaries? for laughs?) and that you and a handful of brave souls, most or all of whom appear to share the same ideological space on the right end of the spectrum, are the only ones willing to tell the truth.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on November 17, 2015, 08:01:41 PM
I have zero expertise to challenge Han's graphs, or the environmentalists' graphs.  So it comes down to who to trust.  The way I see it is that there seems no practical gain for those who are screaming that temperatures are rising. 

Plus I can feel it too.  It is November in Hong Kong, but I still feel it is like late summer here.  It wasn't like that when I was a kid. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 07:20:54 PM
The basic problem as I see it Hans, is that you are asking us to believe that tens of thousands of scientists are engaged in a massive conspiracy to mislead the public (for what? their salaries? for laughs?) and that you and a handful of brave souls, most or all of whom appear to share the same ideological space on the right end of the spectrum, are the only ones willing to tell the truth.

More like hundreds of scientists, who have a very vested interest in advocating for this, to the tune of billions of dollars.  And the same thing happened with the eugenics movement a hundred years ago, even their thuggish methodology is identical.

Climate science has been completely politicized with little to no actual science taking taking place.  Over the last 20 years the field has been hijacked by political activists to the degree that there are hardly any scientists left in the field.

The reality is that we know relatively little about how the climate actually works, which is why real scientists in the field mostly roll their eyes when these hacks make these declarative statements; however, they also know to shut up to not be subject to a witch hunt.

See, I don't have much faith in declarative statements by much of the scientific recourse that tries to tell us how we should live, because so much of it is bullshit.  Just look at the various nutrition guidance a developed over the last 50 years, most of which have been utter bunk.  I love that they're now suddenly saying that whole milk might be healthier than low fat milk.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:03:35 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on November 17, 2015, 08:01:41 PM
I have zero expertise to challenge Han's graphs, or the environmentalists' graphs.  So it comes down to who to trust.  The way I see it is that there seems no practical gain for those who are screaming that temperatures are rising. 

Plus I can feel it too.  It is November in Hong Kong, but I still feel it is like late summer here.  It wasn't like that when I was a kid.

That graph is from NASA and contains the raw satellite data, unaltered, unlike the NOAA data set.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 08:04:51 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
More like hundreds of scientists, who have a very vested interest in advocating for this, to the tune of billions of dollars.

How do these hundreds of scientists have a vested interest in climate change, to the tune of billions of dollars?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on November 17, 2015, 08:05:14 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:03:35 PM


That graph is from NASA and contains the raw satellite data, unaltered, unlike the NOAA data set.

I don't doubt this, but I have handled enough data and drawn enough graphs myself to know that, very often, it is misleading to present the raw data without appropriate adjustments. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 08:09:38 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 08:04:51 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
More like hundreds of scientists, who have a very vested interest in advocating for this, to the tune of billions of dollars.

How do these hundreds of scientists have a vested interest in climate change, to the tune of billions of dollars?

I think he's talking about grant money, which they would get away, because governments have a vested interest in knowing about the weather.  Presumably the guys working in the private sector who are tasked with debunking this global conspiracy don't have a vested interest.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on November 17, 2015, 08:37:07 PM
I am well aware that scientists are very often wrong.  I don't preclude the possibility that, people hundreds of years from now may look back and think the global warming thing is wrong.  Doctors once told me that germs can't survive in the stomach.  A few years later they told me that all my problems could be solved by killing the germs there. 

Despite this, I still think we should err on the side of caution by believing that global warming is happening.  There is more than enough evidence to suggest that it is true, and the consqeuences are dire.  Plus, even if global warming doesn't exist, burning coal has enough negative health effects that it warrants regulation. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 09:15:05 PM
What kind of doctors were these Mono?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on November 17, 2015, 09:25:30 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 09:15:05 PM
What kind of doctors were these Mono?

I'd like to know too  :mad:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 10:34:05 PM
Anyway, climate deniers have a limited point.  Science (as we know it), is never in a finished state.  Things do get over turned and caution should be taken when acting on scientific facts.  However, it only goes so far.  You don't put off appendectomy (I had to look up how to spell this word), hoping there is a revolution in medicine.  Some times you must act, even with imperfect information.  Honestly, I don't think there is much of a chance of us preventing major climatic changes.  We will just have to live with the effects and hopefully mitigate the worst of them.

Han's conspiracy theories are of course bonkers.  When he tells us he came to these conclusions himself he reminds of those all those kooks who attempt to explain how a perpetual motion machine works to physics professors.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2015, 08:35:33 AM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
Over the last 20 years the field has been hijacked by political activists to the degree that there are hardly any scientists left in the field.

Do you get paid to spread this kind of propaganda or is it something you do on your own time?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on November 18, 2015, 08:45:34 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2015, 08:04:51 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
More like hundreds of scientists, who have a very vested interest in advocating for this, to the tune of billions of dollars.

How do these hundreds of scientists have a vested interest in climate change, to the tune of billions of dollars?

I'm pretty sure global warming has kick started a billion dollar industry, but the climate scientists aren't seeing any of that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 18, 2015, 02:08:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 18, 2015, 08:35:33 AM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 08:02:31 PM
Over the last 20 years the field has been hijacked by political activists to the degree that there are hardly any scientists left in the field.

Do you get paid to spread this kind of propaganda or is it something you do on your own time?

He has in the past.  He used to work in Psyops.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 18, 2015, 07:48:46 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 10:34:05 PM
Anyway, climate deniers have a limited point.  Science (as we know it), is never in a finished state.  Things do get over turned and caution should be taken when acting on scientific facts.

That the temperature graphs only go back to the 1880s is a weakness. Every time I see that data I cringe from that. It's either use it and be vulnerable to the ridicule or hire Marty McFly to go back in time and take measurements in geological timeframes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 18, 2015, 07:58:10 PM
I think there are ones that go back further then that.  Globally the climate has gotten cooler over the last several million years.  This is because the carbon in the atmosphere is slowly being fixed into the soil and fossilized.  Most carbon just goes back into  the cycle, but some of it in things like peat bogs stay in the soil.  Eventually it become things like oil and coal.  When we burn coal that carbon that had been stuck in the ground since the days dinosaurs is released bringing back a prehistoric type climate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 19, 2015, 10:46:44 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 09:15:05 PM
What kind of doctors were these Mono?
Chinese doctors.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 18, 2015, 07:48:46 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 17, 2015, 10:34:05 PM
Anyway, climate deniers have a limited point.  Science (as we know it), is never in a finished state.  Things do get over turned and caution should be taken when acting on scientific facts.

That the temperature graphs only go back to the 1880s is a weakness. Every time I see that data I cringe from that. It's either use it and be vulnerable to the ridicule or hire Marty McFly to go back in time and take measurements in geological timeframes.
they have temp graphs that go further than that, but these are reconstructed climate data, hence why they are not often included.  they are subject to complex mathematical models instead of recorded measures.  Complex mathematical models can sometimes be proven wrong, due to a simple (all things being relative) error somewhere, and it did happen in the past that data had to be revised, just like it is now.  And the fluctuations over 4 billion years aren't that practical to analyse current policies.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 19, 2015, 11:38:44 AM
Stockholm has temperature data from 1756 onwards.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 19, 2015, 11:54:01 AM
I think it's possible that climate scientists engage in publishing stuff that is then presented with hyperbole that overstates their findings, but I've never had the energy to dig really deep into climate science. I'll admit that I'm too lazy to do so, and that when I'm asked to choose between a large number of real scientists and far right Republicans and people funded by the fossil fuel industry I have an intrinsic bias toward just accepting what the real scientists say.

The way I see it even if, somehow we are totally wrong about climate change, fossil fuel emissions cause tons of bad things for the environment and public health, both in the burning and extraction of them. So if we find out in 2050 "eh, some mechanism we didn't understand means we didn't really need to phase out fossil fuels", I'd be cool with that anyway. Renewables give us more energy independence (same for nuclear), even though I do know we have significant fossil fuel reserves and shale reserves that have never been tapped, and don't cause all the environmental health problems.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 19, 2015, 02:20:44 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 19, 2015, 11:54:01 AM
I think it's possible that climate scientists engage in publishing stuff that is then presented with hyperbole that overstates their findings,
To be fair, this happens to all science.  Remember the article a few weeks ago about an alien structure in far away solar system?  The scientists who made the report never mentionned "aliens" in their paper.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
The way I see it, even if fossil fuels are only moderatly damaging, they are still finite.

They are going to run out eventually, and then we will have to come up with something else.

Why not just work on that now?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2015, 10:34:12 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
Why not just work on that now?

Pretty sure we are.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 22, 2015, 11:20:50 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2015, 10:34:12 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
Why not just work on that now?

Pretty sure we are.
oil subsidies + low oil prices discourage research.  These technologies would not be commercially viable in current circumstances.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on November 22, 2015, 02:48:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
The way I see it, even if fossil fuels are only moderatly damaging, they are still finite.

They are going to run out eventually, and then we will have to come up with something else.

Why not just work on that now?

If we burn all the (known) remaining carbon, we're super-fucked.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 22, 2015, 02:58:44 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on November 22, 2015, 02:48:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
The way I see it, even if fossil fuels are only moderatly damaging, they are still finite.

They are going to run out eventually, and then we will have to come up with something else.

Why not just work on that now?

If we burn all the (known) remaining carbon, we're super-fucked.

Well yes; even if 'we' end up burning a small percentage of the relatively easy to get to hydrocarbons, say 10-30% we're still going to be in a lot of trouble, well some of us* are that is.


*assuming you've some interest in a diverse range of humanity, if you're only concerned with yourself, your family and your neighbourhood you should be 'fine'.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on November 22, 2015, 04:01:04 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on November 22, 2015, 02:48:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2015, 10:15:17 PM
The way I see it, even if fossil fuels are only moderatly damaging, they are still finite.

They are going to run out eventually, and then we will have to come up with something else.

Why not just work on that now?

If we burn all the (known) remaining carbon, we're super-fucked.

Might be good for giant ants though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 25, 2015, 07:06:13 AM
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34915448

Quote2015 likely to be warmest on record says UN weather body

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fichef.bbci.co.uk%2Fnews%2F660%2Fcpsprodpb%2F53F7%2Fproduction%2F_86859412_86859411.jpg&hash=0d13678e25045ea3cfd66f0fbb27a5403f0e5d51)

Global average temperatures in 2015 are likely to be the warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

Data until the end of October showed this year's temperatures running "well above" any previous 12 month period.

The researchers say the five year period from 2011 to 2015 was also the warmest on record.

The rise, they state, was due to a combination of a strong El Nino and human-induced global warming.

The WMO said their preliminary estimate, based on data from January to October, showed that the global average surface temperature for 2015 was 0.73 degrees C above the 1961-1990 average.

Their scientists also found that global temperatures were approximately 1 degree C above the 1880-1899 period, mirroring a recent finding by the UK Met Office.

'Bad news'

The record-breaking five year period from 2011 to 2015 was 0.57C above the average for 1961-1990.

The WMO said that levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached new highs. In the northern hemisphere, the spring of 2015 saw the three-month global average concentration of CO2 cross the 400 parts per million barrier for the first time.

"The state of the global climate in 2015 will make history for a number of reasons," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud.

"2015 is likely to be the hottest year on record, with ocean surface temperatures at the highest level since measurements began. It is probable that the 1C threshold will be crossed.

"This is all bad news for the planet."

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fichef-1.bbci.co.uk%2Fnews%2F624%2Fcpsprodpb%2F17359%2Fproduction%2F_86856059_86856058.jpg&hash=a97e5d86b9b04f427aded706d4f20a5e8612ed99)

Other researchers agreed that the latest data from the WMO reinforces the view that human emissions of carbon dioxide, from burning fossil fuels, are continuing to heat the Earth beyond natural variability.

"The fingerprint of a warming planet is becoming clearer in nearly every corner of the world," said Dr Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.

"Moreover, 2015 is not a one-off, as indicated by the last five years' average also being the warmest on record.

"In the UK, our variable weather means that 2015 will not set any records for warmth, but the longer view shows UK temperatures have risen about 20% faster than the global average. We can expect this faster rate to continue in future."

As well as warming the land, much of the heat has gone into the oceans. The WMO said the waters have been absorbing more than 90% of the energy that has accumulated in the climate system from human emissions of greenhouse gases. The temperature of the tropical Pacific was more than 1C above average, consistent with a strong El Nino.

The WMO said this weather phenomenon has been a factor in pushing this year past previous records. El Nino has gained in strength over the past few months and has been rated as one of the three strongest since 1950.

The researchers said that the impact of an El Nino is typically felt more strongly in the second calendar year, meaning that 2016 is likely to be more strongly influenced by the event than 2015.

The record temperatures of 2015 were being felt in many different parts of the world. China recorded its warmest ever January to October period. For Africa, this year has been the second warmest on record.

Heat waves affected many parts of the world, with India seeing average maximum temperatures over 45C in some areas. There were also extremely hot periods in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The WMO also argued that many of the extreme weather events in the past five years, especially those relating to higher temperatures, have had their probabilities substantially increased as a result of human-induced climate change.

The new findings are likely to feature prominently at COP21 in Paris next week, when global political leaders and negotiators will aim to secure a new global deal that would limit emissions of carbon dioxide.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 01, 2015, 10:57:55 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/30/us-climatechange-summit-china-smog-idUSKBN0TJ0DG20151130

QuoteSmog chokes Chinese, Indian capitals as climate talks begin

The capitals of the world's two most populous nations, China and India, were blanketed in hazardous, choking smog on Monday as climate change talks began in Paris, where leaders of both countries are among the participants.

China's capital Beijing maintained an "orange" pollution alert, the second-highest level, on Monday, closing highways, halting or suspending construction and prompting a warning to residents to stay indoors.

The choking pollution was caused by the "unfavourable" weather, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Sunday. Emissions in northern China soar over winter as urban heating systems are switched on and low wind speeds have meant that polluted air has not been dispersed.

In New Delhi, the U.S. embassy's monitoring station recorded an air quality index of 372, which puts air pollution levels well into "hazardous" territory. A thick smog blanketed the city and visibility was down to about 200 yards (metres).

Air quality in the city of 16 million is usually bad in winter, when coal fires are lit by the poor to ward off the cold. Traffic fumes, too, are trapped over the city by a temperature inversion and the lack of wind.

However, the government has not raised any alarm over the current air quality and no advisories have been issued to the public. Thirty thousand runners took part in a half marathon at the weekend, when pollution levels were just as high.

In Beijing, a city of 22.5 million, the air quality index in some parts of the city soared to 500, its highest possible level. At levels higher than 300, residents are encouraged to remain indoors, according to government guidelines.

The hazardous air underscores the challenge facing the government as it battles pollution caused by the coal-burning power industry and will raise questions about its ability to clean up its economy at the talks in Paris.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are both in Paris and both were scheduled to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday to give momentum to the two-week negotiations.

"WHEN A CHILD IS BORN, WE PLANT A TREE"

Modi sought to highlight India's green credentials in an article for the Financial Times on Monday, writing: "The instinct of our culture is to take a sustainable path to development. When a child is born, we plant a tree."

But at Connaught Place, a city centre landmark in New Delhi, people chided the government for failing to minimise the risks to their health from air pollution.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on December 01, 2015, 11:02:17 AM
QuoteSmog chokes Chinese, Indian capitals as climate talks begin

Some guy on the street were inviting people to a climate march in London. Maybe they can force out a few percentage change in emission rules in the UK. THAT will solve this issue, do not worry!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Siege on December 01, 2015, 11:24:55 AM
Smog is not produced by CO2, which is colorless and odorless.

The big fight is over CO2, which is nothing more than food for plants, as the culprit of climate change, as if climate has not being always changing, with the ice ages, mini ice ages, warm periods, and so on.

And Berkut, big oil is donating millions to climate alarmists research, and zero, nothing, to climate realists.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 11:26:57 AM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 11:24:55 AM
The big fight is over CO2, which is nothing more than food for plants, as the culprit of climate change, as if climate has not being always changing, with the ice ages, mini ice ages, warm periods, and so on.

Yes...and why did those climate changes occur I wonder?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on December 01, 2015, 11:28:56 AM
I hate how once again we've started using "Save the planet" slogan.

The planet will be fine! It doesn't give a shit wether we fuck our climate up or not.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 11:32:05 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 01, 2015, 11:28:56 AM
I hate how once again we've started using "Save the planet" slogan.

The planet will be fine! It doesn't give a shit wether we fuck our climate up or not.

Right? At one point the entire planet was buried in ice. The planet didn't give two fucks.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on December 01, 2015, 11:44:02 AM
Indeed I think it would help driving the point home more if it was "save humanity" or actually to be more correct "save current human civilisation from possible collapse" Then again that slogan needs more understanding.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Siege on December 01, 2015, 01:17:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 11:26:57 AM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 11:24:55 AM
The big fight is over CO2, which is nothing more than food for plants, as the culprit of climate change, as if climate has not being always changing, with the ice ages, mini ice ages, warm periods, and so on.

Yes...and why did those climate changes occur I wonder?
Mostly solar activity.
Definitely not because of human action since the industrial revolution only happened 200 years ago.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 01, 2015, 02:44:08 PM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 01:17:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 11:26:57 AM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 11:24:55 AM
The big fight is over CO2, which is nothing more than food for plants, as the culprit of climate change, as if climate has not being always changing, with the ice ages, mini ice ages, warm periods, and so on.

Yes...and why did those climate changes occur I wonder?
Mostly solar activity.
Definitely not because of human action since the industrial revolution only happened 200 years ago.

How do you know this?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 03:52:04 PM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 01:17:16 PM
Mostly solar activity.
Definitely not because of human action since the industrial revolution only happened 200 years ago.


Well duh there were no humans around back then. But how to do you account for volcanic activity being such an important part of climate change in the past if it is solar activity?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 01, 2015, 04:06:11 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 01, 2015, 02:44:08 PM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 01:17:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 01, 2015, 11:26:57 AM
Quote from: Siege on December 01, 2015, 11:24:55 AM
The big fight is over CO2, which is nothing more than food for plants, as the culprit of climate change, as if climate has not being always changing, with the ice ages, mini ice ages, warm periods, and so on.

Yes...and why did those climate changes occur I wonder?
Mostly solar activity.
Definitely not because of human action since the industrial revolution only happened 200 years ago.

How do you know this?

Shush Raz, he's read the talking points; maybe some were on bumper stickers too.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 01, 2015, 04:11:20 PM
Quote from: mongers on December 01, 2015, 04:06:11 PM
Shush Raz, he's read the talking points; maybe some were on bumper stickers too.

If you ask him to explain how he came to his conclusions, that opens the possibility for a critique of evidence and logic which could possibly result in Siege changing his mind.

If you just take a piss on him and his opinions at the beginning, that possibility diminishes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 01, 2015, 04:21:38 PM
Well we know the climate was different millions of years ago.  There lived creatures hundreds of millions of years ago that could not live today, like dragon flies the size of your arm or nine foot millipedes.  For those to exist you need a much higher level of oxygen level in the atmosphere for something without lungs to breathe.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on December 03, 2015, 12:57:26 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CR3PdklWcAA3eYf.png)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on December 03, 2015, 01:24:36 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 25, 2015, 07:06:13 AM

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fichef-1.bbci.co.uk%2Fnews%2F624%2Fcpsprodpb%2F17359%2Fproduction%2F_86856059_86856058.jpg&hash=a97e5d86b9b04f427aded706d4f20a5e8612ed99)


Looks like the death of Elvis was the turning point.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 03, 2015, 02:29:26 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

I guess it's saying we should be scared of ISIS instead of global warming.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 03, 2015, 08:31:49 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on December 03, 2015, 02:29:26 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

I guess it's saying we should be scared of ISIS instead of global warming.  :hmm:

Maybe more along the lines of blaming the victim or Obama keeping America defenceless as he pursues his own agenda etc.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on December 03, 2015, 11:21:52 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on December 03, 2015, 02:29:26 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

I guess it's saying we should be scared of ISIS instead of global warming.  :hmm:

Yeah, I think it is an example of simplistic idiots trying to argue that the US can only deal with a single problem at any time.  I.E. is is standard projection by morons.  I think morons find it funny.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 03, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

Presumably we are all on the verge of being killed on Muslims.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 03, 2015, 11:46:34 AM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 17, 2015, 06:14:52 PM
Since the actual measurements of global temperature didn't show any actual warming the climate fraudsters had to "adjust" the data to comport with their climate models.  Now that people are wondering how the fuck they came up with this very convenient adjustment they are clamming up and refusing to release the process that led to this conclusion, even though they are legally obligated to do so since this is publicly funded.

Well, the actually measured change of temperature is shown below:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fearthobservatory.nasa.gov%2FFeatures%2FGlobalWarming%2Fimages%2Fmsu_1978-2010.png&hash=b1d0aea8385d0ecd9bdc41c1a593ee7cc1d1132f)

I can't believe I missed this doozy before.
Hans presumably pulled this from this fact backgrounder on the NASA page:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page1.php

As the backgrounder explains, global warming from an increase in solar energy output would have the effect of increasing tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures alike (along with the surface).  A greenhouse effect, on the other hand, should increase tropospheric and surface temperature, but *decrease* stratospheric temperatures.  The NASA graph therefore shows that the observed surface warming effect is consistent with warming being driven by greenhouse gas effects and not from a temporary increase in solar output.  (the fact that it is nice and cool up in the stratosphere is fun to know but not useful unless we are plan to live in B-52s).

Of course, the NASA data shows increases in surface temperature and the NASA site explains the evidence for warming.

It doesn't surprise to see the likes of Hans and Lamar Smith accuse scientists of fudging data for political purposes; it reflects how they think, and it is exactly what Hans is doing right here in this thread.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on December 03, 2015, 01:00:08 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 03, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

Presumably we are all on the verge of being killed on Muslims.

I mean, if we all book a flight to Iraq, hop the border to Syria, and sign on with one of the various militias, our odds are pretty high!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 03, 2015, 04:06:18 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 03, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

Presumably we are all on the verge of being killed on Muslims.

It's a piece of wood.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 03, 2015, 04:56:35 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on December 03, 2015, 01:00:08 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 03, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2015, 01:17:37 AM
I don't get it.

Presumably we are all on the verge of being killed on Muslims.

I mean, if we all book a flight to Iraq, hop the border to Syria, and sign on with one of the various militias, our odds are pretty high!

I look at the picture a little more and it could be a really fat ninja.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 04, 2015, 08:47:47 AM
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/

QuoteWhy Climate Skeptics Are Wrong

Or why climate skeptics are wrong

At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists—or even just one—supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen?

An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a "consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell argued, it must be based on more than one induction—or a single generalization drawn from specific facts. It must have multiple inductions that converge on one another, independently but in conjunction. "Accordingly the cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have thus jumped together," he wrote in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, "belong only to the best established theories which the history of science contains." Call it a "convergence of evidence."

Consensus science is a phrase often heard today in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Is there a consensus on AGW? There is. The tens of thousands of scientists who belong to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all concur that AGW is in fact real. Why?

It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." The answer is that there is a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry—pollen, tree rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise, ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of temperature increase—that all converge to a singular conclusion. AGW doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the consensus, they would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show a consistent convergence of evidence toward a different theory that explains the data. (Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary theory.) This they have not done.

A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by Australian researchers John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined 11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, about 97 percent concluded that climate change is real and caused by humans. What about the remaining 3 percent or so of studies? What if they're right? In a 2015 paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined the 3 percent and found "a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes." That is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything.

"There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming," Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015, commentary in the Guardian. "Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics." For example, one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered, they had to throw out 6,000 years' worth of earlier data.

Such practices are deceptive and fail to further climate science when exposed by skeptical scrutiny, an integral element to the scientific process.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 09:48:58 AM
Quote(Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary theory.)

It isn't a problem for either group, it is a feature.

And I suspect a large overlap in those groups in any case.

NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH RELIGION! IT IS FINE!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 10:25:06 AM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 09:48:58 AM
NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH RELIGION! IT IS FINE!

Religion is fine at being religion. It sucks at being science though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 10:25:06 AM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 09:48:58 AM
NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH RELIGION! IT IS FINE!

Religion is fine at being religion. It sucks at being science though.

Sadly, for many there isn't any difference between the two.

But to be honest, I actually think the relatively recent "reasoned" retreat of religion from material science is in fact something of a cop out - a way to hang onto the framework of religion after science has thoroughly debunked it.

The bible does in fact make very clear claims about the physical world, for example. Claims which are simply false, and we know they are false on the basis of modern science which was not available to the writers. In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 10:41:15 AM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM

But to be honest, I actually think the relatively recent "reasoned" retreat of religion from material science is in fact something of a cop out - a way to hang onto the framework of religion after science has thoroughly debunked it.

I don't. I do not think it was ever intended to be about material science.

QuoteThe bible does in fact make very clear claims about the physical world, for example. Claims which are simply false, and we know they are false on the basis of modern science which was not available to the writers. In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.

No it doesn't. And besides the Bible makes many obviously false historical claims that were known at the time to be false. They get the name of the King of Babylon wrong, they get the number of Kings of Persia wrong, and so forth and all this was known. St. Augustine said anybody who thinks the earth was literally created in a week is an idiot because that was not the point. And frankly I could go on and on and on here. So I disagree that modern science was necessary for this to be obvious and that taking the Bible as it was intended to be taken is some kind of new cop out.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 11:17:14 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 10:41:15 AM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM

But to be honest, I actually think the relatively recent "reasoned" retreat of religion from material science is in fact something of a cop out - a way to hang onto the framework of religion after science has thoroughly debunked it.

I don't. I do not think it was ever intended to be about material science.

QuoteThe bible does in fact make very clear claims about the physical world, for example. Claims which are simply false, and we know they are false on the basis of modern science which was not available to the writers. In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.

No it doesn't. And besides the Bible makes many obviously false historical claims that were known at the time to be false. They get the name of the King of Babylon wrong, they get the number of Kings of Persia wrong, and so forth and all this was known. St. Augustine said anybody who thinks the earth was literally created in a week is an idiot because that was not the point. And frankly I could go on and on and on here. So I disagree that modern science was necessary for this to be obvious and that taking the Bible as it was intended to be taken is some kind of new cop out.

By the time of St. Augustine, it was pretty obvious that you can't create worlds in a day. At the time Genesis was written, maybe not so much.

People still believe today that god covered the entire globe with a flood, for example. Did he or did he not? The bible says he did, and that was considered to be "true", and for those who were the original consumers, it probably was effectively true.

And if you believe in an omnipotent god, then in fact it isn't even unreasonable to believe that it is true. Why not? If you believe that any one single story in the bible of something happening that is physically beyond material science, then why is it ridiculous to believe that other "magic" things happen? indeed, it isn't even "magic" at that point, it is just the universe following the actual physical laws that define it - said laws including an omnipotent being capable of doing things like resurrecting his nominal "son" and turning water into wine or creating the world in seven days.

What do YOU believe Valmy? Does the bible describe even one single instance of anything happening that is beyond rational scientific understanding? Some actual, physical occurrence?

Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:13:14 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM
In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.

:berkut:

He's gone full Viking.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:15:34 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:13:14 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM
In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.

:berkut:

He's gone full Viking.


Nah, not really.

I think the YECs are a bit more consistent, but at the same time I accept Valmy's more nuanced position that such consistency isn't really that important - there is value to be extracted regardless, and presumably he feels it is a worthwhile endeavor to extract that value even if it involves a bit of biblical cherry picking.

I would like to hear his answer to my question though...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 01:28:43 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:13:14 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:32:00 AM
In a rather perverse way, the Young Earth Creationists are in some fashion a more "honest" Christian, in that they recognize that you can't jut pretend like the bible doesn't say what it rather obvious does say simply because it is patently untrue.

:berkut:

He's gone full Viking.

Sad isn't it?  It's the path of all lazy Atheists.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 04, 2015, 01:28:50 PM
How magic is it if it took him three fucking days?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 01:36:06 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 11:17:14 AM
By the time of St. Augustine, it was pretty obvious that you can't create worlds in a day. At the time Genesis was written, maybe not so much.

It was a common motif in that culture that is for sure. Hard to get into the heads of people that ancient. But I was talking about Christianity specifically. I think when it was adopted everybody understood the nature of the Bible. It would just make no sense to adopt it the way they did if they had a modern pseudo-scientific understanding of it like the YEC crowd.

QuotePeople still believe today that god covered the entire globe with a flood, for example. Did he or did he not? The bible says he did, and that was considered to be "true", and for those who were the original consumers, it probably was effectively true.

Again this was a common motif in that area. Everybody incorporated that story into their religion so the Bible had to put their own spin on it. And what the world meant to them is different, after all, Cyrus went around calling himself  King of the Universe. I don't think anybody took that to mean there were no people outside of his rule.

QuoteAnd if you believe in an omnipotent god, then in fact it isn't even unreasonable to believe that it is true. Why not? If you believe that any one single story in the bible of something happening that is physically beyond material science, then why is it ridiculous to believe that other "magic" things happen? indeed, it isn't even "magic" at that point, it is just the universe following the actual physical laws that define it - said laws including an omnipotent being capable of doing things like resurrecting his nominal "son" and turning water into wine or creating the world in seven days.

This is a materialist modern pseudo-scientific perspective that makes no sense if you plug it in to say...the Byzantine Empire. They still would take in taxes and drill their armies and plan strategy and do everything somebody who does not believe in God would do in order to win a battle. If they believed God's power was physically and materially real then they would just work their mojo and win. But they did both contradictory things and saw no contradiction in it, because that was their understanding of how things worked. But lots of ancient civilizations were like this.

To my modern mind I can easily understand this contradiction. In the "material" world there is no God. Period. I think ancient people grasped this but in a different way, they were always going on about how the material world was an illusion or separate.

QuoteWhat do YOU believe Valmy? Does the bible describe even one single instance of anything happening that is beyond rational scientific understanding? Some actual, physical occurrence?

I believe that nothing in the Bible happened like it says it did or if it did it is a coincidence that was not necessarily intended. The writers of the Bible did not really worry too much if they got the name of the King of Babylon right because that was not the point.

I mean even Herodotus couldn't help but turn his histories into morality plays without too much concern for stern accuracy and he WAS actually trying to do a historical study.

QuoteDid Jesus actually rise from the dead?

In a material scientific sense? Nope.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: lustindarkness on December 04, 2015, 01:39:21 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 04, 2015, 01:28:50 PM
How magic is it if it took him three fucking days?

Fucking lag. <_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 01:42:16 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:15:34 PMNah, not really.

I think the YECs are a bit more consistent, but at the same time I accept Valmy's more nuanced position that such consistency isn't really that important - there is value to be extracted regardless, and presumably he feels it is a worthwhile endeavor to extract that value even if it involves a bit of biblical cherry picking.

I would like to hear his answer to my question though...

I disagree. The YECs are the kings of cherry picking. They have to. Their beliefs make no sense Biblically so they have to ignore whatever is inconvenient. Like Jewish Law. Jesus says you should obey the law in some places (and very stringently at that). Peter and Jesus' brother, the dudes who knew him personally, had that understanding. Yet other things Jesus is quoted saying indicate just the opposite in other places. So what to do...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:42:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 01:36:06 PM
In a material scientific sense? Nope.

Interesting - I applaud you for your consistency.

I don't think you are qualified to really call yourself a "Christian" though. Certainly not under the standard definition of the term anyway, as someone who believes that Christ manifested on Earth and died and arose to heaven, etc., etc.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:46:17 PM
Yeah, so I don't think I was wrong. Not if you are going to go all Viking and regulate who is and who is not a Christian. :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:46:17 PM
Yeah, so I don't think I was wrong. Not if you are going to go all Viking and regulate who is and who is not a Christian. :lol:

huh?

Words have meaning. "Christian" has meaning.

I am not "regulating" anything - I have no power to do so.

But if someone says they have some characteristic, and then proceeds to deny the very things that define that characteristic in my mind, then it hardly makes me some kind of radical to think that they don't really meet the definition as I understand it - and as I think most people understand it.

I think if you asked 100 Christians if they feel that a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, that he came to the Earth, died, and was resurrected was a defining characteristic of what the word "Christian" actually means, 90 of them would agree that at the least that is a necessary condition for Christianity.

I am fine with Valmy feeling that he is a Christian under whatever terms he likes - but noting that he falls well outside the typical definition is hardly unreasonable.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 02:44:44 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
I am fine with Valmy feeling that he is a Christian under whatever terms he likes - but noting that he falls well outside the typical definition is hardly unreasonable.

That is only because you are defining a Christian as one who gives the Bible a literal interpretation.  Valmy says he does not do so.  I don't think he is the only Christian who takes that view.  Indeed it is probably only the Protetestant fundy North American Christians who take the literalist view in any great numbers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 02:44:44 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
I am fine with Valmy feeling that he is a Christian under whatever terms he likes - but noting that he falls well outside the typical definition is hardly unreasonable.

That is only because you are defining a Christian as one who gives the Bible a literal interpretation.  Valmy says he does not do so.  I don't think he is the only Christian who takes that view.  Indeed it is probably only the Protetestant fundy North American Christians who take the literalist view in any great numbers.

There is a wide range though in "taking it literally".

I went to a Lutheran school, for example. They were about as non-fundy as Christians come, and did not take the bible literally at all. I spent countless hours in bible study on what was and was not literal, and what the message was of various non-literal stories.

But they most certainly believed, and taught, that Jesus Christ was an actually person who actually existed and was actually born of a virgin and actually was the son of god and actually was executed and actually did in fact rise from the dead.

They are not "fundies" by any means, and I suspect represent the vast majority of Christian (including Catholic) thought on what actually happened in regards to Christ.

I think it is a small minority of people who call themselves Christians who would claim that Christ did not actually rise from the dead.

So no, I am not defining Christians as only those who take the bible literally. I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 04, 2015, 03:03:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 01:42:16 PM
I disagree. The YECs are the kings of cherry picking. They have to. Their beliefs make no sense Biblically so they have to ignore whatever is inconvenient. Like Jewish Law. Jesus says you should obey the law in some places (and very stringently at that). Peter and Jesus' brother, the dudes who knew him personally, had that understanding. Yet other things Jesus is quoted saying indicate just the opposite in other places. So what to do...

Which laws did he say to follow?  I've never heard of this.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 03:09:06 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 02:44:44 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
I am fine with Valmy feeling that he is a Christian under whatever terms he likes - but noting that he falls well outside the typical definition is hardly unreasonable.

That is only because you are defining a Christian as one who gives the Bible a literal interpretation.  Valmy says he does not do so.  I don't think he is the only Christian who takes that view.  Indeed it is probably only the Protetestant fundy North American Christians who take the literalist view in any great numbers.

There is a wide range though in "taking it literally".

I went to a Lutheran school, for example. They were about as non-fundy as Christians come, and did not take the bible literally at all. I spent countless hours in bible study on what was and was not literal, and what the message was of various non-literal stories.

But they most certainly believed, and taught, that Jesus Christ was an actually person who actually existed and was actually born of a virgin and actually was the son of god and actually was executed and actually did in fact rise from the dead.

They are not "fundies" by any means, and I suspect represent the vast majority of Christian (including Catholic) thought on what actually happened in regards to Christ.

I think it is a small minority of people who call themselves Christians who would claim that Christ did not actually rise from the dead.

So no, I am not defining Christians as only those who take the bible literally. I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.

Sure, but the point you made earlier was that it was a cop out for Christianity to (I think you put it "back out of material science" or something like that) and you used the early earthers as an example of more honest Christians.  In fact the Vatican, for one, does not back away from the study of science and your assertion that early earthers are the honest ones really only applies the literal interpretation of the Bible is the only legitimate interpretation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 04, 2015, 03:21:55 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 04, 2015, 01:46:17 PM
Yeah, so I don't think I was wrong. Not if you are going to go all Viking and regulate who is and who is not a Christian. :lol:

Mitt Romney- not a Christian
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 03:24:08 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 04, 2015, 03:03:00 PM
Which laws did he say to follow?  I've never heard of this.

All of them.

Matthew 5:18

QuoteFor truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

And the writer of Matthew is really big on the Law.

As were James and Peter. Paul disagreed and this was a point of controversy but then he didn't actually know Jesus like the other two guys did he?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 03:31:43 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:42:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 01:36:06 PM
In a material scientific sense? Nope.

Interesting - I applaud you for your consistency.

I don't think you are qualified to really call yourself a "Christian" though. Certainly not under the standard definition of the term anyway, as someone who believes that Christ manifested on Earth and died and arose to heaven, etc., etc.

Well the Fundies would certainly agree with you :lol:

But I naturally think that my views are correct and are true Christianity and that they are wrong. Because that is what being a Christian is all about.

I do think there is a long historical tradition of people with my views actually. But yeah I wouldn't be a Christian if I had to believe otherwise. I guess I could try to find another name but really what is the difference? I go to Church on Sunday and praise Jesus and pray to God. I donate money to the poor and all that. Seems like I am in the club to me (and naturally in the most true and best part of it :P )
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:02:25 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.

*ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism

QuoteUnitarianism is a Christian theological movement named for the affirmation that God is one entity, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism, which defines God as three persons in one being. Unitarians maintain that Jesus of Nazareth is in some sense the "son" of God (as all humans are children of the Creator), but that he is not the one God himself. They may believe that he was inspired by God in his moral teachings and can be considered a savior, but all Unitarians perceive Christ as human rather than divine.

Hence I call myself a Unitarian, which is a kind of Christian.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 04:04:15 PM
Wide spread Biblical literalism is a fairly new phenomenon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 04:05:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 03:31:43 PM
But I naturally think that my views are correct and are true Christianity and that they are wrong. Because that is what being a Christian is all about.

What do two Protestants do when they meet?  They disagree and start their own churches.   
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 04, 2015, 04:08:29 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:02:25 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.

*ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism

QuoteUnitarianism is a Christian theological movement named for the affirmation that God is one entity, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism, which defines God as three persons in one being. Unitarians maintain that Jesus of Nazareth is in some sense the "son" of God (as all humans are children of the Creator), but that he is not the one God himself. They may believe that he was inspired by God in his moral teachings and can be considered a savior, but all Unitarians perceive Christ as human rather than divine.

Hence I call myself a Unitarian.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God <snip> And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

Pretty sure John was saying that Jesus was God here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:12:01 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 04:04:15 PM
Wide spread Biblical literalism is a fairly new phenomenon.

It is due to science and the enlightenment actually. They think you can apply the Bible like you can apply Newtons Laws.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:12:39 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on December 04, 2015, 04:08:29 PM
Pretty sure John was saying that Jesus was God here.

Sure. I and the father are one. But not in the literal sense.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:14:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 04:05:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 03:31:43 PM
But I naturally think that my views are correct and are true Christianity and that they are wrong. Because that is what being a Christian is all about.

What do two Protestants do when they meet?  They disagree and start their own churches.   

:thumbsup: :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 04:25:23 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:12:01 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 04:04:15 PM
Wide spread Biblical literalism is a fairly new phenomenon.

It is due to science and the enlightenment actually. They think you can apply the Bible like you can apply Newtons Laws.

It is sadly championed by ignorant rubes.  Some of those rubes are even Christians.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:17:28 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 03:09:06 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 04, 2015, 02:44:44 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
I am fine with Valmy feeling that he is a Christian under whatever terms he likes - but noting that he falls well outside the typical definition is hardly unreasonable.

That is only because you are defining a Christian as one who gives the Bible a literal interpretation.  Valmy says he does not do so.  I don't think he is the only Christian who takes that view.  Indeed it is probably only the Protetestant fundy North American Christians who take the literalist view in any great numbers.

There is a wide range though in "taking it literally".

I went to a Lutheran school, for example. They were about as non-fundy as Christians come, and did not take the bible literally at all. I spent countless hours in bible study on what was and was not literal, and what the message was of various non-literal stories.

But they most certainly believed, and taught, that Jesus Christ was an actually person who actually existed and was actually born of a virgin and actually was the son of god and actually was executed and actually did in fact rise from the dead.

They are not "fundies" by any means, and I suspect represent the vast majority of Christian (including Catholic) thought on what actually happened in regards to Christ.

I think it is a small minority of people who call themselves Christians who would claim that Christ did not actually rise from the dead.

So no, I am not defining Christians as only those who take the bible literally. I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.

Sure, but the point you made earlier was that it was a cop out for Christianity to (I think you put it "back out of material science" or something like that) and you used the early earthers as an example of more honest Christians.  In fact the Vatican, for one, does not back away from the study of science and your assertion that early earthers are the honest ones really only applies the literal interpretation of the Bible is the only legitimate interpretation.



Ahhh, ok, I see what you mean.

You are taking me too literally - my comment was not meant that seriously, or rather my comment seemed like I thought it was more meaningful than I really meant it. Or something like that.

In any case, I am trying to say that YECs are, in some ways, more consistent in that they simply take what the bible says at face value, and damn the consequences. I am not saying that is a good thing, or that they are "better" Christians, just more of a interesting sort of note on various religious groupings of belief.

I had a fellow officials who was a YEC. We had some interesting discussions on long trips to St. Lawrence.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:19:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:02:25 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 02:59:12 PM
I would define the term "Christian" to refer to people who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think that is really a controversial definition.


*ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism)


QuoteUnitarianism is a Christian theological movement named for the affirmation that God is one entity, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism, which defines God as three persons in one being. Unitarians maintain that Jesus of Nazareth is in some sense the "son" of God (as all humans are children of the Creator), but that he is not the one God himself. They may believe that he was inspired by God in his moral teachings and can be considered a savior, but all Unitarians perceive Christ as human rather than divine.


Hence I call myself a Unitarian, which is a kind of Christian.


Fair enough.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Ed Anger on December 04, 2015, 10:20:14 PM
Ugh, Unitarians.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 04, 2015, 10:22:41 PM
Guys, why is every other thread on the forum turning in to 'discussion' focused around religion.   <_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 04, 2015, 10:23:47 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 04:12:01 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 04:04:15 PM
Wide spread Biblical literalism is a fairly new phenomenon.

It is due to science and the enlightenment actually. They think you can apply the Bible like you can apply Newtons Laws.

OK, lets be clear here though.

Biblical literalism is NOT talking about people who believe that Christ really existed, really was divine, really did rise from the dead, and all this is supernatural.

The set of Christians are not "People who think like Valmy" and "Bible literalists".

Really, bring up biblical literalists is pretty much a red herring in regards to the discussion me and Valmy are having about his rather peculiar (compared to mainstream Christianity) religious beliefs.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 04, 2015, 11:30:21 PM
Are you talking to me? :huh:  I would say that in the time of St. Augustine they had no more idea how the word formed then they did 700 years prior.  People really didn't have a good idea how old the Earth was until the 18th century.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 04, 2015, 11:49:04 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 04, 2015, 10:20:14 PM
Ugh, Unitarians.

Hey! Some of our most mediocre one term Presidents have been Unitarians!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on December 05, 2015, 12:18:34 AM
Actually, I would say that much of the Biblical literalism dates back (at least) to the heresies of the High Middle Ages/Late Middle Ages.  The Protestant Reformation underlined much of the earlier heresies and gave it the stamp of widespread publishing, but the "back to the Bible" movement has been a force for quite a bit longer than the what was stated above.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 05, 2015, 10:11:44 PM
Quote from: PDH on December 05, 2015, 12:18:34 AM
Actually, I would say that much of the Biblical literalism dates back (at least) to the heresies of the High Middle Ages/Late Middle Ages.  The Protestant Reformation underlined much of the earlier heresies and gave it the stamp of widespread publishing, but the "back to the Bible" movement has been a force for quite a bit longer than the what was stated above.

I get what you are saying but I still do not think it is the same thing. After all the 'back to the bible' movement also created my sorta Christians as well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on December 06, 2015, 10:34:04 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 04, 2015, 10:22:41 PM
Guys, why is every other thread on the forum turning in to 'discussion' focused around religion.   <_<

Because the threat of Viking intervention is no more. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 06, 2015, 12:28:55 PM
Quote from: Liep on December 06, 2015, 10:34:04 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 04, 2015, 10:22:41 PM
Guys, why is every other thread on the forum turning in to 'discussion' focused around religion.   <_<

Because the threat of Viking intervention is no more. :(

:D

Now I really do miss him.  :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 07, 2015, 08:24:21 AM
I thought this was a good article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/even-exxonmobil-says-climate-change-is-real-so-why-wont-the-gop/2015/12/06/913e4b12-9aa6-11e5-b499-76cbec161973_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Quote from: Washington Post
Even ExxonMobil says climate change is real. So why won't the GOP?
To understand how dangerously extreme the Republican Party has become on climate change, compare its stance to that of ExxonMobil.

No one would confuse the oil and gas giant with the Sierra Club. But if you visit Exxon's website , you will find that the company believes climate change is real, that governments should take action to combat it and that the most sensible action would be a revenue-neutral tax on carbon — in other words, a tax on oil, gas and coal, with the proceeds returned to taxpayers for them to spend as they choose.
Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Post. He writes editorials for the newspaper and a biweekly column that appears on Mondays. He also contributes to the PostPartisan blog. View Archive

With no government action, Exxon experts told us during a visit to The Post last week, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic (my word, not theirs) 5 degrees Celsius, with rises of 6, 7 or even more quite possible.

"A properly designed carbon tax can be predictable, transparent, and comparatively simple to understand and implement," Exxon says in a position paper titled "Engaging on climate change."

None of this is radical. Officials negotiating a climate agreement right now in Paris would take it as self-evident. Republican leaders in the 1980s and 1990s would have raised no objection.
Play Video2:13
The Paris climate talks, explained
Understand decades of climate change negotiations and what's at stake in Paris in two minutes. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

But to today's Republicans, ExxonMobil's moderate, self-evident views are akin to heresy. Donald Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate, says, "I don't believe in climate change." Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) says, "Climate change is not science, it's religion." Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at the moment seems to acknowledge that climate change might be real but opposes any action to deal with it.

Well, you may say, Trump revels in his stupidities, and most of the presidential candidates are appealing to the rightmost wing of their primary electorate at the moment. What about the grownups in the party, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)?

Glad you asked.

In an op-ed for The Post published as President Obama traveled to Paris for the opening of the climate talks, McConnell slammed Obama's policy for harming the middle class without measurably affecting climate change.

Does that mean, I asked the majority leader's press secretary, that he believes climate change is real, and are there policies he would favor to mitigate the risk?

The spokesman answered: "While the Leader has spoken often on energy and the President's policies, I don't believe he'll have anything new today. And as to the President's policies, the President says he's for 'all of the above.' He got that line from us. But as to his climate proposal and the Paris proposals, I think he's spoken clearly on that in his op-ed. I hope that helps."

I tried once more: "So as to whether he believes climate change is real, or would favor any policies to mitigate it, I should just say, declined to answer?"

I didn't hear back.

A genuine conservative, as Ronald Reagan's secretary of state George P. Shultz has written, would acknowledge uncertainties in climate science but look for rational, market-based policies to lessen the risk without slowing economic growth. A revenue-neutral carbon tax, as in a bill Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has introduced, fits the description precisely.

What then explains the know-nothingism of today's Republicans? Some of them see scientists as part of a left-wing cabal; many of them doubt government's ability to do anything, let alone something as big as redirecting the economy's energy use. Almost all of them, along with quite a few Democrats, would rather not tell voters that energy prices need to rise for the sake of the environment.

Their donors in the oil and gas industry encourage their prejudices. Three years ago, Grover Norquist, the Republicans' anti-tax enforcer, said that a carbon tax wouldn't violate his no-tax-increase pledge if the proceeds were returned by lowering the income tax, though he made clear he didn't like the idea.

The next morning, the lobbying arm of the oil and gas industry swung into action. "Grover, just butch it up and oppose this lousy idea directly," the American Energy Alliance said. "This word-smithing is giving us all headaches."

For most of us, the reaction to this would have been: Butch it up? But Norquist got the message and within hours issued a clarification: Only a constitutional amendment banning the income tax could justify a carbon tax.

So the industry deserves its share of blame, and that includes ExxonMobil, which hardly trumpets its views on the advantages of a carbon tax. (Its most alarming slide, on the 5-degree temperature rise, can't be found on its public site.)

But blaming it all on Big Oil lets the politicians off too easily. Yes, McConnell represents a coal state, and, yes, he wants to preserve his Senate majority. If those considerations are more important to him than saving the planet, let him say so to our children and grandchildren. Let's not blame the oil companies for the pusillanimity of people who are supposed to lead.

Good question: why won't they?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on December 07, 2015, 08:35:09 AM
Article falls apart when it starts discussing McConnell.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 07, 2015, 08:47:51 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 06, 2015, 12:28:55 PM
:D

Now I really do miss him.  :(

It is, of course, dead wrong. We had far more discussions about religion back when Viking made every thread about religion. We are having them again because Berkut is trying to fill in for him -_-
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Brazen on December 07, 2015, 09:15:57 AM
Storm Desmond has swept the Northwest of the UK bringing power cuts and school and hospitals closures. At least one person has died. There was record-breaking rainfall of more than 340mm in a 24-hour period.

On a lighter note, apparently US celebrity fans saw "Storm Desmond" trending and thought it was Kim and Kanye's name for their new baby  :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on December 08, 2015, 08:22:04 PM
Apparently Greenpeace has caught two US academics willing to write for hire pieces against climate change on behalf of fake fossil fuel companies.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/08/greenpeace-exposes-sceptics-cast-doubt-climate-science (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/08/greenpeace-exposes-sceptics-cast-doubt-climate-science)

QuoteGreenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science
Sting operation uncovers two prominent climate sceptics available for hire by the hour to write reports on the benefits of rising CO2 levels and coal

An undercover sting by Greenpeace has revealed that two prominent climate sceptics were available for hire by the hour to write reports casting doubt on the dangers posed by global warming.

Posing as consultants to fossil fuel companies, Greenpeace approached professors at leading US universities to commission reports touting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels and the benefits of coal. The views of both academics are well outside mainstream climate science.

The findings point to how paid-for information challenging the consensus on climate science could be placed into the public domain without the ultimate source of funding being revealed.

They come as government ministers meet in Paris this week to try to reach an agreement to fight climate change, and one month after it emerged that ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy were under investigation in the state of New York over claims of misleading the public and investors about climate change.

Over the course of their investigation, Greenpeace posed as the representative of a Middle Eastern oil and gas company and an Indonesian coal company. In the guise of a Beirut-based business consultant they asked William Ha pper , the Cyrus Fogg Brackett professor of physics at Princeton University, to write a report touting the benefits of rising carbon emissions, according to email exchanges between the professor and the fake company.

Happer is one of the most prominent climate sceptics in the US and on Tuesday was called to testify at a congressional hearing into climate "dogma" convened by Ted Cruz, the Republican presidential candidate and chair of the Senate science committee. He is also chairman of the George Marshal Institute in the US and an adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK.

Reacting to the sting at the UN climate talks in Paris, US secretary of state John Kerry was dismissive of the impact of such paid-for work. "One professor or one scientist is not going to negate peer-reviewed scientists by the thousands over many years and 97% of the scientists on the planet," he said.

The proposed report for the fake consultant was intended to highlight the negative aspects of the climate agreement being negotiated in Paris, he was told in the email approach. The physicist was receptive to the commission, and asked to donate his fee to the CO2 Coalition, a group founded this year to "shift the debate from the unjustified criticism of CO2 and fossil fuels".

"My activities to push back against climate extremism are a labor of love, to defend the cherished ideals of science that have been so corrupted by the climate change cult," he wrote in an email. He did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

The campaign group assumed another false identity, posing as an Indonesian energy consultancy, to approach Frank Clemente, a retired sociologist formerly at Pennsylvania State University, to commission a report countering damaging studies on Indonesian coal deaths and promoting the benefits of coal, according to the email exchanges.

In both cases, the professors discussed ways to obscure the funding for the reports, at the request of the fake companies. In Happer's case, the CO2 Coalition which was to receive the fee suggested he reach out to a secretive funding channel called Donors Trust, in response to a request from the fake Greenpeace entity to keep the source of funds secret. Not disclosing funding in this way is not unlawful under US law.

Also, in an email exchange with the fake business representative, Happer acknowledges that his report would probably not pass peer-review with a scientific journal – the gold-standard process for quality scientific publication whereby work is assessed by anonymous expert reviewers. "I could submit the article to a peer-reviewed journal, but that might greatly delay publication and might require such major changes in response to referees and to the journal editor that the article would no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly as your client would also like," he wrote.

He suggested an alternative process whereby the article could be passed around handpicked reviewers. "Purists might object that the process did not qualify as a peer review," he said. "I think it would be fine to call it a peer review."

Greenpeace said its investigation demonstrated how, unbeknownst to the public, the fossil fuel industry could inject paid-for views about climate change into the international debate, confusing the public and blocking prospects for strong action to avoid dangerous warming.

"Our research reveals that professors at prestigious universities can be sponsored by foreign fossil fuel companies to write reports that sow doubt about climate change and that this sponsorship will then be kept secret," said John Sauven, the director of Greenpeace UK. "Down the years, how many scientific reports that sowed public doubt on climate change were actually funded by oil, coal and gas companies? This investigation shows how they do it, now we need to know when and where they did it."

Such practices are receiving greater scrutiny in academic circles after it emerged that Dr Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who rejects mainstream climate science, was financed almost entirely by fossil fuel companies and lobby groups and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers. The Smithsonian launched an investigation.

In Happer's case, the physicist declined any personal remuneration for his work but wanted his fee donated to the CO2 Coalition. Happer wrote in an email that his fee was $250 an hour and that it would require four days of work – a total of $8,000. "Depending on how extensive a document you have in mind, the time required or cost could be more or less, but I hope this gives you some idea of what I would expect if we were to proceed on some mutually agreeable course," he wrote.

Clemente, who was approached by the sham Indonesian firm to produce a report countering findings linking coal to high rates of premature death, said such a project fell within his skill set. He estimated a fee of about $15,000 for an eight-to-10-page paper, according to email correspondence released by Greenpeace. The professor said he charged $6,000 for writing newspaper opinion pieces.

He said there was no problem quoting him as professor emeritus at Penn State, or obscuring the funding for the research. "There is no requirement to declare source funding in the US. My research and writing has been supported by government agencies, trade associations, the university and private companies and all has been published under the rubric of me as an independent scholar – which I am."

Clemente told the Guardian that he acted as a consultant to "many industries that improve the human quality of life".

He added: "I fully stand behind every single statement I made in my emails. I am very proud of my research and believe that clean coal technologies are the pathway to reliable and affordable electricity, reduction of global energy poverty and a cleaner environment."

"I write is an independent scholar and University is not responsible for any of my work. This is called academic freedom in the United States," he said.

Greenpeace said it had approached a total of seven prominent figures in the US and UK climate denial movement. The other five declined, either citing time pressures and area of expertise, or just did not respond.

Greenpeace argues its investigation offered a rare glimpse into the practice of clandestine industry funding of reports casting doubts about the threat of climate change. The campaign group argues that obscuring funding in this way dupes the public into thinking the reports are produced by the scholars independently with no financial interests at stake.

Happer, who served as an energy adviser for former president George HW Bush, has long argued that rising carbon emissions are a net benefit for humanity.

He returned to the point in his email exchanges with the fake entity, saying: "The Paris climate talks are based on the premise that CO2 itself is a pollutant. This is completely false. More CO2 will benefit the world."

Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University and author of Merchants of Doubt, a book about the climate denial movement, said Happer had been deploying the same arguments that CO2 is good for agriculture for about 20 years – even though such claims have, she said, been thoroughly debunked. "He has been recycling refuted arguments for quite some time now," she said.

"Happer sits in the profile of people we wrote about in Merchants of Doubt," she said. "I've always argued that for this group of people, cold war physicists, it's not about money, it's ideologically driven."

Meanwhile, Peabody Energy regularly cites Clemente's research to make its case that expanding coal use to developing countries would help eliminate global poverty. That argument runs counter to the thinking of financial institutions such as the World Bank which has rejected the notion of coal as a poverty cure.

Happer noted he had also donated an $8,000 fee from Peabody for testimony in a Minnesota state hearing on the impacts of carbon dioxide to the CO2 Coalition.

Happer did not dispute the veracity of the emails, but refused to address questions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 09, 2015, 11:40:57 AM
Quote"I've always argued that for this group of people, cold war physicists, it's not about money, it's ideologically driven."

Damn straight. That and the pussy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 09, 2015, 04:53:06 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 07, 2015, 08:24:21 AM
Good question: why won't they?

Because the GOP is not Exxon.
Exxon is a private corporation that pursues profit, but at the end of the day they have to operate a complex business that involves a lot of engineering and geology, and requires long-term planning.  They can't afford to indulge in political fantasy, if for no other reason than phenomena like higher storm intensity or sea level rise has significant ramifications for their very substantial investments in offshore drilling, or Gulf Coast refineries.

Exxon has no choice but to remain a member of the reality-based community, but large swaths of the GOP have no such compulsion - on the contrary they may face pressures from their base to depart from it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 09, 2015, 04:57:27 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 09, 2015, 04:53:06 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 07, 2015, 08:24:21 AM
Good question: why won't they?

Because the GOP is not Exxon.
Exxon is a private corporation that pursues profit, but at the end of the day they have to operate a complex business that involves a lot of engineering and geology, and requires long-term planning.  They can't afford to indulge in political fantasy, if for no other reason than phenomena like higher storm intensity or sea level rise has significant ramifications for their very substantial investments in offshore drilling, or Gulf Coast refineries.

Exxon has no choice but to remain a member of the reality-based community, but large swaths of the GOP have no such compulsion - on the contrary they may face pressures from their base to depart from it.

:wub:

Makes me want to go back to working for B.P.*






* what's left of it, after those hurricane force legal cases hit it.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 10, 2015, 07:06:05 AM
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/senate-science-committee-hearing-challenges-dogma-of-climate-science/

QuoteSenate Science Committee hearing challenges "dogma" of climate science

While the eyes of the world are on Paris, where nations are hammering out an agreement to do something about the reality of climate change, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness once again held a hearing on Tuesday to debate whether climate change is for real. Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who is running for his party's presidential nomination, convened the hearing titled "Data or dogma? Promoting open inquiry in the debate over the magnitude of human impact on Earth's climate."

Senator Cruz brought in four witnesses to testify, mostly chosen from the usual suspects that have participated in similar hearings in the past. There were two of the very small handful of climate scientists who express doubts about human responsibility for climate change—Georgia Tech professor and blogger Judith Curry and John Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. William Happer, a retired Princeton physicist and chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think-tank, was also invited to speak. The fourth person brought in to talk climate science was conservative radio host and columnist Mark Steyn. (The last two were keynote speakers at this year's Heartland Institute conference for climate "skeptics.")

Senator Cruz opened the hearing with some ironic remarks. "This is a hearing on the science behind the claims of global warming. Now, this is the Science Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, and we're hearing from distinguished scientists, sharing their views, their interpretations, their analysis of the data and the evidence. Now, I am the son of two mathematicians—two computer programmers and scientists—and I believe that public policy should follow the actual science, and the actual data and evidence, and not political and partisan claims that run contrary to the science and data and evidence."

John Christy, who has helped develop the UAH satellite temperature dataset favored by climate "skeptics" because it shows slower warming in portions of the troposphere than we see in surface records, made his pitch for why we just don't know what has caused recent warming. That explanation involved highlighting his graph of tropical mid-troposphere (rather than global surface) model projections and observations that frequently appears in the comments on stories like this one—a graph other climate scientists take issue with—and claiming that emissions cuts would have a minimal impact on climate change. While claiming that research funding is biased, he proposed setting aside five to 10 percent of federal climate research funding for a "Red Team" like the CIA section tasked with outside-the-box analyses that challenge the status quo. This Red Team would "produce an assessment that expresses legitimate, alternative hypotheses" for climate change.

Judith Curry echoed Christy's complaints, claiming that climate science has fallen victim to "groupthink"—a conclusion she says she reached after reading the quote-mined "Climategate" e-mails between scientists in 2009. (A pile of subsequent independent investigations found no evidence of scientific misconduct.) The rest of Curry's testimony entailed claims that the science of anthropogenic climate change is unsettled, which she has spoken and written about at length over the years.

Mark Steyn's testimony focused on his accusations that climate science is fraudulent and oppresses contrarians. Steyn's claim to climate fame is that he's being sued for defamation by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, whom Steyn has repeatedly accused of fraud.

William Happer used most of his time to argue that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are good for the planet, claiming that there is "not much dispute" that there is too little CO2 and too much oxygen for plants right now. He also seemed to like Christy's "Red Team" idea, as he said climate science lacks an "adversarial process" to check if the science is right. (Of course, "an adversarial process" isn't a bad description of peer review or the work of thousands of independent researchers.) "I would like to argue very strongly that we set aside some fraction of funding for climate research that is designed to be for the other side," Happer said. That would run counter to the way funding is granted today, which is based on the hypothesis and the quality of the test rather than what the resulting conclusion is going to be.

Happer became a story in his own right earlier in the day, when Greenpeace released e-mails with Happer in which they had pretended to represent a foreign energy company. They asked Happer if he would produce a report extolling the virtues of CO2 but without disclosing their financial support, and Happer agreed this was something he could do. Happer explained that Peabody Coal Company had paid him $8,000 to testify at regulatory hearings in Minnesota. That fee went to the tax-exempt CO­­2 Coalition, which he said pays his travel expenses but no salary. Just before Tuesday's hearing, someone from Greenpeace filmed a heated exchange with Happer asking whether he had been paid to testify. Happer seemed to indicate that the CO2 Coalition "took some of my fee" before rising out of his chair and angrily replying, "I haven't taken a dime, you son of a bitch."

Finally, there was testimony from a witness invited by committee Democrats—former Navy Rear Admiral and current Penn State meteorology professor David Titley. Titley calmly attempted to explain the basics of climate science, highlighting the fact that nothing is ever 100 percent certain in science, yet we understand how to act on risks despite imperfect knowledge.

A question-and-answer portion followed this testimony, which at one point devolved to Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Steyn, and Curry pretty much shouting at each other. But there was also some discussion about satellite temperature data sets. (Curiously, this involved no questions for John Christy, who helps run one.) Senator Cruz is fond of claiming that one of the satellite data sets shows "no warming for 18 years" while ignoring longer-term trends and the fact that all surface temperature data sets show warming over that period.

After Senator Cruz pushed Titley to answer a question about the satellite records, which he claimed "the global warming alarmists don't want to talk about," Titley let loose. "Let's talk about the satellite measurements," Titley said. "Let's talk about orbital decay. Let's talk about overlapping satellite records. Let's talk about stratospheric temperature contamination. I think Dr. Christy and Dr. [Roy] Spencer, when they've put this out, they have been wrong, I think, at least four consecutive times. Each time the data record has had to be adjusted upward. There have been several sign errors. So, with all due respect, sir, I don't know which data, exactly, your staff has, whether it's the first or second or third or fourth correction to Dr. Christy's data. We used to have a negative trend, and then we had no trend, and now we begrudgingly have an upward trend."

To be fair, Senator Cruz was pointing to a competing data set run by Remote Sensing Systems in California that, until recently, showed an even smaller 18-year warming trend than the University of Alabama in Huntsville data set. And the latest version of that UAH data set, which is in beta, reduces that trend once again.

In a curious moment, William Happer chimed in to state that these satellites measure temperatures "the same way as hospitals do today," with devices that measure infrared radiation. In fact, these satellites measure microwave radiation, and doctors aren't trying to simultaneously determine temperatures of various layers inside you when they pop a thermometer in your ear.

Senator Cruz also accused scientists of deliberately manipulating land surface temperature data to create the appearance of warming over the 20th Century. (Quality-control adjustments to sea surface temperature data, which obviously involve a much larger portion of the globe, actually make the overall effect a decrease in global 20th Century warming.) When asked about this, Judith Curry didn't quite support Senator Cruz's accusation but did comment, "To me, the error bars should really be much bigger if they're making such a large adjustment, so we really don't know too much about what's going on."

In contrast to this talk of uncertainty and scientific skullduggery, Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.) opted for some remedial physics in his opening comments. "By burning fossil fuels, humans are releasing carbon into the atmosphere that would have otherwise remained locked away. This process creates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat that otherwise would have been radiated off into space. We know that by the law of conservation of energy, that additional heat can't just magically disappear. Instead, it causes our planet to get warmer."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 10, 2015, 09:17:49 AM
That article is just a case study in why voting for any of these Republicans is not just foolish - it is actively dangerous.

It is the intentional and willful denial of evidence in favor of faith.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on December 10, 2015, 09:44:14 AM
I don't understand, or can forsee, what is the republicans end game here. What are they trying to achieve?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 10, 2015, 09:45:15 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 10, 2015, 09:44:14 AM
I don't understand, or can forsee, what is the republicans end game here. What are they trying to achieve?

Imposing limits and rules on businesses or freedom (e.g. cars) = bad.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 10, 2015, 09:45:22 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 10, 2015, 09:44:14 AM
I don't understand, or can forsee, what is the republicans end game here. What are they trying to achieve?

Re-election.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 10, 2015, 11:02:36 AM
A little quiz: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/10/science/paris-climate-change-talks-quiz.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

I got 3/8 right.  :Embarrass:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 10, 2015, 11:11:52 AM
Heh. I only got one right.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on December 10, 2015, 11:36:24 AM
I could have developed a quiz even more trivial than that one.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 10, 2015, 11:39:14 AM
Quote from: grumbler on December 10, 2015, 11:36:24 AM
I could have developed a quiz even more trivial than that one.

We know  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on December 10, 2015, 12:29:11 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 10, 2015, 09:45:22 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 10, 2015, 09:44:14 AM
I don't understand, or can forsee, what is the republicans end game here. What are they trying to achieve?

Re-election.

Fucking religious people.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on December 15, 2015, 04:27:18 PM
November also hottest month in records, 4th straight month that record has been broken.

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dmi.dk%2Ftypo3temp%2Fpics%2Fe7f76ae23b.png&hash=640d6f384bc86447442db8a9999f2c94008f8ff7)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Norgy on December 15, 2015, 05:21:18 PM
A deal is brought back to Norway.
Environmental activists: This means no more oil industry here.
Politicians: A small step for one man, a blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
Oil companies: Well, I guess that's it, slutpacks for all.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 15, 2015, 05:24:25 PM
I saw an article in a paper recently about how the Norwegian oil fund does its investments ethically.

:lmfao:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on December 15, 2015, 05:24:55 PM
Quote from: Norgy on December 15, 2015, 05:21:18 PM
A deal is brought back to Norway.
Environmental activists: This means no more oil industry here.
Politicians: A small step for one man, a blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
Oil companies: Well, I guess that's it, slutpacks for all.


So 'Okupert' wasn't so far fetched after all?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 15, 2015, 05:57:28 PM
Quote from: Berkut on December 10, 2015, 09:17:49 AM
That article is just a case study in why voting for any of these Republicans is not just foolish - it is actively dangerous.

It is the intentional and willful denial of evidence in favor of faith.

I didn't see religion mentioned once in there.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on December 15, 2015, 08:23:10 PM
I have no idea what was agreed in Paris.  It isn't widely reported here, so I don't know if I will be affected in any way.  I certainly hope not  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 15, 2015, 08:32:17 PM
Mono: Religious zealot.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Norgy on December 16, 2015, 05:12:28 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 15, 2015, 05:24:25 PM
I saw an article in a paper recently about how the Norwegian oil fund does its investments ethically.

:lmfao:

It's slightly less obnoxious than it sounds. It's basically based on not investing in coal. I bet the fund's still heavily into cluster bombs and DAESH oil.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Norgy on December 16, 2015, 05:14:10 AM
Quote from: Liep on December 15, 2015, 05:24:55 PM
Quote from: Norgy on December 15, 2015, 05:21:18 PM
A deal is brought back to Norway.
Environmental activists: This means no more oil industry here.
Politicians: A small step for one man, a blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
Oil companies: Well, I guess that's it, slutpacks for all.


So 'Okupert' wasn't so far fetched after all?

If you managed to sit through all 10 episodes of that tripe, I applaud you, sir. I gave up after episode 3.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on December 16, 2015, 05:17:11 AM
Quote from: Norgy on December 16, 2015, 05:14:10 AM
Quote from: Liep on December 15, 2015, 05:24:55 PM
Quote from: Norgy on December 15, 2015, 05:21:18 PM
A deal is brought back to Norway.
Environmental activists: This means no more oil industry here.
Politicians: A small step for one man, a blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
Oil companies: Well, I guess that's it, slutpacks for all.


So 'Okupert' wasn't so far fetched after all?

If you managed to sit through all 10 episodes of that tripe, I applaud you, sir. I gave up after episode 3.


Nope, gave up after 2 or 3 as well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 20, 2016, 12:41:40 PM
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/20/2015-smashes-record-for-hottest-year-final-figures-confirm

Quote2015 smashes record for hottest year, final figures confirm

Experts warn that global warming is tipping climate into 'uncharted territory', as Met Office, Nasa and Noaa data all confirm record global temperatures for second year running

2015 smashed the record for the hottest year since reporting began in 1850, according to the first full-year figures from the world's three principal temperature estimates.

Data released on Wednesday by the UK Met Office shows the average global temperature in 2015 was 0.75C higher than the long-term average between 1961 and 1990, much higher than the 0.57C in 2014, which itself was a record. The Met Office also expects 2016 to set a new record, meaning the global temperature records will have been broken for three years running.

Temperature data released in the US on Wednesday by Nasa and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) also showed 2015 shattered previous records.

Experts warned that the record-breaking heat shows global warming is driving the world's climate into "uncharted territory" and that it showed the urgency of implementing the carbon-cutting pledges made by the world's governments in Paris in December.

Heatwaves have scorched China, Russia, Australia, the Middle East and parts of South America in the last two years, while climate change made the UK's record December rainfall, which caused devastating floods, 50-75% more likely.

The Paris agreement commits the world's nations to limit warming to below 2C compared to pre-industrial times, or 1.5C if possible, to avoid widespread and dangerous impacts. But the Met Office data, when compared to global temperatures before fossil fuel burning took off, shows that 2015 was already 1C higher.

A strong El Niño event is peaking at the moment, putting the "icing on the cake" of high global temperatures. El Niño is a natural cycle of warming in the Pacific Ocean which has a global impact on weather. But scientists are clear that the vast majority of the warming seen in 2015 was due to the emissions from human activity.

"Even without an El Niño, this would have been the warmest year on record," said Prof Gavin Schmidt, director at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He said he expected the long trend of rising global temperatures to continue because its principal cause – fossil fuel burning – was also continuing.

"It is clear that human influence is driving our climate into uncharted territory," said Prof Phil Jones, from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which produces the temperature record – called HadCRUT4 – with the Met Office. Peter Stott, at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said 2015 was the first year global average temperature was more than 1C above pre-industrial levels.

Noaa's global temperature records stretch back to 1880 and it also found 2015 was the hottest year yet, beating the previous high by a record margin. The agency also found December was warmer than any other month in the record, when compared to long-term averages. Ten of the 12 months in 2015 had record high temperatures for their respective months, according to Noaa.

Nasa's new data for 2015 also shattered its previous record and showed 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.

"Climate change is the challenge of our generation," said Nasa head Charles Bolden. "Today's announcement is a key data point that should make policymakers stand up and take notice - now is the time to act."

The Nasa, Noaa and HadCRUT4 temperature records all use independent methods to calculate the global average. They use many thousands of temperature measurements taken across the globe, on land and at sea, each day.

There are uncertainties in the measurements, partly due to fewer measurements in the polar regions, and these are included in the calculations. Stott said: "Remaining uncertainties are clearly much smaller than the overall warming seen since pre-industrial times." Another independent temperature record, from the Japan Meteorological Agency, indicates 2015 was by far the hottest year on record.

Bob Ward, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "This [record heat] should put pressure on governments to urgently implement their commitments to act against climate change, and to increase their planned cuts of greenhouse gases. The warming is already affecting the climate around the world, including dangerous shifts in extreme weather events. Those who claim that climate change is either not happening, or is not dangerous, have been conclusively proven wrong by the meteorological evidence around the world."

Despite constantly rising greenhouse gas emissions trapping ever more heat on Earth, the last decade has seen relatively slow warming of air temperatures, dubbed a "pause" in climate change by some. In fact, global warming had not paused at all.

Instead, natural climate cycles led to more of the trapped heat being stored in the oceans (which already absorbed most the heat), some of which El Niño is now releasing. Scientists usually assess changes in climate over decades, rather than years, and the each of the last four decades has been warmer than any decade on record before.

"It's the long term warming trend we need to worry about rather than one hot year," said Prof Piers Forster, at the University of Leeds in the UK. "So we shouldn't get too excited - but it is certainly a sign of things to come."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: lustindarkness on January 20, 2016, 01:02:30 PM
Burn Baby Burn
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Liep on January 20, 2016, 01:20:00 PM
But it's very cold right now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 20, 2016, 02:16:42 PM
Quote from: Liep on January 20, 2016, 01:20:00 PM
But it's very cold right now.

Look at this snowball I made!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on April 01, 2016, 12:05:00 AM
Miami is so fucked

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/31/antarctica_sea_level_rise_research_shows_increased_coastal_threat.html

QuoteUh Oh: Antarctica Might Melt Much Faster Than We Thought

By Eric Holthaus


Sea level rise—perhaps the most consequential effect of climate change—just got a whole lot more urgent. If you live near the coast, this is your wakeup call.


In a study released Wednesday, a new estimate of how much Antarctic ice would melt in a warmer world nearly doubles previous projections of sea level rise by the end of the century. And it might be even worse than that: The study did not explore the true worst-case scenario, and its lead author said the work is still incomplete. Taken together with recent results from other research teams—most notably James Hansen's, just last week—it's increasingly clear that consensus projections of near-term sea level rise, about three feet in the next 85 years, are likely an underestimate.

The latest information comes via a breakthrough in simulating the behavior of Antarctica's vast and complex network of glaciers and ice shelves. That's brought a more complete understanding of how warmer air temperatures—projected to surpass those regularly experienced on Earth at any point during at least the last few million years—are affecting the sea level. At the same time, the study provides new certainty that—should the world act immediately to curb carbon emissions at a scale far beyond current efforts—virtually all Antarctic ice melt could be avoided.


We should take this result very seriously. The new study prompted a lapse into Ciceronian prose from the New York Times and an instant revision to sea level rise projection maps for coastal cities worldwide, with many observers noting that, at current effort levels, humanity is veering dangerously close to the worst-case scenario.


"Under the high emissions scenario, the 22nd century would be the century of hell," Ben Strauss, a sea level scientist at Climate Central told the Washington Post. "There would really be an unthinkable level of sea rise. It would erase many major cities and some nations from the map."


But well before then, in the lifetimes of people being born today, the new study points to a potentially existential threat for cities like Miami; Guangzhou, China; Mumbai, India; New Orleans; Boston; and Alexandria, Egypt. In a scenario in which global carbon emissions remain essentially unchecked, the study argues the world's coastal cities could see an additional two feet of sea level by 2100 above previous estimates—about five feet total.


In an interview with Slate, lead author Rob DeConto said that his results would be "really, really bad news for the business-as-usual future."


DeConto found that the biggest deciding factor of future sea level rise from Antarctica is near-term carbon emissions. There's tenuous hope that we're finally getting the message: Global emissions may have temporarily stopped rising in the last year or two, and December's climate agreement in Paris provides the framework to steer humanity off from its present course, albeit only slightly.


"Chances are, there's going to be a much better outcome if we end up following one of the lower emissions scenarios," DeConto says, noting that in the lowest-emission scenario—in which global emissions peak almost immediately—his study finds there about a 90 percent chance that Antarctica will stay essentially completely frozen.


In all scenarios, DeConto found for Antarctica, the damage may already be done—at least on timescales we can imagine. "It takes literally millennia for the oceans to cool back down again. It will take thousands of years for the ice sheet to push its nose back out into the ocean. ... It's essentially a permanent change."


In the high-emissions scenarios DeConto explored, that means Antarctica will be melting both from above—via a warmer atmosphere—and from below—via warmer oceans. Since many of the largest glaciers in western Antarctica are resting on bedrock that's currently below sea level, ocean warming could melt them quite quickly—within decades. "Once it gets away from us, there isn't really a geoengineering solution for that," DeConto said. "Once the oceans warm up enough, it's not going to matter."

Map graphic
https://twitter.com/chriscmooney/status/715281196889018369/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Like any single scientific study, Wednesday's results aren't a sure thing, but they're much closer to a complete answer than anything we've had so far. The Washington Post's Chris Mooney has a particularly illustrative look at the science that underpinned the new results.


The study's major achievement is the addition of two key ice melting processes left out of all Antarctica-wide models to this point: Meltwater ponding and crevasse formation on the surface of ice sheets—so called "hydrofracturing"—and the tendency of ice sheets that are grounded on marine bedrock to rapidly retreat. Scientists know these processes can lead to collapse, because it's already happening: In Greenland, the Jakobshavn glacier is in rapid retreat, with the unstable calving cliff now more than 250 feet high, about as tall as the Statue of Liberty. In 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula rapidly collapsed in just a few weeks after a particularly warm summer saw the formation of innumerable meltwater ponds and crevasses. Recent fieldwork at the Larsen C ice shelf, a much bigger one, showed that the same process may soon play out there.


Luke Trusel, a climate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, whose similar work was cited in the DeConto paper, says that taken together, his work and DeConto's new work shows that "melting at the [ice shelf] surface can go from insignificant to extremely significant over a short amount of time. This is a nonlinear response to climate warming," Trusel told me. "It's a light switch sort of change. It's rapid." But Trusel says he was surprised by the new study at how rapidly those ice shelf collapses could translate into sea level rise. "As a resident of a coastal community, it leaves me very concerned," Trusel said, who lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.


Eric Rignot, a climate scientist who was a co-author on the Hansen paper, said the DeConto study brings evidence of greater than expected near-term sea level rise "full circle." While Hansen's study focused on bottom-up melting (from the oceans), DeConto's study focused on top-down melting (from the atmosphere). "I think these two studies are shedding new lights on the sort of terrible mess we are heading for with ice sheet melt, which most people do not realize and wishfully would like to avoid without doing anything."


DeConto says that his study provides some "complementary" "actual numbers" to support the controversial recent result of James Hansen, who argued that truly tremendous amounts of meltwater from Antarctica later this century could trigger a feedback loop of further ice melt and throw the global climate into chaos. In the top-end scenario DeConto's study describes, meltwater from Antarctica could surpass the equivalent of all the world's rivers combined in about 100 years—which is similar to the scenario that Hansen says could be enough to trigger profound changes in the way global oceans transport heat.


"We're providing mechanistic explanations for how those dramatic sorts of rates of ice sheet retreat could actually happen," DeConto told me, "but we don't need [Hansen's] feedback [to reach similar conclusions.]"


Climatologist Richard Alley, who assisted with some of the initial preparation of the DeConto study, said that while Hansen and his colleagues raised the possibility that sea level rise may far exceed previous estimates, DeConto and his co-author, David Pollard, "have taken a major step forward" in showing specifically how that might happen.


Alley also expressed dismay at the current incomplete state of knowledge in the field of polar glaciology, which he thinks is leading to an environment where every new bit of knowledge makes headlines—and oversaturates people to the point that dire climate change news no longer alarms them. "Personally, I really would be happier if we had the luxury of doing the research on this, without bothering the public until we have 95 percent confidence in an answer. All of us are fully aware how wrong it is to falsely yell 'Fire' in a crowded theater. But, we also are fully aware how wrong it is to sit silently while a fire begins to spread in that theater. Right now, I do not believe humanity can continue with unchecked warming while confidently assuming that sea-level rise will be limited to roughly 3 feet in a century."


Antarctica is a difficult place to do research. It's remote, it's cold, and studies like these are some of the first to assess some of the basic mechanisms by which global warming may profoundly change it. So, there will be plenty of surprises over the next several years as our understanding of the continent improves. Right now, though, it seems like all the surprises are bad ones.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 01, 2016, 12:16:15 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 01, 2016, 12:05:00 AM
Miami is so fucked

But what about your machines that are gonna create stuff out of atmospheric CO2?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Norgy on April 01, 2016, 05:49:19 AM
The greatest threat of climate change is probably more human migration. That will lead to conflict, whether you accept the science or not.

Oh, and I can grow oranges in my garden in my dotage.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on April 01, 2016, 07:40:05 AM
Quote from: Norgy on April 01, 2016, 05:49:19 AM
The greatest threat of climate change is probably more human migration. That will lead to conflict, whether you accept the science or not.

Oh, and I can grow oranges in my garden in my dotage.

Just read another graphic earlier today that said that US growing season has lengthened two weeks in the last 100 years, with most of that growth coming in the last 30.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Norgy on April 01, 2016, 07:41:47 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 01, 2016, 07:40:05 AM
Quote from: Norgy on April 01, 2016, 05:49:19 AM
The greatest threat of climate change is probably more human migration. That will lead to conflict, whether you accept the science or not.

Oh, and I can grow oranges in my garden in my dotage.

Just read another graphic earlier today that said that US growing season has lengthened two weeks in the last 100 years, with most of that growth coming in the last 30.

Probably similar here too, give or take a few days, but wet summers means more rot. While the dry ones means less to harvest.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 14, 2016, 07:26:05 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-idUSKCN11K0BC

QuoteClimate change 'significant and direct' threat to U.S. military: reports

The effects of climate change endanger U.S. military operations and could increase the danger of international conflict, according to three new documents endorsed by retired top U.S. military officers and former national security officials.

"There are few easy answers, but one thing is clear: the current trajectory of climatic change presents a strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security, and inaction is not a viable option," said a statement published on Wednesday by the Center for Climate and Security, a Washington-based think tank.

It was signed by more than a dozen former senior military and national security officials, including retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and retired Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the Pacific Command until last year.

They called on the next U.S. president to create a cabinet level position to deal with climate change and its impact on national security.

A separate report by a panel of retired military officials, also published on Wednesday by the Center for Climate and Security, said more frequent extreme weather is a threat to U.S. coastal military installations.

"The complex relationship between sea level rise, storm surge and global readiness and responsiveness must be explored down to the operational level, across the Services and Joint forces, and up to a strategic level as well," the report said.

Earlier this year, another report said faster sea level rises in the second half of this century could make tidal flooding a daily occurrence for some installations.

Francesco Femia, co-founder and president of the Center for Climate and Security, said the reports show bipartisan national security and military officials think the existing U.S. response to climate change "is not commensurate to the threat".

The fact that a large and bipartisan number of former officials signed the reports could increase pressure on future U.S. administrations to place greater emphasis and dedicate more resources to combat climate change.

Addressing climate change has not been a top priority in a 2016 campaign dominated by the U.S. economy, trade and foreign policy.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that global warming is a concept "created by the and for the Chinese" to hurt U.S. business.

Democrat Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has advocated shifting the country to 50 percent clean energy by 2030 and promised heavy regulation of fracking.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 14, 2016, 11:03:09 AM
Are military installations that fragile?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 12:25:06 PM
QuoteDemocrat Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has advocated shifting the country to 50 percent clean energy by 2030 and promised heavy regulation of fracking.

If the first part includes natural gas then that will probably not require much Federal action, since we are already doing that. That last part makes me nervous, I wonder what sorts of regulations she is proposing?

I don't actually believe Trump believes what he is saying. He is a liar. Which actually makes me a little better. I doubt he will be taking much action to stop what is already occurring.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 14, 2016, 01:30:31 PM
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Fearth_temperature_timeline.png&hash=056e8096e21ed6688016fadf2d82cb36b2c39ecb)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:39:12 PM
The United States and Euroland both have lower CO2 emissions than we did in 2000, for Europe even lower than they did in 1990. China's has started to trend down. Only India is still headed upwards. Surprising that EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER STARTING IN 2000 and that the current trend is a straight line to doom despite these facts. But hey whatever the new normal is we will have to adjust. The engineering is clearly devoted to lowering CO2 emissions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 14, 2016, 01:47:11 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:39:12 PM
The United States and Euroland both have lower CO2 emissions than we did in 2000, for Europe even lower than they did in 1990. China's has started to trend down. Only India is still headed upwards. Surprising that EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER STARTING IN 2000 and that the current trend is a straight line to doom despite these facts. But hey whatever the new normal is we will have to adjust. The engineering is clearly devoted to lowering CO2 emissions.

If I understand it current CO2 emission levels will still increase atmospheric CO2 for a long time to come.  It will take awhile for atmospheric CO2 to reach a new equillibrium level.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 01:49:13 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:39:12 PM
The United States and Euroland both have lower CO2 emissions than we did in 2000, for Europe even lower than they did in 1990. China's has started to trend down. Only India is still headed upwards. Surprising that EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER STARTING IN 2000 and that the current trend is a straight line to doom despite these facts. But hey whatever the new normal is we will have to adjust. The engineering is clearly devoted to lowering CO2 emissions.

But valmy, emissions are a flow. CO2 already released is a stock.

The point being, even if we have zero emissions from today forward, which is of course impossible, there isn't certainty where the steady state with current CO2 levels will stabilize.

And of course since we are still releasing CO2, and will be doing so in massive quantities for the foreseeable future, the problem will be getting worse.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:50:36 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 14, 2016, 01:47:11 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:39:12 PM
The United States and Euroland both have lower CO2 emissions than we did in 2000, for Europe even lower than they did in 1990. China's has started to trend down. Only India is still headed upwards. Surprising that EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER STARTING IN 2000 and that the current trend is a straight line to doom despite these facts. But hey whatever the new normal is we will have to adjust. The engineering is clearly devoted to lowering CO2 emissions.

If I understand it current CO2 emission levels will still increase atmospheric CO2 for a long time to come.  It will take awhile for atmospheric CO2 to reach a new equillibrium level.

I expect new technology breakthroughs to decrease the CO2 emissions in an accelerated fashion in the next few decades but it is hard to predict how quickly this will go into effect. I am not sure what sorts of "massive efforts" would be or what the "optimistic scenario" entails nor what the "current path" is based on. I mean is the Current Path a realistic assumption based on current trends? Or is it based on some kind of Luddite freeze of technology at its current levels?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:52:17 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 01:49:13 PM

And of course since we are still releasing CO2, and will be doing so in massive quantities for the foreseeable future, the problem will be getting worse.

Well you cannot reasonably expect centuries of engineering and technological efforts to be overturned overnight. We are getting really close on clean energy and electric cars and many other techs. These are rapidly becoming not just superior in emissions but superior technologies period (as one might expect when almost all the new stuff is designed with these purposes). But nobody can wave a magical wand and do it all in ten seconds.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 14, 2016, 01:56:01 PM
Nuclear power. And lots of it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 02:40:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:52:17 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 01:49:13 PM

And of course since we are still releasing CO2, and will be doing so in massive quantities for the foreseeable future, the problem will be getting worse.

Well you cannot reasonably expect centuries of engineering and technological efforts to be overturned overnight. We are getting really close on clean energy and electric cars and many other techs. These are rapidly becoming not just superior in emissions but superior technologies period (as one might expect when almost all the new stuff is designed with these purposes). But nobody can wave a magical wand and do it all in ten seconds.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if global warming in any one year is a relationship between the atmospheric change in greenhouse gases caused by humans and the current temperature, the change we are causing in the short term through reduced emissions is probably a rounding error in the models.

If we take next year, the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by humans is going to be the cumulative gases released by humans over all time with some adjustment for environmental changes (such as clearing forests), plus what will be released next year. The changes you are talking about are a change from having that amount grow by a few percent vs. shrink by a few percent. That change is going to be tremendously dwarfed by what has been released over the past century.

The point I'm trying to make is that doing better doesn't mean we aren't still fucked. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 02:44:16 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 02:40:51 PM
The point I'm trying to make is that doing better doesn't mean we aren't still fucked. :)

The graph seemed to suggest otherwise. The difference between different policies produced radically different global outcomes for actions taking place in a very short period of time.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 02:49:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 02:44:16 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 14, 2016, 02:40:51 PM
The point I'm trying to make is that doing better doesn't mean we aren't still fucked. :)

The graph seemed to suggest otherwise. The difference between different policies produced radically different global outcomes for actions taking place in a very short period of time.

The graph goes out a century and is also very vague as to what is causing the changes - it isn't as though modeling global temperatures a century out is simplistic. "Optimistic scenario" could just reflect that is the outcome of a model with similar inputs to the "pessimistic scenario", but wtih more optimism.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 14, 2016, 11:38:20 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 14, 2016, 01:39:12 PM
The United States and Euroland both have lower CO2 emissions than we did in 2000, for Europe even lower than they did in 1990. China's has started to trend down. Only India is still headed upwards. Surprising that EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER STARTING IN 2000 and that the current trend is a straight line to doom despite these facts. But hey whatever the new normal is we will have to adjust. The engineering is clearly devoted to lowering CO2 emissions.
the trend is on the rist for the entire earth. Certainly higher than 2000. In any case, we shouldn't just measure CO2, it ain't the only GHG, there are others like methane, for example.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 15, 2016, 08:25:47 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 14, 2016, 11:38:20 PM
the trend is on the rist for the entire earth. Certainly higher than 2000. In any case, we shouldn't just measure CO2, it ain't the only GHG, there are others like methane, for example.

1. No, the trend is on decline for the entire earth.

2. Yes it is higher than 2000.

3. All GHG should decline when we stop burning shit for fuel and power.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on September 15, 2016, 08:32:06 AM
Is this the new climate denier strategy?

After a decade or more of clear scientific consensus on human driven global warming, they finally accept it...but think it is fine, we are going to solve it with science without any need to worry about actually reducing emissions or anything?

That would be ironic, wouldn't it?

There is no global warming! It is a hoax! Scientists are charlatans!
OK, there is some warming, but it isn't much! And its natural! Science is bullshit elitism!
OK, there is warming, but it is perfectly normal, and no evidence that humans have driven it! Scientists are all in a conspiracy!
All right, maybe humans have driven it, and maybe it is pretty bad...but no worries! Scientists will invent clean energy and the problem will go away without any need for business to do anything! Go scientists!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 15, 2016, 09:04:38 AM
Quote from: Berkut on September 15, 2016, 08:32:06 AM
Is this the new climate denier strategy?

After a decade or more of clear scientific consensus on human driven global warming, they finally accept it...but think it is fine, we are going to solve it with science without any need to worry about actually reducing emissions or anything?

That would be ironic, wouldn't it?

There is no global warming! It is a hoax! Scientists are charlatans!
OK, there is some warming, but it isn't much! And its natural! Science is bullshit elitism!
OK, there is warming, but it is perfectly normal, and no evidence that humans have driven it! Scientists are all in a conspiracy!
All right, maybe humans have driven it, and maybe it is pretty bad...but no worries! Scientists will invent clean energy and the problem will go away without any need for business to do anything! Go scientists!

Damn. My entire question was does it make that big of a difference if it is solved next year or a few decades from now? Considering we are talking about the entire world here. I mean Clinton stated her goal would be to use 50% clean energy by 2030. I pointed out that we, in fact, are already well above that threshold if you count Natural Gas as clean energy. We are pretty close even if you don't. I am very enthusiastic about what sorts of new engineering we are doing and how we can effectively eliminate emissions sometime this century.

I am an Electrical Engineer in the power industry entirely because I have devoted my entire life and career to reducing emissions and fighting climate change so calling me a climate denier is bizarre.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on September 15, 2016, 10:04:52 AM
I didn't call you a client denier.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on September 15, 2016, 10:11:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on September 15, 2016, 10:04:52 AM
I didn't call you a client denier.

:yes:  As long as Valmy keeps billing, we're all happy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 15, 2016, 10:14:45 AM
Quote from: Berkut on September 15, 2016, 10:04:52 AM
I didn't call you a client denier.

Well, I would, just for kicks, but watching his head explode isn't worth the greenhouse gasses that event would generate.   :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 18, 2017, 11:52:32 AM
Damn those Chinese hoaxers!  :mad:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/science/earth/2016-hottest-year-on-record.html

(Article has many graphics)

QuoteHow 2016 Became Earth's Hottest Year on Record

Global temperatures have continued to rise, making 2016 the hottest year on the historical record and the third consecutive record-breaking year, scientists say. Of the 17 hottest years ever recorded, 16 have now occurred since 2000.

In the historical record, months early in the year, like February and March, have moved further away from the norm than the rest of the year. Scientists expect that the early months of 2017 will continue to show levels of warming beyond the norm, but likely not at the level of 2016 because a strong El Niño weather pattern is now subsiding.

Human-induced climate change has made it at least 160 times more likely that three consecutive years after 2000 would be record-setting, according to Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Scientific Assessment, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

His findings show that if human-induced climate change was not part of the equation, the amount of warming in 2016 have less than one-in-a-million odds of occurring.

"One could argue that about 75 percent of the warmth was due to human impact," Dr. Mann said.

The later months of 2015 and the first half of 2016 experienced faster warming partly due to the El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which sent a surge of heat into the atmosphere.

The El Niño pattern occurs irregularly, in intervals of about two to seven years, and scientists say that the most recent El Niño was among the largest in a century. The peak of the most recent El Niño occurred during winter of 2015, and temperatures were dramatically higher than normal. It began to subside over the course of 2016.

Scientists are working to understand whether climate change is also making El Niño phenomena stronger.

Historical records of global temperature are compiled by two American government agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meteorological agencies in Britain and Japan also compile reliable datasets of global temperature.

The analyses by the agencies are based on thousands of measurements from weather stations, ships and ocean buoys around the world. Each group tracking global temperature uses different methods to take account of problems in the data, but usually reach similar conclusions about the significant long-term trend of global warming.

For 2016, the records from NASA were likely the most accurate, because of data collection in Antarctica and a more sophisticated statistical analysis in the Arctic. The combination allows NASA to have more reliable coverage in the polar regions of the world, which have been highly affected by rising temperatures. Global sea ice extent reached near record low levels late in 2016.

"We expect records to continue to be broken as global warming proceeds," Dr. Mann said.

Well, good thing that Trump wants NASA to focus on exploring space instead of navel gazing on Earth, so hopefully we will soon have less bad news from them on the climate front. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Jacob on January 18, 2017, 02:21:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 15, 2016, 09:04:38 AM
Damn. My entire question was does it make that big of a difference if it is solved next year or a few decades from now? Considering we are talking about the entire world here. I mean Clinton stated her goal would be to use 50% clean energy by 2030. I pointed out that we, in fact, are already well above that threshold if you count Natural Gas as clean energy. We are pretty close even if you don't. I am very enthusiastic about what sorts of new engineering we are doing and how we can effectively eliminate emissions sometime this century.

I think it's a bit like compound interest... even small amounts can make a big difference over longer periods of time.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 01, 2017, 05:04:56 AM
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15109876/climate-change-science-committee-hearing-republicans-consensus

QuoteRepublicans held a fake inquiry on climate change to attack the only credible scientist in the room

Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a heated hearing on the "assumptions, policy implications, and the scientific method" of climate science. In fact, the hearing was just an excuse to pretend there's uncertainty within the scientific community on whether human-made climate change is real.

Four witnesses were asked to testify before the committee; only one of them — Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University — agreed with the other 97 percent of scientists who believe that human activity, like the burning of fossil fuels, is causing our planet to heat up. The other witnesses testified that we don't really know how much people are contributing to climate change, and there's too much uncertainty to consider global warming a threat.

"The witness panel does not really represent the vast majority of climate scientists who have concluded that there is a connection between human activity and climate," Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) said at the hearing. "For a balanced panel, we need 96 more Dr. Manns."

In fact, Mann's views aren't only representative of pretty much the entire science community; they also represent the views of the majority of Americans. Data released last week by the Yale Program on Climate Communication shows that 70 percent of Americans believe that climate change is happening; 53 percent believe that global warming is caused mostly by human activities. And 75 percent want the US government to regulate heat-trapping carbon dioxide as a pollutant. (More than 70 percent of Americans also trust climate scientists on global warming.)

Bonamici said that the hearing was a waste of time. Yet, the committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) commented in his opening statement that "much of climate science today appears to be based more on exaggeration, personal agendas, and questionable predictions than on the scientific method." He added, "Alarmist predictions amount to nothing more than wild guesses."

Some members of Congress went on by asking some ridiculous questions and targeting the only climate scientist in the room who seemed to take climate change seriously. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) asked the witnesses whether it's true that sea levels are actually going to fall, not rise as a result of global warming. (Melting glaciers and land-based ice caps are already causing sea levels to rise.) Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) asked whether we know what caused the ice ages just to make the point that the ice ages occurred naturally and so we can't claim with certainty that climate change is human-made. (Again, within the scientific community, there's basically no disagreement that by pumping heat-trapping gases like CO2 into the atmosphere, people are warming up the planet.)

In a particularly intense moment, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attacked Mann for saying that Smith took part in a "climate science denying conference" at the Heartland Institute. "From the get go, we have heard personal attack after personal attack after personal attack coming from those how are claiming to represent the mainstream of science, even to the point that our chairman is attacked," Rohrabacher said. "That is ridiculous, people should be ashamed of yourselves." (The live stream then stopped working.)

Rep. Darin Lahood (R-IL) asked three of the witnesses whether they had ever been personally attacked by Mann for their views on climate science. "As I understand it in the past, and this is public record, Dr. Mann has referred to you as 'a carnival barker' and also 'a contrarian pundit.' Are you aware of that?" Lahood asked the witness Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado's Environmental Studies Department. "I can't keep up with all of Dr. Mann's epithets," Pielke responded.

Mann did represent the only "mainstream" scientist at the hearing, so the fact that he was repeatedly attacked is not that surprising. There was a lot of what one congressman referred to as a "food fight among scientists." But as members of Congress hold useless hearings and President Donald Trump tries to bring back coal mining, climate change is only getting worse and we're running out of time.

"The consequences for this country are very grave for our citizens," Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) said at the hearing. "At some point we have to go with consensus for the time being, as we continue research." She added: "We cannot wait for final ultimate truth to make decisions."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on April 01, 2017, 05:22:52 AM
Climate expert Michael Mann. :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 01, 2017, 05:38:19 AM
He's an expert on Heat.  :sleep:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 13, 2017, 10:50:40 AM
So apparently the amount of nutrients in our food had been decreasing over time.  One scientist thinks he knows why: increasing atmospheric CO2.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511?lo=ap_a1
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 13, 2017, 01:34:03 PM
Now that doesn't make any sense. We have had periods of higher CO2 in the past and there were still animals around eating stuff.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 13, 2017, 01:38:34 PM
Lions ate them.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 13, 2017, 02:10:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 13, 2017, 01:34:03 PM
Now that doesn't make any sense. We have had periods of higher CO2 in the past and there were still animals around eating stuff.

Just have to eat more. it's one of the theories why dino's got so big.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on December 02, 2017, 07:47:25 PM
For anyone who says one degree of change doesn't matter...if I ever move my thermostat up one degree (from 64 to 65), my condo becomes a sweltering wasteland.  :mad:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 03, 2017, 12:54:43 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 13, 2017, 01:34:03 PM
Now that doesn't make any sense. We have had periods of higher CO2 in the past and there were still animals around eating stuff.

Did you read the article or just the headline?

According to the article, there is no controversy that foods have become less nutritious.  The question is why that is occurring. And this researcher thinks he has linked higher CO2 to lower nutrients.




Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on December 03, 2017, 01:10:04 AM
It is December, but temperatures here still regularly go above 20C, and I still need to switch on the air-conditioner occasionally.  This never happened when I was a kid. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 03, 2017, 03:09:45 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 03, 2017, 12:54:43 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 13, 2017, 01:34:03 PM
Now that doesn't make any sense. We have had periods of higher CO2 in the past and there were still animals around eating stuff.

Did you read the article or just the headline?

According to the article, there is no controversy that foods have become less nutritious.  The question is why that is occurring. And this researcher thinks he has linked higher CO2 to lower nutrients.






I don't remember as that was almost three months ago.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2017, 03:10:35 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on December 03, 2017, 01:10:04 AM
It is December, but temperatures here still regularly go above 20C, and I still need to switch on the air-conditioner occasionally.  This never happened when I was a kid.

You were thinner, and in better shape.  Now you break into a sweat opening a laptop. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 13, 2017, 05:03:44 PM
That bad news is the Arctic is warming quickly (as predicted).  The good news is there is still at least one US government agency that is still measuring the effects of global warming

QuotePermafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever, according to a new US government report that also found Arctic seawater is warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/arctic-permafrost-sea-ice-thaw-climate-change-report
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on December 13, 2017, 05:17:32 PM
For now.  The Administration just hasn't gotten to them yet.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on December 13, 2017, 07:40:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 13, 2017, 10:50:40 AM
So apparently the amount of nutrients in our food had been decreasing over time.  One scientist thinks he knows why: increasing atmospheric CO2.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511?lo=ap_a1

Actually that's not too bad for me.  That means, potentially, I can eat more without getting too fat.  Right?  :unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 13, 2017, 08:00:02 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on December 13, 2017, 07:40:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 13, 2017, 10:50:40 AM
So apparently the amount of nutrients in our food had been decreasing over time.  One scientist thinks he knows why: increasing atmospheric CO2.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511?lo=ap_a1 (http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511?lo=ap_a1)

Actually that's not too bad for me.  That means, potentially, I can eat more without getting too fat.  Right?  :unsure:


No.  You need to eat more to get the same nutrients.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 01, 2018, 07:59:32 PM
So what does the climate in 2018 have in store for 'us'?

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on January 01, 2018, 10:29:07 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2017, 03:10:35 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on December 03, 2017, 01:10:04 AM
It is December, but temperatures here still regularly go above 20C, and I still need to switch on the air-conditioner occasionally.  This never happened when I was a kid.

You were thinner, and in better shape.  Now you break into a sweat opening a laptop. 

Plus, when he was a kid, his parents were the ones controlling the heating/cooling setting.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 01, 2018, 10:31:57 PM
I think 2018 is the year the world should adopt plans for the active management of the atmosphere; we need a plan B.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on January 01, 2018, 10:46:51 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 01, 2018, 10:31:57 PM
I think 2018 is the year the world should adopt plans for the active management of the atmosphere; we need a plan B.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Savonarola on January 02, 2018, 04:34:04 PM
Is there a plan for a total ban on diesel fuel in the EU?  Alstom has a new Hydrogen Train (http://www.alstom.com/press-centre/2017/03/alstoms-hydrogen-train-coradia-ilint-first-successful-run-at-80-kmh/).  When introducing it our CEO mentioned something about a diesel ban, and I was wondering if that was planned or just speculation on our part.

(The motors of diesel locomotives actually operate by electricity; the diesel engines power the generators.  So this really isn't a huge change in concept.)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 02, 2018, 04:35:57 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 02, 2018, 04:34:04 PM
Is there a plan for a total ban on diesel fuel in the EU?  Alstom has a new Hydrogen Train (http://www.alstom.com/press-centre/2017/03/alstoms-hydrogen-train-coradia-ilint-first-successful-run-at-80-kmh/).  When introducing it our CEO mentioned something about a diesel ban, and I was wondering if that was planned or just speculation on our part.

(The motors of diesel locomotives actually operate by electricity; the diesel engines power the generators.  So this really isn't a huge change in concept.)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/paris-copenhagen-oxford-ban-petrol-diesel-cars-emissions-pollution-nitrogen-dioxide-a8000596.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on January 02, 2018, 04:45:21 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 01, 2018, 10:31:57 PM
I think 2018 is the year the world should adopt plans for the active management of the atmosphere; we need a plan B.

So who should decide how to do this management?  Seems to me that it is inevitable that such management will result in both losers and winners, and the losers won't just sit there and let their country/region's climate be decided by others.  It isn't far fetched that they'll regard such management as an act of war. 

A real Plan B is to live with the consequences of global warming.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Ed Anger on March 15, 2018, 07:50:45 PM
The University of Dayton is installing 4,000 solar panels...to provide 2% their power. Sigh.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on April 23, 2018, 11:07:19 PM
Not looking good.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/one-of-the-most-worrisome-predictions-about-climate-change-may-be-coming-true-1841735
Quote
One Of The Most Worrisome Predictions About Climate Change May Be Coming True

The new research, based on ocean measurements off the coast of East Antarctica, shows that melting Antarctic glaciers are indeed freshening the ocean around them.

World | (c) 2018 The Washington Post | Chris Mooney, The Washington Post | Updated: April 24, 2018 07:01 IST


One Of The Most Worrisome Predictions About Climate Change May Be Coming True

The new research shows that melting Antarctic glaciers are indeed freshening the ocean

Two years ago, former NASA climate scientist James Hansen and a number of colleagues laid out a dire scenario in which gigantic pulses of fresh water from melting glaciers could upend the circulation of the oceans, leading to a world of fast-rising seas and even superstorms.

Hansen's scenario was based on a computer simulation, not hard data from the real world, and met with skepticism from a number of other climate scientists. But now, a new oceanographic study appears to have confirmed one aspect of this picture - in its early stages, at least.

The new research, based on ocean measurements off the coast of East Antarctica, shows that melting Antarctic glaciers are indeed freshening the ocean around them. And this, in turn, is blocking a process in which cold and salty ocean water sinks below the sea surface in winter, forming "the densest water on the Earth," in the words of study lead author Alessandro Silvano, a researcher with the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

This so-called Antarctic bottom water has stopped forming in two key regions of Antarctica, the research shows - the West Antarctic coast and the coast around the enormous Totten glacier in East Antarctica.

These are two of Antarctica's fastest-melting regions, and no wonder: When cold surface water no longer sinks into the depths, a deeper layer of warm ocean water can travel across the continental shelf and reach the bases of glaciers, retaining its heat as the cold waters remain above. This warmer water then rapidly melts the glaciers and the large floating ice shelves connected to them.

In other words, the melting of Antarctica's glaciers appears to be triggering a "feedback" loop in which that melting, through its effect on the oceans, triggers still more melting. The melting water stratifies the ocean column, with cold fresh water trapped at the surface and warmer water sitting below Then, the lower layer melts glaciers and creates still more melt water - not to mention rising seas as glaciers lose mass.

"What we found is not only a modeling study but is something that we observed in the real ocean," said Silvano, who conducted the research in Science Advances with colleagues from several other institutions in Australia and Japan. "Our study shows for the first time actual evidence of this mechanism. Our study shows that it is already happening."

Hansen said that "this study provides a nice small-scale example of processes that we talk about in our paper."

"On the large-scale issue, it is too early to say how these feedback processes will play out, based on empirical evidence," Hansen said by email. "If we stay on business-as-usual [greenhouse gas] emissions rates, so that global warming continues to increase, I expect that the freshwater injection rate will increase (mainly via ice faster ice shelf breakup and underwater melt) and sea ice area will increase. This experiment will be playing out over the next years and decades."

According to Matthew Long, an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the study "is consistent with a large body of existing literature that shows warming and freshening of the deep ocean in the southern hemisphere"

"The fact that we see consistent warming and freshening indicates that the processes we expect to play out over the next century are already underway," Long said. "Indeed, this study is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that the world's oceans are changing - and that the pace of change is beginning to accelerate."

If the process of Antarctic bottom water formation is being impaired, at least in some regions, then it would be a Southern hemisphere analogue of a process that has already caused great worry and drawn considerably more attention - a potential slowdown of the overturning circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, thanks to freshening of the ocean from the melting of Greenland.

"Of those two key areas of deep water formation, the northern Atlantic one has been widely considered more vulnerable to global warming," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who says he has found changes to the formation of dense deep water in the North Atlantic. "It is therefore of some concern that we now see increasing signs that the deep water formation around Antarctica is already being affected."

Rahmstorf pointed to additional studies which also suggest that Antarctic bottom water formation is changing. In one case, a 2017 study relying on measurements from the Southern Indian Ocean, where Antarctic bottom water travels after leaving the Southern Ocean, found that this deep water has been growing fresher over time, especially in the last decade.

One limitation with the current study, however, is that while the researchers have found that deep water is not forming in two key Antarctic regions, they cannot actually say when a change in these regions occurred. Measurements do not go back far enough for that, said study author Silvano. Thus, it's possible that deep water formation in these regions shut off a long time ago, well before the modern period of intense climate warming. That would make it harder to pin current events on human-caused climate change.

Still, the mechanism detected by the study, in which freshening water from glaciers inhibits the sinking of colder waters at the surface, would presumably continue to apply.

Silvano said his main worry is that in addition to melting by the ocean, Antarctica could also start melting on its surface more if the climate warms further - leading to far more melt water forming in the ocean. So far, unlike in Greenland, this is mostly not happening in Antarctica. But it could.

Silvano also said that if the formation of Antarctic bottom water slows, the global consequences could be massive. The process buries heat, and carbon dioxide, deep beneath the ocean surface - without that process, the heat and CO2 could remain in the atmosphere.

And then, there's the problem of rising sea levels if the feedback between the ocean and the glaciers continues.

"The idea is that this mechanism of rapid melting and warming of the ocean triggered sea level rise at other times, like the last glacial maximum, when we know rapid sea level rise was five meters per century," said Silvano. "And we think this mechanism was the cause of rapid sea level rise"

In the future, he said, "it's possible that with global warming, some other areas of Antarctica will see a complete inhibition of bottom water formation, and then this feedback will kick off."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:43:37 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/01/world/state-of-the-climate-2017-noaa-wxc/index.html

QuoteGrim report card for planet ranks 2017 one of hottest years in recorded history

(CNN)Last year was one of the hottest in recorded history, according to a new study released Wednesday by the American Meteorological Society.

The report is another piece of compelling evidence that our planet is warming faster than at any point in modern history. It's the 28th version of the annual checkup for the planet and updates numerous global climate indicators such as polar ice, oceans and extreme weather events around the world.

The State of the Climate in 2017 report, led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Centers for Environmental Information, was compiled using contributions from more than 500 scientists in more than 60 countries.

The fact that 2017 was either the second- or third-hottest year, depending on the dataset used, does not come as a surprise. It follows a string of record hot years in 2014, 2015 and 2016 -- and while 2017 did not provide a fourth consecutive record, it was the hottest non-El Niño year seen.

El Niño, which is characterized by a warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, tends to warm up the entire planet during years when it occurs.

Conversely, when La Niña is active, it tends to provide some natural air-conditioning for the planet as large portions of the Pacific Ocean cool to below average temperatures. Even though 2017 had a weak La Niña present in the beginning and end of the year, it failed to regulate the planet's high temperature caused by ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gas concentrations.

The major greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, all rose to record high amounts in our atmosphere during 2017, according to the report.

The global average carbon dioxide concentration was 405.0 parts per million (ppm), which is the highest ever recorded and also higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years, according to ice-core data.


The oceans are also heating up, with significant planet-altering consequences.

The global average sea surface temperatures were near a record high, just slightly below the record from 2016, and the last three years have seen the hottest on record.

Warm seas equal rising seas, and 2017 set a new record for global sea level -- which has risen year over year for six consecutive years and 22 of the last 24 years. Global sea level is rising at an average rate of 1.2 inches (3.1 cm) per decade, and that rate has been even higher in the most recent decades as sea-level rise accelerates.

Unprecedented coral bleaching also occurred during 2017, according to the report, which was the most widespread and destructive ever observed with hundreds of miles of corals in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean basins experiencing up to 95% mortality in the hardest-hit reefs.

Both the Arctic and the Antarctic saw record low levels of sea ice during 2017, as warmer air and sea surface temperatures continued the trend of thinning out the polar ice.

"Today's abnormally warm Arctic air and sea surface surface temperatures have not been observed in the last 2,000 years," the study said.

In March of 2017, at the end of the ice-growing season when the coverage of sea ice in the Arctic reached its maximum extent of the year, scientists found it was the smallest yearly maximum in the 37-year record.

In the Antarctic, sea ice was below average for all of 2017, hitting record lows during the first four months of 2017. On March 1 it hit a record low extent since satellites began observing the ice in 1978.

As for land ice, the news continues to be grim, which is bad news for global sea levels as melting glaciers are a significant contributor to rising ocean levels.

Glaciers across the globe lost ice mass for the 38th consecutive year -- with declines "remarkably consistent" across all regions of the planet according to the report. To put the amount of ice lost since 1980 into perspective, the report states that "the loss is equivalent to slicing 22 meters (more than 70 feet) off the top of the average glacier."

"Climate is not experienced in annual averages," the report states, even though that is how we most often monitor and gauge the changes in our planet's climate variability -- both natural and human-influenced.

"Humans experience climate change and variability most deeply in the form of impacts and extremes," according to the report --- and 2017 certainly had plenty of them.

Even though globally tropical cyclone (hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms, etc.) numbers were about average in 2017, the North Atlantic basin had one of it's busiest years on record with three standout hurricanes.

Hurricane Harvey dumped record rainfall totals in Texas and Louisiana, including a new US record of 60.5 inches (1,538 mm) which smashed the old record of 52 inches (1,320 mm).

Right on it's heels came Hurricane Irma, which became the strongest tropical cyclone globally of the year and the strongest Atlantic hurricane outside of the warmest waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

Hurricane Maria immediately followed, bringing catastrophic damage across the Caribbean Islands including devastating the landscape and infrastructure of Puerto Rico.

All three of these hurricanes ranked in the top-5 costliest disasters in US history.

Notable, deadly floods hit every continent except Antarctica -- with India floods claiming 800 lives, Venezuela experienced its most devastating flooding in more than a decade, and flooding of the Niger and Benue Rivers in Nigeria displaced more than 100,000 people.

Global fire activity was the lowest since at least 2003, but extreme droughts in a few key locations led to a number of devastating fire seasons globally.

In the US, an extreme western wildfire season saw over 4 million hectares burned, costing $18 billion -- which tripled the previous US annual wildfire cost record from 1991. Just to the north, Canada's British Columbia saw 1.2 million hectares burn during their driest summer on record.

Spain and Portugal had their second- and third-driest years respectively -- and suffered through an unusually long fire season that claimed over 100 lives.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:46:11 AM
NYT has a long essay arguing that we missed our chance 30 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on August 02, 2018, 10:17:21 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 02, 2018, 04:34:04 PM
Is there a plan for a total ban on diesel fuel in the EU?  Alstom has a new Hydrogen Train (http://www.alstom.com/press-centre/2017/03/alstoms-hydrogen-train-coradia-ilint-first-successful-run-at-80-kmh/).  When introducing it our CEO mentioned something about a diesel ban, and I was wondering if that was planned or just speculation on our part.

(The motors of diesel locomotives actually operate by electricity; the diesel engines power the generators.  So this really isn't a huge change in concept.)

For cars in some big cities, not for trains AFAIK. Some train lines are still electrified, once in in a while, to improve service.
The whole Diesel logistic and maintenance chain will take time and money to be substituted. Of course, hydrogen is cleaner than diesel but more flammable.  :hmm:
In French, engineers like to call those locomotives "diesel-électrique" for the very reason you pointed out.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on August 02, 2018, 10:42:47 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:46:11 AM
NYT has a long essay arguing that we missed our chance 30 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

When I read that, I am reminded of one of the interpretations of Cortez and the Conquistadors's behavior during the conquest of Mexico. Having committed atrocities upon atrocities for gold, sacrificed much for the ruthless pursuit of wealth meant that every little setback threatened to showcase just how far they had gone, for so little. Rather than lead them to stop, it spurred them on, like a gambler, willing to burn everything, willing to destroy everything in the knowledge that the end would come soon enough. There is an eschatology to capitalism and climate change.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 11:54:38 AM
So capitalism will successfully conquer climate change?  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 02, 2018, 12:01:36 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 11:54:38 AM
So capitalism will successfully conquer climate change?  :P

In a depressing turn of events I mentioned the article to one of my associates. His response was essentially that it is all too complicated and so scientists cannot possibly know.

That person would probably much more readily believe your comment.  It's easy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 02, 2018, 12:09:24 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 02, 2018, 12:01:36 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 11:54:38 AM
So capitalism will successfully conquer climate change?  :P

In a depressing turn of events I mentioned the article to one of my associates. His response was essentially that it is all too complicated and so scientists cannot possibly know.

That person would probably much more readily believe your comment.  It's easy.

And wilful.

Feigned Ignorance is bliss.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on August 02, 2018, 01:05:31 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 11:54:38 AM
So capitalism will successfully conquer climate change?  :P

Everyone imagines themselves as Cortez, and not as one of the Mexica.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 02:36:31 PM
I don't, really.  But what he did was a pretty incredible feat.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on August 02, 2018, 02:58:15 PM
What I meant is that, continuing your analogy of capitalism conquering climate change, it may indeed turn out to be true, but when, and at what cost? The people championing waiting for capitalism to conquer climate change are usually those who imagine themselves as the winner of the process (Cortez), and not as those who lost their lives, or became miserable because of it - people who think they will not have to suffer during a process that promises to be full of sufferings and upheavals. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 02, 2018, 03:24:49 PM
I have long argued on this forum for humanity to move to underground cities powered by nuclear reactors.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 02, 2018, 03:30:00 PM
You want us to be cave men?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 02, 2018, 03:32:07 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 02, 2018, 03:30:00 PM
You want us to be cave men?

Cave. Men.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on August 02, 2018, 04:05:51 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 11:54:38 AM
So capitalism will successfully conquer climate change?  :P

No doubt it could, that's certainly a solid Marxist thesis.

Sure we might lose a bunch of coastal cities, cost liives, reduce the value of trillions of investment. But capitalism can keep rolling through all that, adjusting to the changes in marginal schedules of production and cost as it goes. Whether you find that reassuring is another question.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 02, 2018, 04:55:43 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 02, 2018, 02:36:31 PM
I don't, really.  But what he did was a pretty incredible feat.


Marty once said I had "pretty, incredible feet."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 02, 2018, 05:01:06 PM
How did he happen to see your feet?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 02, 2018, 05:18:13 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 02, 2018, 05:01:06 PM
How did he happen to see your feet?

I saw them only when Raz was defeated .
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 02, 2018, 07:45:12 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 02, 2018, 05:01:06 PM
How did he happen to see your feet?

Footbook profile.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 04, 2018, 07:50:47 AM
The main river that runs through this area is warming.  In the past it reached temperatures in that stressed the salmon swimming up river, on average, two days a year.  But over the last eight years it has was that warm for 22 days.  There is a concern that the run this year could be severely reduced because of continued warming this year.

The significance of that? "In the four-year life cycle of a Fraser River sockeye, 2018 is supposed to be one of the big years — where the river runs red with millions of fish."  If this run declines the viability of salmon in this area is questionable. 

  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sockeye-salmon-water-temperature-1.4771607
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on August 04, 2018, 10:03:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 04, 2018, 07:50:47 AM
The main river that runs through this area is warming.  In the past it reached temperatures in that stressed the salmon swimming up river, on average, two days a year.  But over the last eight years it has was that warm for 22 days.  There is a concern that the run this year could be severely reduced because of continued warming this year.

The significance of that? "In the four-year life cycle of a Fraser River sockeye, 2018 is supposed to be one of the big years — where the river runs red with millions of fish."  If this run declines the viability of salmon in this area is questionable. 

  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sockeye-salmon-water-temperature-1.4771607

Scottish salmon is much better than Canadian ones  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 04, 2018, 10:32:56 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on August 04, 2018, 10:03:00 AM
Scottish salmon is much better than Canadian ones  ;)

They're also affected:

http://www.thenational.scot/news/16064252.Scientists_launch_tool_to_help_Scottish_salmon_survive_climate_change/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 04, 2018, 10:46:48 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 15, 2018, 07:50:45 PM
The University of Dayton is installing 4,000 solar panels...to provide 2% their power. Sigh.

4000 10' square panels? Or 4000 1" square panels?

The raw number of panels doesn't really mean much of anything.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: celedhring on August 04, 2018, 10:47:14 AM
Spain, right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQz91Cx0Ato
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 04, 2018, 12:41:21 PM
You know what? I think we're fucked.

The changes needed are coming way too slow. Governments and especially consumers don't care enough. It's too little too late.

I think we'll survive as a species but we're in for really rough time :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Rex Francorum on August 05, 2018, 06:50:48 PM
Well, I have enough of the summer. Can't wait for autumn to kick in. ----> prefers winter to summer overall. I know there are far worst than ourselves in Québec, but we are not made to tolerate -30 AND + 30.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 05, 2018, 08:05:06 PM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:46:11 AM
NYT has a long essay arguing that we missed our chance 30 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

Well if that is true we never had a chance at all. I still think we are doing some great things and who knows what we might do in this fight? CO2 can also be absorbed as well.

The doomsayers can keep chanting and they may be right,  but I have nothing to do but keep at it. I did become an EE for this, after all.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on August 05, 2018, 08:12:46 PM
You're an electrical engineer?  I thought you were a social worker of some sort.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on August 06, 2018, 05:53:56 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:46:11 AM
NYT has a long essay arguing that we missed our chance 30 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

I have not read the essay yet, but I've seen already a few answers to it from the NGO/environmental activist side and they really criticize it for blaming "human nature" rather than oil companies and the Republicans.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 06, 2018, 09:25:48 AM
Quote from: dps on August 05, 2018, 08:12:46 PM
You're an electrical engineer?  I thought you were a social worker of some sort.

I was a sort of social worker, but that was 17 years ago.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 07, 2018, 02:38:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 05, 2018, 08:05:06 PM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2018, 09:46:11 AM
NYT has a long essay arguing that we missed our chance 30 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

Well if that is true we never had a chance at all. I still think we are doing some great things and who knows what we might do in this fight? CO2 can also be absorbed as well.

The doomsayers can keep chanting and they may be right,  but I have nothing to do but keep at it. I did become an EE for this, after all.

My son has a similar outlook.  It is what keeps me optimistic about the future.  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 08, 2018, 12:57:06 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45775309

QuoteClimate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

It's the final call, say scientists, the most extensive warning yet on the risks of rising global temperatures.

Their dramatic report on keeping that rise under 1.5 degrees C states that the world is now completely off track, heading instead towards 3C.

Staying below 1.5C will require "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".

It will be hugely expensive, the report says, but the window of opportunity is not yet closed.

After three years of research and a week of haggling between scientists and government officials at a meeting in South Korea, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5C.

The critical 33-page Summary for Policymakers certainly bears the hallmarks of difficult negotiations between climate researchers determined to stick to what their studies have shown and political representatives more concerned with economies and living standards.

Despite the inevitable compromises, there are some key messages that come through loud and and clear.

"The first is that limiting warming to 1.5C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to 2 degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways," said Prof Jim Skea, who is a co-chair of the IPCC.

"The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5C - changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation."

What's the one big takeaway?

"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW IDIOTS', but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have."

The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below 2 degrees this century then the changes we would experience would be manageable.

Not any more. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years in 2030.

We can stay below it but it will require urgent, large-scale changes from governments and individuals, plus we will have to invest a massive pile of cash every year, around 2.5% of global GDP, for two decades.

Even then, we will still need machines, trees and plants to capture carbon from the air that we can then store deep underground. Forever!

Five steps to 1.5
- Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030.
- Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050.
- Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero.
- Up to 7 million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (a bit less than the size of Australia).
- Global net zero emissions by 2050.

How much will all this cost?

It won't come cheap. The report says that to limit warming to 1.5C, it will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035.

Experts believe that this number needs to be put in context.

"There are costs and benefits you have to weigh up," said Dr Stephen Cornelius, a former UK IPCC negotiator now with WWF, who says that cutting emissions hard in the short term will cost money, but is cheaper than paying for carbon dioxide removal later this century.

"The report also talks about the benefits as there is higher economic growth at 1.5 degrees than there is at 2C, and you don't have the higher risk of catastrophic impacts at 1.5 that you do at 2."

What happens if we don't act?

The researchers say that if we fail to keep temperatures below 1.5C, we are in for some significant and dangerous changes to our world.

You can kiss coral reefs good-bye, as the report says they would be essentially 100% wiped out at 2 degrees of warming.

Global sea-level will rise around 10 centimetres more if we let warming go to 2C, That may not sound like much but keeping to 1.5C means that 10 million fewer people would be exposed to the risks of flooding.

There are also significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops like rice, maize and wheat.

"We are already in the danger zone at one degree of warming," said Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace.

"Both poles are melting at an accelerated rate; ancient trees that have been there for hundreds of years are suddenly dying; and the summer we've just experienced - basically, the whole world was on fire."

Is this plan at all feasible?

That all depends on what you mean. The IPCC scientists are not allowed to prescribe what should be done; they can only outline what the options are. But those involved with this study believe it shows realistic paths to staying under 1.5C.

"It is feasible if we all put our best foot forward, and that's a key message of this report. No-one can opt out anymore," said Dr Debra Roberts, who's a co-chair of the IPCC.

"We all have to fundamentally change the way we live our lives; we can't remain remote from the problem anymore.

"The report is very clear, this can be done, but it will require massive changes, socially and politically and accompanied by technological development."

Is all this about saving small island states?

The idea of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 is something very close to the hearts and minds of small island and low-lying states who fear they will be inundated with flooding if temperatures go to 2 degrees.

But over the three years that the report was in preparation, more and more scientific evidence has been published showing that the benefits of staying close to 1.5C are not just for island nations in the Pacific.

"If you save a small island country then you save the world," said Dr Amjad Abdulla, who's an IPCC author from the Maldives. "Because the report clearly states that no-one is going to be immune. It's about morality - it's about humanity."

How long have we got?

Not long at all. But that issue is now in the hands of political leaders. The report says that hard decisions can no longer be kicked down the road. If the nations of the world don't act soon, they will have to rely even more on unproven technologies to take carbon out of the air - an expensive and uncertain road.

"They really need to start work immediately. The report is clear that if governments just fulfil the pledges they made in the Paris agreement for 2030, it is not good enough. It will make it very difficult to consider global warming of 1.5C," said Prof Jim Skea.

"If they read the report and decide to increase their ambitions and act more immediately then 1.5C stays within reach - that's the nature of the choice they face."

Campaigners and environmentalists, who have welcomed the report, say there is simply no time left for debate.

"This is the moment where we need to decide" said Kaisa Kosonen.

"We want to move to clean energy, sustainable lifestyles. We want to protect our forests and species. This is the moment that we will remember; this is the year when the turning point happened."

What can I do?

The report says that there must be rapid and significant changes in four big global systems - energy, land use, cities and industry.

"This is not about remote science; it is about where we live and work, and it gives us a cue on how we might be able to contribute to that massive change," said Dr Debra Roberts.

"You might say you don't have control over land use, but you do have control over what you eat and that determines land use.

"We can choose the way we move in cities and if we don't have access to public transport - make sure you are electing politicians who provide options around public transport."



Personally, I think we're fucked. Climate change doesn't win elections. People want their cheap energy, cheap beef, drive their cars, fly on vacations across the globe, and buy cheap consumer products, and tomorrow be damned.

I think the rich countries will mitigate some of the effects for their populace. However, I expect we're also headed for mass migrations from heavily affected areas that will likely lead to some extremely ugly reactions from the migrants' destination countries.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on October 08, 2018, 01:16:45 AM
We're fucked.  Not because people can't think long-term, but because the nature of the problem ensures that no one and no single government can take ownership.  For each individual and organisation, the optimal solution is to do nothing and hope that everybody else acts. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 08, 2018, 03:16:57 AM
Agreed, we're fucked.  I'm glad I don't have kids, so I won't have to explain it to them.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 08, 2018, 09:33:57 AM
I don't know. Technology is moving forward very quickly and given timelines of 2030 and 2050 momentum might pick up. I feel like we have already seen far more progress than we had any right to expect back in 2008. So...it might still work out. And even if we are 'fucked' temporarily I think we can rally. Right now the technology for carbon capture is experimental but it will not be by 2030 or 2050.

Quote from: Monoriu on October 08, 2018, 01:16:45 AM
We're fucked.  Not because people can't think long-term, but because the nature of the problem ensures that no one and no single government can take ownership.  For each individual and organisation, the optimal solution is to do nothing and hope that everybody else acts. 

Is being ahead and having optimal technology really a bad plan? China is a leader here so they clearly are not taking your bizarre strategy of intentionally letting other countries get ahead.

Quote from: Maladict on October 08, 2018, 03:16:57 AM
Agreed, we're fucked.  I'm glad I don't have kids, so I won't have to explain it to them.

To kids this will be normal and they are up to the challenge. It is the olds who are unable to understand it and need it explained to them.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on October 08, 2018, 09:39:25 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 08, 2018, 09:33:57 AMTo kids this will be normal and they are up to the challenge. It is the olds who are unable to understand it and need it explained to them.

I am quite sure that, in the future, when the next generations look back, this will be one of the topics that will make them facepalm in a "What the hell were they thinking" kind of way.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 08, 2018, 10:24:47 AM
Quote from: The Larch on October 08, 2018, 09:39:25 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 08, 2018, 09:33:57 AMTo kids this will be normal and they are up to the challenge. It is the olds who are unable to understand it and need it explained to them.

I am quite sure that, in the future, when the next generations look back, this will be one of the topics that will make them facepalm in a "What the hell were they thinking" kind of way.

That is already happening
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 08, 2018, 12:50:52 PM
Should have gone full nuclear.

Also, "we're fucked", "glad I don't have kids" etc. What is this, loser hour? Man the fuck up and deal with stuff that our grandparents would have been thrilled to have to deal with compared to crap back then.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 08, 2018, 02:37:52 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on October 08, 2018, 01:16:45 AM
We're fucked. Not because people can't think long-term, but because the nature of the problem ensures that no one and no single government can take ownership.  For each individual and organisation, the optimal solution is to do nothing and hope that everybody else acts.

That's a very convenient line of reasoning and in accurate, because the large majority of people in the developed world can carry on as they wish and not be especially bothered by the consequences of climate change.

The people who are "fucked" are some others, someone where else and in some other time, maybe next year, next decade or next century.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PJL on October 08, 2018, 02:52:27 PM
Quote from: The Brain on October 08, 2018, 12:50:52 PM
Should have gone full nuclear.

Also, "we're fucked", "glad I don't have kids" etc. What is this, loser hour? Man the fuck up and deal with stuff that our grandparents would have been thrilled to have to deal with compared to crap back then.

Going full nuclear might actually be the only realistic chance that the world avoids catastrophic climate change before 2030.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 08, 2018, 03:00:41 PM
Quote from: The Larch on October 08, 2018, 09:39:25 AM
I am quite sure that, in the future, when the next generations look back, this will be one of the topics that will make them facepalm in a "What the hell were they thinking" kind of way.

Simple - we weren't thinking.  Thinking is passe.  In the US even a prospective Supreme Court justice seals the deal by putting  his emotions on a grotesque display and by making a mockery of the very notion of logical thinking.

I mean sure warming will cost trillions and ultimately millions of deaths.  But the important thing is we really showed those globalists where to stick it!  Any cost is worth paying for that unique pleasure.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 08, 2018, 04:04:42 PM
I managed about 10 seconds of Kavanaugh's disgraceful display...................now he is a Supreme Court judge  :(

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 08, 2018, 04:51:59 PM
Quote from: The Brain on October 08, 2018, 12:50:52 PM
Also, "we're fucked", "glad I don't have kids" etc. What is this, loser hour? Man the fuck up and deal with stuff that our grandparents would have been thrilled to have to deal with compared to crap back then.

I am, not least by not having kids   :)
Still think we're fucked though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 13, 2018, 11:33:08 AM
28 degrees in mid October, breaking all time records set yesterday and the day before. And the 70s before that.
No wonder people don't care, everyone's enjoying themselves too much.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on October 13, 2018, 07:45:31 PM
Stupid question maybe, but how do they recycle the air on the ISS for the 20 years it's been up there?

The tech is obviously there to filter out carbon dioxyde no?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 13, 2018, 07:59:48 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on October 13, 2018, 07:45:31 PM
Stupid question maybe, but how do they recycle the air on the ISS for the 20 years it's been up there?

The tech is obviously there to filter out carbon dioxyde no?

Money is no object up there for a couple of tonnes of air, down here you're talking about getting on for a million tonnes of atmosphere for each of the 7* billion of us.



* I'm so old/ behind the times, I've probably half forgotten a recent tipping over into another billion, so it's probably 8 billion? :unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 13, 2018, 11:19:10 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on October 13, 2018, 07:45:31 PM
Stupid question maybe, but how do they recycle the air on the ISS for the 20 years it's been up there?

The tech is obviously there to filter out carbon dioxyde no?

I found this which suggests you need low humidity environment.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/long_duration_sorbent_testbed
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 14, 2018, 04:27:32 AM
The problem of clearing up CO2 emissions is one of scale and cost.

World CO2 emissions due to human activity were just over 36 billion tonnes in 2015. The current cost of removing one tonne of CO2 appears to be around $600 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44396781 ). So $21.6tn to clear up current emissions, roughly a quarter of world GDP.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on October 14, 2018, 08:26:25 AM
Does "human activity" figures generally include breathing, or is it just artificial/industrial emissions?

(actually curious, not a lame troll attempt)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 14, 2018, 08:32:45 AM
Not sure; it would be around 2 billion tonnes per annum though.

Of course there is the "natural" carbon cycle which would include emissions by animals.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 01, 2018, 01:53:58 PM
New report out saying that the Ocean has absorbed more heat than had been thought.  That has a lot of knock on consequences but one of the more concerning ones is that if we are to stay below 2 degrees of warming we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 25% more than had been estimated.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/study-oceans-have-absorbed-60-percent-more-heat-previously-thought




Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 01, 2018, 01:55:48 PM
It's the end of the world as we know it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2018, 02:43:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2018, 01:53:58 PM
New report out saying that the Ocean has absorbed more heat than had been thought.  That has a lot of knock on consequences but one of the more concerning ones is that if we are to stay below 2 degrees of warming we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 25% more than had been estimated.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/study-oceans-have-absorbed-60-percent-more-heat-previously-thought

The climate change debate over the past few decades has been a useful object lesson in the consequences of statistical illiteracy on policy.  Namely that to the extent uncertainty exists about a range of outcomes, that should more often than not prompt a willingness to spend MORE resources to insure against the bad outcome, not less.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 02, 2018, 10:50:22 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2018, 02:43:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2018, 01:53:58 PM
New report out saying that the Ocean has absorbed more heat than had been thought.  That has a lot of knock on consequences but one of the more concerning ones is that if we are to stay below 2 degrees of warming we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 25% more than had been estimated.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/study-oceans-have-absorbed-60-percent-more-heat-previously-thought

The climate change debate over the past few decades has been a useful object lesson in the consequences of statistical illiteracy on policy.  Namely that to the extent uncertainty exists about a range of outcomes, that should more often than not prompt a willingness to spend MORE resources to insure against the bad outcome, not less.

Agreed.  I think the most significant thing about this report is that it has reduced the amount of uncertainty regarding the outcomes we can expect.  And because we now live in a world dominated by Trump's constant lies and misinformation - this news hardly gets a mention.  WAD as far as the Trumpists are concerned I guess. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 02, 2018, 12:55:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 02, 2018, 10:50:22 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2018, 02:43:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2018, 01:53:58 PM
New report out saying that the Ocean has absorbed more heat than had been thought.  That has a lot of knock on consequences but one of the more concerning ones is that if we are to stay below 2 degrees of warming we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 25% more than had been estimated.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/study-oceans-have-absorbed-60-percent-more-heat-previously-thought

The climate change debate over the past few decades has been a useful object lesson in the consequences of statistical illiteracy on policy.  Namely that to the extent uncertainty exists about a range of outcomes, that should more often than not prompt a willingness to spend MORE resources to insure against the bad outcome, not less.

Agreed.  I think the most significant thing about this report is that it has reduced the amount of uncertainty regarding the outcomes we can expect.  And because we now live in a world dominated by Trump's constant lies and misinformation - this news hardly gets a mention.  WAD as far as the Trumpists are concerned I guess.

I don't disagree.

Oh and give now big a 'number' this ocean temperature warming is, it's astonishing how little impact it's having on politics in America, the UK or many other countries.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 05, 2018, 10:18:42 PM
Quote from: The Brain on October 08, 2018, 12:50:52 PM
Should have gone full nuclear.

Also, "we're fucked", "glad I don't have kids" etc. What is this, loser hour? Man the fuck up and deal with stuff that our grandparents would have been thrilled to have to deal with compared to crap back then.

Well said.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 05, 2018, 11:39:12 PM
Today's youth are too soft, what with their hula hoops and television.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 06, 2018, 01:28:11 AM
And there it is. After more than a decade of dragging their feet and fighting court orders to do more to reach climate targets, the government has now stated we need nuclear plants as it's the only realistic option left on the table.  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 06, 2018, 03:09:43 AM
Yes, nuclear for the base load and wind and solar for intermittent, with improved links between different countries so that non-nuclear renewables can provide a larger percentage share. If fossil fuels are used for the transition then gas is the least damaging.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 06, 2018, 06:12:41 AM
Stop trying to make nuclear happen. It's not going to happen.

(https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/015/731/00-look-2-regina-george-mean-girls-throwback-thursday-640x480.jpg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM
I think we're on the cusp of major changes. The climate will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better - no one wants to really do anything as long as it threatens a country's economic development and competitiveness.

And making it better and/or adapting will require major changes across the entirety of society and will create a huge upheaval either way. EU and US will have to significantly strengthen their borders. Question is what happens when they face their own migrants, e.g. if parts of Spain or Italy become unsustainable to live in, or if US coastal cities are flooded?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 06, 2018, 06:32:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM
I think we're on the cusp of major changes. The climate will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better - no one wants to really do anything as long as it threatens a country's economic development and competitiveness.

And making it better and/or adapting will require major changes across the entirety of society and will create a huge upheaval either way. EU and US will have to significantly strengthen their borders. Question is what happens when they face their own migrants, e.g. if parts of Spain or Italy become unsustainable to live in, or if US coastal cities are flooded?

If that happens I'll go and open a pub in Canada near the North-West Passage. We'll serve authentic goulash. Made out of moose.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on November 06, 2018, 06:42:13 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM


And making it better and/or adapting will require major changes across the entirety of society and will create a huge upheaval either way. EU and US will have to significantly strengthen their borders. Question is what happens when they face their own migrants, e.g. if parts of Spain or Italy become unsustainable to live in, or if US coastal cities are flooded?

It's not like migration from South Italy to Padania  :P or Andalusians to Northern Spain is unknown of. Problem is, even the meseta in central/north Spain will be affected.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 06, 2018, 06:55:29 AM
I think it will also depend on a general level of the economy and infrastructure in some places. You can't do anything for flooded coastal cities but if an area becomes more barren and hot, the farmers are fucked, sure, but people may persevere if there'll be jobs and food. I'd imagine, at least.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 06, 2018, 11:20:58 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM
or if US coastal cities are flooded?
Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama turn blue!?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 06, 2018, 11:21:41 AM
Alabama? Maybe. Tennessee is in the mountains though :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 06, 2018, 11:22:15 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2018, 06:32:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM
I think we're on the cusp of major changes. The climate will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better - no one wants to really do anything as long as it threatens a country's economic development and competitiveness.

And making it better and/or adapting will require major changes across the entirety of society and will create a huge upheaval either way. EU and US will have to significantly strengthen their borders. Question is what happens when they face their own migrants, e.g. if parts of Spain or Italy become unsustainable to live in, or if US coastal cities are flooded?

If that happens I'll go and open a pub in Canada near the North-West Passage. We'll serve authentic goulash. Made out of moose.
sounds good!  Though elk might be easier to find at this latitude. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on November 06, 2018, 11:22:41 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 06, 2018, 11:21:41 AM
Alabama? Maybe. Tennessee is in the mountains though :P

perfect island real-estate?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 06, 2018, 11:23:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 06, 2018, 11:21:41 AM
Alabama? Maybe. Tennessee is in the mountains though :P
I meant people from the coastal areas move inland.  "blue states".  Not the ocean.  Though I realize the double meaning now :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 06, 2018, 04:48:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2018, 06:32:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2018, 06:19:59 AM
I think we're on the cusp of major changes. The climate will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better - no one wants to really do anything as long as it threatens a country's economic development and competitiveness.

And making it better and/or adapting will require major changes across the entirety of society and will create a huge upheaval either way. EU and US will have to significantly strengthen their borders. Question is what happens when they face their own migrants, e.g. if parts of Spain or Italy become unsustainable to live in, or if US coastal cities are flooded?

If that happens I'll go and open a pub in Canada near the North-West Passage. We'll serve authentic goulash. Made out of moose.

You can come to North Vancouver.  We are on a mountain so sea level rise won't be so bad, and our climate is becoming like Southern California.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 06, 2018, 05:14:12 PM
He probably can't afford Vancouver.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 06, 2018, 05:42:56 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 06, 2018, 05:14:12 PM
He probably can't afford Vancouver.

You may have missed this part

We'll serve authentic goulash
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on November 06, 2018, 06:09:46 PM
I live on a hill, about 43 feet up and two blocks from the ocean.  When I am old I will live on an island.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 22, 2018, 02:19:39 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DskYMR7U4AEXINE.jpg)

:bleeding:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 22, 2018, 02:50:14 AM
This has been said every single winter since the mid-80s.

Using those click bait terms complete with RANDOM CAPITALIZING is really disheartening.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 22, 2018, 03:11:08 AM
Well, he is stuck in Washington when he'd rather be in Florida.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 22, 2018, 03:19:21 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 22, 2018, 03:11:08 AM
Well, he is stuck in Washington when he'd rather be in Florida.  :hmm:

He went to Florida on Tuesday.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 22, 2018, 04:51:18 AM
D'oh!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Solmyr on November 22, 2018, 01:02:33 PM
Can you somehow get him to go to Florida when a hurricane strikes there? Preferably for a beach vacation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 23, 2018, 09:46:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/

But we're are not, some other people, some other place, they'll more often than not be poorer people in marginal places; relatively wealthy people will do ok, money will generally overcome the inconveniences.

Just depends how much you're prepared to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 23, 2018, 11:08:40 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/

Unless we are not. But shocking Tim is doing the doom and gloom and WE'RE ALL DOOMED shit. I thought we all died from that epidemic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 24, 2018, 06:59:00 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 23, 2018, 09:46:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/

But we're are not, some other people, some other place, they'll more often than not be poorer people in marginal places; relatively wealthy people will do ok, money will generally overcome the inconveniences.

Just depends how much you're prepared to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others?

Florida ia going to be devastated
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 24, 2018, 08:33:50 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 24, 2018, 06:59:00 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 23, 2018, 09:46:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/

But we're are not, some other people, some other place, they'll more often than not be poorer people in marginal places; relatively wealthy people will do ok, money will generally overcome the inconveniences.

Just depends how much you're prepared to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others?

Florida ia going to be devastated

How does that contradict or address the point I made?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 24, 2018, 08:37:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 24, 2018, 08:33:50 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 24, 2018, 06:59:00 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 23, 2018, 09:46:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2018, 09:19:53 PM
Feds release a new report saying we're fucked.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576589/

But we're are not, some other people, some other place, they'll more often than not be poorer people in marginal places; relatively wealthy people will do ok, money will generally overcome the inconveniences.

Just depends how much you're prepared to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others?

Florida ia going to be devastated

How does that contradict or address the point I made?

It's where Lemonjello and Fromtia live.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2018, 10:28:28 PM
Quote
Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Balloons at NYC Thanksgiving Parade shatter ALL RECORDS.  Whatever happened to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation?


Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on November 25, 2018, 05:41:36 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2018, 10:28:28 PM
Quote
Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Balloons at NYC Thanksgiving Parade shatter ALL RECORDS.  Whatever happened to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation?

:lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 25, 2018, 04:27:03 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html?action=click&emc=edit_nn_20181125&module=Top+Stories&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=78513733emc%3Dedit_nn_20181125&pgtype=Homepage&te=1

QuoteU.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Economy

WASHINGTON — A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century's end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump's agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

Mr. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, "Whatever happened to Global Warming?" 

But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

"There is a bizarre contrast between this report, which is being released by this administration, and this administration's own policies," said Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center.

All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.

Scientists who worked on the report said it did not appear that administration officials had tried to alter or suppress its findings. However, several noted that the timing of its release, at 2 p.m. the day after Thanksgiving, appeared designed to minimize its public impact.

Still, the report could become a powerful legal tool for opponents of Mr. Trump's efforts to dismantle climate change policy, experts said.

"This report will weaken the Trump administration's legal case for undoing climate change regulations, and it strengthens the hands of those who go to court to fight them," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.

The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which the federal government is required by law to produce every four years. The first volume was issued by the White House last year.

The previous report, issued in May 2014, concluded with nearly as much scientific certainty, but not as much precision on the economic costs, that the tangible impacts of climate change had already started to cause damage across the country. It cited increasing water scarcity in dry regions, torrential downpours in wet regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.

The results of the 2014 report helped inform the Obama administration as it wrote a set of landmark climate change regulations. The following year, the E.P.A. finalized President Barack Obama's signature climate change policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. At the end of the 2015, Mr. Obama played a lead role in brokering the Paris Agreement.

But in 2016, Republicans in general and Mr. Trump in particular campaigned against those regulations. In rallies before cheering coal miners, Mr. Trump vowed to end what he called Mr. Obama's "war on coal" and to withdraw from the Paris deal. Since winning the election, his administration has moved decisively to roll back environmental regulations.

The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.

The findings come a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations, issued its most alarming and specific report to date about the severe economic and humanitarian crises expected to hit the world by 2040.

But the new report also emphasizes that the outcomes depend on how swiftly and decisively the United States and other countries take action to mitigate global warming. The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which usually means imposing taxes or fees on companies that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; establishing government regulations on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted; and spending public money on clean-energy research.

A White House statement said the report, which was started under the Obama administration, was "largely based on the most extreme scenario" of global warming and that the next assessment would provide an opportunity for greater balance.

The report covers every region of the United States and asserts that recent climate-related events are signs of things to come. No area of the country will be untouched, from the Southwest, where droughts will curb hydropower and tax already limited water supplies, to Alaska, where the loss of sea ice will cause coastal flooding and erosion and force communities to relocate, to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where saltwater will taint drinking water.

More people will die as heat waves become more common, the scientists say, and a hotter climate will also lead to more outbreaks of disease.

Two areas of impact particularly stand out: trade and agriculture.

Trade disruptions

Mr. Trump has put trade issues at the center of his economic agenda, placing new tariffs on imports and renegotiating trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. But climate change is likely to be a disruptive force in trade and manufacturing, the report says.

Extreme weather events driven by global warming are "virtually certain to increasingly affect U.S. trade and economy, including import and export prices and businesses with overseas operations and supply chains," the report concludes.

Such disasters will temporarily shutter factories both in the United States and abroad, causing price spikes for products from apples to automotive parts, the scientists predicted. So much of the supply chain for American companies is overseas that almost no industry will be immune from the effects of climate change at home or abroad, the report says.

It cites as an example the extreme flooding in Thailand in 2011. Western Digital, an American company that produces 60 percent of its hard drives there, sustained $199 million in losses and halved its hard drive shipments in the last quarter of 2011. The shortages temporarily doubled hard drive prices, affecting other American companies like Apple, HP and Dell.

American companies should expect many more such disruptions, the report says.

"Climate change is another risk to the strength of the U.S. trade position, and the U.S. ability to export," said Diana Liverman, a University of Arizona professor and co-author of the report. "It can affect U.S. products, and as it drives poverty abroad we can lose consumer markets."

Agricultural risks

The nation's farm belt is likely to be among the hardest-hit regions, and farmers in particular will see their bottom lines threatened.

"Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the U.S.," the report says. "Expect increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad."

By 2050, the scientists forecast, changes in rainfall and hotter temperatures will reduce the agricultural productivity of the Midwest to levels last seen in the 1980s.

The risks, the report noted, depend on the ability of producers to adapt to changes.

During the 2012 Midwestern drought, farmers who incorporated conservation practices fared better, said Robert Bonnie, a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University who worked in the Agriculture Department during the Obama administration. But federal programs designed to help farmers cope with climate change have stalled because the farm bill, the primary legislation for agricultural subsidies, expired this fall.

The report says the Midwest, as well as the Northeast, will also experience more flooding when it rains, like the 2011 Missouri River flood that inundated a nuclear power plant near Omaha, forcing it to shut down for years.

Other parts of the country, including much of the Southwest, will endure worsening droughts, further taxing limited groundwater supplies. Those droughts can lead to fires, a phenomenon that played out this fall in California as the most destructive wildfire in state history killed dozens of people.

The report predicts that frequent wildfires, long a plague of the Western United States, will also become more common in other regions, including the Southeast. The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, which killed 14 people and burned more than 17,000 acres in Tennessee, may have been just the beginning. But unlike in the West, "in the Southeast, they have no experience with an annual dangerous fire season, or at least very little," said Andrew Light, a co-author of the report and a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.

Climate change is taking the United States into uncharted territory, the report concludes. "The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid," it says.

There is always some uncertainty in climate projections, but scientists' estimates about the effects of global warming to date have largely been borne out. The variable going forward, the report says, is the amount of carbon emissions humans produce.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 27, 2018, 03:28:42 AM
Well, that's settled:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46351940?ocid=socialflow_twitter&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=twitter

QuoteTrump on climate change report: 'I don't believe it'

US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on a report by his own government warning of devastating effects from climate change.

Asked outside the White House about the findings that unchecked global warming would wreak havoc on the US economy, he said: "I don't believe it."

The report found that climate change will cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars annually and damage health.

The Trump administration has pursued a pro-fossil fuels agenda.

The world's leading scientists agree that climate change is human-induced and warn that natural fluctuations in temperature are being exacerbated by human activity.

What did President Trump say?

He told reporters on Monday that he had "read some of" Friday's report, which was compiled with help from US government agencies and departments.

Mr Trump said other countries must take measures to cut their emissions.

"You're going to have to have China and Japan and all of Asia and all these other countries, you know, it [the report] addresses our country," he said.

"Right now we're at the cleanest we've ever been and that's very important to me.

"But if we're clean, but every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good.

"So I want clean air, I want clean water, very important."

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused the Trump administration of trying to hide the report.

What did the report say?

The Fourth National Climate Assessment outlines the potential impacts of climate change across every sector of American society.

"With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century - more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many US states," the report says.

"Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century."

The report notes that the effects of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country, including more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events.

But it says that projections of future catastrophe could change if society works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and "to adapt to the changes that will occur".

What has President Trump previously said on climate change?

In October, President Trump accused climate change scientists of having a "political agenda", telling Fox News he was unconvinced that humans were responsible for the earth's rising temperatures.

After taking office he announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, which commits another 187 other countries to keeping rising global temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.

At the time, Mr Trump said he wanted to negotiate a new "fair" deal that would not disadvantage US businesses and workers.

During his election campaign in 2016 Mr Trump said climate change was "a hoax". However he has since rowed back on that statement saying in a recent interview: "I don't think it's a hoax, I think there's probably a difference."

How great is the climate threat?

A report released in October by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the leading international body evaluating climate change - said it could be stopped only if the world made major, and costly, changes.

That means reducing global emissions of CO2 by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and reducing coal use to almost zero and using up to seven million sq km (2.7 million square miles) for land energy crops.

If the world fails to act, the researchers warned, there would be some significant and dangerous changes to our world, including rising sea levels, significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops such as rice, maize and wheat.


To be fair, even the governments who pay lip service to climate change don't do nearly enough to curb it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 03:42:35 AM
The USA's CO2 emissions are falling while virtuous Germany is increasing CO2 emissions  :hmm:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#7b70f9ed3535

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/01/24/germany-announces-carbon-emission-rise-second-year-row/

There are good reasons for this of course. Shale gas replacing coal in the USA is a big improvement for example. But it is interesting, in the instagram age, how important the posturing of leaders is to people's perceptions of reality.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 27, 2018, 09:15:48 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?

Yeah. The environmentalists are shitty allies.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 27, 2018, 09:27:18 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 03:42:35 AM
The USA's CO2 emissions are falling while virtuous Germany is increasing CO2 emissions  :hmm:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#7b70f9ed3535

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/01/24/germany-announces-carbon-emission-rise-second-year-row/

There are good reasons for this of course. Shale gas replacing coal in the USA is a big improvement for example. But it is interesting, in the instagram age, how important the posturing of leaders is to people's perceptions of reality.

That's why I used the term "lip service." Many countries talk a big game, but shy back from taking decisive steps. In Germany, the government would have to tackle the energy sector, industries, and car manufacturers, but with the jobs attached and size of these sectors, nobody seems even willing to formulate a plan. The government has been waffling for months about the Diesel emissions that are in breach of EU regulations with basically no cooperation from the car industry.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 27, 2018, 09:38:23 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 27, 2018, 09:27:18 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 03:42:35 AM
The USA's CO2 emissions are falling while virtuous Germany is increasing CO2 emissions  :hmm:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#7b70f9ed3535

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/01/24/germany-announces-carbon-emission-rise-second-year-row/

There are good reasons for this of course. Shale gas replacing coal in the USA is a big improvement for example. But it is interesting, in the instagram age, how important the posturing of leaders is to people's perceptions of reality.

That's why I used the term "lip service." Many countries talk a big game, but shy back from taking decisive steps. In Germany, the government would have to tackle the energy sector, industries, and car manufacturers, but with the jobs attached and size of these sectors, nobody seems even willing to formulate a plan. The government has been waffling for months about the Diesel emissions that are in breach of EU regulations with basically no cooperation from the car industry.


'People' just want to buy stuff, shovel in at the front, shit it out at the back; someone else in another time will clean it up.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:12:42 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?

Nuclear power plants can't survive freakishly huge tsunamis. They cannot be kept on German soil!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 10:32:48 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 27, 2018, 09:27:18 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 03:42:35 AM
The USA's CO2 emissions are falling while virtuous Germany is increasing CO2 emissions  :hmm:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#7b70f9ed3535

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/01/24/germany-announces-carbon-emission-rise-second-year-row/

There are good reasons for this of course. Shale gas replacing coal in the USA is a big improvement for example. But it is interesting, in the instagram age, how important the posturing of leaders is to people's perceptions of reality.

That's why I used the term "lip service." Many countries talk a big game, but shy back from taking decisive steps. In Germany, the government would have to tackle the energy sector, industries, and car manufacturers, but with the jobs attached and size of these sectors, nobody seems even willing to formulate a plan. The government has been waffling for months about the Diesel emissions that are in breach of EU regulations with basically no cooperation from the car industry.

Yes indeed.

Trump really is a blessing here. The well-heeled can point their fingers at the vile orange oaf whilst carrying on with their ski-trips, overpowered cars and exotic holidays with a clear conscience  :huh:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:40:24 AM
And don't forget the "carbon footprint reduction" extra charge you can pay online when ordering various services and such  :lol: Your conciense can be much lighter with the proper indulgence paper!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 10:49:39 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:12:42 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?

Nuclear power plants can't survive freakishly huge tsunamis. They cannot be kept on German soil!

I've heard that nuclear plants contain atoms!  :o
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on November 27, 2018, 11:20:20 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 27, 2018, 09:27:18 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 03:42:35 AM
The USA's CO2 emissions are falling while virtuous Germany is increasing CO2 emissions  :hmm:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#7b70f9ed3535

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/01/24/germany-announces-carbon-emission-rise-second-year-row/

There are good reasons for this of course. Shale gas replacing coal in the USA is a big improvement for example. But it is interesting, in the instagram age, how important the posturing of leaders is to people's perceptions of reality.

That's why I used the term "lip service." Many countries talk a big game, but shy back from taking decisive steps. In Germany, the government would have to tackle the energy sector, industries, and car manufacturers, but with the jobs attached and size of these sectors, nobody seems even willing to formulate a plan. The government has been waffling for months about the Diesel emissions that are in breach of EU regulations with basically no cooperation from the car industry.

Diesel powered cars are more common in Germany than in the US, correct?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 27, 2018, 11:24:36 AM
Not as common as on Krypton.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 11:33:52 AM
What's rather priceless is that IIRC around 2009 the UK government gave subsidies on diesel cars. Now they really close to severly punishing them I think.

Take crap like that, and the fact that as it turns out most of the plastic "recycling" in the West involved dumping it on China, and it's really hard to take this whole thing seriously. Not the actual climate problem, that's serious enough. But attempts to reverse it.

Even in seeming efforts it's just a battleground for short-term economic and political interests. See the whole plastic recycling thing. Or how you switch from nuclear to coal to score a cheap political victory. Or how people are made to obsess over cars and their fuel usage, when even with that's gone you still have ships and trains burning oil, not to mention all the other industrial products derived from it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 11:45:04 AM
The government should really try to reclaim the costs of those subsidies from the car companies; given that we were supplied with falsified data and that data led to the subsidies.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 27, 2018, 11:47:06 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:40:24 AM
And don't forget the "carbon footprint reduction" extra charge you can pay online when ordering various services and such  :lol: Your conciense can be much lighter with the proper indulgence paper!

Offsets are an elegant and efficient method of reducing global emissions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 12:34:00 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 27, 2018, 11:47:06 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:40:24 AM
And don't forget the "carbon footprint reduction" extra charge you can pay online when ordering various services and such  :lol: Your conciense can be much lighter with the proper indulgence paper!

Offsets are an elegant and efficient method of reducing global emissions.

Assuming most companies don't trick our outright lie regarding them when offering such extra charges for customers.

I mean look at the recent findings regarding plastic recycling in the UK. MASSIVE fraud using loopholes in the system.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on November 27, 2018, 12:56:37 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 10:49:39 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:12:42 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?

Nuclear power plants can't survive freakishly huge tsunamis. They cannot be kept on German soil!

I've heard that nuclear plants contain atoms!  :o

If only they had an Atomwaffe like we do.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on November 27, 2018, 01:44:57 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 11:33:52 AM
What's rather priceless is that IIRC around 2009 the UK government gave subsidies on diesel cars. Now they really close to severly punishing them I think.


Macron is already punishing diesel drivers now, after years of cheaper diesel fuel prices too.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on November 27, 2018, 01:46:19 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 27, 2018, 09:14:30 AM
Isn't Germany shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal?


You forgot Russian gas in the new green energy mix, courtesy of Gazprom and Former Kanzler Schröder.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 27, 2018, 04:19:24 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 27, 2018, 11:47:06 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:40:24 AM
And don't forget the "carbon footprint reduction" extra charge you can pay online when ordering various services and such  :lol: Your conciense can be much lighter with the proper indulgence paper!

Offsets are an elegant and efficient method of reducing global emissions.
elegant, yes.  Efficient, not so much.

For the tree you buy, it will take it's entire life, say 30 years, to offset the cost of one trip to some southern, sunny carribean place.  If a tree buyer and his family are doing this trip every year, they create a lot more damage than they can repair.

If they use private planes or private helicopters, it's even worst.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on November 27, 2018, 04:21:04 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 11:33:52 AM
What's rather priceless is that IIRC around 2009 the UK government gave subsidies on diesel cars. Now they really close to severly punishing them I think.

I bought a diesel car.  :(

(or, now I should know why I got a pretty good deal on the price)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 27, 2018, 04:47:15 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 27, 2018, 04:21:04 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 11:33:52 AM
What's rather priceless is that IIRC around 2009 the UK government gave subsidies on diesel cars. Now they really close to severly punishing them I think.

I bought a diesel car.  :(

(or, now I should know why I got a pretty good deal on the price)

Oh, bad luck.

Should have consulted with us UK bores in tbr  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 27, 2018, 04:53:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 27, 2018, 04:19:24 PM
elegant, yes.  Efficient, not so much.

For the tree you buy, it will take it's entire life, say 30 years, to offset the cost of one trip to some southern, sunny carribean place.  If a tree buyer and his family are doing this trip every year, they create a lot more damage than they can repair.

If they use private planes or private helicopters, it's even worst.

Are you saying they are running out of space in which to plant trees?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 27, 2018, 06:19:47 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 27, 2018, 11:47:06 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2018, 10:40:24 AM
And don't forget the "carbon footprint reduction" extra charge you can pay online when ordering various services and such  :lol: Your conciense can be much lighter with the proper indulgence paper!

Offsets are an elegant and efficient method of reducing global emissions.

There are many methods for reducing global emissions and at this point we need to use lots of them, elegant or not.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 28, 2018, 01:38:56 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/27/politics/donald-trump-climate-change-report/index.html

QuoteTrump administration climate change report is dead wrong, says Trump administration

Washington (CNN)Last Friday, the Trump administration -- 13 federal agencies working in coordination -- released the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a detailed document featuring the conclusions of more than 300 scientists that the planet is getting warmer, human activity is contributing to that warming and we are approaching a point of no return in terms of the damage to the climate.

It's a stunning document. It's also one that President Donald Trump and his administration don't, uh, believe.
"I don't believe it," Trump told reporters Monday of the report, acknowledging that he had only read "some" of the study.

Then, on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders took the whole thing a step further. "We think that this is the most extreme version and it's not based on facts," Sanders said. "It's based on -- it's not data-driven. We'd like to see something that is more data-driven."

Let's be very clear about what is going on here: The President and his official spokesperson are rejecting the conclusions of a detailed study conducted by the Trump administration because the findings of that study don't comport with the President's long-held beliefs that climate change just isn't a real thing.

And this is far from the first time this has happened. Back in 2017, the US intelligence community unanimously concluded that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. Trump has continued to raise questions about whether Russia actually did it. Earlier this month, the CIA determined that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had personally ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump, in an official White House statement, said "our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event -- maybe he did and maybe he didn't!"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 28, 2018, 03:01:18 AM
I don't think one should consider the entire government part of the administration.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 05, 2018, 07:01:17 AM
BC's carbon tax viewed as the model to emulate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-carbon-tax-popular-give-the-profits-to-the-people
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 12, 2018, 07:52:06 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/11/world/climate-change-arctic-report-card-2018-wxc/index.html

QuoteUnparalleled warmth is changing the Arctic and affecting weather in US, Europe

(CNN)The Arctic is experiencing a multi-year stretch of unparalleled warmth "that is unlike any period on record," according to the 2018 Arctic Report Card, a peer-reviewed report released Tuesday morning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Commerce.

The report states that human-caused climate change is transforming the Arctic, both physically through the reduction of sea ice, and biologically through reductions in wildlife populations and introduction of marine toxins and algae.

The report is yet another study from part of the US government indicating that climate change is real and having a profound impact, despite denials from the President and senior members of his Administration.

Temperatures in the Arctic are warming more than twice as fast as the overall planet's average temperature, with temperatures this year in the highest latitudes (above 60 degrees north) coming in 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981-2010 average. These were the second warmest (behind 2016) air temperatures ever recorded during the Arctic year, which runs from October through September to avoid splitting the winter season.

The five years since 2014 have been warmer than any other years in the historical record, which goes back to 1900. Although Arctic temperatures have been subject to wild swings back and forth through the decades due to natural variability, they have been consistently warmer than average since 2000 and at or near record since 2014, the report states.

"The changes we are witnessing in the Arctic are sufficiently rapid that they cannot be explained without considering our impacts on the chemistry of the atmosphere," Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who authored part of the report, told CNN in an email.

Mote expressed that any natural cycle or mechanism that would lead to the amount of warming and ice loss that has been observed would take much longer than the few years over which we have seen these drastic changes.

The rapid warming of the Arctic is known as "Arctic amplification," which is due to multiple feedback loops that the report describes. Warmer temperatures lead to less ice and snow, which means less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed by the darker oceans. This warms the ocean further, which in turn decreases the sea ice even more. The lack of sea ice and more ocean surface leads to additional cloudiness later in the fall season, which keeps the Arctic region warmer even later into the winter.

"What starts in the Arctic isn't confined there," Mote noted. "Changes in sea ice influence ocean currents and the jet stream in ways that can affect weather in lower latitudes, including the United States and Europe," Mote said.

The report highlighted several of these events over the past year as an example of how Arctic warming can influence day-to-day weather.

The swarm of Nor'easters that plauged the eastern United States in early 2018 and the extreme cold outbreak during March in Europe, known as the "Beast from the East," were specifically noted
.

Sea ice continues to decline

As you would expect with the trend of record warm temperatures, sea ice has seen dramatic declines over the past 20 years as well, with 2018 continuing that trend.

According to the 2018 Arctic Report Card, this year featured the second-lowest winter sea-ice extent -- the amount of the Arctic Ocean that is covered with sea ice -- since the satellite record began in 1979. The summer minimum sea ice was the sixth-lowest over the same time period.

While winter sea ice extents have decreased at a much slower rate compared to the ice extent during the summer, there has been a significant change to the ice pack during the winter.

The ice is much younger than it used to be. According to the report, fewer than 1% of Arctic ice is considered "oldest ice," meaning it is at least four years old and has survived multiple melt seasons. Older ice tends to be thicker and more resilient to changes in temperature.

Since scientists began measuring the age of the ice in the mid-1980s, multi-year ice in the Arctic has decreased in size from 2.54 million square kilometers (roughly the size of Mexico and all of Central America combined) to 0.13 million square kilometers (roughly the size of Nicaragua in Central America) -- a 95% reduction in a little over 30 years.

"Sea ice cover has transformed from a strong, thick pack in the 1980s to a more fragile, younger, thinner, and more mobile pack in recent years," the report states, where "the thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in the summer and has contributed to the decreasing trend in the minimum ice extent."

Red tides and reindeer

The warming of the Arctic climate and the decline of sea ice have led to some drastic changes in the biodiversity of the region.

The report's authors found notable increases in harmful algal blooms, often known as red tides, which can affect human, wildlife and ecosystem health and lead to mass die-offs of fish and marine mammals, such as was observed in Florida during much of the summer this year.

As the Arctic warms, new toxins are being introduced to the region. This map highlights the location and kind of toxins found in marine animal species from 2004 to 2013 in the Alaskan Arctic.

While normally confined to warmer climates, the toxin-producing phytoplankton have been shifting northward as ocean temperatures rise, posing a risk to the local populations and economies that depend heavily on fishing for food and tourism.

Other native wildlife species are feeling the heat, as well. Reindeer and caribou populations continued to decline in 2018, according to the report, with their total populations dropping by more than 50% over the past 20 years.

While climate change isn't the only factor likely behind the decline in these herds, it is a driving force for a number of threats the animals face. Increased heat stress, food shortages, disease and parasites -- climate change overarches each of these challenges, the report states.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 12, 2018, 01:31:57 PM
Climate/environmental policy at work:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/epa-science-adviser-allowed-industry-group-edit-journal-article

QuoteEPA science adviser allowed industry group to edit journal article

When the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begins a major review of air pollution standards this week, a researcher who has received funding from an industry group opposed to the rules will be leading the agency's panel.

Tony Cox, who was named chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, accepted funding from the American Petroleum Institute (API) to help finance his research into particulate matter pollution. He also allowed the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group to proofread and copy edit his findings before they were published, according to his own acknowledgements.

It's highly unusual to give an industry group, or anyone who funds scientific work, a chance to influence the outcome of research, according to scientists.

"Certainly his ties to industry and comfort with allowing them to influence the science is concerning given he is heading a process where we know there will be heavy industry pressure to influence it," said Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The arrangement is unusual in the scientific community because it stands to discredit a researcher's work, even if the group that provided funding makes innocuous changes, other researchers said. In this case, the access that Cox gave to API doesn't seem to have dramatically altered the conclusions of his study. Instead, a small change here and there could have made it a friendlier vehicle for the industry's message, Goldman said.

It "implies that the messaging matters," she said.

Cox, who was nominated for his position by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been critical of EPA air pollution regulations and has said that research showing the connection between air pollution and serious human health consequences is overblown. He sent E&E News a study that happened to contain copy edits, which he said were made by reviewers. It's unclear which changes were made by API, and Cox denies that the fossil fuel lobbying group offered meaningful edits.

Cox is a statistician who is now tasked with overseeing the advisory committee's review of particulate matter pollution standards. It's supposed to make a key health determination that could affect millions of Americans: chiefly whether the level of air pollution they are breathing is hurting them.

The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is meeting Wednesday and Thursday to review EPA's science assessment for particulate matter. It's part of the legal requirement under the Clean Air Act that EPA review scientific information related to the national ambient air quality standards for six pollutants. They are: particulate matter, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead and sulfur dioxide.

Cox states in his study that API provided input before it was published last year.

"This paper benefited from close proof-reading and copy-editing suggestions from API, but these reviews and suggestions were provided for the author's consideration without constraints that any of them be incorporated," he wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology.

API, which lobbies the government on behalf of fossil fuel companies, has a history of fighting regulations on air pollution, sometimes by pointing to the scientific conclusions of studies that it funded.

Before Pruitt resigned amid a flurry of ethics investigations earlier this year, EPA replaced academic researchers on its science advisory boards with researchers supported by industry groups. Pruitt declared that scientists who received EPA grants had conflicts of interest, while those who are paid by polluting industries deserved a louder voice. That's when he named Cox to lead the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

Under acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, EPA has gone even further to sideline scientists, particularly around air pollution. It recently disbanded a separate panel of scientists, who are supposed to review particulate matter pollution, and canceled plans for another panel that was to review ozone.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has remade the panel led by Cox. It now includes an academic and several state regulators who have downplayed the effects of air pollution.

Cox's 2017 study, which examines the causal relationship between air pollution and human health, was published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology. The journal has a reputation for publishing industry-funded work that's sometimes used to argue against government regulations.

Cox's research questions previous studies that have connected serious human health problems to air pollution. It fits with the approach that Cox has taken when testifying to Congress: He emphasizes uncertainties, including in 2015, when he told lawmakers that health benefits of reducing ozone exposure were "unwarranted and exaggerated."

Cox denied that API influenced his work and said the organization did not suggest any substantive changes. The fossil fuel group offered "some minor copy editing suggestions on punctuation and my use of 'relation' vs. 'relationship,'" Cox said.

"Neither in effect nor in actual fact did they interfere with, shape, or direct my findings or the conduct of my research in any way," Cox said in an email to E&E News. "My research was complete before I drafted the paper, and nothing of substance changed thereafter except in response to journal reviewer comments and my own re-reading for clarity. My research is and always have been my own, and I do not accept outside interference."

Cox has a history of attacking established research on the health risks of air pollution, using his own statistical model to crunch data associated with particulate matter, or PM2.5.

In one study, he said there was "no evidence that reductions in PM2.5 concentrations cause reductions in mortality rates." In addition to API, he has received funding from the American Chemistry Council and Philip Morris International Inc., the tobacco company.

There's a large body of science that connects serious health ailments to air pollution. Ozone and fine particle air pollution are particularly dangerous to vulnerable groups of people, including children, the elderly, people with asthma and outdoor workers.

The World Health Organization published research earlier this year that found nine out of 10 people globally breathe polluted air and that air pollution kills 7 million people annually. It's one of the leading causes of death. Vehicle emissions are a leading cause of air pollution worldwide.

John Bachmann, EPA's director for science policy on air quality during President George W. Bush's administration, said it's "crazy" that EPA is barring researchers who received agency grants from sitting on advisory panels. They are often some of the best researchers, he said.

That change means the panel overseen by Cox is reviewing air pollution standards without the help of a single epidemiologist. Altogether, the altered panels once included at least seven epidemiologists; they're all gone, Bachmann said.

He added that current members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee are qualified, but their capabilities, expertise and perspectives are greatly limited compared with those who once served on a specialized panel to review particulate matter. Pruitt disbanded it.

"It's a huge loss to claim you can review a document that has hundreds and hundreds of pages on epidemiology by people who don't do it, don't do the research in it and the one guy who has done some of it has a point of view that is not mainstream," Bachmann said, referring to Cox.

Cox's 2017 study is a "review paper that focuses on epidemiological literature and application of epidemiological methods to case studies by someone who is not an epidemiologist," said Christopher Frey, a former chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

In the past, it was rare to appoint a chair who had not previously served on the panel, Frey said. The Clean Air Act requires reviews by the advisory panel to be thorough and to rely on the latest science. He said industry researchers, going back to tobacco industry efforts to discredit the health effects of smoking, are largely focused on uncertainty rather than the risks. Frey said EPA, when it funded some of his research, did not seek to edit his work beforehand.

"In a regulatory purpose, you really want all the members of the committee to be perceived as impartial and free of conflict of interest, and I don't think as a group this committee earns that perception."

Frey, who served as chairman of the committee from 2012 to 2015 and was first appointed in 2008 under Bush, said the current board is derived of stakeholders with a vested interest.

The panel lost prominence in other ways too. In the past, there were dozens of people reviewing air pollution research for three years. Now, it's seven people doing the review in one year.

"It's a perfect storm," Frey said. "So many things have been changed all at once, and every one of them weakens the process, and collectively it just creates a tremendously weak process that borders on being a total sham."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on December 12, 2018, 09:33:07 PM
He is basically saying "I submitted it to this industry group to review, but they didn't make any real changes, and I knew they wouldn't, but I submitted it to them anyway, oh, and also, really, I decided long before I wrote up the paper that it wouldn't actually say anything they would object to anyway, seeing as how they bought and paid for me a LONG time ago!"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 13, 2018, 07:04:45 AM
How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on December 13, 2018, 07:14:40 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 13, 2018, 07:04:45 AM
How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).

Wait, what is the good kind?  The one in New Mexico?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on December 13, 2018, 07:24:53 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on December 13, 2018, 07:14:40 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 13, 2018, 07:04:45 AM
How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).

Wait, what is the good kind?  The one in New Mexico?

:mmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on December 13, 2018, 08:54:45 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 28, 2018, 03:01:18 AM
I don't think one should consider the entire government part of the administration.

Agreed.  Just the executive branch of government is part of the administration.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 13, 2018, 09:04:52 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

QuoteThe Oil Industry's Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards — that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation — clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world's oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales.

In recent months, Marathon Petroleum also teamed up with a secretive policy group within the Koch network, the American Legislative Exchange Council, to draft legislation for states supporting the industry's position. Its proposed resolution, dated Sept. 18, describes current fuel-efficiency rules as "a relic of a disproven narrative of resource scarcity" and says "unelected bureaucrats" shouldn't dictate the cars Americans drive.

A separate industry campaign on Facebook, covertly run by an oil-industry lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and other oil giants, urged people to write to regulators to support the rollback.

The Facebook ads linked to a website with a picture of a grinning Mr. Obama. It asked, "Would YOU buy a used car from this man?" The site appears to have been so effective that a quarter of the 12,000 public comments received by the Department of Transportation can be traced to the petition, according to a Times analysis.

Gary R. Heminger, Marathon's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement that the company supported "sound fuel economy standards" and wanted to "help ensure they are achievable and based on existing technology."

He added, "We appreciate the administration's willingness to conduct a thorough review in order to ensure future standards are achievable and will actually benefit American consumers."

A spokesman for Koch Industries, the energy conglomerate led by Mr. Koch, said the company had "a long, consistent track record of opposing all forms of corporate welfare, including all subsidies, mandates and other handouts that rig the system."

The oil industry's campaign, the details of which have not been previously reported, illuminates why the rollbacks have gone further than the more modest changes automakers originally lobbied for.

The standards that the Trump administration seeks to weaken required automakers to roughly double the fuel economy of new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks by 2025. Instead, the Trump plan would freeze the standards at 2020 levels. Carmakers, for their part, had sought more flexibility in meeting the original 2025 standards, not a categorical rollback.

The Trump plan, if finalized, would increase greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by more than the amount many midsize countries put out in a year and reverse a major effort by the Obama administration to fight climate change.

The energy industry's efforts also help explain the Trump administration's confrontational stance toward California, which, under federal law, has a unique authority to write its own clean-air rules and to mandate more zero-emissions vehicles.

California has pledged to stick to the stricter standards, together with 13 other states that follow its lead. But President Trump's plan challenges California's rule-writing power, setting up a legal battle that threatens to split the American auto market in two.

That is a prospect automakers desperately want to avoid.

But for gasoline producers like Marathon, a shift toward more efficient vehicles poses a grave threat to the bottom line. In October, the company acquired a rival, Andeavor, making it the biggest refiner in the United States, with sales of 16 billion gallons of fuel a year.

Even while doubling down on gasoline, Marathon has projected an environmentally friendly public image. "We have invested billions of dollars to make our operations more energy efficient," Marathon said in a recent report. The company's Twitter account recently highlighted a gardening project and the creation of a duck pond at one of its refineries.

On a conference call with investors last week, Mr. Heminger, the Marathon chief executive, was already counting the extra barrels of fuel a Trump rollback would mean for the industry: 350,000 to 400,000 barrels of gasoline per day, he said.

"However, you have another side who doesn't want to pivot away" from the stricter rules, Mr. Heminger said. "So we have a lot of work to do to keep this momentum going."

Marathon's Early Start

Marathon began its outreach to the Trump administration early, asking to meet with Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency soon after he became its administrator in early 2017. Marathon had been a top donor to Mr. Pruitt in Oklahoma, a state where oil is so prominent that a well stands on the grounds of the capitol building.

"Our CEO, Gary Heminger, would be very glad for an opportunity to visit with the Administrator," a Marathon lobbyist wrote in an email to Mr. Trump's transition team on May 8, 2017. "I believe this would be a constructive dialogue." The E.P.A. helps oversee fuel economy rules along with the Transportation Department.

Mr. Pruitt was scheduled to meet with the Marathon chief at least twice — once in June 2017 as part of a meeting with the board of a powerful fuel-industry group, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and again in September for a more private talk, according to emails and schedules released in a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club.

A Marathon spokesman, Chuck Rice, said Mr. Heminger did not discuss auto-efficiency rollbacks with Mr. Pruitt. An E.P.A. official did not respond to a question about whether the auto rules were discussed.

Marathon then turned its focus to Congress, hiring the firm Ogilvy Government Relations to lobby legislators in Washington on fuel-economy standards, according to Ogilvy's disclosure forms. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the summer, Marathon representatives also approached legislators about an  industry talking-points letter, according to six people familiar with that effort. The file properties of a Microsoft Word version of one letter, provided by a Congressional delegation, show that it was last edited by a Marathon lobbyist, Michael J. Birsic, on June 11, 2018.

Mr. Rice of Marathon said the company did not write the letter, and the company declined to say who did. It did not offer an explanation for Mr. Birsic's digital fingerprint on the document file.

Nineteen lawmakers from the delegations of Indiana, West Virginia and Pennsylvania sent letters to the Transportation Department that included exact phrases and reasoning from the industry letter. The lawmakers' letters, sent in June and July, all make the point that oil scarcity is no longer a concern.

The Trump administration's proposed rollback echoes the post-conservation theme. While energy conservation is significant, the proposal says, the downside of additional petroleum consumption would be dwarfed by the rollback's benefits.

Representatives from the three state delegations either declined to comment or did not respond to requests.

Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the industry's campaign. "It appears as though oil interests are cynically trying to gin up support in Congress for the weakest possible standards to ensure that cars and SUVs have to rely on even more oil," he said.

"If this attempt is successful, the outcome will be a blow to the auto industry, consumers, and our environment."

The Facebook Campaign

The Facebook ads, featuring Mr. Trump waving alongside the message, "SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT'S CAR FREEDOM AGENDA!," appeared the week after the administration made public its fuel economy plan in August. At least 10 times during the two-month public comment period on the plan, the ads, which did not state their oil industry origins, asked people to write to the government to back weaker emissions standards.

Public comments matter in federal rule-making. The law requires that citizens' views be taken into account before a rule is finalized.

"File an official comment to SUPPORT our President's plan for safer, cheaper cars that WE get to choose," read one ad, which ran for seven days in early October. The ad leads to a page that provides basic language to submit.

More than 3,300 of the 12,000 public comments that D.O.T. has made public contain language identical to that petition, an analysis of the files showed.

The campaign was a product of the fuel and petrochemical manufacturers trade group, widely known as AFPM. However, neither the Facebook ads nor the site identified the industry group. Instead they name a group called Energy4US, which describes itself as "a coalition of consumers, businesses and workers" promoting affordable energy.

Energy4US has close ties to the industry group. According to internet domain records, Victor Adams, listed as an AFPM web manager, registered Energy4Us.org in 2015 using his work email address. Energy4US lists the group as a coalition member, along with about 50 other groups including energy interests, labor groups, a sheriff's association and even a recreational fishing alliance.

The AFPM board includes representatives from Exxon, Chevron, Phillips 66, Marathon and Koch Industries. The companies all referred queries to the group.

Derrick Morgan, a senior vice president at AFPM, said the group "regularly works with policymakers, coalition groups and individuals to promote shared goals," and also will "lead and join groups like Energy4US."

The Department of Transportation said it was "generally aware" that there were groups urging the public to make comments through online campaigns, but said it does not regulate them.

Taking the Fight On the Road

House bill 1593 is just eight words long: "To repeal the corporate average fuel economy standards." Koch Industries, a petroleum empire with interests as diverse as gasoline, pipelines, fertilizer and Stainmaster carpets, is the bill's sole corporate backer.

The measure, which would eliminate fuel standards altogether, is not expected to go far. But it underscores the company's stance on the matter. And Koch interests are fighting that battle not only in Washington but increasingly in statehouses and even local policy meetings nationwide.

In Dearborn, Mich., at a September meeting on the Trump fuel-efficiency rollbacks, Annie Patnaude of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded group, spoke in favor. "This is a step in the right direction to protect consumers and workers against government mandates that would limit choice," she said.

In Iowa, Americans for Prosperity joined the fight over whether to make it easier for gas stations to install chargers for electric vehicles. In Illinois, it discouraged state officials from considering subsidies for electric vehicles.

And last month an Americans for Prosperity representative trekked to a public hearing in Colorado, where regulators were thinking about becoming the 13th state to follow California's stricter standards. The representative, Shari Shiffer-Krieger, a field director for the group, argued that people in the rugged state wanted SUVs, not tighter emissions rules. "Coloradans deserve much better," she said.

The oil industry lost that fight. Colorado allied itself with California.

But Americans for Prosperity said fights like these get to the heart of its free-market philosophy. "We believe in a level playing field so all Americans have the equal opportunity to succeed," said Bill Riggs, a spokesman for the group, in a statement. The organization will keep fighting "mandates that unfairly pick winners and losers in any industry," he said.

Drafting Pro-Oil State Legislation

On August 6, a Marathon lobbyist, Stephen D. Higley, emailed a Wisconsin state representative an explainer of American fuel economy law. The memo didn't mince words.

"It's a relic," the memo said, particularly at a time when the United States was "poised to become the largest oil producer in the world."

The Wisconsin representative, Mike Kuglitsch, participates in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch-funded group that helps companies write model legislation for state lawmakers to use as a basis for their own laws.

Emails obtained by the Times show that Marathon has been working with members of the legislative exchange council to build support for the Trump fuel-efficiency rollback in state legislatures and to denounce California's power to write its own rules for cars. The emails were made public under Wisconsin's open records law to Documented, a watchdog group that tracks corporate influence in public policy.

California's special authority could effectively split the American auto market in two, since 13 other states — representing roughly 35 percent of nationwide car sales — have agreed to follow California's stricter rules. That means automakers might find themselves making cars to two competing standards.

"Who should decide what cars and trucks consumers should buy, consumers themselves or unelected bureaucrats in Sacramento, California or Washington, D.C.?" the memo sent by Marathon said.

In a statement, Bill Meierling of the legislative exchange council said that mandating fuel economy was a rule that "many state legislators believe doesn't make sense for working Americans."

Just days after the emails between Marathon and the Wisconsin lawmaker, some 1,500 state legislators and other officials from across the country gathered in New Orleans to cheer on Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation, at the legislative exchange council's annual convention. Marathon sponsored the event.

The Transportation Department was determined to cut government regulations, said Ms. Chao, a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which has received Koch funding and has long opposed the fuel economy rules.

Mr. Trump's proposed rollback, she said, "ranks as one of the most significant regulatory reforms that this administration is undertaking." The room erupted in applause.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 13, 2018, 09:08:14 AM
And: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/climate/trump-clean-water-rollback.html?action=click&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Climate%20and%20Environment

Quote[...]

The clean water rollback is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to weaken or undo major environmental rules, including proposals to weaken regulations on planet-warming emissions from cars, power plants and oil and gas drilling rigs, a series of moves designed to speed new drilling in the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and efforts to weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act. This week in Katowice, Poland, at an annual United Nations conference on mitigating global warming, Trump administration officials held an event touting the benefits of fossil fuels.

[...]
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 12, 2019, 07:21:39 PM

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DwmRPBzX0AA_KcR.jpg)

:hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on January 13, 2019, 05:01:03 AM
And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 13, 2019, 08:49:00 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 13, 2019, 05:01:03 AM
And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

Very good.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 13, 2019, 09:36:01 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 13, 2019, 05:01:03 AM
And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

So well beyond the intellectual capabilities of our President.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on January 13, 2019, 10:36:27 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 13, 2019, 09:36:01 PM
So well beyond the intellectual capabilities of our President.

It's colder in winter, therefore global warming is a hoax!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 15, 2019, 09:42:23 PM
The title of the article says it all

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-are-warming-faster-than-predicted/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on January 15, 2019, 11:39:52 PM
There are times when I am glad I never had children...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on January 16, 2019, 12:01:59 AM
Is there a limit as to the amount of heat that oceans can absorb?  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on January 16, 2019, 12:07:30 AM
Yes. Eventually they would all boil away.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on January 16, 2019, 01:38:08 AM
Quote from: PDH on January 15, 2019, 11:39:52 PM
There are times when I am glad I never had children...

:yes:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 18, 2019, 08:07:24 AM
Australians on the boil:

Quote
Australia swelters through record-breaking heatwave18 January 2019 
Share   


Image copyright
AFP/Getty

Australia has just sweltered through at least five of its 10 warmest days on record, authorities estimate.

An extreme heatwave has afflicted the nation since Saturday, causing wildlife deaths, bushfires and an increase in hospital admissions.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said preliminary readings showed daily national temperature highs of 40C.

The town of Noona in New South Wales meanwhile recorded a night-time temperature of 35.9C.

It was the highest minimum temperature ever recorded anywhere in Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said.

Temperatures on Friday will soar above 42C in "broad areas", the bureau predicted.

Forecasters have compared conditions to the nation's worst heatwave in 2013, where the mercury soared to 39C for seven consecutive days.

The hottest day on record for Australia is 7 January 2013, when the national average maximum temperature was 40.3C.

"The current heatwave ranks alongside that of January 2013 as the most extensive and prolonged heatwave on record over Australia," BOM senior meteorologist Blair Trewin told the BBC earlier this week.

"There have been other notable heatwaves but none affecting such a large area of the country."


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46886798 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46886798)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on January 18, 2019, 08:09:47 AM
Summer in Australia must be a bitch.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: AnchorClanker on January 19, 2019, 12:58:34 AM
For what it's worth, DC has had the wettest year since the 1880's.  Funny, I thought the fall seemed an awful lot like an Oregon Coast fall...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 22, 2019, 11:24:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 15, 2019, 09:42:23 PM
The title of the article says it all

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-are-warming-faster-than-predicted/

and since the oceans are warming faster than predicted, I suppose it stands to reason that Greenland's glaciers are also melting faster than previously predicted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/21/greenland-ice-melting-faster-than-scientists-previously-thought-study
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on January 23, 2019, 08:14:44 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 22, 2019, 11:24:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 15, 2019, 09:42:23 PM
The title of the article says it all

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-are-warming-faster-than-predicted/

and since the oceans are warming faster than predicted, I suppose it stands to reason that Greenland's glaciers are also melting faster than previously predicted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/21/greenland-ice-melting-faster-than-scientists-previously-thought-study

I guess that's why one the best UK boutique labels re-released Waterworld, offering a special edition.  :tinfoil:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 29, 2019, 10:14:53 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyFVs_jXQAAfvXx?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 29, 2019, 10:16:55 AM
QuoteDonald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can't last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

QuoteA Science Enthusiast 🚀
@aSciEnthusiast

Replying to
@realDonaldTrump
Glad you asked! The polar vortex is supposed to stay at the north pole but dwindling sea ice (from climate change) has caused the vortex to split in three places, and that's why it's cold down here. Polar vortex splits like this will become more common as climate change worsens.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on January 29, 2019, 11:23:30 AM
That is probably why it is called "Global Warming" and not "Local Regional Warming"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 29, 2019, 12:27:46 PM
You're wasting your breath. Might as well teach a baboon to conduct a symphony orchestra.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on January 29, 2019, 12:59:04 PM
(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cold.png) (https://xkcd.com/1321/)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 29, 2019, 08:59:47 PM
"I want you to panic"

Good clear message - greeted by polite applause by the Davos crowd

https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2019/jan/25/i-want-you-to-panic-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-issues-climate-warning-at-davos-video
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on January 29, 2019, 09:30:45 PM
Quote from: AnchorClanker on January 19, 2019, 12:58:34 AM
For what it's worth, DC has had the wettest year since the 1880's.  Funny, I thought the fall seemed an awful lot like an Oregon Coast fall...
It rains constantly here now too.  Haven't had a legit drought in like ten years.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on January 29, 2019, 09:33:01 PM
Yeah I have commented on it a lot in the Weather WTF thread but Fall has been incredibly wet in Texas the last couple years. I find myself wondering if it is a fluke or if warming in the Gulf of Mexico means we are going to get dumped on every (or even most) Autumn moving foward, which would be a major change.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on January 29, 2019, 09:34:24 PM
I mean don't get me wrong, I would actually like to live in a tropical rainforest climate as long as we can keep all of the giant bugs and shit away. :sleep:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on January 29, 2019, 09:37:25 PM
Quote from: Caliga on January 29, 2019, 09:34:24 PM
I mean don't get me wrong, I would actually like to live in a tropical rainforest climate as long as we can keep all of the giant bugs and shit away. :sleep:

Well our problem is we flood a bunch. We have very rocky soil that does not absorb much water and lots of rivers and creeks everywhere. But that is probably not a problem in a place not sitting on solid blocks of limestone.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on January 29, 2019, 09:40:16 PM
We sit on limestone too (hence why bourbon is so delicious :) ) but we typically have a big fat layer of clay between our feet and the limestone here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on January 30, 2019, 01:09:20 AM
Quote from: Valmy on January 29, 2019, 09:37:25 PM
But that is probably not a problem in a place not sitting on solid blocks of limestone.
give it some time.  In a few million years, I'm sure the soil will adjust to these new conditions. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on January 30, 2019, 01:52:37 AM
Quote from: Caliga on January 29, 2019, 09:40:16 PM
We sit on limestone too (hence why bourbon is so delicious :)

I'll bite. How does the limestone improve the liquor?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on January 30, 2019, 02:26:11 AM
Water in limestone areas is usually particularly delicious and tasty. I didn't know that improved whiskey as well though.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on January 30, 2019, 09:53:22 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on January 30, 2019, 01:52:37 AM
I'll bite. How does the limestone improve the liquor?
I dunno *how*, it just makes the water taste a certain way that is supposed to have a huge impact on the flavor of the finished product.

Isn't that the same reason ales from Burton in England taste good? :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on January 30, 2019, 09:55:39 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 30, 2019, 02:26:11 AM
Water in limestone areas is usually particularly delicious and tasty. I didn't know that improved whiskey as well though.
That's the story at least.  I don't think bourbon is legally required to be made with lime water, but all of the distilleries in Kentucky use local well/spring water which is bound to be very limey.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on January 30, 2019, 02:48:02 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 30, 2019, 02:26:11 AM
Water in limestone areas is usually particularly delicious and tasty. I didn't know that improved whiskey as well though.

Water in limestone areas.  :yucky: :yucky: :yucky:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 31, 2019, 03:45:36 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/aynABv6.jpg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on January 31, 2019, 12:54:26 PM
I assume that's not from your sister's feed.  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 01, 2019, 09:27:15 AM
Nice retort:

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/socialembed/https://twitter.com/NOAAClimate/status/1090263390503596032~/news/world-us-canada-47078054)

Apols if it's already been posted.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 06, 2019, 03:22:41 PM
From the NYTimes today

QuoteNASA scientists announced Wednesday that the Earth's average surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth highest in nearly 140 years of record-keeping and a continuation of an unmistakable warming trend.

The data means that the five warmest years in recorded history have been the last five, and that 18 of the 19 warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2001. The quickly rising temperatures over the past two decades cap a much longer warming trend documented by researchers and correspond with the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/06/climate/fourth-hottest-year.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage


Trumpists - but its cold outside
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:04:31 PM
The good news is humans can cause global cooling.

QuoteThe authors found that disease and war wiped out 90 percent of the indigenous population in the Americas, or about 55 million people. The earth, they argue, then reclaimed the land that these populations left behind. The new vegetation pulled heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and into the land, contributing to what scientists refer to as the "Little Ice Age."

"It was a drastic change in the earth's system," said Alexander Koch, the study's lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at the University College London Department of Geography.


The bad news is that last time it was done, it required a 90% reduction of a population.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/climate/little-ice-age-colonization.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on February 07, 2019, 04:46:45 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?

:unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?

No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that climate change was an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared around the same period.

But that is history stuff and not strictly climate science.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:55:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?

No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that as an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared.

But that is history stuff and not strictly climate science.

Interesting.  From the article there seems to be a debate about it being as long as 1400-1900 - but that would bring it further back in time.

The part that is salient though is the reduction they found in CO2 in the atmosphere after colonization.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on February 08, 2019, 05:46:07 AM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that climate change was an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared around the same period.

That's the context in which I first heard the term, as well.  Tuchman was confusing the end of the Medieval warming period with the Little Ice Age, though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 08, 2019, 05:56:13 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 08, 2019, 05:46:07 AM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that climate change was an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared around the same period.

That's the context in which I first heard the term, as well.  Tuchman was confusing the end of the Medieval warming period with the Little Ice Age, though.

Well, one person's end of warming is the other's start of cooling. I am sure some species will be thrilled by the glasshouse Earth we are creating, for example.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Threviel on February 08, 2019, 09:18:58 AM
Well, there was a huge depopulation event in the 1300s also, although in the old world, might have started the process.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:22:15 AM
Without commenting on the idea that this is an example, I've never really understood the reluctance that some people have to the idea that human activity can change the global environment/climate.

That part isn't that complicated at all. The globe is a basically closed system. It is a giant test tube. But it isn't really that big. We can measure the increase in CO2 for example, and surprise surprise, if we pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up in a clearly measurable way.

The Earth is pretty big...but on the other hand, it really isn't that big. It is a closed system, and doing anything within the system that has a measurable impact on the composition of that system is creating change.

Obviously understanding how it changes is complex, even moreso *predicting* those changes. But there isn't anything magical about it - it is just science. We started thinking about it, what 50, 60 years ago? Hell, I think we've made amazing progress since then considering it was essentially a brand new field of study in many ways. But the basic idea is pretty straightforward. We have a closed system, and we are creating measurable changes, and we need to understand what those changes will do....

I just do not understand the idea that there is skepticism around the very idea that humans could change the earths climate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:25:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:55:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?

No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that as an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared.

But that is history stuff and not strictly climate science.

Interesting.  From the article there seems to be a debate about it being as long as 1400-1900 - but that would bring it further back in time.

The part that is salient though is the reduction they found in CO2 in the atmosphere after colonization.

Well I mean if you think about it a bit the Mongols also killed millions and spread the black death with also killed tens of millions. If tens of millions dying can bring about a reduction in CO2 then why wouldn't a previous reduction in population not do the same?

But, as you say, this discovery does not exactly give us a clear way forward  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:25:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:55:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:53:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 07, 2019, 04:43:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 07, 2019, 04:39:46 PM
Interesting theory, but I was under the impression the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s.

odd, is that because it was the first thing that popped up on a google search?

No. I recall a discussion about it in Barbara Tuchman's Distant Mirror, which was when I first heard of it. I recall hearing that as an explanation for how the first Nordic colonies in Greenland disappeared.

But that is history stuff and not strictly climate science.

Interesting.  From the article there seems to be a debate about it being as long as 1400-1900 - but that would bring it further back in time.

The part that is salient though is the reduction they found in CO2 in the atmosphere after colonization.

Well I mean if you think about it a bit the Mongols also killed millions and spread the black death with also killed tens of millions. If tens of millions dying can bring about a reduction in CO2 then why wouldn't a previous reduction in population not do the same?

Because it isn't the killing that does it, it is the returning land to its native state.

If the Mongols killing a few tens of millions didn't result in the depopulation of large areas that then over several decades returned to a state without human agriculture, it would not have the same effect.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:33:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
Because it isn't the killing that does it, it is the returning land to its native state.

If the Mongols killing a few tens of millions didn't result in the depopulation of large areas that then over several decades returned to a state without human agriculture, it would not have the same effect.

Yes. Though there is some indication that did happen. But he Black Death does not seem to have a mortality rate quite as extreme as what seems to have happened in the New World. And though people talk about how the Mongols destroyed massive amounts of peasants and left lots of land to fallow it may not have been on the same scale. They did destroy lots of ancient irrigation systems that never got repaired as well.

Though I find it surprising pre-modern agriculture can have a noticeable impact on the climate like that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on February 08, 2019, 11:06:41 AM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:33:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
Because it isn't the killing that does it, it is the returning land to its native state.

If the Mongols killing a few tens of millions didn't result in the depopulation of large areas that then over several decades returned to a state without human agriculture, it would not have the same effect.

Yes. Though there is some indication that did happen. But he Black Death does not seem to have a mortality rate quite as extreme as what seems to have happened in the New World. And though people talk about how the Mongols destroyed massive amounts of peasants and left lots of land to fallow it may not have been on the same scale. They did destroy lots of ancient irrigation systems that never got repaired as well.

Though I find it surprising pre-modern agriculture can have a noticeable impact on the climate like that.

It probably isn't just the "return land to native state" that did it, but the lack of slash-and-burn.

I would assume a lot of native peoples in NA used 'slash and burn' agriculture. This is a type where, to clear a plot for growing, you use a controlled burn of the forest. The burned tree trunks are left standing, the ash makes fertilizer; after a few years you have to leave it fallow and burn another plot.   

This is commonly used in central America and SE Asia to this day. It releases lots of smoke ... plus the deforestation lasts for years. This creates lots of carbon emissions, enhancing global warming.

https://www.wn.org/climate-change-indonesias-slash-burn-agroforestry-can-help/

Point is that different types of agriculture have different effects. The Mongols smashed irrigation in Persia, leading to not reforestation, but desert-creation: less carbon was soaked up by vegetation (as there was now desert where there used to be crops), so killing all those people did not tend to prevent global warming. In contrast, assuming pre-Columbian NA natives used slash and burn (which is likely - as clearing forest without metal axes or draught animals to pull stumps and haul logs is really tough), killing them was a net benefit in terms of reducing global warming. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in_ecosystems
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on February 08, 2019, 11:23:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:22:15 AM
Without commenting on the idea that this is an example, I've never really understood the reluctance that some people have to the idea that human activity can change the global environment/climate.

That part isn't that complicated at all. The globe is a basically closed system. It is a giant test tube. But it isn't really that big. We can measure the increase in CO2 for example, and surprise surprise, if we pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up in a clearly measurable way.

The Earth is pretty big...but on the other hand, it really isn't that big. It is a closed system, and doing anything within the system that has a measurable impact on the composition of that system is creating change.

Obviously understanding how it changes is complex, even moreso *predicting* those changes. But there isn't anything magical about it - it is just science. We started thinking about it, what 50, 60 years ago? Hell, I think we've made amazing progress since then considering it was essentially a brand new field of study in many ways. But the basic idea is pretty straightforward. We have a closed system, and we are creating measurable changes, and we need to understand what those changes will do....

I just do not understand the idea that there is skepticism around the very idea that humans could change the earths climate.

I can, easily.

Climate is not something that is on a human scale. Humans are not good at integrating things that are not to their scale, especially time scales.

Also, vast majority of people think there's a God(s) that created the earth for us, how can we affect what God(s) has done?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 11:26:09 AM
Quote from: Malthus on February 08, 2019, 11:06:41 AM
Point is that different types of agriculture have different effects. The Mongols smashed irrigation in Persia, leading to not reforestation, but desert-creation: less carbon was soaked up by vegetation (as there was now desert where there used to be crops), so killing all those people did not tend to prevent global warming. In contrast, assuming pre-Columbian NA natives used slash and burn (which is likely - as clearing forest without metal axes or draught animals to pull stumps and haul logs is really tough), killing them was a net benefit in terms of reducing global warming. 

Damn. Well with all this anti-Vaxing going on maybe we can depopulate North America with small pox and measles again soon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 11:33:13 AM
So what do you guys think of the New Green Deal?  Love it or shove it?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Savonarola on February 08, 2019, 12:02:25 PM
Quote from: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 11:33:13 AM
So what do you guys think of the New Green Deal?  Love it or shove it?

I think Nancy Pelosi told us all we need to know about it in her interview in Politico (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/07/pelosi-trump-government-shutdown-1154355):

QuoteThe California Democrat did agree to launch a select committee on climate change, similar to the one she created back in 2007, when she first became speaker. Pelosi said Wednesday, however, the panel would not be tasked with writing a specific bill, and brushed off the idea of the Green New Deal as a "suggestion."

"It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive," Pelosi said. "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it right?"

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 12:09:08 PM
Quote from: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 11:33:13 AM
So what do you guys think of the New Green Deal?  Love it or shove it?

I don't know exactly what that is. It sort of sounds like doing Tennessee Valley Authority type stuff to help the environment?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on February 08, 2019, 12:18:39 PM
Reminds us that old Democrats are no better than old & new Republicans.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 12:48:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 12:09:08 PM
Quote from: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 11:33:13 AM
So what do you guys think of the New Green Deal?  Love it or shove it?

I don't know exactly what that is. It sort of sounds like doing Tennessee Valley Authority type stuff to help the environment?

Read up when you have a moment: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691997301/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-releases-green-new-deal-outline

A few of the nuttier suggestions: getting rid of air travel in favor of high speed rail, a guaranteed (hopefully green) job for everyone, "access to nature" (didn't realize we didn't already have that), upgrading or rebuilding all existing buildings to make them more green, offering "economic security" to those "unwilling to work"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 12:59:11 PM
That bill all but admits it would be putting us on a kind of war mobilization effort. Obviously I would like some sort of process to reduce emissions and develop carbon capture technology to offset what emissions we do have but...I don't know. It seems really extreme and full of fluff. Maybe we could convince Canada to do it first and see if it works.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
I read it. About half (hard to quantify) is pretty irrelevant to climate change.

I think that what AOC and co want is to get the dems running in 2020 to endorse greener ideas. Smart.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 02:29:23 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
I read it. About half (hard to quantify) is pretty irrelevant to climate change.

I think that what AOC and co want is to get the dems running in 2020 to endorse greener ideas. Smart.

It is a good idea but it is smart politically? We probably want 2020 to be a referendum on Trump and not a referendum on Climate Change....unless we are sure to win that referendum.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on February 08, 2019, 02:32:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
I read it. About half (hard to quantify) is pretty irrelevant to climate change.

I think that what AOC and co want is to get the dems running in 2020 to endorse greener ideas. Smart.

Yeah, it includes medicare for all and jobs for all.

I think doing stuff like that trivializes environmental issues by making them just another political talking point, and makes it easier for right wingers to unfortunately ignore climate change as just another left wing idea.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 02:42:12 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 08, 2019, 02:32:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
I read it. About half (hard to quantify) is pretty irrelevant to climate change.

I think that what AOC and co want is to get the dems running in 2020 to endorse greener ideas. Smart.

Yeah, it includes medicare for all and jobs for all.

I think doing stuff like that trivializes environmental issues by making them just another political talking point, and makes it easier for right wingers to unfortunately ignore climate change as just another left wing idea.

Excellent point. I mean I am all for a plan to get us to a carbon neutral state, and hopefully whatever is developed can have substantial bipartisan support so it has a chance in hell of being put into effect, but it should probably be an initiative separate from social welfare issues.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 03:07:11 PM
Yeah,gotta agree. It makes an issue that should be a-political explicitly political.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 08, 2019, 03:27:26 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 02:29:23 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 02:26:32 PM
I read it. About half (hard to quantify) is pretty irrelevant to climate change.

I think that what AOC and co want is to get the dems running in 2020 to endorse greener ideas. Smart.

It is a good idea but it is smart politically? We probably want 2020 to be a referendum on Trump and not a referendum on Climate Change....unless we are sure to win that referendum.

The political judgment is the key.  Hopefully most Americans are agreed that climate change is a pressing problem and that reasonable policies will be developed in response.  I read the Green New Deal as an affirmational document which outlines what can be done which might make it easier for other policies to be viewed as moderate and therefore more politically saleable.  But if the scientists are right, we are running out of time.

And there is no reason to doubt they are incorrect.  So if the political judgment here is wrong, it could be fatal - literally.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 08, 2019, 03:42:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:33:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
Because it isn't the killing that does it, it is the returning land to its native state.

If the Mongols killing a few tens of millions didn't result in the depopulation of large areas that then over several decades returned to a state without human agriculture, it would not have the same effect.

Yes. Though there is some indication that did happen. But he Black Death does not seem to have a mortality rate quite as extreme as what seems to have happened in the New World. And though people talk about how the Mongols destroyed massive amounts of peasants and left lots of land to fallow it may not have been on the same scale. They did destroy lots of ancient irrigation systems that never got repaired as well.

Though I find it surprising pre-modern agriculture can have a noticeable impact on the climate like that.


It's possible that mortality rates of disease in the New World have been exaggerated...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 03:56:02 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 08, 2019, 03:42:21 PM
It's possible that mortality rates of disease in the New World have been exaggerated...

They are very rough estimates to be sure.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on February 08, 2019, 04:20:37 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 08, 2019, 03:42:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:33:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
Because it isn't the killing that does it, it is the returning land to its native state.

If the Mongols killing a few tens of millions didn't result in the depopulation of large areas that then over several decades returned to a state without human agriculture, it would not have the same effect.

Yes. Though there is some indication that did happen. But he Black Death does not seem to have a mortality rate quite as extreme as what seems to have happened in the New World. And though people talk about how the Mongols destroyed massive amounts of peasants and left lots of land to fallow it may not have been on the same scale. They did destroy lots of ancient irrigation systems that never got repaired as well.

Though I find it surprising pre-modern agriculture can have a noticeable impact on the climate like that.


It's possible that mortality rates of disease in the New World have been exaggerated...

It's also quite possible they've been under-estimated.

Pre-columbian population estimates are very hotly debated.  Pretty sure we've even discussed it here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on February 08, 2019, 04:34:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 08, 2019, 03:27:26 PM
But if the scientists are right, we are running out of time.

And there is no reason to doubt they are incorrect.

Oh, good. Had me worried for a second.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 08, 2019, 05:34:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 08, 2019, 04:20:37 PM


It's also quite possible they've been under-estimated.

Pre-columbian population estimates are very hotly debated.  Pretty sure we've even discussed it here.


Probably not.  The numbers that get tossed about are always the very high estimates.  For instance numbers for Cahokia are always given the highest number possible,  40,000.  All other estimates are lower, some much, much lower like a 1/5th of that number.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 08, 2019, 05:36:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 08, 2019, 03:27:26 PM

The political judgment is the key.  Hopefully most Americans are agreed that climate change is a pressing problem and that reasonable policies will be developed in response. 

Unfortunately the time for reasonable, measured responses has long passed, it's too late. All remaining reasonable responses will be increasingly extreme.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 08, 2019, 06:38:13 PM
Does the sort of rage that Climate Change discussion appear in other countries or is this just an American thing.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on February 08, 2019, 06:58:00 PM
Pretty universal in western countries I think. IMO.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 11, 2019, 03:54:37 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 08, 2019, 04:34:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 08, 2019, 03:27:26 PM
But if the scientists are right, we are running out of time.

And there is no reason to doubt they are incorrect.

Oh, good. Had me worried for a second.

Doh!

Quote from: Maladict on February 08, 2019, 05:36:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 08, 2019, 03:27:26 PM

The political judgment is the key.  Hopefully most Americans are agreed that climate change is a pressing problem and that reasonable policies will be developed in response. 

Unfortunately the time for reasonable, measured responses has long passed, it's too late. All remaining reasonable responses will be increasingly extreme.

I am not sure where we are on that continuum but I agree the time we have to implement public policy measures that are less extreme is fast coming to an end.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:21:42 PM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 03:07:11 PM
Yeah,gotta agree. It makes an issue that should be a-political explicitly political.

I'm not really sure what you meant here. I agree that it ought to be sort of an apolitical problem, and I also agree that the AOC "Green New Deal" seems to have everything and a kitchen sink and a hat for everyone in it which may be muddying the waters a bit, a bit "wooly" from a policy perspective as they say in the old country.

I think its great though that shes pushing hard on the issue, and hopefully dragging the Democratic leadership with her to a more aggressive posture. I think having another round of tepid committees produce some really anemic lobbyist friendly stuff a couple of years down the road isn't doing anything at all really. Just more of the same. I think that's where Pelosi is.

But climate change and how we are going to respond is intensely political already, and it was made that way by conservative media and the Republican party. They aren't going to change their minds anytime soon, and apparently the clock has been running against us for quite some time. I think if we continue to do nothing and wait for conservatives to come around or capitalism to save us then it's going to be a miserable future. I think it might be better to just try to press on without them.

What's sort of fascinating to me is how Climate change denial became such a central policy plank for conservatives. It's really odd in some respects. Why isn't clean air and the enviroment a conservative platform? Solar power ? There's no really compelling reason why they shouldn't be.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:25:38 PM
I'd just like to throw this question out to the Languish-verse; What can be done about climate change? What ought be our best approach and what are the possible approaches? In terms of politics and engineering and so forth.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 11, 2019, 10:29:38 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:25:38 PM
I'd just like to throw this question out to the Languish-verse; What can be done about climate change? What ought be our best approach and what are the possible approaches? In terms of politics and engineering and so forth.

Energy storage and new emissionless energy technology. Battery technology is the most important in the short term. Natural Gas is the stopgap. Coal and other dirty energy sources need to be stopped entirely. Only electric vehicles should be legal to produce as soon as is feasible.

And after all that we probably need to increase minimum energy efficiency standards on new buildings and appliances.

Carbon capture technology will need to be developed to offset any emissions we just cannot eliminate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 11, 2019, 10:38:33 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 11, 2019, 10:29:38 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:25:38 PM
I'd just like to throw this question out to the Languish-verse; What can be done about climate change? What ought be our best approach and what are the possible approaches? In terms of politics and engineering and so forth.

Energy storage and new emissionless energy technology. Battery technology is the most important in the short term. Natural Gas is the stopgap. Coal and other dirty energy sources need to be stopped entirely. Only electric vehicles should be legal to produce as soon as is feasible.

And after all that we probably need to increase minimum energy efficiency standards on new buildings and appliances.

Carbon capture technology will need to be developed to offset any emissions we just cannot eliminate.

All well and good but what's the answer to the ever expanding burn off of kerosene in the stratosphere? 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 11, 2019, 10:38:38 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:25:38 PM
I'd just like to throw this question out to the Languish-verse; What can be done about climate change? What ought be our best approach and what are the possible approaches? In terms of politics and engineering and so forth.

Political elimination of certain topics. IE, making it as palatable to be a climate change-denier as it is to be in favor of, say, slavery.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 11, 2019, 10:40:51 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:21:42 PM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 03:07:11 PM
Yeah,gotta agree. It makes an issue that should be a-political explicitly political.
.....
What's sort of fascinating to me is how Climate change denial became such a central policy plank for conservatives. It's really odd in some respects. Why isn't clean air and the enviroment a conservative platform? Solar power ? There's no really compelling reason why they shouldn't be.
....

They don't want to be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, it's free to do what they want, when and where they want without censure or moderation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:44:07 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on February 11, 2019, 10:38:38 PM

Political elimination of certain topics. IE, making it as palatable to be a climate change-denier as it is to be in favor of, say, slavery.

Oh, we are trending for slavery to be making a comeback in a couple more election cycles on current form.  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on February 11, 2019, 10:48:23 PM
When I was in grad school James G. Watt (Reagon's former Secretary of the Interior) gave a talk and an informal luncheon with us lowly grads.  He told us that God would not let man destroy the environment unless it was bringing on the End of Times.  He was scary.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on February 11, 2019, 11:36:46 PM
Quote from: PDH on February 11, 2019, 10:48:23 PM
(Reagon's former Secretary of the Interior)

Reagon Targaryen?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 11, 2019, 11:55:57 PM
 :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on February 12, 2019, 06:24:55 AM
Quote from: fromtia on February 11, 2019, 10:21:42 PM
Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 03:07:11 PM
Yeah,gotta agree. It makes an issue that should be a-political explicitly political.

But climate change and how we are going to respond is intensely political already, and it was made that way by conservative media and the Republican party. They aren't going to change their minds anytime soon, and apparently the clock has been running against us for quite some time. I think if we continue to do nothing and wait for conservatives to come around or capitalism to save us then it's going to be a miserable future. I think it might be better to just try to press on without them.

What's sort of fascinating to me is how Climate change denial became such a central policy plank for conservatives. It's really odd in some respects. Why isn't clean air and the enviroment a conservative platform? Solar power ? There's no really compelling reason why they shouldn't be.

I was going to say something like this, climate change and action against it is already a fiercely political and partisan issue in the US, waiting for some kind of magical consensus to appear is disingenious when one of the sides is adamantly against doing almost anything at all and is just willfully blind to facts. I have no idea about that that Green New Deal stuff includes, but somebody giving that debate a kick in the butt to get it started in the US at high political level is more than welcomed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 12, 2019, 06:37:40 AM
Whatever chance ever existed for the US right to accept climate change as a thing is long gone. They (or the parts holding power)  are going for the most retarded and confrontional stances on everything else. Why would they be any different on climate change?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 12, 2019, 11:57:33 AM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0300-3

QuoteAbstract

Knowledge of the ice thickness distribution of the world's glaciers is a fundamental prerequisite for a range of studies. Projections of future glacier change, estimates of the available freshwater resources or assessments of potential sea-level rise all need glacier ice thickness to be accurately constrained. Previous estimates of global glacier volumes are mostly based on scaling relations between glacier area and volume, and only one study provides global-scale information on the ice thickness distribution of individual glaciers. Here we use an ensemble of up to five models to provide a consensus estimate for the ice thickness distribution of all the about 215,000 glaciers outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The models use principles of ice flow dynamics to invert for ice thickness from surface characteristics. We find a total volume of 158 ± 41 × 103 km3, which is equivalent to 0.32 ± 0.08 m of sea-level change when the fraction of ice located below present-day sea level (roughly 15%) is subtracted. Our results indicate that High Mountain Asia hosts about 27% less glacier ice than previously suggested, and imply that the timing by which the region is expected to lose half of its present-day glacier area has to be moved forward by about one decade.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on February 12, 2019, 11:58:13 AM
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 11, 2019, 11:36:46 PM
Quote from: PDH on February 11, 2019, 10:48:23 PM
(Reagon's former Secretary of the Interior)

Reagon Targaryen?

Fine - Reagun
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 12, 2019, 11:59:57 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 12, 2019, 11:57:33 AM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0300-3

QuoteAbstract

Knowledge of the ice thickness distribution of the world's glaciers is a fundamental prerequisite for a range of studies. Projections of future glacier change, estimates of the available freshwater resources or assessments of potential sea-level rise all need glacier ice thickness to be accurately constrained. Previous estimates of global glacier volumes are mostly based on scaling relations between glacier area and volume, and only one study provides global-scale information on the ice thickness distribution of individual glaciers. Here we use an ensemble of up to five models to provide a consensus estimate for the ice thickness distribution of all the about 215,000 glaciers outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The models use principles of ice flow dynamics to invert for ice thickness from surface characteristics. We find a total volume of 158 ± 41 × 103 km3, which is equivalent to 0.32 ± 0.08 m of sea-level change when the fraction of ice located below present-day sea level (roughly 15%) is subtracted. Our results indicate that High Mountain Asia hosts about 27% less glacier ice than previously suggested, and imply that the timing by which the region is expected to lose half of its present-day glacier area has to be moved forward by about one decade.


I admit I don't get the alarm on this. I mean sure the glacier will go away more quickly than anticipated, but that's because it holds less water than anticipated, isn't it? So we are still fucked, but not more fucked than we thought we were.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 12, 2019, 12:03:22 PM
Many glaciers are important reservoirs of fresh water:

https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/questions/people.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 12, 2019, 12:05:45 PM
Ah, right, forgot about that, thanks.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 12:12:44 PM
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/8/green-new-deal (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/8/green-new-deal)

QuoteThursday morning, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14th District) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) released a resolution outlining their much-buzzed-about Green New Deal—a proposed large-scale effort to create jobs and address income inequality through federal government spending on programs that would help America curtail its emission of greenhouse gases by drastically reducing the use of fossil fuels. The outline comes following months of discussion of the concept on Capitol Hill and beyond. You can read it here.

The proposal is sweeping. It's idealistic. And, we can't help but notice, it doesn't really talk about one of the biggest factors in carbon emissions: urban land use.

Like... at all...

We're not the only ones who noticed this, of course. Vox's David Roberts pointed it out in his thorough review of the resolution. And Strong Towns member Alex Baca wrote an in-depth take for Slate on this very issue. An excerpt:

But the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn't address the places Americans live. And our physical geography—where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places—is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else. The proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 12:35:28 PM
Quotewhere we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places

City planning and zoning may be a bit outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.

QuoteThe proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform.

Yeah you are probably never going to get us to endorse intense social control except under very extreme circumstances. It kind of goes against everything we stand for. I mean what if somebody doesn't want to change where they sleep, work, shop, worship, and send their kids to play? We have to force them. Liberals, myself included, lack the stomach for that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on February 12, 2019, 02:24:15 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 12:35:28 PM
Yeah you are probably never going to get us to endorse intense social control except under very extreme circumstances. It kind of goes against everything we stand for. I mean what if somebody doesn't want to change where they sleep, work, shop, worship, and send their kids to play? We have to force them. Liberals, myself included, lack the stomach for that.

I don't understand this argument, as if the only other alternative to laissez-faire was statist totalitarianism. We force people to do what they do not want all the time - like pay their taxes, or dump toxic waste in reserves of potable water (oh wait). What people want is heavily conditioned by what is actually available to them, and the milieu they grew up in. This article's critique (probably misplaced, as you note), is not about picking people's churches for them. It's about curtailing urban sprawl and stopping urban planning to be at the mercy of real estate developers (who are hardly spokespeople for what 'people want').
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:34:26 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 12:35:28 PM
Quotewhere we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places

City planning and zoning may be a bit outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.


Of course, as it should be. The author does go on to state the same thing more or less but then point out ways in which they believe 'federal incentives profoundly shape local land use already'.

Strong Towns are sort of an interesting bunch. I got involved in advocating for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in the small town I live in a few years ago, attending the city council meetings and so on. A total nightmare. But it did leave me with a real interest in how our towns, cities and infrastructure get planned, built and paid for and by whom. Strong Towns essentially believe in incrementalism, and generally oppose large infrastructure projects. They also strive to be sort of apolitical, in as much as one can, so I think they came at the critique of the GND deliberately spicy like.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:38:40 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 12, 2019, 02:24:15 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 12:35:28 PM
Yeah you are probably never going to get us to endorse intense social control except under very extreme circumstances. It kind of goes against everything we stand for. I mean what if somebody doesn't want to change where they sleep, work, shop, worship, and send their kids to play? We have to force them. Liberals, myself included, lack the stomach for that.

I don't understand this argument, as if the only other alternative to laissez-faire was statist totalitarianism. We force people to do what they do not want all the time - like pay their taxes, or dump toxic waste in reserves of potable water (oh wait). What people want is heavily conditioned by what is actually available to them, and the milieu they grew up in. This article's critique (probably misplaced, as you note), is not about picking people's churches for them. It's about curtailing urban sprawl and stopping urban planning to be at the mercy of real estate developers (who are hardly spokespeople for what 'people want').

First of all passing laws preventing you from doing things is very different from radically changing what you are already doing. I mean having you pay your taxes versus you have to move because we are leveling your subdivision is very different.

The quote sounded like changing already existing urban land use, not curtailing future planning. Reforming future planning can already be done in city government. That is not "hard work of reform". That is the normal work of reform Liberals have already been doing for decades.

Though I guess in that vein I should mention that Austin has worked diligently for two decades now trying to increase urban density and curtail the sprawl. Minsky has (and maybe you as well? I don't recall) pointed out how rather ineffective this is as the more high rises and urban density they build the more unaffordable it becomes. People like me are then pushed into surrounding suburban towns. So I don't know how effective it actually is. But how would that sort of urban planning be done on a Federal level?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:40:31 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 12:35:28 PM
Quotewhere we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places

City planning and zoning may be a bit outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.

QuoteThe proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform.

Yeah you are probably never going to get us to endorse intense social control except under very extreme circumstances. It kind of goes against everything we stand for. I mean what if somebody doesn't want to change where they sleep, work, shop, worship, and send their kids to play? We have to force them. Liberals, myself included, lack the stomach for that.


Dont think anyone was or is suggesting a sort of einsatzgruppen of libs descending on towns and cities across the land and throwing real americans out of their homes. I think it is absolutely important to start thinking about changing the way we do things like build towns and cities and infrastructure rather then just take an approach of business as usual, but the cars and trucks will be electric.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:47:21 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:34:26 PM
Of course, as it should be. The author does go on to state the same thing more or less but then point out ways in which they believe 'federal incentives profoundly shape local land use already'.

Strong Towns are sort of an interesting bunch. I got involved in advocating for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in the small town I live in a few years ago, attending the city council meetings and so on. A total nightmare. But it did leave me with a real interest in how our towns, cities and infrastructure get planned, built and paid for and by whom. Strong Towns essentially believe in incrementalism, and generally oppose large infrastructure projects. They also strive to be sort of apolitical, in as much as one can, so I think they came at the critique of the GND deliberately spicy like.

Gotcha. I guess I am not aware of how federal incentives impact urban planning. I can see how, for example, federal tax credits influence the building of wind farms out in rural areas. So if there is some sort of federal incentive currently discouraging one sort of urban planning over another than perhaps that might need to be reformed to encourage another type.

Also I can see why they seemed to think that urban planning was so "foundational" to combating climate change. It is their particular focus, so naturally they want us to believe it is the most important issue.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:49:53 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:40:31 PM
Dont think anyone was or is suggesting a sort of einsatzgruppen of libs descending on towns and cities across the land and throwing real americans out of their homes.

I was thrown off by their strong language and accusations that Liberals are not ready for big tough choices.

QuoteI think it is absolutely important to start thinking about changing the way we do things like build towns and cities and infrastructure rather then just take an approach of business as usual, but the cars and trucks will be electric.

I think many cities have been thinking about that and have been for a very long time. To the best of my knowledge nobody has yet to develop something we can all point to and say "there, that is what the solution is"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:56:14 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:49:53 PM

I think many cities have been thinking about that and have been for a very long time. To the best of my knowledge nobody has yet to develop something we can all point to and say "there, that is what the solution is"

I'm not aware of a single solution to having better towns and cities either but I am more or less a fan of Strong Towns and their general approach. A part of what they advocate for strongly is robust citizen participation in municipal planning, something which I have had an (unpleasant) taste of. I think that's a really important part of a better functioning democracy and a better functioning democracy is an important part of addressing climate change, I think.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:58:48 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:56:14 PM
a better functioning democracy is an important part of addressing climate change, I think.

Why? Wouldn't that typically result in NIMBYism?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 03:19:58 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:58:48 PM


Why? Wouldn't that typically result in NIMBYism?

Well just in the broadest sense, I think that if people participate in politics and planning at the simplest local level, questions like "should we have a bicycle lane, or should it be more Death Race 2000?" are a great way to get involved and actually have conversations with other people and organize meetings and things and discover the delight of being able in some small way to move the lever of power in your neighborhood.

If people can go from there to more fully participating at the state and federal level, more than just a popularity contest every four years with a lot of myth and emotion then yes I think that's for the best because I don't think people are so nihilistic that they'll decide to just flush civilization down the toilet because free markets or something.

I think learning to participate fully and having a less atomized culture is a steep learning curve, but I think its important.

And sure, there will be lots and lots of NIMBYs, there already are and they are a nightmare. Not sure what to do about them other than to organize more reasonable people in larger numbers around them. It's possible to do in a democracy one would hope, even though the NIMBYs often seem to be the most well off with the best resources.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on February 12, 2019, 03:22:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:58:48 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:56:14 PM
a better functioning democracy is an important part of addressing climate change, I think.

Why? Wouldn't that typically result in NIMBYism?

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 12, 2019, 03:44:17 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 12, 2019, 03:22:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 12, 2019, 02:58:48 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 12, 2019, 02:56:14 PM
a better functioning democracy is an important part of addressing climate change, I think.

Why? Wouldn't that typically result in NIMBYism?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 07:33:29 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.


:lmfao:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 13, 2019, 08:11:04 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.

I don't disagree.

Also us as individuals should modify our behaviour, now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on February 13, 2019, 08:21:07 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 07:33:29 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.


:lmfao:

An excellent and incisive intellectual response.  When Berkut sees these, he cannot criticize it as he properly does the facile and intellectually lazy one-smiley responses.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on February 13, 2019, 09:13:37 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 13, 2019, 08:21:07 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 07:33:29 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.


:lmfao:

An excellent and incisive intellectual response.  When Berkut sees these, he cannot criticize it as he properly does the facile and intellectually lazy one-smiley responses.  :thumbsup:

I could be wrong, but I read that as 'skepticism that we, as a society, have the collective foresight and strength of will to do this'.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 13, 2019, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: Malthus on February 13, 2019, 09:13:37 AM

I could be wrong, but I read that as 'skepticism that we, as a society, have the collective foresight and strength of will to do this'.

Yes that's how I read it or he could have selected a clearer smilie like :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 13, 2019, 09:43:08 AM
Why leap to the simpler explanation when a more convoluted one that lets you hurl insults is available?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on February 13, 2019, 01:16:38 PM
So McConnell is going to schedule a vote on the Green New Deal.  The bill's Senate sponsor (Markey, D-MA) is hacked off about it, calling it "sabotage" :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 13, 2019, 01:47:12 PM
On the face of it, I support McConnell on this. Why shouldn't the GND be brought to a floor vote? Are the Democrats irate that they haven't been given enough time to sell it, or...?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on February 13, 2019, 01:48:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 29, 2019, 08:59:47 PM
"I want you to panic"

Good clear message - greeted by polite applause by the Davos crowd

https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2019/jan/25/i-want-you-to-panic-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-issues-climate-warning-at-davos-video
It's a good message, made the more impressive by the fact that she has autism and selective mutism. She's done a TED talk as well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 13, 2019, 01:53:15 PM
Quote from: Maximus on February 13, 2019, 01:48:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 29, 2019, 08:59:47 PM
"I want you to panic"

Good clear message - greeted by polite applause by the Davos crowd

https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2019/jan/25/i-want-you-to-panic-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-issues-climate-warning-at-davos-video
It's a good message, made the more impressive by the fact that she has autism and selective mutism. She's done a TED talk as well.

Most of us olds have failed the place.

Hoping the younger ones don't become as cynical as my generation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 13, 2019, 09:13:37 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 13, 2019, 08:21:07 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 07:33:29 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.


:lmfao:

An excellent and incisive intellectual response.  When Berkut sees these, he cannot criticize it as he properly does the facile and intellectually lazy one-smiley responses.  :thumbsup:

I could be wrong, but I read that as 'skepticism that we, as a society, have the collective foresight and strength of will to do this'.

Yes, this.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 13, 2019, 02:50:41 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 13, 2019, 04:10:47 AM
We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.

And we are probably at the point where nation states doing their own thing is not viable.  There is going to have to be intense international cooperation to develop the energy 2.0 grid that will be necessary.

Berkut's response would also be appropriate here.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 14, 2019, 12:21:40 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 14, 2019, 09:49:20 AM
Quote from: derspiess on February 13, 2019, 01:16:38 PM
So McConnell is going to schedule a vote on the Green New Deal.  The bill's Senate sponsor (Markey, D-MA) is hacked off about it, calling it "sabotage" :lol:

I mean...why not? It is not like they were ever going to get the votes in the Senate to pass it. And even if they did it would be vetoed. So Markey should be happy about the opportunity to symbolically vote for this and not actually have to worry about what happens if it passes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 14, 2019, 03:27:20 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 14, 2019, 12:21:40 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.


I think we are going to use Brexit as our model and just sort of muddle through.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 14, 2019, 05:24:12 PM
the difference being that on the day before 2 degrees of warming hits, we can't have a snap referendum to reverse the decision.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on February 14, 2019, 11:52:56 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 14, 2019, 12:21:40 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.


...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 15, 2019, 10:46:59 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 14, 2019, 11:52:56 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 14, 2019, 12:21:40 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.


...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.

I am afraid option 2 is going to be chosen for us if we do not choose option 1.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 15, 2019, 12:39:18 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 15, 2019, 10:46:59 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 14, 2019, 11:52:56 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 14, 2019, 12:21:40 AM
Quote from: Berkut on February 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM
Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.


...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.

I am afraid option 2 is going to be chosen for us if we do not choose option 1.

Yeah, option 3 is the same as option 2.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on February 15, 2019, 12:41:34 PM
These are not the options. We will get trillions of dollars of economic losses no matter what. It's between having our current civilization going into the future or a significaly reduced numbers of humans on this planet.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 15, 2019, 01:37:42 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 15, 2019, 12:41:34 PM
These are not the options. We will get trillions of dollars of economic losses no matter what. It's between having our current civilization going into the future or a significaly reduced numbers of humans on this planet.

False choices?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 15, 2019, 07:09:06 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 15, 2019, 12:41:34 PM
These are not the options. We will get trillions of dollars of economic losses no matter what. It's between having our current civilization going into the future or a significaly reduced numbers of humans on this planet.

If we devoted significant resources now to developing a new electrical grid with electricity generated from green sources, there could be an economic boom and we could avoid the most significant losses.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on February 16, 2019, 02:18:32 AM
Current carbon intensity of electricity maps and graphs for the UK :

https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/

Currently only 23 gCO2/kWh in the NW of England; 182 down your way mongers  :(

So right now is a good time to do one's laundry and recharge the car in NW England.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 16, 2019, 08:54:04 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on February 16, 2019, 02:18:32 AM
Current carbon intensity of electricity maps and graphs for the UK :

https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/

Currently only 23 gCO2/kWh in the NW of England; 182 down your way mongers  :(

So right now is a good time to do one's laundry and recharge the car in NW England.

Thanks RH, interesting.

I don't think one can underestimate just who selfish people can be with regard to the environment, as long as the lights switch on they want it make anywhere else, rather than something that might spoil the view on their Sunday afternoon drive.   
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on February 16, 2019, 12:31:53 PM
It seems as if the steely eyed independent minded climatologists/Anne Coulter fans have drifted away from languish a bit or perhaps moved on to more exciting conspiracy theories. As the general mood on here is trending "We are super fucked" I recommend that we have a poll asking our gentle readers to choose which dystopian science fiction nightmare our world is set to fall into.

For starters it could be Children of Men, sad Clive Owen anxiously wandering a grimy UK overwhelmed by some sort of refugee crisis.

The most likely candidate for me though is Zardoz - a far future world split between a tiny group of omnipotent "Eternals" who manipulate the larger population of wild eyed "Brutals" to murder each other in large numbers. Also Sean Connery has a battle-jock-strap of some kind, which is what I would choose for the apocalypse.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:13:38 PM
Who was the intelligence NCO who fired his boss?  Can't remember his nick. 

He's the only climate change skeptic i can think of.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on February 16, 2019, 01:18:08 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:13:38 PM
Who was the intelligence NCO who fired his boss?  Can't remember his nick. 

He's the only climate change skeptic i can think of.

Yo.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 16, 2019, 01:19:12 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:13:38 PM
Who was the intelligence NCO who fired his boss?  Can't remember his nick. 

He's the only climate change skeptic i can think of.

Hansmeister
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 16, 2019, 01:42:45 PM
Here's the guy.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpEdsh6VqA
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:54:36 PM
Quote from: dps on February 16, 2019, 01:18:08 PM
Yo.

That's not it.  Something with an H, maybe German sounding.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 02:01:59 PM
Wasn't Siege? He had a problem with the moon landing...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 16, 2019, 02:15:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 02:01:59 PM
Wasn't Siege? He had a problem with the moon landing...

Siege was a moon conspiracy guy. Hans was the climate change denier. He'd bring up some studies from the 70s where scientists predicted global cooling (according to him) as proof that climate science was a fraud. He was also one of those sects of christians that believed that the end times would come when the Jews converted to Christianity. I think he also got into a weird stalking thing with Malthus.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 16, 2019, 02:28:58 PM
I repeat: Hansmeister.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on February 16, 2019, 02:32:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:54:36 PM
Quote from: dps on February 16, 2019, 01:18:08 PM
Yo.

That's not it.  Something with an H, maybe German sounding.

You may be right. I can't quite remember his name either.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 16, 2019, 03:49:47 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 15, 2019, 07:09:06 PM
If we devoted significant resources now to developing a new electrical grid with electricity generated from green sources, there could be an economic boom and we could avoid the most significant losses.
oh sure.  All wee need is for most of English Canada to accept hydro-electricity from Quebec and ditch their coal&gaz plants.

Easy peasy?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 16, 2019, 03:51:29 PM
Quote from: fromtia on February 16, 2019, 12:31:53 PM
It seems as if the steely eyed independent minded climatologists/Anne Coulter fans have drifted away from languish a bit or perhaps moved on to more exciting conspiracy theories. As the general mood on here is trending "We are super fucked" I recommend that we have a poll asking our gentle readers to choose which dystopian science fiction nightmare our world is set to fall into.

For starters it could be Children of Men, sad Clive Owen anxiously wandering a grimy UK overwhelmed by some sort of refugee crisis.

The most likely candidate for me though is Zardoz - a far future world split between a tiny group of omnipotent "Eternals" who manipulate the larger population of wild eyed "Brutals" to murder each other in large numbers. Also Sean Connery has a battle-jock-strap of some kind, which is what I would choose for the apocalypse.
Either The 100 or the new show on Netflix (IO, I think).
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 16, 2019, 03:53:26 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 16, 2019, 02:32:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 01:54:36 PM
Quote from: dps on February 16, 2019, 01:18:08 PM
Yo.

That's not it.  Something with an H, maybe German sounding.

You may be right. I can't quite remember his name either.
Hansmeister, as Syt said.  There may have been another Republican or two in the earlier days following the Mass Exodus from Paradox.

There was an anti-evolution guy, maybe he was a climate change denier too, I cannot remember.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 16, 2019, 03:59:18 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 16, 2019, 02:32:36 PM
You may be right. I can't quite remember his name either.

Burgermeister Meisterburger?  That rings a bell.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 16, 2019, 05:50:19 PM
Hortleister I think.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on February 16, 2019, 06:19:14 PM
I thought his name was Vinraith. :unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 07:56:33 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 16, 2019, 02:15:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 02:01:59 PM
Wasn't Siege? He had a problem with the moon landing...

Siege was a moon conspiracy guy. Hans was the climate change denier. He'd bring up some studies from the 70s where scientists predicted global cooling (according to him) as proof that climate science was a fraud. He was also one of those sects of christians that believed that the end times would come when the Jews converted to Christianity. I think he also got into a weird stalking thing with Malthus.

Yes. The sect being Roman Catholicism in his case
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 16, 2019, 08:55:23 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 07:56:33 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 16, 2019, 02:15:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 02:01:59 PM
Wasn't Siege? He had a problem with the moon landing...

Siege was a moon conspiracy guy. Hans was the climate change denier. He'd bring up some studies from the 70s where scientists predicted global cooling (according to him) as proof that climate science was a fraud. He was also one of those sects of christians that believed that the end times would come when the Jews converted to Christianity. I think he also got into a weird stalking thing with Malthus.

Yes. The sect being Roman Catholicism in his case

Man even the catholics are hardcore in America hah
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 17, 2019, 12:28:53 AM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 07:56:33 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 16, 2019, 02:15:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 16, 2019, 02:01:59 PM
Wasn't Siege? He had a problem with the moon landing...

Siege was a moon conspiracy guy. Hans was the climate change denier. He'd bring up some studies from the 70s where scientists predicted global cooling (according to him) as proof that climate science was a fraud. He was also one of those sects of christians that believed that the end times would come when the Jews converted to Christianity. I think he also got into a weird stalking thing with Malthus.

Yes. The sect being Roman Catholicism in his case
Are you sure? Two non priest catholic as hardcore as Mike Pence in one country?   :cry:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on February 17, 2019, 12:59:17 AM
Hans and who's the other one? Mel Gibson?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 17, 2019, 11:19:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 16, 2019, 03:49:47 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 15, 2019, 07:09:06 PM
If we devoted significant resources now to developing a new electrical grid with electricity generated from green sources, there could be an economic boom and we could avoid the most significant losses.
oh sure.  All wee need is for most of English Canada to accept hydro-electricity from Quebec and ditch their coal&gaz plants.

Easy peasy?

Last I checked BC was in English Canada and it does not have coal or gas plants.  But you are correct that there is no way we will accept hydro from Quebec - we have our own :P

So here, ya easy peasy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 17, 2019, 11:27:45 PM
Ontario gets like 40% from hydro and the rest from nuclear IIRC
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 17, 2019, 11:41:44 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 17, 2019, 11:27:45 PM
Ontario gets like 40% from hydro and the rest from nuclear IIRC

So it is Manitoba that is burning all the coal eh? Bastards.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 18, 2019, 12:06:53 AM
Or those shifty newfies
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on February 18, 2019, 12:09:41 AM
So are we all playing some sort of joke on Syt here?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on February 18, 2019, 08:59:37 AM
Quote from: HVC on February 17, 2019, 11:27:45 PM
Ontario gets like 40% from hydro and the rest from nuclear IIRC

Aren't the nuclear plants being decommissioned? That's a big 60% We could build together but the RoC doesn't like to work with HQ.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 18, 2019, 10:45:09 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 18, 2019, 12:09:41 AM
So are we all playing some sort of joke on Syt here?

#RememberHansmeister
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 18, 2019, 11:53:03 AM
Quote from: fromtia on February 16, 2019, 12:31:53 PM


For starters it could be Children of Men, sad Clive Owen anxiously wandering a grimy UK overwhelmed by some sort of refugee crisis.


Children of Men is a rip-off of 2019 after the Fall of New York, itself very much inspired by Escape from New York and Max Max 2 among others.

I'll settle for Zardoz, since the French-dubbed line of " The gun is good, the penis is evil" is hilarious in French. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 18, 2019, 03:46:06 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 17, 2019, 11:19:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 16, 2019, 03:49:47 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 15, 2019, 07:09:06 PM
If we devoted significant resources now to developing a new electrical grid with electricity generated from green sources, there could be an economic boom and we could avoid the most significant losses.
oh sure.  All wee need is for most of English Canada to accept hydro-electricity from Quebec and ditch their coal&gaz plants.

Easy peasy?

Last I checked BC was in English Canada and it does not have coal or gas plants.  But you are correct that there is no way we will accept hydro from Quebec - we have our own :P

So here, ya easy peasy.
Read again and put emphasis on most

We could export energy to New Brunswick, but they do not want it.  Newfoundland lobbyed the Feds to get some money for their own hydro project in Labrador and their own submarine power line to reach New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and New England.  So far, it's a mess and Newfoundlanders will pay at least 3x the price it was supposed to be until it is done.

Ontario wants to restart its coal plants and does not wish for powerlines from Quebec to cross its territory.  Manitoba, Sask and Alberta do not want to import electricity from a seperatist province.

To me, that qualifies for "most".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 18, 2019, 03:48:32 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 17, 2019, 11:41:44 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 17, 2019, 11:27:45 PM
Ontario gets like 40% from hydro and the rest from nuclear IIRC

So it is Manitoba that is burning all the coal eh? Bastards.
The prairies burn coal.
New Brunswick too.
PEI, I can't remember.
Newfoundland was supposed to export electricity, but they can't generate enough yet.  Something about cost overrun and production delays...
That is what happens when amateurs try something. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on February 18, 2019, 07:04:41 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 18, 2019, 11:53:03 AM
Quote from: fromtia on February 16, 2019, 12:31:53 PM


For starters it could be Children of Men, sad Clive Owen anxiously wandering a grimy UK overwhelmed by some sort of refugee crisis.


Children of Men is a rip-off of 2019 after the Fall of New York, itself very much inspired by Escape from New York and Max Max 2 among others.

I'll settle for Zardoz, since the French-dubbed line of " The gun is good, the penis is evil" is hilarious in French. :)

It's pretty hilarious in English as well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 18, 2019, 08:32:40 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 18, 2019, 11:53:03 AM
I'll settle for Zardoz, since the French-dubbed line of " The gun is good, the penis is evil" is hilarious in French. :)

Le fusil est bon, le pénis est mieux ?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 24, 2019, 09:57:14 AM
Part of the NYTimes editorial on the Green New Deal

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/green-new-deal-climate-democrats.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

QuoteThe idea of decarbonizing the economy is ambitious, commendable and urgent. In early January, for instance, came three hugely dispiriting reports. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimated that America's carbon dioxide emissions, after a period of decline, had risen by 3.4 percent in 2018, even as a near-record number of coal plants around the country were retired. The main culprits were economic growth and rising emissions from factories, putting America's vow to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 further out of reach, absent bold new policies or technological breakthroughs.

This bad news was followed by a study in Science finding that the oceans are warming at an alarming pace, 40 to 50 percent faster than the United Nations had estimated, putting corals and fisheries at even greater risk. If that were not enough, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences followed with a study predicting faster melting of Antarctica's huge ice reserves.

These are not good signs, but Mr. Markey, ever the optimist, thinks there is no better time to put forth aggressive ambitions and solutions. Obviously, nothing will happen legislatively as long as the Republicans control the Senate and Mr. Trump sits in the White House. But the stars are aligned, Mr. Markey thinks, for a robust debate about a climate strategy that his party can take to the voters in 2020. The steady drumbeat of alarming reports, plus one climate-related multibillion dollar disaster after another, has raised public consciousness, which in turn increases public pressure on Congress to do something. In an exchange that went viral on Friday, a group of children pressed Democractic Senator Dianne Feinstein over her refusal to support the plan. "We're the ones who are going to be impacted," one of the children lamented.

Meanwhile, technological progress toward clean-energy solutions has been nothing short of remarkable, giving the lie to the old denier argument that clean energy inevitably means fewer jobs. Wind capacity has increased more than fourfold in the last decade. Solar power, while still a very small part of the total energy mix, has increased at an even faster rate. And prices for both have dropped to the point where they are increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Ten years ago, an electric car was a curiosity; now more than a million have been sold in the United States.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 24, 2019, 04:11:21 PM
And on the other hand, the soon to be US ambassador to the UN:

Quote
CBC Politics 
    
The new U.S. ambassador to Canada says when it comes to climate change she believes in "both sides of the science" cbc.ca/1.4366936 pic.twitter.com/UNKhgSMj74


:hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 24, 2019, 04:17:55 PM
Cognitive dissonance is probably an important quality to cultivate in the Trump administration.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 24, 2019, 05:09:29 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 18, 2019, 08:32:40 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 18, 2019, 11:53:03 AM
I'll settle for Zardoz, since the French-dubbed line of " The gun is good, the penis is evil" is hilarious in French. :)

Le fusil est bon, le pénis est mieux ?

Mieux que ça :
"L'arme c'est le bien, le pénis c'est le mal !"
Oui, jeu de mots (involontaire ?) entre mal et mâle.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 25, 2019, 09:21:58 AM
Warmest February day ever recorded today, 20.3C in West Wales.

And by extension the warmest Winter's* day in the UK since records began.

So now 'warming' here then.  :bowler:



* Our Meteorology Office works on calender seasons rather than using the equinox etc, so Winter is offically Dec 1st to Feb 28th/29th.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Solmyr on February 25, 2019, 02:17:07 PM
So Trump is setting up an official climate change denier panel. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-to-select-federal-scientists-to-reassess-government-climate-findings-sources-say/2019/02/24/49cd0a84-37dd-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html)  :glare:

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 02:21:33 PM
Quote from: Solmyr on February 25, 2019, 02:17:07 PM
So Trump is setting up an official climate change denier panel. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-to-select-federal-scientists-to-reassess-government-climate-findings-sources-say/2019/02/24/49cd0a84-37dd-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html)  :glare:



Yeah there seems to be a major offensive by the fossil fuels people recently. Probably in reaction to the whole "Green New Deal" business.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 25, 2019, 04:38:55 PM
One of the many curious aspects of Trump's presidency is the degree he finds himself at war with his own executive branch.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on February 25, 2019, 05:05:01 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 25, 2019, 04:38:55 PM
One of the many curious aspects of Trump's presidency is the degree he finds himself at war with his own executive branch.

Not really, he's been know to pick a fight with his own reflection.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 05:26:13 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 25, 2019, 04:38:55 PM
One of the many curious aspects of Trump's presidency is the degree he finds himself at war with his own executive branch.

How is that curious?  First action of his presidency was to call the CIA and FBI traitors and dumbasses for saying Russia meddled.

DRAIN THE SWAMP
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:19:38 PM
Speaking of the "Green New Deal" so I am hearing it somehow drove Amazon out of NYC or something? How? One crazy law that was never going to be passed suggested by one extremist Congresswoman drove Amazon out of NYC?

I have no idea what is going on there.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 08:21:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:19:38 PM
Speaking of the "Green New Deal" so I am hearing it somehow drove Amazon out of NYC or something? How? One crazy law that was never going to be passed suggested by one extremist Congresswoman drove Amazon out of NYC?

I have no idea what is going on there.

They didn't pull out because of any laws or regs or anything concrete like that.  They pulled out because of public outcry.

I was confused by that as well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:25:24 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 08:21:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:19:38 PM
Speaking of the "Green New Deal" so I am hearing it somehow drove Amazon out of NYC or something? How? One crazy law that was never going to be passed suggested by one extremist Congresswoman drove Amazon out of NYC?

I have no idea what is going on there.

They didn't pull out because of any laws or regs or anything concrete like that.  They pulled out because of public outcry.

I was confused by that as well.

Ah. So why am I seeing all these think pieces linking it to the Green New Deal and whats-her-name?

What was the public outcry about? I guess I am not getting why this NYC deal is a national story. If New Yorkers didn't like the deal the city struck with Amazon that sounds like a local deal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 08:29:36 PM
Because she was one of the principle outcriers.  I think the proposed site might be in her district.

The outcry was basically an anti-gentrification argument combined with a claim that the tax break was too big.

edit: I got a chuckle out of whoever said "we could spend that $3 billion on other great things."  What $3 billion are you talking about, you idjit?  It doesn't exist yet and now never will.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:31:31 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 08:29:36 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:25:24 PM
Ah. So why am I seeing all these think pieces linking it to the Green New Deal and whats-her-name?

What was the public outcry about? I guess I am not getting why this NYC deal is a national story. If New Yorkers didn't like the deal the city struck with Amazon that sounds like a local deal.

Because she was one of the principle outcriers.  I think the proposed site might be in her district.

The outcry was basically an anti-gentrification argument combined with a claim that the tax break was too big.

The tax break thing probably was too big IIRC. But it concerns a bit to have the whole party linked to this one extremist.

Quoteedit: I got a chuckle out of whoever said "we could spend that $3 billion on other great things."  What $3 billion are you talking about, you idjit?  It doesn't exist yet and now never will.

Idiocy like this is what I generally expect from her. Just launching a big political waves without really thinking it through. Maybe she is our Ted Cruz.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on February 25, 2019, 09:28:31 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2019, 08:19:38 PM
Speaking of the "Green New Deal" so I am hearing it somehow drove Amazon out of NYC or something? How? One crazy law that was never going to be passed suggested by one extremist Congresswoman drove Amazon out of NYC?

I have no idea what is going on there.

I read a few weeks ago that it was possibly cancelled because it appeared that the project would be blocked or seriously delayed in some obscure public board that had to greenlight it because a loud opponent to the project got appointed to it. No idea about how the pundits you listen to link it to the GND.

Edit: Found an article about this:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/amazon-new-york-long-island-city-hq2-michael-gianaris (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/amazon-new-york-long-island-city-hq2-michael-gianaris)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on February 25, 2019, 10:57:53 PM
Valmy, Ted Cruz is our Ted Cruz. :alberta:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 25, 2019, 11:14:21 PM
Ocasio-Cortes had little to do with the Amazon pull-out from NYC. It is not in her district and as a federal rep, she basically had zero direct power to influence how it played out.  The press played up her limited role because she is a name now and the state and local politicians who actually were involved have no name recognition.

Unions, although very weak nationally, sitll have political influence in NYC and are not friendly to Amazon.  The governor and mayor ran a closed process which made it easy to criticize from the outside. Also the lack of key detail and the lack of transparency made it easier to criticize. They key focal point of opposition was in the NY state sentate, which controls appointments to a state planning board whose approval was needed to get around NYCs otherwise difficult zoning regulations. Basically the state senate leader was going to make it impossible for the planning board to get to the required unanimity requirement. Cuomo's response was to plan to circumvent the board but at that point Amazon walked.

There's no way to know for sure what Amazon's thinking was, but my suspicion is that Bezos was taken aback by the old-school hardball NY politicking and got cold feet.  Cuomo is tough and ruthless and likely would have gotten the deal through, especially with the mayor on board, but Amazon didn't like the heat and the media.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on February 26, 2019, 08:07:21 AM
No one should be friendly to Amazon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on February 26, 2019, 10:19:34 AM
No one should be shelling out billions in taxpayer subsidies to massive corporations, either.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 26, 2019, 10:51:27 AM
Mu understanding is that Amazon stood to benefit from the application of existing NYC and state programs and credits that are also available to other employers.   Amazon's project was so big the total $$ number rose to the billions whereas it would be a much smaller number for a smaller business.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 28, 2019, 05:33:59 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/28/mps-debate-climate-after-school-strike-but-only-a-handful-turn-up?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

QuoteMPs debate climate after school strike – but only a handful turn up

In the week that the UK experienced its hottest ever winter day, just a handful of government MPs attended a debate on climate change in parliament on Thursday.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said she had secured the discussion after being inspired by the thousands of UK schoolchildren who went on strike over climate change this month and wanted to thank them for forcing MPs into action.

Moran said climate change had not been debated in the main chamber of the House of Commons for two years. She spoke, however, to a chamber where the seats were predominantly empty. At points, as few as 10 MPs sat on government benches, although the opposition side was more occupied. The lacklustre response to the debate from the government was in stark contrast to the condemnation by Downing Street to the thousands of children involved in the strike for climate change, calling it "truancy".

Mary Creagh, chair of the environmental audit committee, said politicians needed to shape and bend the financial system to invest in a green economy.

"To achieve net zero [carbon emissions] we have to reduce our emissions rapidly and at scale in every area of our economy and our lives," she said.

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, said last year's UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report – detailing the difference between meeting a 1.5C rise above pre-industrial levels compared with 2C – gave the most alarming picture yet of the impact of climate change.

He said: "If you look at the trends, we are not heading for that apocalyptic 2 degree rise, we are heading something that looks more like 3 degrees, the consequences of which we cannot possibly estimate."

In light of that, he said "the idea of children missing a few hours of geometry or PE to wake our political system up is somehow the wrong thing to do just seems ... absurd".

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, who secured the debate with Moran, said long-term climate targets had to be amended to net zero. She said even after all of the international conferences and pledges, the Earth was still set to warm by 3-4C.

"Time is quickly running out to limit warming even to the 1.5 or 2 degree aspirations of the IPCC. We face a climate emergency ... It calls for unprecedented boldness of vision and a new way of thinking."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 04, 2019, 09:53:56 AM
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/state-rep-daryl-metcalfe-says-reducing-carbon-dioxide-emissions-will-kill-his-vegetables/Content?oid=13785614

QuoteState Rep. Daryl Metcalfe says reducing carbon dioxide emissions will kill his vegetables

"I enjoy my vegetables, and plants need CO2, so I want to make sure we have plenty of CO2 out there so we have green grass and green vegetables growing."

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Cranberry) is well known for making ludicrous statements, ones that are typically tinged with arch-conservative ideology. For example, a video went viral that showed an irritated Metcalfe shouting "I'm a heterosexual. I have a wife. I love my wife. I don't like men, as you might," when touched on the elbow by a colleague in a hearing last year.

At a Feb. 20 meeting, Metcalfe continued that trend, but this time by embracing climate-change denial. In a committee hearing in Harrisburg about a new report called Advancing Pennsylvania's Energy-Enabled Economy, Metcalfe claims reducing carbon dioxide emissions will actually harm the planet since plants need carbon dioxide (CO2) to survive.

"Just to be on record, I enjoy my vegetables, and plants need CO2, so I want to make sure we have plenty of CO2 out there so we have green grass and green vegetables growing," said Metcalfe in a video released on his Facebook page.

"We need CO2, we can't eliminate all CO2. We are going to have an interesting debate for those that want to reduce something that is actually needed by our environment. And claiming that they are improving the environment."

This claim is obviously false. Earth had plants and agriculture before humans started refining coal and other practices that released massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. And environmentalists want to reduce CO2 emissions as a goal to slow down climate change, not eliminate CO2 altogether from our atmosphere.

Maybe Metcalfe was trying to make the argument that more CO2 is better for the planet since it could boost agricultural production. That argument has been made before by former U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in 2017, and it has some flaws.

According to the Scientific American magazine, several climate scientists agree that theoretically more CO2 could increase production of agricultural plants. But sharp increases could also reduce nitrogen, which plants, especially wild ones, consume as food. (Plants use CO2 to breathe.)

Additionally, more CO2 in the atmosphere has shown to raise global temperatures. And global temperatures rising quickly can have disastrous effects on plant life. The Scientific American states increased CO2's "negative consequences — such as drought and heat stress — would likely overwhelm any direct benefits that rising CO2 might offer plant life."

A request to Metcalfe's office for comment on this story was not returned.

Further perplexing is that Metcalfe goes on to defend and boost natural gas-drilling, aka fracking, which has been a large driver in reducing CO2, even while boosting other greenhouse gases like methane.

"I think the average individual that is out there trying to heat their home in Philadelphia or in Pittsburgh is very thankful that natural gas has been developed so much in Pennsylvania," said Metcalfe.

He also lauded the construction of the cracker plant in Beaver County, which will refine natural gas into plastics and should boost fracking production in the region.

But even conservative websites publish stories about fracking's role in reducing CO2 emissions. A 2017 article from the Daily Caller say, "Fracking has cut more CO2 emissions than all renewable energy combined."

Metcalfe also criticized renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and claimed they couldn't provide the level of power needed to heat homes during cold snaps. But according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association, winter is actually the high season for Canadian wind production.

Metcalfe is the chair of the state House's Environmental Resources & Energy committee, and decides the fate of much of Pennsylvania's environmental legislation. He wrapped up his speech by claiming environmentalists where using "flawed reasoning" when pushing for greener policies.

"To try and put your own view out there instead of putting your facts into account, I think is very flawed science, very flawed reasoning," said Metcalfe. "And not something that our citizens ultimately appreciate or benefit from."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2019, 10:39:59 AM
The quotes they give don't make the claims ascribed to him.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on March 04, 2019, 10:46:55 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2019, 10:39:59 AM
The quotes they give don't make the claims ascribed to him.

"Just to be on record, I enjoy my vegetables, and plants need CO2, so I want to make sure we have plenty of CO2 out there so we have green grass and green vegetables growing," said Metcalfe in a video released on his Facebook page.

"We need CO2, we can't eliminate all CO2. We are going to have an interesting debate for those that want to reduce something that is actually needed by our environment. And claiming that they are improving the environment."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2019, 11:49:48 AM
Those are true statements. Some CO2 is needed.

There is perhaps an implication that any reduction in CO2 would be bad, but surely they could have found a quote where he flat out says it?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 04, 2019, 12:17:16 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2019, 11:49:48 AM
Those are true statements. Some CO2 is needed.

There is perhaps an implication that any reduction in CO2 would be bad, but surely they could have found a quote where he flat out says it?

Plants&trees managed just fine before we started burning coal and oil.
Now, why is it that, suddenly, if we reduce our artificial co2 emissions, the earth and all life on it would be doomed?

Imagine a situation where humans are completely wiped out in a week.  A 100% deadly plague, Babylon 5 style.

Are plants better or wost off now that we do not generate co2&methane from burning coal, oil and natural gas and that animal populations are kept in check by various predators?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 01:13:11 PM
My wife's plants would be in serious trouble.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on March 04, 2019, 01:27:38 PM
Just in case you non-America types don't know..."state representatives", are super small fish/more likely to be crazy, and can safely be ignored.

Might just as well get outraged at the antics of a city councilman.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on March 04, 2019, 02:44:06 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 04, 2019, 01:27:38 PM
Just in case you non-America types don't know..."state representatives", are super small fish/more likely to be crazy, and can safely be ignored.

No, they can't. US States wield considerable power, many of which have a tremendous impact on the very same dynamics that empower crazy national politicians. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 04, 2019, 03:59:24 PM
Since climate is obviously a national emergency, north americans should be ready to abandon their toilet paper.  Right now.

I'm surprised it wasn't part of the Green New Deal.

https://www.ecowatch.com/forests-tissue-toilet-paper-sustainability-2629612402.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 04:08:26 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on March 04, 2019, 02:44:06 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 04, 2019, 01:27:38 PM
Just in case you non-America types don't know..."state representatives", are super small fish/more likely to be crazy, and can safely be ignored.

No, they can't. US States wield considerable power, many of which have a tremendous impact on the very same dynamics that empower crazy national politicians. 


You're correct in terms of large groups of state representatives.  Individual state representatives can be ignored.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 04, 2019, 04:38:52 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 04:08:26 PM
You're correct in terms of large groups of state representatives.  Individual state representatives can be ignored.

They hold proportionally more power at the state level than individual congressmen do at the national level.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 05:06:25 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 04:08:26 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on March 04, 2019, 02:44:06 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 04, 2019, 01:27:38 PM
Just in case you non-America types don't know..."state representatives", are super small fish/more likely to be crazy, and can safely be ignored.

No, they can't. US States wield considerable power, many of which have a tremendous impact on the very same dynamics that empower crazy national politicians. 


You're correct in terms of large groups of state representatives.  Individual state representatives can be ignored.


Well, Right-wing representatives who say crazy things should be ignored.  It is vital we discuss left-wing reps as a danger to our Republic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 04, 2019, 09:12:56 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 05:06:25 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 04:08:26 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on March 04, 2019, 02:44:06 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 04, 2019, 01:27:38 PM
Just in case you non-America types don't know..."state representatives", are super small fish/more likely to be crazy, and can safely be ignored.

No, they can't. US States wield considerable power, many of which have a tremendous impact on the very same dynamics that empower crazy national politicians. 


You're correct in terms of large groups of state representatives.  Individual state representatives can be ignored.


Well, Right-wing representatives who say crazy things should be ignored.  It is vital we discuss left-wing reps as a danger to our Republic.
how about condemning both, especially when they come from your side? :)

I think the Democrats in the House and Senate did a good job with that anti-semitic congresswoman.  Now, if all those who call themselves left leaning would apply such rigor when it comes to international politics and economy...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 09:31:54 PM
I have plenty of times.  We had a state Rep who publicly stated she wanted Trump to be assassinated.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on March 05, 2019, 04:56:36 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2019, 11:49:48 AM
Those are true statements. Some CO2 is needed.

There is perhaps an implication that any reduction in CO2 would be bad, but surely they could have found a quote where he flat out says it?

I am not going to dignify with a reply this ridiculous claim that reducing human CO2 emissions would remove CO2 from the atmosphere and make plant life disappear.




I guess we should be happy to see such "opinions" surface though. This really do seem like grasping for straws by deniers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 05, 2019, 12:28:52 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 04, 2019, 04:38:52 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2019, 04:08:26 PM
You're correct in terms of large groups of state representatives.  Individual state representatives can be ignored.

They hold proportionally more power at the state level than individual congressmen do at the national level.

Yep. People often ignore the statehouse but that is where most of the policies that actually impact your life are made.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on March 05, 2019, 12:36:55 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 05:06:25 PM
Well, Right-wing representatives who say crazy things should be ignored.  It is vital we discuss left-wing reps as a danger to our Republic.

I've ignored plenty of loony lefty state reps.  It's actually the right-wing ones that bother me more.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 05, 2019, 12:45:00 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 05, 2019, 12:36:55 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 05:06:25 PM
Well, Right-wing representatives who say crazy things should be ignored.  It is vital we discuss left-wing reps as a danger to our Republic.

I've ignored plenty of loony lefty state reps.  It's actually the right-wing ones that bother me more.

I have to admit I kind of tuned out the chatter in the statehouse after the big debate about regulating cheerleader dances back in the day. As usual they seem to be figuring how to appear to lowering taxes while they are, in fact, raising them. Which is a trick Rick Perry was a master at.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 05, 2019, 12:47:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 05, 2019, 12:45:00 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 05, 2019, 12:36:55 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2019, 05:06:25 PM
Well, Right-wing representatives who say crazy things should be ignored.  It is vital we discuss left-wing reps as a danger to our Republic.

I've ignored plenty of loony lefty state reps.  It's actually the right-wing ones that bother me more.

I have to admit I kind of tuned out the chatter in the statehouse after the big debate about regulating cheerleader dances back in the day. As usual they seem to be figuring how to appear to lowering taxes while they are, in fact, raising them. Which is a trick Rick Perry was a master at.

Shouldn't this be in the US elections thread.





j/k
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 05, 2019, 12:48:24 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 05, 2019, 12:47:21 PM
Shouldn't this be in the US elections thread.





j/k

Doh!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on March 06, 2019, 07:06:14 PM
A full dossier about the gradual disappearance of snow during winter, in Canada.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/2019/03/neige-accumulation-hiver-quebec-environnement-meteo-gel-degel/index-en.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 06, 2019, 07:45:27 PM
Apparently, you should not read this if you are slightly (or more) depressed:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper-so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 06, 2019, 07:51:28 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on March 06, 2019, 07:06:14 PM
A full dossier about the gradual disappearance of snow during winter, in Canada.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/2019/03/neige-accumulation-hiver-quebec-environnement-meteo-gel-degel/index-en.html
Apparently, someone didn't get the memo:
https://www.facebook.com/uniladmag/videos/612607782543096/

;)


(disclaimer: that was a joke, anectdotal evidence/isolated incident in no way meant that climate change is a hoax nor is immediate action and not words are needed)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 06, 2019, 07:55:34 PM
I should also had that telling anyone from Quebec city they receive less acumulated snow than usual is not an advisable option for now.  Short term memory&all that...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
The movement of certain species northwards is one aspect of climate change visible on a human scale.

For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.

While species do normally migrate somewhat, the movement of several species northwards is generally prevented by die-offs due to winter cold.

This is something very visible - because it is hard to miss a gigantic rat-like animal of a species you have never seen before rooting around in your backyard.  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
I had a chianti a few nights ago it seemed a bit hot.  Looked on the label and alchohol levels were at 14.5%.  Historically many Chiantis struggled to hit their minimum alcohol levels of 11.5-12%. The classic chianti was a light-to-medium bodied style wine with the term "nervous" as a common descriptor, now it more often drinks like something from the Southern Rhone or Provence.

Chablis used to have a reputation as a thin wine, as reflected by the AOC regulations that permit bottling of non-cru wines below 10%.  Now it's common to see Chablis marketed at or near 14%.  Some of these wines are good but they aren't Chablis anymore - at least they aren't the Chablis my father introduced me too decades ago.

This is happening in all regions - it's glaring to anyone who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 07, 2019, 01:38:46 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.

Impressive.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on March 07, 2019, 01:42:20 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
I had a chianti a few nights ago it seemed a bit hot.  Looked on the label and alchohol levels were at 14.5%.  Historically many Chiantis struggled to hit their minimum alcohol levels of 11.5-12%. The classic chianti was a light-to-medium bodied style wine with the term "nervous" as a common descriptor, now it more often drinks like something from the Southern Rhone or Provence.

Chablis used to have a reputation as a thin wine, as reflected by the AOC regulations that permit bottling of non-cru wines below 10%.  Now it's common to see Chablis marketed at or near 14%.  Some of these wines are good but they aren't Chablis anymore - at least they aren't the Chablis my father introduced me too decades ago.

This is happening in all regions - it's glaring to anyone who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.

It's quite noticeable. We come from around Orleans and as a kid everything local hovered around 12%. It's near impossible to find now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 07, 2019, 01:49:29 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
This is happening in all regions - it's glaring to anyone who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.
that's likely why I hadn't noticed all these changes, I haven't been drinking wine for that long.  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 07, 2019, 02:01:50 PM
I have been drinking less wine as a result.  It doesn't have the same appeal it once did.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 07, 2019, 02:32:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 07, 2019, 01:49:29 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
This is happening in all regions - it's glaring to anyone who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.
that's likely why I hadn't noticed all these changes, I haven't been drinking whine for that long.  :P

How long have you been whining?    :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 07, 2019, 03:19:02 PM
stupid english grammar :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on March 07, 2019, 09:19:37 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.

While species do normally migrate somewhat, the movement of several species northwards is generally prevented by die-offs due to winter cold.

This is something very visible - because it is hard to miss a gigantic rat-like animal of a species you have never seen before rooting around in your backyard.  :D
Yep.  We have armadillos in Kentucky now, though I've yet to see one.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 07, 2019, 09:28:13 PM
Plants too.  Flowers that are supposed to blossom in March/April now do so in January. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 08, 2019, 12:19:16 AM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.
oppossum, I'll handle.
But if I start seeing tarantulas or vipers in my garden, I will feak out.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on March 08, 2019, 09:02:50 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 08, 2019, 12:19:16 AM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.
oppossum, I'll handle.
But if I start seeing tarantulas or vipers in my garden, I will feak out.

Name doesn't match post.  :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 08, 2019, 01:33:47 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 07, 2019, 09:19:37 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.

While species do normally migrate somewhat, the movement of several species northwards is generally prevented by die-offs due to winter cold.

This is something very visible - because it is hard to miss a gigantic rat-like animal of a species you have never seen before rooting around in your backyard.  :D
Yep.  We have armadillos in Kentucky now, though I've yet to see one.

Relax.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on March 08, 2019, 02:06:15 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 08, 2019, 01:33:47 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 07, 2019, 09:19:37 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.

While species do normally migrate somewhat, the movement of several species northwards is generally prevented by die-offs due to winter cold.

This is something very visible - because it is hard to miss a gigantic rat-like animal of a species you have never seen before rooting around in your backyard.  :D
Yep.  We have armadillos in Kentucky now, though I've yet to see one.

Relax.

Who will speak for the Swedes, when they come for you. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 08, 2019, 03:22:50 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 08, 2019, 09:02:50 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 08, 2019, 12:19:16 AM
Quote from: Malthus on March 07, 2019, 09:19:58 AM
For example - the opossum has, over the last ten years, extended its range north to Toronto.
oppossum, I'll handle.
But if I start seeing tarantulas or vipers in my garden, I will feak out.

Name doesn't match post.  :lol:
:cool:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on March 14, 2019, 09:48:09 PM
Mozambique under threat from a very strong tropical cyclone, storm surges of 4+ metres predicted.

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/25E7/production/_106030790_snapshot.jpg)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47576831 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47576831)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 15, 2019, 01:43:53 PM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47581585

QuoteClimate strikes spread worldwide as students call for action

Thousands of school pupils worldwide have abandoned classrooms for a day of protest against climate change.

India, South Korea, Australia and the US are among the countries where teenagers are already on strike.

The day of action is expected to embrace about 100 countries. They are inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who protests weekly outside Sweden's parliament.

Scientists say tougher measures are needed to cut global warming.

The Paris climate agreement of 2017 committed nearly 200 countries to keeping global temperatures "well below" 2.0C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times and to striving for a maximum of 1.5C.

The globally co-ordinated children's protests - promoted through posts on Twitter and other social media - have been going on for several months.

On Thursday Greta Thunberg's campaigning earned her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the 16-year-old told top executives and politicians that "on climate change, we have to acknowledge that we have failed".

Ministers in some countries have voiced concern about children skipping classes.

Australia's Education Minister Dan Tehan said "students leaving school during school hours to protest is not something that we should encourage".

UK Education Secretary Damian Hinds echoed that concern, and the government said the disruption increased teachers' workloads and wasted lesson time.

But Environment Secretary Michael Gove backed the protesting children, saying in a video: "Dear school climate strikers, we agree."

"Collective action of the kind you're championing can make a difference, and a profound one," he said.

20,000 students protested in Austria, 10,500 in Vienna. Chancellor Kurz declared solidarity with the students, most of which were confused, because "We protest because he doesn't get his ass in gear."

Most ... interesting signs:

(https://preview.redd.it/4myriodrsam21.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=d6106b9068184e62de9ed734e2bd387d44d5e767)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on March 15, 2019, 02:41:42 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 07, 2019, 09:19:37 PM

Yep.  We have armadillos in Kentucky now, though I've yet to see one.

We supposedly have them in North Carolina now, too, but I don't think they're this far east yet.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 15, 2019, 02:42:51 PM
I am sorry to hear that. They are incredibly stupid and annoying.

I guess they are kind of cute though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on March 15, 2019, 02:52:14 PM
I kind of like the idea of armadillos expanding their range.  In their case, my understand (which, as always, may be faulty) is that it's not so much because of climate change but because of the decline of other mammals that compete with them and also the decline of the few things that prey on them.  At any rate, I think I'd rather have the around than possums.  Not that possums aren't a bit cool themselves because of being marsupials.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 15, 2019, 05:33:23 PM
A couple of hundred students protested outside the government HQs yesterday.  Most of them didn't look like locals though.  I bet they were international school students, children of expats. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on March 15, 2019, 05:38:05 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 15, 2019, 05:33:23 PM
A couple of hundred students protested outside the government HQs yesterday.  Most of them didn't look like locals though.  I bet they were international school students, children of expats.

Mono if you had children, would you be 'embarrassed' if they'd taken part?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 15, 2019, 05:39:54 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 15, 2019, 05:38:05 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 15, 2019, 05:33:23 PM
A couple of hundred students protested outside the government HQs yesterday.  Most of them didn't look like locals though.  I bet they were international school students, children of expats.

Mono if you had children, would you be 'embarrassed' if they'd taken part?

Super embarrassed. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 15, 2019, 05:50:51 PM
They marched past my office.  A large well ordered group.  Mono would approve.  Until he learned the substance of what they were doing.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on March 15, 2019, 06:07:45 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 15, 2019, 05:50:51 PM
They marched past my office.  A large well ordered group.  Mono would approve.  Until he learned the substance of what they were doing.

:lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on March 15, 2019, 06:20:58 PM
Saw lots of kids out in DC today when I went to grab lunch.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 15, 2019, 06:22:04 PM
Students still haven't spread to Kentucky. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on March 16, 2019, 10:34:25 AM
Quote from: The Brain on March 15, 2019, 06:22:04 PM
Students still haven't spread to Kentucky. :)

What about Sweden?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 16, 2019, 10:36:12 AM
What would Caliga's sock puppet know about Sweden?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 16, 2019, 05:07:40 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 16, 2019, 10:34:25 AM
Quote from: The Brain on March 15, 2019, 06:22:04 PM
Students still haven't spread to Kentucky. :)

What about Sweden?

We have plenty of students in Sweden. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on March 16, 2019, 07:07:10 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 16, 2019, 05:07:40 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 16, 2019, 10:34:25 AM
Quote from: The Brain on March 15, 2019, 06:22:04 PM
Students still haven't spread to Kentucky. :)

What about Sweden?

We have plenty of students in Sweden. :)

Are they expanding their range northward?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 17, 2019, 02:56:42 AM
Quote from: dps on March 16, 2019, 07:07:10 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 16, 2019, 05:07:40 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 16, 2019, 10:34:25 AM
Quote from: The Brain on March 15, 2019, 06:22:04 PM
Students still haven't spread to Kentucky. :)

What about Sweden?

We have plenty of students in Sweden. :)

Are they expanding their range northward?

We don't know. No one lives up north.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2019, 05:25:35 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 07, 2019, 01:42:20 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 07, 2019, 12:37:33 PM
I had a chianti a few nights ago it seemed a bit hot.  Looked on the label and alchohol levels were at 14.5%.  Historically many Chiantis struggled to hit their minimum alcohol levels of 11.5-12%. The classic chianti was a light-to-medium bodied style wine with the term "nervous" as a common descriptor, now it more often drinks like something from the Southern Rhone or Provence.

Chablis used to have a reputation as a thin wine, as reflected by the AOC regulations that permit bottling of non-cru wines below 10%.  Now it's common to see Chablis marketed at or near 14%.  Some of these wines are good but they aren't Chablis anymore - at least they aren't the Chablis my father introduced me too decades ago.

This is happening in all regions - it's glaring to anyone who has been drinking wine since the 1980s and still has those memories.

It's quite noticeable. We come from around Orleans and as a kid everything local hovered around 12%. It's near impossible to find now.

Never saw Chablis that high but it is mostly 12.5 %, a bit higher than I remember.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on March 23, 2019, 06:15:22 PM
Could this be the miracle machine?

QuoteSoundEnergy's THEARC-25 thermoacoustic cooling system is claimed to take heat and turn it into sound, before then turning that sound into cold – all without moving parts, and without any additional energy required.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/01/18/this-dutch-startup-converts-heat-into-cold-via-a-stirling-engine-and-could-just-save-the-planet/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 27, 2019, 04:01:56 AM
https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/speeches?ID=2271BAF4-7F34-4BE8-81C5-B621E9BAF878

QuoteMr. President,

Fear has become an all-too-prevalent quality in America's political discourse.

And unfortunately, fear is unavoidable when debating the substance of the resolution before us today – climate change, socialism, and the Green New Deal.

On entering this debate, I have a little fear in my heart, too.

But, Mr. President, my fear at this moment may be a little different from that of my colleagues.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I am not immediately afraid of what carbon emissions, unaddressed, might do our environment, our civilization, and our planet.

Unlike others, I am not immediately afraid of what the Green New Deal would do to our economy and our government. After all, it's not going to pass today.

Rather, after reading the Green New Deal, I am mostly afraid of not being able to get through this speech with a straight face.

For Mr. President, I rise today to consider the Green New Deal with the level of seriousness it deserves.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/87240bba-1544-49ff-b22b-495b7d878d29/reagan-custom.jpg)

This is a picture of former President Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while riding on the back of a dinosaur.

You will note both the rocket launcher strapped to his back, and the stirring patriotism of the velociraptor holding up the tattered American flag.

Now, critics might quibble with this depiction of the climactic battle of the Cold War, because – while awesome – in real life there was no climactic battle, with or without velociraptors.

The Cold War was won without firing a shot.

But that quibble actually serves our purposes here today, Mr. President.

Because this image has as much to do with overcoming Soviet communism in the 20th century as the Green New Deal has to do with overcoming climate change in the 21st.

The aspirations of the proposal have been called radical and extreme. But mostly they are ridiculous.

There isn't a single serious idea here. To illustrate, let me highlight two of the most prominent goals produced by the plan's authors.

Goal Number One: the Green New Deal calls for the elimination of all airplanes.

This might seem merely ambitious for politicians who represent the densely populated northeast. But how is this supposed to work for our fellow citizens who don't live between Washington and Boston?

In a future without air travel, how are people supposed to get around the vast expanses of, say, Alaska during the winter?

I'll tell you how.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6ed9501c-8fb3-41de-9af6-cba7bdd173b0/tauntaun-custom.jpg)

Tauntauns, Mr. President: a beloved species of repto-mammals native to the ice planet of Hoth.

While not as efficient as planes or snow-mobiles, these hairy, bipedal space lizards offer their own unique benefits.

Not only are tauntauns carbon-neutral, but according to one report "a long time ago" and "far, far away," they may even be fully recyclable for their warmth on especially cold nights.

What about Hawaii, isolated, 2,000 miles out into the Pacific Ocean? Under the Green New Deal's airplane prohibition, how are they supposed to get to and from the mainland, or maintain their tourism-based economy?

At that distance, swimming would be out of the question. And jet skis are notorious gas-guzzlers. No, all residents of Hawaii would be left with... is this.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=566F2721-9673-4177-BF2D-D002BD43395B)

This is a picture Aquaman, a super hero from the underwater kingdom of Atlantis and founding member of the Super Friends.

I draw your attention, Mr. President, to the twenty-foot sea horse he is riding. Under the Green New Deal, this is probably Hawaii's best bet.

Now, I'm the first to admit that a massive fleet of giant, trained seahorses would be very cool. But we have no idea about scalability or domestic capacity in this sector.

The last thing we want is to ban all airplanes, and only then find out that China or Russia have already established strategic hippocampus programs designed to cut the United States out of the global market.

Mr. President, we must not allow a giant seahorse gap!

Goal Number Two: the Green New Deal anticipates the elimination of all cows.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6a12be14-c323-4f6a-b01a-68f01a8b921f/cows-custom.jpg)

Talking points released by the sponsors of the resolution the day it was introduced cited the goal of "fully get[ting] rid of" – I will paraphrase – "[flatulating] cows.'"

Now, Mr. President, I share their concern. But honestly, if they think the cows smell bad, just wait 'til they get a whiff of the seahorses.

But back to the cattle. I have a chart to illustrate the trend.

As you see, Mr. President, on the left these little cows represent the population of bovine Americans today.

On the right is the future population under the Green New Deal. We would go from about 94 million cows to... zero cows.

You may think I'm exaggerating, Mr. President, but this is no bull.

No more milk. No more cheese. No more steak. No more hamburgers.

Over the state work period last week, I visited some farms to find out for myself what Utah's own bovine community thinks of the Green New Deal.

Every cow I talked to said the same thing: "Boooooooo."

The authors of this proposal will protest that these goals are not actually part of the Green New Deal, but were merely included in supporting documents – accidentally – sent out by the office of the lead House sponsor.

But, Mr. President, this only makes my point.

The supporters of the Green New Deal want Americans to trust them to reorganize our entire society and economy ... when they couldn't even figure out how to send out the right press release.

The Green New Deal is not a serious policy document because it is not a policy document at all. It's an aesthetic one.

This resolution is not an agenda of solutions. It's a token of elite tribal identity – and endorsing it, a public act of piety for the chic and woke.

And on those embarrassing terms, it is already a resounding success.

As Speaker Pelosi herself put it: "The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it right?"

Right.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/f29d49df-2b90-4cbf-bb5a-59aceff8e80c/new-nancy-quote-custom.jpg)

Critics will no doubt chastise me for not taking climate change seriously. But please, Mr. President. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No Utahn needs to hear pious lectures about the gravity of climate change from politicians from other states.

For it was only 2016 – as viewers of the SyFy Network will remember – when climate change hit home in Utah, when our state was struck not simply by a tornado, Mr. President, but a tornado ... with sharks in it!

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8827429a-3367-4446-8abd-7888fdc92092/sharknado-4-custom.jpg)

These images are from the indispensable documentary film, Sharknado 4.

They capture the moment when one of the tornado sharks crashed through the office window of Utah's Governor, Gary Herbert.

A true Utah hero, Herbert bravely fought the animal off with the tennis racket he keeps by his desk ... for just such occasions.

So let's be really clear, Mr. President. Climate change is no joke. But the Green New Deal is a joke.

It is the legislative equivalent of Austin Powers's "Dr. Evil" demanding "sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads."

The Green New Deal is not the solution to climate change. It's not even part of the solution. It's part of the problem.

The solution to climate change won't be found in political posturing or virtue signaling like this.

It won't be found in the federal government at all.

You know where the solution can be found? In churches, wedding chapels, and maternity wards across the country and around the world.

(https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/e6ca5be8-16c1-4e40-8e67-9303933f6c87/babies-custom.jpg)

This, Mr. President, is the real solution to climate change: babies.

Climate change is an engineering problem – not social engineering, but the real kind.

It's a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and technological invention.

And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans!

More people mean bigger markets for innovation.

More babies mean more forward-looking adults – the sort we need to tackle long-term, large scale problems.

American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing regions.

As economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote on this very point, "by having more children, you are making your nation more populous – thus boosting its capacity to solve [climate change]."

Finally, Mr. President, children are a mark of the kind of personal, communal, and societal optimism that is the true pre-requisite for meeting national and global challenges together.

The courage needed to solve climate change is nothing compared with the courage needed to start a family.

The true heroes of this story aren't politicians or social media activists.

They are moms and dads, and the little boys and girls they are, at this moment, putting down for naps... helping with their homework... building tree houses... and teaching how to tie their shoes.

The planet does not need us to "think globally, and act locally" so much as it needs us to think family, and act personally.

The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution, but the serious business of human flourishing – the solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married, and have some kids.

I yield the floor.


You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK27NZon11w
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on March 27, 2019, 04:30:59 AM
Is that guy for real? I saw yesterday the part about the babies on Twitter and that seemed already ridiculous enough, without all the rest of the presentation.  :wacko:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 27, 2019, 04:42:35 AM
He's an elected senator.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 27, 2019, 04:49:05 AM
Fantastic speech.  It is actually quite funny and amusing.  Can't believe he really used those visual aids.  I love how he delivered it in a straight face, and how his aide seems to be desperately holding back. 

I am totally for having more babies, as long as those aren't mine.  I think an ever increasing number of babies is a necessary foundation of a growing and prosperous nation.  It also has absolutely nothing to do with global warming.

A bit worrying though.  If his goal is to undermine the Green New Deal, I fear he has achieved the opposite.  Because it highlights the quality of the opposition to the Green New Deal.   We need sane arguments against the Green New Deal.  Not...this. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 27, 2019, 04:58:46 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 27, 2019, 04:49:05 AM
Fantastic speech.  It is actually quite funny and amusing.  Can't believe he really used those visual aids.  I love how he delivered it in a straight face, and how his aide seems to be desperately holding back. 

I am totally for having more babies, as long as those aren't mine.  I think an ever increasing number of babies is a necessary foundation of a growing and prosperous nation.  It also has absolutely nothing to do with global warming.

A bit worrying though.  If his goal is to undermine the Green New Deal, I fear he has achieved the opposite.  Because it highlights the quality of the opposition to the Green New Deal.   We need sane arguments against the Green New Deal.  Not...this.

How many people do you think the planet can sustain? 10 billion? 15 billion? 50 billion?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 27, 2019, 05:04:45 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 27, 2019, 04:58:46 AM


How many people do you think the planet can sustain? 10 billion? 15 billion? 50 billion?

Not sure.  But I think human societies and technologies evolve to deal with new challenges.  Right now we may support, say 10 billion people.  If there are actually 15 billion people, then the additional population pressure will incentivise humanity to find new ways to support more people.  In short, life will find a way.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 27, 2019, 05:37:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

It was what drove Hitler to try and conquer Lebensraum for Germans, because he felt the territory was too small for its population (it was then at about the same levels as modern Germany).

That said, I don't think turning Earth in an ecumenopolis is a splendid idea. :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 07:09:22 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

I wonder what Malthus would say about this
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on March 27, 2019, 07:52:50 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 07:09:22 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

I wonder what Malthus would say about this

It's a crisis!  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 07:54:17 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 27, 2019, 05:37:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

It was what drove Hitler to try and conquer Lebensraum for Germans, because he felt the territory was too small for its population (it was then at about the same levels as modern Germany).

That said, I don't think turning Earth in an ecumenopolis is a splendid idea. :P

That's why we need to colonise the solar system.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 27, 2019, 08:49:12 AM
Wait a second.  I rewatched the speech from the Honourable Senator, "...former President Ronald Reagan, naturally firing a machine gun, while riding on the back of a dinosaur."  Did I hear it correctly that he used the word "naturally?"  That word choice is simply glorious. 

The sanity of US voters is one of the most important foundations of world peace, and after watching this video, my faith in the US electorate and US senators has been eroded.  A bit. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 09:02:53 AM
Quote from: Malthus on March 27, 2019, 07:52:50 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 07:09:22 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

I wonder what Malthus would say about this

It's a crisis!  :ph34r:

I knew you would not disappoint  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 01:16:28 PM
On the good news front a sea plane company operating out of the port of Vancouver is going to convert its whole fleet to electric engines starting this year.  I use them to fly to Victoria and other towns on Vancouver Island and the Coast of BC on business.  I look forward to the more quiet ride  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on March 27, 2019, 01:26:12 PM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 07:54:17 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 27, 2019, 05:37:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

It was what drove Hitler to try and conquer Lebensraum for Germans, because he felt the territory was too small for its population (it was then at about the same levels as modern Germany).

That said, I don't think turning Earth in an ecumenopolis is a splendid idea. :P

That's why we need to colonise the solar system.

I'm all for it but it won't help overpopulation on Earth. Unless we figure out how to build space elevators, 99% of the solar system population will be here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on March 27, 2019, 01:39:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 01:16:28 PM
On the good news front a sea plane company operating out of the port of Vancouver is going to convert its whole fleet to electric engines starting this year.  I use them to fly to Victoria and other towns on Vancouver Island and the Coast of BC on business.  I look forward to the more quiet ride  :)

It's amazing that batteries are now good enough for that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on March 27, 2019, 01:44:11 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 27, 2019, 01:39:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 01:16:28 PM
On the good news front a sea plane company operating out of the port of Vancouver is going to convert its whole fleet to electric engines starting this year.  I use them to fly to Victoria and other towns on Vancouver Island and the Coast of BC on business.  I look forward to the more quiet ride  :)

It's amazing that batteries are now good enough for that.

Yes.

Lithium batteries are subject to spontaneous combustion & we're putting them in planes!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 01:54:07 PM
Because jet fuel is noncombustible?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on March 27, 2019, 02:02:55 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 27, 2019, 01:44:11 PM
Lithium batteries are subject to spontaneous combustion & we're putting them in planes!

As long as Boeing makes the avionics and autopilot software kit, we're good.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on March 27, 2019, 02:08:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 01:54:07 PM
Because jet fuel is noncombustible?

I don't think jet fuel is subject to spontaneous combustion.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 27, 2019, 02:39:26 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 27, 2019, 01:26:12 PM
Unless we figure out how to build space elevators, 99% of the solar system population will be here.

Not if people in the colonies outbreed terrestrial ones. But you're correct that won't help people on earth.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on March 27, 2019, 02:48:45 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 27, 2019, 01:26:12 PM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 07:54:17 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 27, 2019, 05:37:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

It was what drove Hitler to try and conquer Lebensraum for Germans, because he felt the territory was too small for its population (it was then at about the same levels as modern Germany).

That said, I don't think turning Earth in an ecumenopolis is a splendid idea. :P

That's why we need to colonise the solar system.

I'm all for it but it won't help overpopulation on Earth. Unless we figure out how to build space elevators, 99% of the solar system population will be here.

If we can figure out how to get 1% of the human population off of Earth and living in a sustainable manner, I will consider that a tremendous success.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 02:55:40 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 27, 2019, 02:08:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 01:54:07 PM
Because jet fuel is noncombustible?

I don't think jet fuel is subject to spontaneous combustion.  :hmm:

Li-Ion batteries are not subject to being used as an explosive either :hmm: Why does that not terrify you?

But just like we regard stoking a giant fireball and running super heated water through tiny pipes in a boiler that potentially might explode as no big deal, because we understand it and how to keep it going, the issues with Li-Ion batteries are not magical or mysterious. They have been known forever and just like having lots of explosions going on on board they can be managed through intelligent engineering.

This strikes me as fear mongering. Sort of like the people trying to convince us that Lithium will become the new oil and ruin the world or something. Anything new freaks people out that sometimes we forget how theoretically dangerous most of the stuff that already surrounds us on a daily basis that we now regard as mundane.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 27, 2019, 02:56:53 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on March 27, 2019, 02:48:45 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 27, 2019, 01:26:12 PM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 07:54:17 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 27, 2019, 05:37:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 27, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
I am listening to an audiobook (Keegan's about the British Empire) and it mentioned how there was an early 19th century fear of overpopulation.

It was what drove Hitler to try and conquer Lebensraum for Germans, because he felt the territory was too small for its population (it was then at about the same levels as modern Germany).

That said, I don't think turning Earth in an ecumenopolis is a splendid idea. :P

That's why we need to colonise the solar system.

I'm all for it but it won't help overpopulation on Earth. Unless we figure out how to build space elevators, 99% of the solar system population will be here.

If we can figure out how to get 1% of the human population off of Earth and living in a sustainable manner, I will consider that a tremendous success.

Will the 1% take their wealth with them?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 02:59:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2019, 02:56:53 PM
Will the 1% take their wealth with them?

Unless the 1% have all their wealth in cash I don't think that is possible :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 27, 2019, 03:00:25 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 02:59:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2019, 02:56:53 PM
Will the 1% take their wealth with them?

Unless the 1% have all their wealth in cash I don't think that is possible :P

I'm told cash is awesome, so they probably do.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 27, 2019, 03:30:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 02:55:40 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 27, 2019, 02:08:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 01:54:07 PM
Because jet fuel is noncombustible?

I don't think jet fuel is subject to spontaneous combustion.  :hmm:

Li-Ion batteries are not subject to being used as an explosive either :hmm: Why does that not terrify you?

But just like we regard stoking a giant fireball and running super heated water through tiny pipes in a boiler that potentially might explode as no big deal, because we understand it and how to keep it going, the issues with Li-Ion batteries are not magical or mysterious. They have been known forever and just like having lots of explosions going on on board they can be managed through intelligent engineering.

This strikes me as fear mongering. Sort of like the people trying to convince us that Lithium will become the new oil and ruin the world or something. Anything new freaks people out that sometimes we forget how theoretically dangerous most of the stuff that already surrounds us on a daily basis that we now regard as mundane.

Yeah, the planes used by this service currently depend on an engine system that require many explosions going off throughout the flight.  I am a bit more at ease with a system that actively avoids any explosions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2019, 08:11:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2019, 08:29:36 PM
Because she was one of the principle outcriers.  I think the proposed site might be in her district.

The outcry was basically an anti-gentrification argument combined with a claim that the tax break was too big.

edit: I got a chuckle out of whoever said "we could spend that $3 billion on other great things."  What $3 billion are you talking about, you idjit?  It doesn't exist yet and now never will.

Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of modern monetary theory, which, if I understand it correctly says that government can print as much money as it wants as long as inflation remains under control. Even taxes aren't necessary to fund things, though they can be a net good as a brake on inequality and inflation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-21/modern-monetary-theory-beginner-s-guide
QuoteWarren Buffett Hates It. AOC Is for It. A Beginner's Guide to Modern Monetary Theory
An overview of a once-fringe school of economic thought that's suddenly of the moment.

By Peter Coy, Katia Dmitrieva, and Matthew Boesler
2019년 3월 21일 오후 7:00 GMT+9

There's a lot of debate swirling around Modern Monetary Theory—some strident. Its critics call it a hot mess. "MMT has constructed such a bizarre, illogical, convoluted way of thinking about macro that it's almost impervious to attack," Bentley University economist Scott Sumner claimed recently on his blog. MMT's proponents say it's the critics who are impervious to reason—"part of a degenerative paradigm that has lost credibility," says Australian MMTer William Mitchell.

This state of confusion isn't good because Modern Monetary Theory, once confined to blogs and a handful of colleges including the University of Missouri at Kansas City, suddenly matters. In the U.S., the left wing of the Democratic Party is citing MMT to make the case for massive federal government spending on a Green New Deal to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels and fund Medicare for All. It's virtually certain that MMT will be dragged into the debates of the 2020 presidential race. So the time is right for a semi-deep dive into Modern Monetary Theory—what it is, where it comes from, its pros and its cons.

Fortunately, the first academic textbook based on the theory was published in February. The 573-page tome, titled simply Macroeconomics, is by Mitchell, an economist at the University of Newcastle in Australia; Randall Wray of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; and Martin Watts, an emeritus professor at Newcastle. This article is based on the textbook as well as academic papers and blogs by MMTers and their critics.

MMT proposes that a country with its own currency, such as the U.S., doesn't have to worry about accumulating too much debt because it can always print more money to pay interest. So the only constraint on spending is inflation, which can break out if the public and private sectors spend too much at the same time. As long as there are enough workers and equipment to meet growing demand without igniting inflation, the government can spend what it needs to maintain employment and achieve goals such as halting climate change.

If you've absorbed that much, you're already ahead of a lot of the critics. Because MMT is associated with the Left, some people assume it favors soaking the rich to pay for social programs. In fact, MMT breaks with liberal orthodoxy by saying that while taxes on the wealthy are good for lessening inequality, they aren't essential to pay for government spending. Another misconception is that MMT says deficits never matter. On March 13 the University of Chicago Booth School of Business published a survey of prominent economists that misrepresented MMT that way, leaving out its understanding that too-big deficits can cause excessive inflation. The surveyed professors roundly disagreed with MMT as described. MMTers cried foul.


Modern Monetary Theory says the world still hasn't come to terms with the death of the gold standard in 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared that the dollar was no longer convertible into gold. In the modern era of "fiat" currency, MMT says, the U.S. and other big economies no longer need to worry about having enough gold to back their paper money, so they're free to print however much they need.

MMT claims to be the legitimate heir to the theories of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, who created the field of macroeconomics during the Great Depression. Keynes coined the term "paradox of thrift." His insight was that while any single household can dig itself out of a hole by cutting spending when its income falls, the economy as a whole cannot. One household's spending is another's income, so if everybody cuts back, no one gets paid. What you get then is a depression—a situation only government can fix because, unlike the private sector, it can afford to spend freely, putting money in people's pockets and thus getting the economy back on track.

In MMT's reckoning, Keynesianism was gutted in the following decades by successors such as Paul Samuelson, who unrealistically tried to make economics like physics, playing down the role of fundamental uncertainty. MMTers haven't endeared themselves to the mainstream by referring to that school of thought as "bastard Keynesianism," a coinage of the late British economist Joan Robinson.


MMT also draws on the "functional finance" work of the Russian-born British economist Abba Lerner, who wrote in the 1940s that government should spend what's required to achieve its goals, deficits be damned. Later, Britain's Wynne Godley developed the concept of sectoral balances, which focuses on the accounting truth that when the government runs a deficit, the nongovernment sector must run a surplus, and vice versa.

Starting in the 1990s, the budding movement coalesced with the financial and intellectual support of Warren Mosler, a hedge fund manager who lives in the U.S. Virgin Islands and has interests ranging from politics to catamaran design. It ran into skepticism. When Mitchell presented the ideas at an economic conference, he recalls, the first comment was from a man who said, "I think we are being visited by a presence from Mars today."

MMT rejects the modern consensus that economies should be steered primarily by the raising and lowering of interest rates. MMTers believe that the natural rate of interest in a world of fiat money is zero and that pegging it higher is a giveaway to the investor class. They say tweaking interest rates is ineffectual because businesses make investment decisions based on prospects for growth, not the cost of money.

MMTers argue that economies should be guided by fiscal policy—government spending and taxation. They want a nation's central bank to do the bidding of its treasury. So when the treasury needs money, the central bank accommodates it with a keystroke—creating base money from thin air by crediting the treasury's checking account. The new textbook says that today, governments "tend to run unduly restrictive fiscal policy stances so as not to contradict the monetary policy stance."

MMT says that, contrary to appearances, banks don't make loans out of deposits. Rather, they make loans based on the demand for borrowing, then the borrowers stash the proceeds in the bank. Anyone they write a check to simply makes a deposit in another bank. The bottom line is that loans create deposits rather than deposits creating loans. This is one aspect of MMT that even some conservative central bankers—including those at Germany's Bundesbank—agree with.


To stabilize employment, MMT would add a federally funded, locally administered job guarantee. Government would employ more people in slumps than in booms. Pavlina Tcherneva of Bard College's Levy Economics Institute is refining the plan. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist from the Bronx who's in her first term in Congress, supports the job guarantee and says MMT should be "a larger part of our conversation."

MMT challenges a core principle of conventional economics, which is that an increase in budget deficits will tend to raise interest rates, all else equal. Just the opposite, it says, sounding a bit like the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland. When the government spends more, the private sector gets the money and puts it in the banking system. With more money in the system and no increase in demand for it, interest rates will tend to fall, not rise, MMT says. That is, unless the government chooses to soak up reserves by selling bonds, which it doesn't have to do.

The reason the government doesn't need to sell treasury securities, or levy taxes, to spend money is that the central bank, under the control of the treasury, can pay for everything by conjuring up electronic money. In MMT's ideal world there would still be taxes, but their main purpose, aside from lessening inequality, would be as "offsets" to keep inflation under control. Taxes would drain just enough money from consumers and businesses so total spending in the economy won't be excessive.

It's tempting to view MMT's conception of fiscal policy as essentially similar to that of the mainstream—"Hey, they believe in taxes, too!"—but that's not quite right. MMTers hold that inflation isn't primarily the result of excessively strong growth. They blame much of it on businesses' excessive pricing power. So before trying to choke off growth to kill inflation, they would try to break up monopolies and stop banks from making too many loans. "The more actively we regulate big business for public purpose, the tighter the full employment we can achieve," three MMTers wrote in a letter to the Financial Times' Alphaville column that was published on March 1.


With that formula, it's no wonder that MMT has loud critics on Wall Street, where it's sometimes derided as Magic Money Tree. What's more surprising is how much flak the school of thought is taking from liberal economists who'd appear to be natural allies, such as Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and former Harvard president. Summers has been making the case that wealthy nations are suffering from "secular stagnation" and require permanently high levels of stimulative deficit spending by governments to keep them out of recession, which is similar to what MMT argues. Yet in a recent Washington Post op-ed, Summers called MMT "fallacious at multiple levels."

Summers and others may be worried that MMT will give a bad name to their more conventionally dovish views on deficits. "As long as they're out there claiming that standard macroeconomics is all wrong, I guess we need to respond," Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate who is a professor at City University of New York Graduate Center, wrote on his New York Times blog.

MMT's critics argue that trying to use fiscal policy to steer the economy is a proven failure because Congress and the president rarely act quickly enough to respond to a downturn. And they say politicians can't be relied upon to impose pain on the public through higher taxes or lower spending to squelch rising inflation. MMTers respond that they also oppose fine-tuning and instead want to use automatic stabilizers—including the jobs guarantee—to keep the economy on track.

MMT's detractors are skeptical of the idea that the treasury and central bank should work in concert. The Federal Reserve did the Treasury Department's bidding during World War II, but that "overdraft" privilege was used spottily thereafter and permanently ended in 1981—precisely because economists warned that a subservient central bank would allow inflation to race out of control. They're also dubious of the jobs guarantee, arguing that if the government's wage for guaranteed jobs is too low it won't do much to help unemployed workers or the economy, while if it's too high it will undermine private employment. Tcherneva's plan calls for $15 an hour. MMT envisions that government-employed workers would move back into the private sector when the economy strengthened, but that means some government functions would no longer be performed. In an email, Wray said the cyclical fluctuations in government employment are manageable.

Critics of MMT reject its reassurance that a country with its own currency doesn't need to worry about deficits. After all, it's been proven that a nation that loses the confidence of the world's investors will see its currency plummet. As recently as 1976, the U.K. was forced to appeal to the International Monetary Fund to stabilize the value of sterling. Wray said the U.K.'s mistake was trying to peg its currency to the dollar and the crisis eased when it allowed the pound to float.

Other disagreements are harder for laypeople to parse. There are complicated arguments over how interest rates are determined and whether the government and private sectors compete for savings, for example. Mainstream economists argue that the correct parts of MMT aren't new and the new parts aren't correct. But MMTers point out that the establishment hasn't covered itself in glory in recent years—largely failing to foresee the global financial crisis a decade ago, for instance. Paul McCulley, the former chief economist of bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co., says that though he's "not a card-carrying MMTer," he believes it offers a "robust architecture for a fiat currency world."

In any case, the new textbook gives MMT a good slingshot. Samuelson, in the preface to the 1990 edition of his best-selling principles book, wrote, "I don't care who writes a nation's laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economics textbooks." Stephanie Kelton, an MMTer who was the economic adviser on Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign in 2016 and is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, sees the tide turning. In presentations, the Stony Brook University economist likes to flash up a quote that says, essentially: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. Then you win.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: 11B4V on March 27, 2019, 08:22:52 PM
Every time she open her mouth a toilet flushes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 27, 2019, 08:32:16 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2019, 08:11:30 PM
Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of modern monetary theory, which, if I understand it correctly says that government can print as much money as it wants as long as inflation remains under control.

No, that's what plain vanilla monetary theory says.  MMT says just print away.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on March 27, 2019, 08:35:59 PM
History is full of examples of governments printing too much money that results in hyperinflation. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2019, 08:44:32 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 27, 2019, 08:32:16 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2019, 08:11:30 PM
Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of modern monetary theory, which, if I understand it correctly says that government can print as much money as it wants as long as inflation remains under control.

No, that's what plain vanilla monetary theory says.  MMT says just print away.
That Forbes article and everything else I've read on them brings up inflation as the main constraint from the beginning. What have you read that says otherwise?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 27, 2019, 10:18:19 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2019, 08:44:32 PM
That Forbes article and everything else I've read on them brings up inflation as the main constraint from the beginning. What have you read that says otherwise?

I don't recall the Economist article I read mentioning inflation, except as an obvious critique.

If you introduce an inflationary constraint into MMT, then you just have normal expansionary monetary policy during a recession, except that the newly printed money is going straight into funding of government spending instead of being lent out to banks to lower interest rates and increase investment. 

Of course, none of this sheds any light on why Aoki-san is talking about MMT at a time of full employment and heated up labor markets.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 27, 2019, 11:43:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2019, 02:59:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 27, 2019, 02:56:53 PM
Will the 1% take their wealth with them?

Unless the 1% have all their wealth in cash I don't think that is possible :P
we'll need a galactic stock exchange. :cool:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 27, 2019, 11:56:35 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 27, 2019, 10:18:19 PM
Of course, none of this sheds any light on why Aoki-san is talking about MMT at a time of full employment and heated up labor markets.

because the GOP is raking immense deficits, it is hard to propose unlimited spending to add trillions on the trillions of debt you will inherit in 2020.  It's a convenient way to say "we can spend however we want, it is never going to be a problem, see this nice little theory we have here makes everything allright".

I've heard of this before, but not by this specific name.  And I think Krugman devoted a column debunking it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on March 28, 2019, 01:07:51 PM
There's a lot of confusion about MMT, some of which is caused by the MMT people themselves.
It's basically just a updated version of Functional Finance, a theory proposed by Abba Lerner in the 60s and 70s.

Lerner's theory is that there is no binding fiscal constraint on a country that borrows in its own currency because it can always just print more currency.  The constraint on the fiscal side is thus concern over inflation, not insolvency.  Taxes are raised to keep inflation and inflation expectations suppressed, not to finance spending. The MMT people basically took Lerner's ideas and surrounded them with a lot of jargon.

There's nothing really wrong with the theory. The conventional way to manage an economy is to have a fixed fiscal constraint - i.e. either a balance budget or more commonly a capped deficit target or 2 or 3 percent of GDP and then use monetary policy to manage demand.  But you could do it the other way around.  Target a nominal growth rate for the economy -whuch corresponds to a risk free nominal interest rate - and then use fiscal policy to hit the target. 

While economically, both these policy regimes should work and could work similarly, politically they operate differently given current institutions.  Using monetary policy to regulate demand means the responsibility is the hands of unelected experts at the Fed. Using fiscal policy puts it in the hands of Congress.

MMT has a leftist coloration because of the assumption that implementation of a MMT regime would involve using more spending as the way to generate demand and thus provide a macro-economic justification for things lefties want to do anyways.  But it doesn't have to work that way - you could implement MMT by freezing spending and then varying tax levels by eg using period tax rebates to generate deficits when desired.

The irony is that most prominent practioner of MMT right now is arguably the Trump Administration.  Trump's macro policy basically follows MMT - target a desired rate of nominal growth and then set a level of fiscal deficit to hit that target. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2019, 04:08:15 PM
I disagree that there is nothing wrong with this theory Joan.

First the assumption that countries which borrow in their own currency have no total debt constraint.  Investors' willingness to purchase government debt is contingent on the expectation of being repaid and the real return offered.  As debt/GDP increases not only does the government's ability to service its debt decrease, but so does its willingness.  And as we discussed countless times before, although one can inflate away existing debt problems, that creates its own serious problems, such as hyperinflation, the elimination of prices as signalling mechanisms, barterization, and erasing personal savings. This calculus doesn't change simply because your country is borrowing from its own residents.

Second the problem I mentioned above, that present proponents of MMT seem to have read a 7th grade Cliff Notes version of MMT (probably on Slate) and misunderstood it to mean that we can spend as much as we want, whenever we want, without worrying.

Third is absurdity of expecting the political system to deliver fiscal tightening in periods of overheating.  The Fed, in contrast, has shown it is capable of being a mean bastard when that is what is needed, precisely because of its independence.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 28, 2019, 07:52:07 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2019, 04:08:15 PM
Second the problem I mentioned above, that present proponents of MMT seem to have read a 7th grade Cliff Notes version of MMT (probably on Slate) and misunderstood it to mean that we can spend as much as we want, whenever we want, without worrying.
Bingo!

Proponents of such theory seem to imagine GDP will always grow due to constant public sector spending.  Therefore, debt/gdp is not important to their calculations because it remains stable.

Note as Joan said, it is the same thing as the GOP is doing by slashing taxes and building a wall: they expect so much GDP growth that the ratio will actually go down or at worst remain stable.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on March 28, 2019, 10:24:56 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2019, 04:08:15 PM
First the assumption that countries which borrow in their own currency have no total debt constraint.  Investors' willingness to purchase government debt is contingent on the expectation of being repaid and the real return offered.  As debt/GDP increases not only does the government's ability to service its debt decrease, but so does its willingness.

At the extremes perhaps, but empirically that doesn't really hold. US Debt/GDP has nearly doubled since the Clinton years and looks likely to rise further but borrowing costs have gone way down.  As long as the real economy looks healthy and the dollar holds its value people will buy debt and not scruple at debt/GDP ratios over 100%.

Quotealthough one can inflate away existing debt problems, that creates its own serious problems, such as hyperinflation, the elimination of prices as signalling mechanisms, barterization, and erasing personal savings. This calculus doesn't change simply because your country is borrowing from its own residents.

That is true and acknowledged in theory by MMT in the sense that the fiscal balance must be managed to control inflation.

QuoteSecond the problem I mentioned above, that present proponents of MMT seem to have read a 7th grade Cliff Notes version of MMT (probably on Slate) and misunderstood it to mean that we can spend as much as we want, whenever we want, without worrying.

Quite so - I doubt Ocasio-Cortez has read the academic articles very carefully, she is just seizing on a theory that sounds helpful.

QuoteThird is absurdity of expecting the political system to deliver fiscal tightening in periods of overheating.  The Fed, in contrast, has shown it is capable of being a mean bastard when that is what is needed, precisely because of its independence.

I agree that whatever can be said of MMT as a matter of economic theory, it doesnt work as a matter of practical political economy.  The Fed has established a decent track record of competence on macro management since Volcker, despite some missteps. Congress doesn't inspire the same confidence.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2019, 10:45:32 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 28, 2019, 10:24:56 PM
At the extremes perhaps, but empirically that doesn't really hold. US Debt/GDP has nearly doubled since the Clinton years and looks likely to rise further but borrowing costs have gone way down.  As long as the real economy looks healthy and the dollar holds its value people will buy debt and not scruple at debt/GDP ratios over 100%.

It didn't hold empirically for Greece either, until it did.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2019, 11:46:43 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47754189

QuoteCanada warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, report says

Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates.

The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify.

Canada's Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate.

The report suggests that many of the effects already seen are likely irreversible.

Canada's annual average temperature has increased by an estimated 1.7C (3F) since 1948, when nationwide temperatures were first recorded.

The largest temperature increases have been seen in the North, the Prairies, and in northern British Columbia.

Annual average temperature in northern Canada increased by approximately 2.3C.

"While both human activities and natural variations in the climate have contributed to the observed warming in Canada, the human factor is dominant," the report states.

"It is likely that more than half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities."

What are the effects?

The effects of global warming on Canada's environment include more extreme weather.

Hotter temperatures could mean more heat waves and a higher risk of wildfires and droughts in some parts of the country.

Oceans are expected to become more acidic and less oxygenated, which could harm marine life.

Parts of Canada's Arctic Ocean are projected to have extensive ice-free periods during summer within a few decades.

A rise in sea levels could also increase the risk of coastal flooding and more intense rainfall could cause problems with flooding in urban centres.

What caused Canada's warming?

Canada's rapid warming is due to a number of factors, including a loss of snow and sea ice, which is increasing the absorption of solar radiation and causing larger surface warming than in other regions, according to the report.

Despite the bleak projections, the report notes that the amount of warming could be limited if global action is taken by drastically reducing "carbon emissions to near zero early in the second half of the century and [reducing] emissions of other greenhouse gases substantially".

Canada is one of nearly 200 countries that have signed on to the Paris Agreement - a single global agreement on tackling climate change that seeks to keep temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial times and "endeavour to limit" them even more, to 1.5C.

The Canadian government says it will meet the Paris target of cutting emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 despite the fact that a number of official reports indicate the country is unlikely to meet its reduction targets without significant effort.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on April 02, 2019, 11:53:29 AM
I know globally we are fucked, but how is Canada becoming warmer a bad thing for Canada or Canadians? :P

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:54:06 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 02, 2019, 11:53:29 AM
I know globally we are fucked, but how is Canada becoming warmer a bad thing for Canada or Canadians? :P



More raccoons and possums.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2019, 11:59:57 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 02, 2019, 11:53:29 AM
I know globally we are fucked, but how is Canada becoming warmer a bad thing for Canada or Canadians? :P

It might, if their Southern neighbors decide Canada is more attractive to live in than their home countries.

(https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/sites/all/themes/nca3/interactive/map-toggle/water-supplies-projected-decline/img/map-a2.jpg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:00:42 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 02, 2019, 11:53:29 AM
I know globally we are fucked, but how is Canada becoming warmer a bad thing for Canada or Canadians? :P

Much of the infrastructure, housing, heck everything, in the North is built on permafrost.  As that melts everything is going to hell.

The North is basically turning into a large swampy bog unfit for what now inhabits that area.

For the world in general it is terrible news, as the permafrost melts it is releasing more greenhouse gases that had been locked into the permafrost (carbon dioxide and methane).  It is a feedback loop scientists had been warning would occur, and now that it is here, it may be too late to stop.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:01:05 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 02, 2019, 11:59:57 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 02, 2019, 11:53:29 AM
I know globally we are fucked, but how is Canada becoming warmer a bad thing for Canada or Canadians? :P

It might, if their Southern neighbors decide Canada is more attractive to live in than their home countries.

(https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/sites/all/themes/nca3/interactive/map-toggle/water-supplies-projected-decline/img/map-a2.jpg)

We are thinking about building a wall.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2019, 12:01:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:00:42 PMFor the world in general it is terrible news, as the permafrost melts it is releasing more greenhouse gases that had been locked into the permafrost (carbon dioxide and methane).  It is a feedback loop scientists had been warning would occur, and now that it is here, it may be too late to stop.

Pretty much the same thing happens in Siberia, btw.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:03:06 PM
Guys, stop being fearmongers. Think of Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:04:56 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 02, 2019, 12:01:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:00:42 PMFor the world in general it is terrible news, as the permafrost melts it is releasing more greenhouse gases that had been locked into the permafrost (carbon dioxide and methane).  It is a feedback loop scientists had been warning would occur, and now that it is here, it may be too late to stop.

Pretty much the same thing happens in Siberia, btw.

Yeah, I assume it is happening there too.  But the data was taken in Canada, thus the headline.

Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:03:06 PM
Guys, stop being fearmongers. Think of Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur.

And the report was released the same day the Conservative party in Canada robo texted people to let them know they would repeal the carbon tax introduced yesterday.  Great timing.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2019, 12:06:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:04:56 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 02, 2019, 12:01:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:00:42 PMFor the world in general it is terrible news, as the permafrost melts it is releasing more greenhouse gases that had been locked into the permafrost (carbon dioxide and methane).  It is a feedback loop scientists had been warning would occur, and now that it is here, it may be too late to stop.

Pretty much the same thing happens in Siberia, btw.

Yeah, I assume it is happening there too.  But the data was taken in Canada, thus the headline.

Add things like this: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/05/31/climate-change-is-making-the-arab-world-more-miserable

I expect even if we turned this around tomorrow, it would get significantly worse before it got better, and I suspect there'll be a lot more people traveling North than already do.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:08:10 PM
Yep, I am happy I live where I do.  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:09:25 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:08:10 PM
Yep, I am happy I live where I do.  :)

If the result of this is that the developed world becomes more livable and the developing world becomes shittier that would just add insult to injury.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2019, 12:13:56 PM
Personally, I no longer look forward to summer. The number of days over 30 degrees, and nights over 20 degrees has been ticking up consistently in recent years (with the occasional dip).

Last year, Vienna had 120 "summer days" days over 25°C, of which 40 were over 30°C (defined as "heat days"). On top of that, 41 days with night time temperatures above 20 degrees. We regularly hit the upper 30s on at least a couple of days per summer now, getting close to 40.

More people die in Austria as a result of heat than of traffic accidents.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 12:16:53 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 02, 2019, 11:46:43 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47754189 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47754189)

QuoteCanada warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, report says

I planned on buying a new snowbile, but fuck it, I'm sticking with the ATV.

Quote
The Canadian government says it will meet the Paris target of cutting emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 despite the fact that a number of official reports indicate the country is unlikely to meet its reduction targets without significant effort.
This is bullshit.  The Canadian government has no plan, except to tax its citizen.  Quebec has already tried that and is also on its way to miss the target.

Current climate report indicates the govt has done nothing to reach its goals.  But I kinda predicted that, before the election. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 12:17:41 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 02, 2019, 11:59:57 AM
It might, if their Southern neighbors decide Canada is more attractive to live in than their home countries.
We'll build a wall and have the US pay for it! :mad:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:18:47 PM
Quote from: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 12:17:41 PM
We'll build a wall and have the US pay for it! :mad:

Sorry, we are broke.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 12:20:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:00:42 PM
For the world in general it is terrible news, as the permafrost melts it is releasing more greenhouse gases that had been locked into the permafrost (carbon dioxide and methane).  It is a feedback loop scientists had been warning would occur, and now that it is here, it may be too late to stop.
I do wonder if these gazes can be extracted safely, before they are naturally released in the atmosphere.

On the plus side, we might unearth some mammoths, clone them and create a themed park...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:24:01 PM
Quote from: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 12:20:56 PM
On the plus side, we might unearth some mammoths, clone them and create a themed park...

And then clone Ronald Reagan and have him ride them around?

QuoteI do wonder if these gazes can be extracted safely, before they are naturally released in the atmosphere.

Well it is such a huge surface area and is happening so gradually that strikes me as not a practical solution.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:33:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:09:25 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:08:10 PM
Yep, I am happy I live where I do.  :)

If the result of this is that the developed world becomes more livable and the developing world becomes shittier that would just add insult to injury.

Sure, but I my comment was directed to the fact I would much rather be in Vancouver than anywhere in the US (except perhaps parts of Washington State, Oregon and Alaska).
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:36:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:33:40 PM
Sure, but I my comment was directed to the fact I would much rather be in Vancouver than anywhere in the US (except perhaps parts of Washington State, Oregon and Alaska).

Ah but the article Syt posted was about the arabs moving north. Anyway, fair enough.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:38:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:36:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:33:40 PM
Sure, but I my comment was directed to the fact I would much rather be in Vancouver than anywhere in the US (except perhaps parts of Washington State, Oregon and Alaska).

Ah but the article Syt posted was about the arabs moving north. Anyway, fair enough.

I am quite happy to have immigrants coming into Canada.  As people flee less habitable places our economy will grow.  The trick is going to be to ensure we make the right choices about how we produce our energy and use the land resources we have as that occurs.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:41:57 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:38:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:36:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:33:40 PM
Sure, but I my comment was directed to the fact I would much rather be in Vancouver than anywhere in the US (except perhaps parts of Washington State, Oregon and Alaska).

Ah but the article Syt posted was about the arabs moving north. Anyway, fair enough.

I am quite happy to have immigrants coming into Canada.  As people flee less habitable places our economy will grow.  The trick is going to be to ensure we make the right choices about how we produce our energy and use the land resources we have as that occurs.

As welcome as the refugees might be made in Canada, I would be sad if their countries were ruined. And it would seem especially unjust since they were producing significantly less emissions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:46:10 PM
I agree.  But the time to take action to prevent that is almost over.

The terrifying truth is that humans make decisions to act based on individual circumstances not where there are global adverse effects, no matter how dire.  I am beginning to think there is no shot at stopping global warming going over 1.5 and very little chance of going over 2.0
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on April 02, 2019, 02:38:11 PM
Ive pretty much concluded that humans suck and we are probably fucked.

Seems more and more likely that this may be one of the Great Filters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 02:41:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:24:01 PM
Well it is such a huge surface area and is happening so gradually that strikes me as not a practical solution.
yeah, I was hoping they would be in some kind of scattered "pockets".  You're most likely right.  Oh well.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 02:43:04 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 12:36:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:33:40 PM
Sure, but I my comment was directed to the fact I would much rather be in Vancouver than anywhere in the US (except perhaps parts of Washington State, Oregon and Alaska).

Ah but the article Syt posted was about the arabs moving north. Anyway, fair enough.
Africa is already moving toward Europe, so one way or another, Algeria will again be part of the French Empire. :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 02:44:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:46:10 PM
I agree.  But the time to take action to prevent that is almost over.

The terrifying truth is that humans make decisions to act based on individual circumstances not where there are global adverse effects, no matter how dire.  I am beginning to think there is no shot at stopping global warming going over 1.5 and very little chance of going over 2.0
Well, instead of saying "We must act now to save the polar bears", try campaigning on keeping global warming below 1.5C to keep the Arabs on their lands.  That will work on all side of the political spectrum ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on April 02, 2019, 07:40:58 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 02, 2019, 12:46:10 PM


The terrifying truth is that humans make decisions to act based on individual circumstances not where there are global adverse effects, no matter how dire.  I am beginning to think there is no shot at stopping global warming going over 1.5 and very little chance of going over 2.0

Finally, we reached agreement after all these years :hug:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 07:46:56 PM
Hey you two live in coastal cities. Good luck in the new Pacific Venices.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 02, 2019, 08:51:53 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 07:46:56 PM
Hey you two live in coastal cities. Good luck in the new Pacific Venices.

Talking of which this is Male, is the capital of the Maldives.

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Filiketowastemytime.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FMale-Capital-Maldives.jpg&hash=97a450a5fb97440c47991ae6b6e7b56c4df695bc)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:44:33 PM
What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on April 02, 2019, 10:49:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:44:33 PM
What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.

Going to Maldives is unbelievably expensive.  The costs aren't third world at all. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:51:33 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 02, 2019, 10:49:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:44:33 PM
What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.

Going to Maldives is unbelievably expensive.  The costs aren't third world at all. 

Interesting. I guess with all those Arab billionaires and all of India close by their tourism market must be booming.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on April 02, 2019, 11:08:58 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2019, 10:45:32 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 28, 2019, 10:24:56 PM
At the extremes perhaps, but empirically that doesn't really hold. US Debt/GDP has nearly doubled since the Clinton years and looks likely to rise further but borrowing costs have gone way down.  As long as the real economy looks healthy and the dollar holds its value people will buy debt and not scruple at debt/GDP ratios over 100%.

It didn't hold empirically for Greece either, until it did.

Greece didn't have debt in it's own currency.

Japan has 250% of it's GDP in debt.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 02, 2019, 11:22:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 02, 2019, 11:08:58 PM
Greece didn't have debt in it's own currency.
You're confusing the argument about whether a country can monetize its own debt with the argument about whether investors will continue to purchase government debt as the debt/GDP ratio approaches infinity.  Joan and I were discussing the second point.

QuoteJapan has 250% of it's GDP in debt.
And dozens of countries have defaulted with debt in the 40-60% range.  Some multiple times.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 03, 2019, 05:33:28 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 02, 2019, 10:49:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:44:33 PM
What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.

Going to Maldives is unbelievably expensive.  The costs aren't third world at all.

Why would it be cheap? It's a luxury destination for foreign tourists, and everything has to be flown in. The islands themselves don't produce barely anything.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 03, 2019, 06:00:57 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:51:33 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 02, 2019, 10:49:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 10:44:33 PM
What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.

Going to Maldives is unbelievably expensive.  The costs aren't third world at all. 

Interesting. I guess with all those Arab billionaires and all of India close by their tourism market must be booming.

I believe most visitors to the Maldives are European, although Chinese are the first overall. Their tourism industry has been booming for several decades already, they're not a newly discovered place in any way.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on April 03, 2019, 08:33:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 03, 2019, 10:07:02 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<
lol :D
I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more! :P

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on April 03, 2019, 11:11:19 AM
Quote from: viper37 on April 03, 2019, 10:07:02 AM

I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more! :P

It is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 03, 2019, 11:51:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on April 03, 2019, 10:07:02 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<
lol :D
I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more! :P

Could be worse, your ancestors didn't settle in Saskatchewan or Northern Manitoba.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on April 03, 2019, 12:38:50 PM
Quote from: Malthus on April 03, 2019, 11:11:19 AMIt is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats.  :hmm:

:hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on April 03, 2019, 12:43:14 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on April 03, 2019, 12:38:50 PM
Quote from: Malthus on April 03, 2019, 11:11:19 AMIt is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats.  :hmm:

:hmm:

If everyone in Europe wore wool tuques for the past four hundred years ...  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on April 03, 2019, 01:32:03 PM
Quote from: Malthus on April 03, 2019, 12:43:14 PM
If everyone in Europe wore wool tuques for the past four hundred years ...  :D

They'd still be eating cod...

(I understand the good-natured joke. But Standards of Professional Conduct force me to raise a skeptical eyebrow at the lousy history behind the quip.)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 03, 2019, 03:58:37 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 02, 2019, 11:22:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 02, 2019, 11:08:58 PM
Greece didn't have debt in it's own currency.
You're confusing the argument about whether a country can monetize its own debt with the argument about whether investors will continue to purchase government debt as the debt/GDP ratio approaches infinity.  Joan and I were discussing the second point.

QuoteJapan has 250% of it's GDP in debt.
And dozens of countries have defaulted with debt in the 40-60% range.  Some multiple times.

Which gets to the point that debt/GDP ratio has its limitations as a metric for national financial health and stability.

MMT, as I understand it, is not a free lunch theory, it is just a different way of thinking about the decision matrix and trade-offs that national economies face with respect to macro policy.
The way I would put it is:
1) MMTers see mainstream macro as an "as if" theory - i.e. mainstream macro views the economy and the available policy instruments "as if" there is a binding budget constraint and a limited stock of lendable funds when in fact that isn't strictly true.
2) the response is that the mainstream policy regime can still work within an MMT framework, and that the alternative regime - using discretionary fiscal policy as the regular and principal tool of demand management -- makes assumptions about institutions that control that policy tool that are not realistic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 04:28:38 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 03, 2019, 03:58:37 PM
Which gets to the point that debt/GDP ratio has its limitations as a metric for national financial health and stability.

MMT, as I understand it, is not a free lunch theory, it is just a different way of thinking about the decision matrix and trade-offs that national economies face with respect to macro policy.
The way I would put it is:
1) MMTers see mainstream macro as an "as if" theory - i.e. mainstream macro views the economy and the available policy instruments "as if" there is a binding budget constraint and a limited stock of lendable funds when in fact that isn't strictly true.
2) the response is that the mainstream policy regime can still work within an MMT framework, and that the alternative regime - using discretionary fiscal policy as the regular and principal tool of demand management -- makes assumptions about institutions that control that policy tool that are not realistic.
There may not be a hard, universal cap on debt that applies to all countries, but that's not the same as saying there is no cap and countries can borrow to infinity.  At the most extreme end point there is the cap of debt service consuming 100% of GDP, and all your tax payers have died from starvation or exposure.*

You may say MMT is not free lunch, but then you need to disregard the claim that "countries with their debt denominated in a currency of their own issuing can borrow as much as they want."

If you eliminate that claim then all I can see remaining is a preference for managing the business cycle through fiscal policy as opposed to monetary policy.  Which is actually a pretty conservative macro system, not least for the reason that it means running consistent surpluses in inflationary periods.

Except for those debt holders still receiving their coupons.  :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on April 03, 2019, 04:34:23 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 03, 2019, 08:33:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

GF, depending on when they came over, you should be glad they didn't pick the Caribbean--back in the day, Europeans who settled there tended to die off fairly quickly from malaria and the like.  By the 1980's, Zoupa's folks wouldn't have had that excuse.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 03, 2019, 04:50:53 PM
So what are 'we' going to do about *this?





* but this I mean climate change, not the debate about where French people go for extended holidays.  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 04:55:28 PM
Quote from: mongers on April 03, 2019, 04:50:53 PM
So what are 'we' going to do about *this?

Right now, not much. 

Or do you mean what should we do?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 03, 2019, 04:56:31 PM
Sadly, the "we" has to be at the level of the nation state to recruit the resources needed to restructure how electricity is produced. delivered and used.  The "we" as individuals need to elect governments who will do that.  Ideally all political parties would compete for votes on the basis of having the best plan to identify and achieve what needs to be done.  But, again sadly, very few political parties are doing so in any meaningful way.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 03, 2019, 04:59:39 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 04:28:38 PM
You may say MMT is not free lunch, but then you need to disregard the claim that "countries with their debt denominated in a currency of their own issuing can borrow as much as they want."

They can but at the limit the price is potential hyperinflation, i.e. early Weimar Germany or late Mugabe Zimbabwe as opposed to Greece.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 05:07:45 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 03, 2019, 04:59:39 PM
They can but at the limit the price is potential hyperinflation, i.e. early Weimar Germany or late Mugabe Zimbabwe as opposed to Greece.

The limit comes before that, at the point an investor knows the only options are default or hyperinflation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on April 03, 2019, 08:04:31 PM
Quote from: mongers on April 03, 2019, 04:50:53 PM
So what are 'we' going to do about *this?





* but this I mean climate change, not the debate about where French people go for extended holidays.  ;)

There is no "we" in this.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 08:32:38 PM
...which raises the free rider issue.  IMO the best way to deal with that would be global trade sanctions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on April 03, 2019, 08:48:08 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 08:32:38 PM
...which raises the free rider issue.  IMO the best way to deal with that would be global trade sanctions.

Europe is going to sanction the US?  Not much can be done if the US, China and India don't cooperate. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 03, 2019, 08:52:46 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 03, 2019, 04:56:31 PM
Sadly, the "we" has to be at the level of the nation state to recruit the resources needed to restructure how electricity is produced. delivered and used.  The "we" as individuals need to elect governments who will do that.  Ideally all political parties would compete for votes on the basis of having the best plan to identify and achieve what needs to be done.  But, again sadly, very few political parties are doing so in any meaningful way.
Easily for us, in Quebec and BC, we can get our electricity from hydro power (limited GHG) and export it.

If we had amplus surplus of oil that we could use for power, would we be so adamant to push for change on how we produce that?

Hydro-Quebec wanted to buy NB Power at some time.  That caused quite a stir in English Canada.  Even excusing the traditional Quebec bashing, lots of provinces do not want to relinquish their energy production.  If BC Power was to take over Alberta Power and shut down all their thermal plants, I'm not sure it would go over that well.

Anyway.  In the mean time, we could at least stup those stupid subsidies to the oil industry.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 03, 2019, 08:53:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 08:32:38 PM
...which raises the free rider issue.  IMO the best way to deal with that would be global trade sanctions.
that would be the ideal solution.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 09:22:18 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 03, 2019, 08:48:08 PM
Europe is going to sanction the US?  Not much can be done if the US, China and India don't cooperate.

Obviously.  So it will be some time before you need to start worrying about personal sanctions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 04, 2019, 08:19:30 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 03, 2019, 09:22:18 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 03, 2019, 08:48:08 PM
Europe is going to sanction the US?  Not much can be done if the US, China and India don't cooperate.

Obviously.  So it will be some time before you need to start worrying about personal sanctions.
With so many hard drives filled to the brim with anime, Mono has got to be responsible for a third of Hong Kong's power consumption. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on April 04, 2019, 09:49:34 AM
Quote from: dps on April 03, 2019, 04:34:23 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 03, 2019, 08:33:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

GF, depending on when they came over, you should be glad they didn't pick the Caribbean--back in the day, Europeans who settled there tended to die off fairly quickly from malaria and the like.  By the 1980's, Zoupa's folks wouldn't have had that excuse.

My first ancestor showed up in, what is now Quebec city, 1648.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: derspiess on April 04, 2019, 10:06:17 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 04, 2019, 09:49:34 AM
Quote from: dps on April 03, 2019, 04:34:23 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 03, 2019, 08:33:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

GF, depending on when they came over, you should be glad they didn't pick the Caribbean--back in the day, Europeans who settled there tended to die off fairly quickly from malaria and the like.  By the 1980's, Zoupa's folks wouldn't have had that excuse.

My first ancestor showed up in, what is now Quebec city, 1648.

Wise choice. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 04, 2019, 11:58:04 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 04, 2019, 09:49:34 AM
Quote from: dps on April 03, 2019, 04:34:23 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 03, 2019, 08:33:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 03, 2019, 12:38:59 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 02, 2019, 11:09:18 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 02, 2019, 11:07:58 PM
A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago  <_<

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

GF, depending on when they came over, you should be glad they didn't pick the Caribbean--back in the day, Europeans who settled there tended to die off fairly quickly from malaria and the like.  By the 1980's, Zoupa's folks wouldn't have had that excuse.

My first ancestor showed up in, what is now Quebec city, 1648.
Mine arrived in 1635, got his first lands in 1649 and 1659.  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 04, 2019, 12:01:51 PM
Quote from: derspiess on April 04, 2019, 10:06:17 AM
Wise choice. 
From there, they went downhill, finally settling on Montreal's south shore :(  Had he known his descendants would suffer with pollution and traffic, he might have made a wiser choice :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 12, 2019, 04:56:58 PM
The arctic is about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

QuoteThe temperatures recorded today are even higher than the previous highs believed to have occurred during the early Holocene period, about 9,900 and 6,400 years ago, when Earth's axis was tilted more strongly toward the sun, the report states.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/arctic-warmest-in-10000-years-1.5094392

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 01, 2019, 10:51:02 AM
What if air conditionners could help save the planet? (https://www.wired.com/story/what-if-air-conditioners-could-help-save-the-planet/)

Quotearth's climate is full of terrifying feedback loops: Decreased rainfall raises the risk of wildfires, which release yet more carbon dioxide. A warming Arctic could trigger the release of long-frozen methane, which would heat the planet even faster than carbon. A lesser-known climate feedback loop, though, is likely mere feet from where you're sitting: the air conditioner. Use of the energy-intensive appliance causes emissions that contribute to higher global temperatures, which means we're all using AC more, producing more emissions and more warming.

But what if we could weaponize air conditioning units to help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere instead? According to a new paper in Nature, it's feasible. Using technology currently in development, AC units in skyscrapers and even your home could get turned into machines that not only capture CO2, but transform the stuff into a fuel for powering vehicles that are difficult to electrify, like cargo ships. The concept, called crowd oil, is still theoretical and faces many challenges. But in these desperate times, crowd oil might have a place in the fight to curb climate change.
[/b]

Interesting tech, if it can be developped into a practical application.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 02, 2019, 11:51:49 PM
Amsterdam to ban all diesel and petrol cars, motorcycles by 2030. This should be interesting.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 02, 2019, 11:58:33 PM
That's plenty of time to backtrack.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 03, 2019, 01:32:28 PM
The UN is going to release a report on Monday which states that unless immediate action is taken 1m species are going to go extinct in the couple of decades.  This shouldn't come as much of a surprise.  What is critical is this part of the report:

QuoteThe report will sketch out possible future scenarios that will vary depending on the decisions taken by governments, businesses and individuals. The next year and a half is likely to be crucial because world leaders will agree rescue plans for nature and the climate at two big conferences at the end of 2020.

You can do your own analysis of how that works with electoral cycles in various countries.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/03/climate-crisis-is-about-to-put-humanity-at-risk-un-scientists-warn



Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 06, 2019, 07:20:27 AM
We are so fucked

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48169783
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on May 06, 2019, 07:45:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 06, 2019, 07:20:27 AM
We are so fucked

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48169783

bbbut, shareholder value!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 13, 2019, 03:23:43 PM
Atmospheric CO2 reaches record 415ppm, the highest its been in millions of years (https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate/atmospheric-co2-reaches-record-415ppm-the-highest-its-been-in-millions-of-years/)

QuoteThe year's increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has been partly fueled by El Niño conditions — changes in the sea-surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires. However, the main factor responsible for the upward trend is, by far, the burning of fossil fuels.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 13, 2019, 03:31:17 PM
By this time in the fire season BC normally only has had 11 wild fires.  We have 27 as of today.  The warming drier climate is having its effect, and all of those trees going up in flames creates its own feedback loop.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 13, 2019, 05:09:51 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on May 06, 2019, 07:45:46 AM
bbbut, shareholder value!

bbbut, consumer convenience!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 14, 2019, 01:10:47 AM
Bill Nye summarizes the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDcro7dPqpA&feature=youtu.be&t=1114
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on May 14, 2019, 01:28:25 AM
Quote from: Syt on May 14, 2019, 01:10:47 AM
Bill Nye summarizes the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDcro7dPqpA&feature=youtu.be&t=1114

I watched this yesterday, and I assumed that the science guy was just some random contract actor.  Didn't realise that John Oliver hired somebody famous. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on May 14, 2019, 07:27:56 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 13, 2019, 05:09:51 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on May 06, 2019, 07:45:46 AM
bbbut, shareholder value!

bbbut, consumer convenience!

Also dumb, probably dumber.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on May 24, 2019, 09:29:20 AM
You'll be happy to learn from pro-government (i.e. government-sanctioned) Hungarian media sources, that Europe-wide student protests today have been sponsored by Soros in an attempt to steal young people's votes from the anti-immigration parties in the European election.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on May 30, 2019, 10:54:35 PM
Apocalyptic

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/record-breaking-heat-alaska-wreaks-havoc-communities-and-ecosystems-180972317/#0mMl8oEPWZuEhicK.99
QuoteRecord-Breaking Heat in Alaska Wreaks Havoc on Communities and Ecosystems

Abnormally high temperatures have led to unsafe travel conditions, uncertain ecological futures and even multiple deaths

By Tim Lydon, Hakai Magazine
SMITHSONIAN.COM
MAY 30, 2019 1:22PM

Alaska in March is supposed to be cold. Along the north and west coasts, the ocean should be frozen farther than the eye can see. In the state's interior, rivers should be locked in ice so thick that they double as roads for snowmobiles and trucks. And where I live, near Anchorage in south-central Alaska, the snowpack should be deep enough to support skiing for weeks to come. But this year, a record-breaking heatwave upended norms and had us basking in comfortable—but often unsettling—warmth.

Across Alaska, March temperatures averaged 11 degrees Celsius above normal. The deviation was most extreme in the Arctic where, on March 30, thermometers rose almost 22 degrees Celsius above normal—to 3 degrees. That still sounds cold, but it was comparatively hot.

"It's hard to characterize that anomaly, it's just pretty darn remarkable for that part of the world," says Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in Fairbanks. The state's wave of warmth was part of a weeks-long weather pattern that shattered temperature records across our immense state, contributing to losses of both property and life. "When you have a slow grind of warming like that, lasting weeks or months, it affects people's lives," Thoman says.

On April 15, three people, including an 11-year-old girl, died after their snowmobiles plunged through thin ice on the Noatak River in far northwestern Alaska. Earlier in the winter, 700 kilometers south, on the lower Kuskokwim River, at least five people perished in separate incidents when their snowmobiles or four-wheelers broke through thin ice. There were close calls too, including the rescue of three miners who spent hours hopping between disintegrating ice floes in the Bering Sea near Nome. Farther south, people skating on the popular Portage Lake near Anchorage also fell through thin ice. Varying factors contributed to these and other mishaps, but abnormally thin ice was a common denominator.

In Alaska, ice is infrastructure. For example, the Kuskokwim River, which runs over 1,100 kilometers across southwestern Alaska, freezes so solid that it becomes a marked ice road connecting dozens of communities spread over 300 kilometers. In sparsely populated interior Alaska, frozen rivers are indispensable for transporting goods, visiting family and delivering kids to school basketball games.

Along Alaska's west coast, the frozen waters of the Bering Sea also act as infrastructure. Each winter, frigid air transforms much of the Bering between Russia and Alaska into sea ice. As it fastens to shore, the ice provides platforms for fishing and hunting, and safe routes between communities. It also prevents wave action and storm surges from eroding the shores of coastal villages.

The steady decline of sea ice is old news, but 2019 brought exceptional conditions. In January, a series of warm storms began breaking apart the ice, which had formed late and was thinner than usual. By late March, the Bering Sea was largely open, at a time when the ice usually reaches its maximum for the year, which historically has been as much as 900,000 square kilometers (more than twice the size of the province of Alberta). In April, U.S. federal scientists reported coverage was even lower than the unprecedented low extent of 2018. By mid-May, ice that should have persisted into June was almost entirely gone.

Declining sea ice and melting permafrost are having devastating impacts on Alaskan villages. Since 2003, the United States Government Accountability Office has identified at least 31 communities at risk, with erosion imperiling homes, roads and drinking water sources. Three villages—Kivalina, Newtok and Shishmaref—must relocate soon or cease to exist, a traumatic reality brought into sharper focus by the warm 2019 winter.

In an added hardship, disappearing ice cuts off access to hunting and fishing routes, and the warming ocean is changing where fish and marine mammals can be found. This has real nutritional consequences in a land where many residents still rely on subsistence hunting and fishing. Commercial crab, cod and pollock fleets also wrestle with the changes.


Beyond the immediate impacts on people and infrastructure, less ice in the Bering and in the neighboring Chukchi Sea to the north have far-reaching atmospheric effects in Alaska. As Thoman explains, the massive area of newly open water creates warmer air temperatures and provides more moisture to storms. It can increase coastal erosion and winter rain or even produce heavier snow far inland. Researchers are also investigating whether disappearing sea ice is affecting continental weather patterns.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers south of the Bering, the balmy winter contributed to above-average sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska. Scientists say the gulf is certain to warm further during the upcoming summer. For many, including Rob Campbell, a biological oceanographer with the Prince William Sound Science Center, it stirs unpleasant memories of the Blob, an enormous patch of warm water that formed in the Gulf of Alaska in 2013. It lasted over two years and upset ecological norms across our region.

"Today we don't see as much heat in the gulf as we had beginning in 2013," says Campbell. "But in general, the northern gulf is 1.5 degrees Celsius above average. It's a big anomaly heading into summer."

Campbell finds the conditions worrisome. "Continued warmth like this has cascading effects," he says. "And we may not understand the consequences for species like salmon for years to come."

As spring rolls into summer, temperatures have moderated somewhat, but above-average warmth still dominates across much of Alaska. It's especially true in the Arctic, where May temperatures at some locations have been higher than normal nearly every day, sometimes by as much as 10 degrees Celsius. As a result, sea ice and snowpacks are at record lows. To scientists, village elders and others, it is the latest indication of the transformational changes accelerating across the north.


Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 04, 2019, 11:03:26 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

QuoteTrump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science

WASHINGTON — President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term "global warming" into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump's hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump's most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the "deep state," and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.

As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.

Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

The administration's prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth's atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.

Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.

"What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that's consistent with their politics," said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government's most recent National Climate Assessment. "It reminds me of the Soviet Union."

In an email, James Hewitt, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, defended the proposed changes.

"The previous use of inaccurate modeling that focuses on worst-case emissions scenarios, that does not reflect real-world conditions, needs to be thoroughly re-examined and tested if such information is going to serve as the scientific foundation of nationwide decision-making now and in the future," Mr. Hewitt said.

However, the goal of political appointees in the Trump administration is not just to change the climate assessment's methodology, which has broad scientific consensus, but also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.

"The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president's deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

Mr. Happer's proposed panel is backed by John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser, who brought Mr. Happer into the N.S.C. after an earlier effort to recruit him during the transition.

Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.

Climate scientists are dismissive of Mr. Happer; his former colleagues at Princeton are chagrined. And several White House officials — including Larry Kudlow, the president's chief economic adviser — have urged Mr. Trump not to adopt Mr. Happer's proposal, on the grounds that it would be perceived as a White House attack on science.

Even Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who views Mr. Happer as "the climate hustler's worst nightmare — a world-class physicist from the nation's leading institution of advanced learning, who does not suffer fools gladly," is apprehensive about what Mr. Happer is trying to do.

"The very idea will start a holy war on cable before 2020," he said. "Better to win now and introduce the study in the second inaugural address."

But at a White House meeting on May 1, at which the skeptical advisers made their case, Mr. Trump appeared unpersuaded, people familiar with the meeting said. Mr. Happer, they said, is optimistic that the panel will go forward.

The concept is not new. Mr. Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of a series of military-style exercises, known as "red team, blue team" debates, on the validity of climate science first promoted by Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator who was forced to resign last year amid multiple scandals.

At the time, the idea was shot down by John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff. But since Mr. Kelly's departure, Mr. Trump has talked about using Mr. Happer's proposed panel as a forum for it.

For Mr. Trump, climate change is often the subject of mockery. "Wouldn't be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!" he posted on Twitter in January when a snowstorm was freezing much of the country.

His views are influenced mainly by friends and donors like Carl Icahn, the New York investor who owns oil refineries, and the oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm — both of whom pushed Mr. Trump to deregulate the energy industry.

Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka made a well-publicized effort to talk him out of leaving the Paris accord in 2017. But after being vanquished by officials including Mr. Bannon, Mr. Pruitt, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II, there is little evidence she has resisted his approach since then.

The president's advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of "opportunity and abundance" because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.

"That is one of the most crude messages one could deliver," said R. Nicholas Burns, who served as the NATO ambassador under George W. Bush.

At the National Security Council, under Mr. Bolton, officials said they had been instructed to strip references to global warming from speeches and other formal statements. But such political edicts pale in significance to the changes in the methodology of scientific reports.

Mr. Reilly, the head of the Geological Survey, who does not have a background in climate change science, characterized the changes as an attempt to prepare more careful, accurate reports. "We're looking for answers with our partners and to get statistical significance from what we understand," he said.

Yet scientists said that by eliminating the projected effects of increased carbon dioxide pollution after 2040, the Geological Survey reports would present an incomplete and falsely optimistic picture of the impact of continuing to burn unlimited amounts of coal, oil and gasoline.

"The scenarios in these reports that show different outcomes are like going to the doctor, who tells you, 'If you don't change your bad eating habits, and you don't start to exercise, you'll need a quadruple bypass, but if you do change your lifestyle, you'll have a different outcome,'" said Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and an author of the National Climate Assessment.

Not all government science agencies are planning such changes. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asked if its scientists would limit the use of climate models, wrote in an email, "No changes are being considered at this time."

The push to alter the results of at least some climate science reports, several officials said, came after November's release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment.

While the Trump administration did not try to rewrite the scientific conclusions of the report, officials sought to play it down — releasing it the day after Thanksgiving — and discredit it, with a White House statement calling it "largely based on the most extreme scenario."

Still, the report could create legal problems for Mr. Trump's agenda of abolishing regulations. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama's most consequential policies: federal regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

Opponents say that when they challenge the moves in court, they intend to point to the climate assessment, asking how the government can justify the reversals when its own agencies have concluded that the pollution will be so harmful.

That is why officials are now discussing how to influence the conclusions of the next National Climate Assessment
.

"They've started talking about how they can produce a report that doesn't lead to some silly alarmist predictions about the future," said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded research organization, and who led the administration's transition at the E.P.A.

A key change, he said, would be to emphasize historic temperatures rather than models of future atmospheric temperatures, and to eliminate the "worst-case scenarios" of the effect of increased carbon dioxide pollution — sometimes referred to as "business as usual" scenarios because they imply no efforts to curb emissions.

Scientists said that eliminating the worst-case scenario would give a falsely optimistic picture. "Nobody in the world does climate science like that," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. "It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags."

Outside the United States, climate scientists had long given up on the White House being anything but on outlier in policy. But they worry about the loss of the government as a source for reliable climate research.

"It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way," said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 04, 2019, 12:32:32 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 04, 2019, 11:03:26 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

Quote
The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president's deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

FFS
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on June 04, 2019, 12:35:37 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 04, 2019, 12:32:32 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 04, 2019, 11:03:26 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

Quote
The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president's deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

FFS

We've started treating companies like people, can molecules be far behind?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 04, 2019, 12:45:36 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 04, 2019, 12:32:32 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 04, 2019, 11:03:26 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

Quote
The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president's deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

FFS


Well he is the one calling for carbon-dioxide to be burned. WHO IS THE NAZI NOW?!!!111
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
 :(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
:(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

I got a good look at Greenland on our flight back from Europe - there are lots of deep wide trenches running down to the sea formed from glacier flows that used to be there.  It looks like a massive abandoned open pit mining operation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 18, 2019, 12:41:57 PM
really cool looking picture though. Jesus dogs
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on June 18, 2019, 01:07:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
:(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

I got a good look at Greenland on our flight back from Europe - there are lots of deep wide trenches running down to the sea formed from glacier flows that used to be there.  It looks like a massive abandoned open pit mining operation.

To be fair you don't know how long ago those glaciers melted.  There are tons of places that look like that - but the glacial retreated 100+ years ago.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 01:35:53 PM
Given the dramatic rate of glacier melt that has occurred over the last 20 years (and particularly the last 10) I highly doubt what I was looking at dated to 1919.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 26, 2019, 04:26:29 AM
Everything seems to be going well.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/25/g20-nations-triple-coal-power-subsidies-climate-crisis

Quote
G20 countries triple coal power subsidies despite climate crisis
Major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all aid for fossil fuels


G20 countries have almost tripled the subsidies they give to coal-fired power plants in recent years, despite the urgent need to cut the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.

The bloc of major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies.

The figures, published in a report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and others, show that Japan is one of the biggest financial supporters of coal, despite the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, having said in September: "Climate change can be life-threatening to all generations ... We must take more robust actions and reduce the use of fossil fuels." The annual G20 meeting begins in Japan on Friday.

China and India give the biggest subsidies to coal, with Japan third, followed by South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia and the US. While the UK frequently runs its own electricity grid without any coal power at all, a parliamentary report in June criticised the billions of pounds used to help to build fossil fuel power plants overseas.

Global emissions must fall by half in the next decade to avoid significantly worsening drought, floods, extreme heatwave and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. But emissions are still increasing, with coal-fired power the biggest single contributor to the rise in 2018.

"It has now been 10 years since the G20 committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, yet astonishingly some governments are actually increasing the amount they give to coal power plants," said Ipek Gençsü, research fellow at ODI and lead author of the report.

"Momentum is growing around the world for governments to take urgent action to tackle the climate crisis and ending subsidies to coal would bring benefits to all [including reduced air pollution] and help set a level playing field for clean energy," she said.

Han Chen, energy policy manager at the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-author of the report, said: "Other governments may struggle to take Japan's rhetoric on climate change seriously, as this year's G20 host government continues to pour billions of dollars into propping up coal. If prime minister Abe is serious about dealing with climate change, he should end Japan's government-backed finance for coal."

Green campaigners are planning protests in Japan against the G20's coal subsidies and in nations where coal plants are being funded. China is supporting coal plants in the Philippines, opposed by the Oriang women's movement, which campaigns for gender and social justice.

Flora Santos, the movement's president, said: "We cannot continue to live in peril and in the face of ever-worsening threats to the survival and security of our families. The expansion of the coal industry and projects must stop as soon as possible."

The researchers totalled the financial and tax subsidies given for mining coal and building and maintaining coal-fired power plants, including investments by state-owned companies. They found the average annual amount increased from $17bn in 2014 to $47bn in 2017. In contrast, the subsidies for coal mining halved, from $22bn to $10bn.

"In reality, government support to coal is much larger than our report's numbers show, because many G20 countries still lack transparency on the many ways they subsidise coal," said Ivetta Gerasimchuk, at the International Institute for Sustainable Development and another co-author.

Coal is seen as a sector in terminal decline across the world, from Asia to the US to Europe, and the International Energy Agency reported that total investments in new coal plants have fallen by 75% from 2015 to 2018. The reason state subsidies are bucking this trend may be because governments are choosing to prop up the sector for political reasons, said Gençsü.

"They are just kicking the can down the road," she said. "The money would be much better channelled to managing the [low carbon] transition and setting an end date. Coal use is going to end – it is the trajectory the world is on – but they are really dragging their feet."

About 5% of the subsidies identified in the report went to assisting a transition away from coal, mainly in Germany and the UK. But other programmes have been launched since 2017, including a $15bn fund in China for coal and steel workers, and a €250m scheme for coalminers in Spain, which is not a G20 nation.

The World Coal Association did not respond to a request for comment.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on June 26, 2019, 04:31:50 AM
<_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 26, 2019, 03:10:15 PM
QuoteSpain, which is not a G20 nation.

This I did not know.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 26, 2019, 04:33:38 PM
I'm glad I don't have kids.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 27, 2019, 05:54:48 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
:(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

I got a good look at Greenland on our flight back from Europe - there are lots of deep wide trenches running down to the sea formed from glacier flows that used to be there.  It looks like a massive abandoned open pit mining operation.

IIRC the original photo was posted as dramatic because of how early this stage was reached in the year, otherwise this is supposed to happen in the summer.

But it went around the world with the basic attitude of OMG GREENLAND HAS LOST ICE, DOOM IS AT HAND.

My problem with that is that the issue is severe enough without hyperbole, I think arguments for action could be more convincing if at least the pro-action side refused to be sensationalist.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on June 27, 2019, 06:56:56 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 26, 2019, 03:10:15 PM
QuoteSpain, which is not a G20 nation.

This I did not know.

http://theconversation.com/explainer-who-gets-invited-to-the-g20-summit-and-why-33308

QuoteBut Spain is a what is known as a "permanent invitee". What is the difference between a member and a permanent invitee, I hear you cry. No-one knows. Spain always gets to come.

:hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:15:04 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 27, 2019, 05:54:48 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
:(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

I got a good look at Greenland on our flight back from Europe - there are lots of deep wide trenches running down to the sea formed from glacier flows that used to be there.  It looks like a massive abandoned open pit mining operation.

IIRC the original photo was posted as dramatic because of how early this stage was reached in the year, otherwise this is supposed to happen in the summer.

But it went around the world with the basic attitude of OMG GREENLAND HAS LOST ICE, DOOM IS AT HAND.

My problem with that is that the issue is severe enough without hyperbole, I think arguments for action could be more convincing if at least the pro-action side refused to be sensationalist.

:huh:

The fact that the North is warming quickly is a very good indication that doom is at hand.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 27, 2019, 07:50:01 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 27, 2019, 05:54:48 AM

I think arguments for action could be more convincing if at least the pro-action side refused to be sensationalist.

They've tried that for decades and nobody cared. And it's hard to overstate the problem at this point.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 11:03:48 AM
Quote from: Maladict on June 27, 2019, 07:50:01 AM

Quote from: Tamas on June 27, 2019, 05:54:48 AM

I think arguments for action could be more convincing if at least the pro-action side refused to be sensationalist.

They've tried that for decades and nobody cared. And its hard to overstate the problem at this point.

Tamas is a good example of what is wrong.  Intellectually he knows that climate change is a thing.  He is just not ready to acknowledge how urgent the problem is.  As was discussed upthread a while ago, the climate change delayers may be more harmful at this point than the deniers.  The deniers look foolish now.  The delayers have a veneer of reasonableness and moderation that too many people will accept and in doing so we are going to go over 1.5.

We see this problem in the Canadian election coming up.  The two main parties give lip service to climate change but the things they are prepared to do about it are not close to what the IPCC says needs to be done.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 27, 2019, 12:06:52 PM
Have to agree cc

The delayers are like people that see a tornado coming for their house, and immediately call to cut their homeowner's insurance coverage to save on premiums.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 27, 2019, 05:49:59 PM
I think there is a real problem in saying "We're doomed!"  Hyperbole make it easier to dismiss a very serious problem.  I don't think anyone is predicting a runaway greenhouse scenario that would turn the Earth into Venereal wasteland.  Sea levels at the Eemian period are catastrophic enough.


I think we should make the climate deniers put some skin in the game.  If sea levels do rise to Eemian levels then all the displaced persons. have an absolute right to asylum in the US.  The Nation of Bangladesh would be totally lost.  Rising sea levels may not scare American conservatives, but an influx of 150 million brown-skinned Muslims might.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:14:30 PM
Sea level rise is the least of our concerns.  Scientists made a tactical error focusing on that early on.  their reason for doing so is it was easily understandable (or so they thought).  The other effects of climate change over 1.5 are pretty severe and likely trigger a feedback  loop that will be difficult to reverse.

QuoteScientists (including the Hothouse Earth authors) believe they are likely to be near 2 degrees C and that the risks increase dramatically above that level of global warming. But we can't rule out the possibility that it is closer at hand. Hence the goal of the Paris Climate agreement to stay well below 2 degrees C and attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad


Saying that we are not facing disaster if action isn't taken to keep up from going above 1.5 is simply irresponsible.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 27, 2019, 07:41:05 PM
Meanwhile Spain burns.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 28, 2019, 12:07:09 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:14:30 PM
Sea level rise is the least of our concerns. 

Speak for yourself  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 28, 2019, 12:51:03 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:14:30 PM
Sea level rise is the least of our concerns.  Scientists made a tactical error focusing on that early on.  their reason for doing so is it was easily understandable (or so they thought).  The other effects of climate change over 1.5 are pretty severe and likely trigger a feedback  loop that will be difficult to reverse.

QuoteScientists (including the Hothouse Earth authors) believe they are likely to be near 2 degrees C and that the risks increase dramatically above that level of global warming. But we can't rule out the possibility that it is closer at hand. Hence the goal of the Paris Climate agreement to stay well below 2 degrees C and attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad (https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad)


Saying that we are not facing disaster if action isn't taken to keep up from going above 1.5 is simply irresponsible.


I didn't say we aren't facing a disaster.  I object to saying things like "We're doomed".  Just so we are clear here, do you believe the situation described in your article will result in the death of every living creature on this planet?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 08:37:27 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on June 28, 2019, 12:51:03 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:14:30 PM
Sea level rise is the least of our concerns.  Scientists made a tactical error focusing on that early on.  their reason for doing so is it was easily understandable (or so they thought).  The other effects of climate change over 1.5 are pretty severe and likely trigger a feedback  loop that will be difficult to reverse.

QuoteScientists (including the Hothouse Earth authors) believe they are likely to be near 2 degrees C and that the risks increase dramatically above that level of global warming. But we can't rule out the possibility that it is closer at hand. Hence the goal of the Paris Climate agreement to stay well below 2 degrees C and attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad (https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad)


Saying that we are not facing disaster if action isn't taken to keep up from going above 1.5 is simply irresponsible.


I didn't say we aren't facing a disaster.  I object to saying things like "We're doomed".  Just so we are clear here, do you believe the situation described in your article will result in the death of every living creature on this planet?


Every living creature?  No.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 28, 2019, 11:01:42 AM
https://showyourstripes.info/

Gives stripe diagrams for countries/locations, showing if the year average was above or below the 1971-2000 average.

For Vienna, 1775 - 2018:

(https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/EUROPE-Austria-Vienna-1775-2018-ZA.png)

Globe 1850 - 2018:

(https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/GLOBE---1850-2018-MO.png)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 01:57:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:15:04 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 27, 2019, 05:54:48 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2019, 12:36:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on June 18, 2019, 12:22:40 PM
:(

https://twitter.com/RasmusTonboe/status/1139504201615237120

I got a good look at Greenland on our flight back from Europe - there are lots of deep wide trenches running down to the sea formed from glacier flows that used to be there.  It looks like a massive abandoned open pit mining operation.

IIRC the original photo was posted as dramatic because of how early this stage was reached in the year, otherwise this is supposed to happen in the summer.

But it went around the world with the basic attitude of OMG GREENLAND HAS LOST ICE, DOOM IS AT HAND.

My problem with that is that the issue is severe enough without hyperbole, I think arguments for action could be more convincing if at least the pro-action side refused to be sensationalist.

:huh:

The fact that the North is warming quickly is a very good indication that doom is at hand.
no, it is not.  It is an indication that Earth's temperature are rising quickly, faster than we might have expected, but it is not a very good indication that "doom" is at hand.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 02:07:13 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 01:57:05 PM

no, it is not.  It is an indication that Earth's temperature are rising quickly, faster than we might have expected, but it is not a very good indication that "doom" is at hand.

You suggested earlier that scientist were overly optimistic about the amount of time we have before going over 1.5 - why the about face now?  Or is it you think its no biggie?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 02:07:27 PM
@Syt, I was wondering why there was so much blue... Kinda forgot to scroll... doh!   :P :blush:

looking at it, Costa Rica seems not so bad, surprisingly.  Might be because it's already hellish and can't get worst, or the Pacific coast is doing wonder at these lattitudes.

On the other hand, with ice melting&all, maybe Greenland will become the new hotspot where tourists go during summer :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 02:09:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 02:07:13 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 01:57:05 PM

no, it is not.  It is an indication that Earth's temperature are rising quickly, faster than we might have expected, but it is not a very good indication that "doom" is at hand.

You suggested earlier that scientist were overly optimistic about the amount of time we have before going over 1.5 - why the about face now?  Or is it you think its no biggie?
"Doom" is not science.  Doom is about having a planet unlivable for humans, or most of humanity anyway.  That is not the case, even with global warming.

It is a disaster, it will cost us much, much, much more money that it would to reduce our CO2 emissions right now, but it is not "doom", as in extinction level event for humanity, or most of the world's fauna (well, it is happenning, but it is not solely due, or even mostly due to global warming, that is a seperate problem we must also tackle).

Basically: can we adapt to global warming?  Yes.  Should we invest energy into adaptation rather than prevention?  No, certainly not.  Should we ignore adaptation or mitigation?  At this point, no.  Too many stupid people.


Also, we could do more, but never as much as the "Greens" want to.  Remember: the European greens managed to have Germany shut down its nuclear power plants and replace them with coal plants.  How is that helping us?

There are ways to be realistic about it, and Tamas is right, talking of impending "DOOM" is not helping.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 02:16:04 PM
that is double talk Viper.  We are already experiencing species extinction at alarming rates and we have not even got to 1.5 yet.  Both on land and in the oceans. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 28, 2019, 03:18:07 PM
Sounds pretty serious. Maybe we should stop flying planes halfway around the world for fun.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 28, 2019, 03:23:03 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 08:37:27 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on June 28, 2019, 12:51:03 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2019, 07:14:30 PM
Sea level rise is the least of our concerns.  Scientists made a tactical error focusing on that early on.  their reason for doing so is it was easily understandable (or so they thought).  The other effects of climate change over 1.5 are pretty severe and likely trigger a feedback  loop that will be difficult to reverse.

QuoteScientists (including the Hothouse Earth authors) believe they are likely to be near 2 degrees C and that the risks increase dramatically above that level of global warming. But we can't rule out the possibility that it is closer at hand. Hence the goal of the Paris Climate agreement to stay well below 2 degrees C and attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad (https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/08/why-positive-climate-feedbacks-are-so-bad)


Saying that we are not facing disaster if action isn't taken to keep up from going above 1.5 is simply irresponsible.


I didn't say we aren't facing a disaster.  I object to saying things like "We're doomed".  Just so we are clear here, do you believe the situation described in your article will result in the death of every living creature on this planet?


Every living creature?  No.


Okay, that's a start.  Will every living human being will be extinct?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 28, 2019, 03:29:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 02:16:04 PM
that is double talk Viper.  We are already experiencing species extinction at alarming rates and we have not even got to 1.5 yet.  Both on land and in the oceans.


We've been experiencing species extinction at alarming rates for the last 10,000 years.  The question is what sort of extinction level crisis are we going to experiencing.  Is it a E-O level extinction or P-T level extinction?

The rapid decline in insect levels over the last 20 years may be a sign of Permian-Triassic event.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 28, 2019, 03:45:18 PM
We call it Voight-Kampff for short.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 04:16:35 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2019, 02:16:04 PM
that is double talk Viper.  We are already experiencing species extinction at alarming rates and we have not even got to 1.5 yet.  Both on land and in the oceans. 
but that is not solely due to global warming.  Deforestation increases global warming, and this is the most threatening aspect to many life forms, but it is not global warming causing the death of so many species.  Acidification of the oceans is caused mainly by global warming though, but global warming does not cause whale hunting, or whales colliding with ships.  Plastic in the oceans is not a cause of global warming, nor is any kind of pollution rejected in the atmosphere and the oceans.  The use of pesticides has nothing to do with global warming, but it is creating problems for insect populations and the birds who feed on them.  Modern agricultural practices that leaves fewer parts of fields left "vacant" for months also decreases the number of birds that used to inhabit these fields.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 28, 2019, 04:20:24 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on June 28, 2019, 03:18:07 PM
Sounds pretty serious. Maybe we should stop flying planes halfway around the world for fun.

:hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 29, 2019, 01:02:34 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 04:16:35 PM
  Modern agricultural practices that leaves fewer parts of fields left "vacant" for months also decreases the number of birds that used to inhabit these fields.




Did Quebec just discover crop-rotation?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 29, 2019, 10:09:25 PM
Europe's ten largest carbon emitters:

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/16AAE/production/_106264829_carbonemissions-nc.png)

Nine lignite power stations and an Irish airline.  :hmm:

Article here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47783992 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47783992)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:19:12 AM
If only the plebs haven't started flying to places and continued to stay put in their hovels. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 30, 2019, 04:51:35 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on June 29, 2019, 01:02:34 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 28, 2019, 04:16:35 PM
  Modern agricultural practices that leaves fewer parts of fields left "vacant" for months also decreases the number of birds that used to inhabit these fields.

Did Quebec just discover crop-rotation?
there's less crop rotation than before.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 30, 2019, 05:35:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.

I believe that the German Greens have been in favor of quitting both nuclear and coal power. I recall that they positioned themselves that quitting nuclear energy mustn't lead to increased energy production from coal, and that both should be phased out a.s.a.p. for renewables.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 07:43:24 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 30, 2019, 05:35:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.

I believe that the German Greens have been in favor of quitting both nuclear and coal power. I recall that they positioned themselves that quitting nuclear energy mustn't lead to increased energy production from coal, and that both should be phased out a.s.a.p. for renewables.

Fine, but surely in the interim period leading up to a giant heavily industrialised, advanced country being run 100% from windmills and solar panels, nuclear is the answer, not bloody coal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 30, 2019, 11:04:08 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 07:43:24 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 30, 2019, 05:35:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.

I believe that the German Greens have been in favor of quitting both nuclear and coal power. I recall that they positioned themselves that quitting nuclear energy mustn't lead to increased energy production from coal, and that both should be phased out a.s.a.p. for renewables.

Fine, but surely in the interim period leading up to a giant heavily industrialised, advanced country being run 100% from windmills and solar panels, nuclear is the answer, not bloody coal.

No that would be a sensible position.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on June 30, 2019, 11:43:16 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 30, 2019, 11:04:08 AM
No that would be a sensible position.

The extremists among the Greens don't want "a sensible position."  They want you to panic, and have said so using just those words.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 30, 2019, 02:37:30 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 30, 2019, 05:35:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.

I believe that the German Greens have been in favor of quitting both nuclear and coal power. I recall that they positioned themselves that quitting nuclear energy mustn't lead to increased energy production from coal, and that both should be phased out a.s.a.p. for renewables.

Surely in the current situation phasing out coal should be a much higher priority than phasing out zero emissions energy sources. What kind of idiotic positioning are they taking? Do they want to help the environment or play a central role in environmental destruction? Because that position makes it hard to tell.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 30, 2019, 03:06:29 PM
Its sad, but the Greens were coming around to nuclear power until Fukushima. When the anti-science kicked in again
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on June 30, 2019, 03:21:49 PM
Quote from: Tyr on June 30, 2019, 03:06:29 PM
Its sad, but the Greens were coming around to nuclear power until Fukushima. When the anti-science kicked in again


That's not really anti-science just anti-practical.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 30, 2019, 03:24:25 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 30, 2019, 02:37:30 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 30, 2019, 05:35:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2019, 02:20:32 AM
Also that chart shows you then, how fucking stupid most greens are. They had ALL the German nuclear plants closed because of a TSUNAMI IN JAPAN. Now they burn coal instead.

I believe that the German Greens have been in favor of quitting both nuclear and coal power. I recall that they positioned themselves that quitting nuclear energy mustn't lead to increased energy production from coal, and that both should be phased out a.s.a.p. for renewables.

Surely in the current situation phasing out coal should be a much higher priority than phasing out zero emissions energy sources. What kind of idiotic positioning are they taking? Do they want to help the environment or play a central role in environmental destruction? Because that position makes it hard to tell.

The current situation is the same as it's been for decades, and all this time they've been consistent.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on June 30, 2019, 04:38:42 PM
Quote from: Tyr on June 30, 2019, 03:06:29 PM
Its sad, but the Greens were coming around to nuclear power until Fukushima. When the anti-science kicked in again

Not in Germany. Opposition to nuclear has always been a core tenet. (Atomkraft? Nein danke)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 30, 2019, 07:37:43 PM
Greens and Environmentalists have always been shitty allies for trying to reduce emissions. It is really frustrating.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on June 30, 2019, 08:42:07 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on June 30, 2019, 04:38:42 PM
Quote from: Tyr on June 30, 2019, 03:06:29 PM
Its sad, but the Greens were coming around to nuclear power until Fukushima. When the anti-science kicked in again

Not in Germany. Opposition to nuclear has always been a core tenet. (Atomkraft? Nein danke)

Exactly.  Better to tolerate global warming than nuclear power.  Gotta shut down those nukes even if it kills us.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on July 01, 2019, 09:25:57 PM
50 years from now, when humanity deals with the carnage from global warming, one of the questions that will be asked is why didn't our forefathers fix this when they could.  I wonder what the lessons learned will be in future generations' minds.  I don't think the lesson learned will be let's maintain the status quo.  It will be ugly.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 01, 2019, 09:42:48 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on July 01, 2019, 09:25:57 PM
50 years from now, when humanity deals with the carnage from global warming, one of the questions that will be asked is why didn't our forefathers fix this when they could.  I wonder what the lessons learned will be in future generations' minds.  I don't think the lesson learned will be let's maintain the status quo.  It will be ugly.

Yet you cling to that "lesson" like a life preserver.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on July 01, 2019, 11:17:07 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 01, 2019, 09:42:48 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on July 01, 2019, 09:25:57 PM
50 years from now, when humanity deals with the carnage from global warming, one of the questions that will be asked is why didn't our forefathers fix this when they could.  I wonder what the lessons learned will be in future generations' minds.  I don't think the lesson learned will be let's maintain the status quo.  It will be ugly.

Yet you cling to that "lesson" like a life preserver.  :hmm:

I am but a bystander.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 30, 2019, 10:56:47 PM
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/37A1/production/_108114241_top10-nc.png)

QuoteClimate change: UK's 10 warmest years all occurred since 2002
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

The top 10 warmest years on record in the UK have all occurred since 2002, a new analysis from the Met Office says.
Its State of the UK Climate report shows that 2014 remains the warmest year in a temperature sequence now dating back to 1884.
Despite last summer's blistering heat, 2018 only places as the seventh warmest year on record - as the statistic is based on temperatures all year round.
When it comes to the coldest years, the most recent in the top 10 was in 1963.
The patterns of warm and cold years in Britain are a clear signal of climate change, say scientists.

.....

Full article here, well worth reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49167797 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49167797)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on July 31, 2019, 10:26:05 AM
It's kind of amazing that one of the fallouts of the Rise of Trump is that it is now cool to pretend that global warming is a hoax again.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 01, 2019, 11:45:09 AM
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greenland-ice-sheet-melt-865803/

QuoteGreenland Is Melting Away Before Our Eyes

Amid an ongoing heat wave, new data show the Greenland ice sheet is in the middle of its biggest melt season in recorded history. It's the latest worrying signal climate change is accelerating far beyond the worst fears of even climate scientists.

The record-setting heat wave that sweltered northern Europe last week has moved north over the critically vulnerable Greenland ice sheet, triggering temperatures this week that are as much as 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.

Weather models indicate Tuesday's temperature may have surpassed 75 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of Greenland, and a weather balloon launched near the capital Nuuk measured all-time record warmth just above the surface. That heat wave is still intensifying, and is expected to peak on Thursday with the biggest single-day melt ever recorded in Greenland. On August 1 alone, more than 12 billion tons of water will permanently melt away from the ice sheet and find its way down to the ocean, irreversibly raising sea levels globally.

A tweet from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the official weather service of Greenland, said "almost all the ice sheet, including Summit" measurably melted on Tuesday. According to a preliminary estimate, that melt covered 87 percent of the ice sheet's surface, which would be the second-biggest melt day in Greenland's recorded history. Separate weather monitoring equipment at Summit Camp at the top of the 10,000-foot-thick Greenland ice sheet confirmed the temperature briefly reached the melting point.

Downhill, meltwater was seen dramatically streaming off the edge of the ice sheet in massive waterfalls. Climate scientist Irina Overeem, who placed a meltwater monitoring station in western Greenland eight years ago, recorded a dramatic video of a rushing torrent of water. In a comment posted on Twitter, she said "I have my fingers crossed for it not being washed away." In an email to Rolling Stone, Overeem described the nature of life in Greenland these days: After recording that video, she spotted a warning of the major glacial water runoff on the announcement board of the main supermarket in the capital city. A similar glacial flood in 2012 was so intense it washed away bridge.

Ice core records show melt days like these have happened only a handful of times in the past 1,000 years. But, with the advent of human-caused climate change, the chances of these full-scale melt events happening are sharply increasing.

Even just a few decades ago, an event like this would have been unthinkable. Now, island-wide meltdown days like this are becoming increasingly routine. The ongoing melt event is the second time in seven years that virtually the entire ice sheet simultaneously experienced at least some melt. The last was in July 2012, where 97 percent of the ice sheet simultaneously melted.

In the 1980s, wintertime snows in Greenland roughly balanced summertime melt from the ice sheet, and the conventional wisdom among scientists was that it might take thousands of years for the ice to completely melt under pressure from global warming.

That's all changed now.

With a decade or two of hindsight, scientists now believe Greenland passed an important tipping point around 2003, and since then its melt rate has more than quadrupled.

This week alone, Greenland will lose about 50 billion tons of ice, enough for a permanent rise in global sea levels by about 0.1mm. So far in July, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 160 billion tons of ice — enough to cover Florida in about six feet of water. According to IPCC estimates, that's roughly the level of melt a typical summer will have in 2050 under the worst-case warming scenario if we don't take meaningful action to address climate change. Under that same scenario, this week's brutal, deadly heat wave would be normal weather in the 2070s.

Xavier Fettweis, a polar scientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who tracks meltwater on the Greenland ice sheet, told Rolling Stone in an email that the recent acceleration of these melt events means the IPCC scenarios "clearly underestimate what we currently observe over the Greenland ice sheet" and should revisit their projections for the future.

"This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need change our way of
living," said Fettweis. "It is more and more likely that the IPCC projections are too optimistic in the Arctic." Altogether, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 24 feet.

This isn't happening in isolation: This summer has been horrific all across the Arctic.

Unusual wildfires across Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska, and Greenland have been raging all summer, and by one estimate released about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in the month of June alone — equivalent to the annual emissions of Sweden. In Switzerland, some glaciers melted so rapidly during last week's heatwave that they sent swirling mudflows racing downhill. In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is at a record-low extent as the melt season continues to lengthen. In Alaska, ecosystems are rapidly changing, especially in the Bering Sea region where this year's ice-free season began in February.

As daunting as this is, the latest science on Greenland also points to a window of hope: Greenland's meltdown is not yet irreversible. That self-sustaining process of melt-begetting-more-melt would kick in at around 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. That means whether or not Greenland's ice sheet melts completely is almost entirely in human control: A full-scale mobilization ­— including rapidly transforming the basis of the global economy toward a future where fossil fuels are no longer used — would probably be enough to keep most of the remaining ice frozen, where it belongs.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 01, 2019, 12:21:44 PM
QuoteSo far in July, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 160 billion tons of ice — enough to cover Florida in about six feet of water.

This should be very easy to check.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 12, 2019, 05:39:13 PM
https://www.livescience.com/66120-amazon-rainforest-deforestation-bolsonaro.html

deforestation up 278% since last year, (June to June) in Amazonia.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 15, 2019, 03:39:32 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/14/glaciers-iceland-country-loss-plaque-climate-crisis

QuoteThe glaciers of Iceland seemed eternal. Now a country mourns their loss

My grandparents mapped these giants of the landscape. A plaque will mark the spot where the first was lost to the climate crisis

How do you write a eulogy for a glacier? Think about it. How would you go about that, having grown up with glaciers as a geological given, a symbol of eternity? How do you say goodbye?

When academics at Rice University in Houston, Texas called and asked me to write the text for a plaque to commemorate the first dead glacier in Iceland, I found myself confronted with this problem. I was reminded of one of my favourite passages from Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five:

"You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?"

"No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?"

"I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'"

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too.

Well guess what, Harrison Starr. We humans have done for the glaciers. Almost every glacier on the planet has stopped growing and most are shrinking at an alarming rate. Ok Glacier is the first in Iceland to be formally declared dead ice. In the Himalayas, Greenland, the Alps and Iceland, the glaciers are all melting. In the spirit of Vonnegut, you could say that the Texan professors had asked me to write a pro-glacier text.

The name of our dead glacier has multiple layers. Ok in Icelandic is the equivalent of "yoke" in English, the pole traditionally used to carry buckets of water. Yoke can also mean burden, something that weighs you down. Ok carried water in the form of ice. And now that water has become ocean, the slowly rising burden of future generations.

According to current trends, all glaciers in Iceland will disappear in the next 200 years. So the plaque for Ok could be the first of 400 in Iceland alone. The glacier Snæfellsjökull, where Jules Verne began his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, is likely to be gone in the next 30 years and that will be a significant loss. This glacier is for Iceland what Fuji is for Japan.

The combined disappearance of all the glaciers of Iceland will add about 1cm to global sea levels. It might not seem much, but when that process is replicated worldwide, the floods will affect hundreds of millions of people. The most worrying prospect of all is the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. They are the yoke that carries the water for one billion people.

My family has a personal connection to glaciers. My grandparents were founding partners of the Icelandic glacial research society. When my grandfather said he wanted to take my grandmother with him on a three-week research trip in 1955, some men asked him if he was crazy. Take a woman on a glacier trip? My grandparents and the research team mapped and measured the glacier and were stuck in a small tent for three days. "Weren't you cold?" I asked them. "Cold? We were just married," they replied. The part of the glacier where they pitched their tent had no name at the time. Today it is called Brúðarbunga, "The Bride's Bulge".

For now, about 10% of Iceland is covered with glaciers. The thickest packs are in Vatnajökull – up to 1,000 metres deep. Imagine stacking three Empire State Buildings on top of each other – then stretch that bulk over the horizon. To think that something so huge is actually fragile is beyond comprehension. When my grandparents measured the glaciers, they were the eternal white giants. But calculate how long they will last in this warming climate and the outlook is bleak, to say the least. Most of them will only last the lifespan of someone born today who lives to a good age. We understand that glaciers grow and recede, but this is a collapse, an explosion in slow motion.

It's not that we aren't used to changes in nature: we have mountains in Iceland younger than myself, huge craters that are younger than the Brooklyn Bridge. We have volcanic eruptions so violent and powerful that they seem to render all human action puny by comparison.

What do we humans matter, people ask, when a volcano might blow and spew out millions of tonnes of CO2? In 2010 the famous Eyjafjallajökull eruption closed down all airports in Europe. But its CO2 emissions were only about 150,000 tonnes a day, compared with human activity which is responsible for almost 100m tonnes a day. The impact of humans on a daily basis is equal to more than 600 of these volcanoes. Imagine all these eruptions on every continent, all day, all night, all year round and tell yourself that they have no effect on the climate.

The natural world is being transformed at an alarming rate. The frozen graves of mammoths in Siberia are thawing and the rate of ocean acidification is reaching levels not seen for 50m years. A dying glacier is not a dramatic event. The drama of a melting glacier is no more dramatic than springtime: one day there is snow and the next day it is gone. We are living through the Great Thaw, the Big Melt. We have to remind ourselves that this is not normal. That it is not OK to write a memorial to a glacier named Ok. We remind ourselves with a plaque that we resemble the frogs which are slowly boiled alive in the fable. Fellow frogs, we are cooking: what are we going to do about it?

One of the fundamental flaws of our civilisation is its inability to think outside the present. When a scientist talks about 2100, we feel the date has nothing to do with us. So sometimes when I talk to university students I ask them to do a simple calculation, a thought experiment. I tell them, if you were born in the year 2000 you might become a healthy 90-year-old. At that time you might have a favourite 20-year-old in your life. A grandchild perhaps, someone you have known and loved for 20 years. When will that person be a healthy 90-year-old, maybe talking about you as the greatest influence in their lives?

The students do the maths and come up with a year like 2160. That is not an abstract calculation. That is the intimate time of someone in high school or at university today. This is time whose meaning they can touch with their bare hands. If we can connect deeply to a date like this, what do we think of scientists warning of catastrophe in 2070? Or 2090? How can that be beyond our imagination, as if part of some sci-fi future?

So on the copper plate to commemorate Ok glacier, we have written to these loved ones of the future: "We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."


(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fargumentua.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F___________1_24.jpg&hash=ee3d8f3786366ce61c2a12d0263b7761cceaa0ac)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 15, 2019, 04:29:25 AM
From a purely irresponsible and selfish view, why should the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland worry about the mildening of their islands' climate? Honest question.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 15, 2019, 05:53:02 AM
From a selfish reason? Tourism I guess.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 15, 2019, 06:50:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 15, 2019, 04:29:25 AM
From a purely irresponsible and selfish view, why should the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland worry about the mildening of their islands' climate? Honest question.

Maybe they like it the way it is?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 15, 2019, 06:52:32 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 15, 2019, 04:29:25 AM
From a purely irresponsible and selfish view, why should the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland worry about the mildening of their islands' climate? Honest question.

In my grandfather's childhood the local bay outside Reykjavík sometimes froze during winter. The 30's, 40's and 50's in Iceland were warm comparatively speaking and then there was another 30 year cold snap followed by a warming that's still ongoing. The glaciers in Iceland have been on an almost 2 century shrinking trend though since the Little Ice Age ended.

Current temperatures are approaching what they were around the time Iceland was first settled.

But yeah, the absolute worst case 4 degree warming scenario this century would take Iceland to about what a miserably cold Swedish summer is today. Canada and Iceland might actually become semi-inhabitable. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 15, 2019, 06:55:57 AM
What about the Icelandic fishing industry?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 15, 2019, 07:07:12 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 15, 2019, 06:55:57 AM
What about the Icelandic fishing industry?

No idea, some species will become more or less abundant. Atlantic mackerel for instance is showing up in huge shoals around Iceland, enough to become a valuable addition to the usual species.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 07:33:46 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 15, 2019, 04:29:25 AM
From a purely irresponsible and selfish view, why should the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland worry about the mildening of their islands' climate? Honest question.

Well, a few reasons.

First, global warming is a bit of a misnomer - while the temperature is overall increasing, what it leads to is increasing weather instability. Bad weather events have (and will) increase in frequency and severity.

Second, global warming (and global ice melting) will likely lead to a rise in sea levels - not good when many of your settlements are on the sea shores.

So overall, it isn't the warming that is the problem, but what it brings with it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 15, 2019, 07:48:54 AM
Yeah, we evolved as a species in an icehouse epoch and the current civilization is built around that. It would be a major struggle to adapt if we went back to the Pliocene climate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 15, 2019, 09:35:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 07:33:46 AM

So overall, it isn't the warming that is the problem, but what it brings with it.

I cannot help but remember the last time the world was warmer Texas was under a shallow sea.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 09:45:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 15, 2019, 09:35:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 07:33:46 AM

So overall, it isn't the warming that is the problem, but what it brings with it.

I cannot help but remember the last time the world was warmer Texas was under a shallow sea.

So what you are saying is that climate change has an upside?

[  ;) ]
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on August 16, 2019, 04:39:50 AM
With Florida and Texas underwater there is no way that Trump will get his 5th term  :cool:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 16, 2019, 04:45:45 AM
The hamberders will do him in well before that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 16, 2019, 10:15:05 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 09:45:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 15, 2019, 09:35:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 15, 2019, 07:33:46 AM

So overall, it isn't the warming that is the problem, but what it brings with it.

I cannot help but remember the last time the world was warmer Texas was under a shallow sea.

So what you are saying is that climate change has an upside?

[  ;) ]

Probably by the end of the 21st century there will be a massive carbon recapture infrastructure in place and that coupled with going full Brain, with 4th generation nuclear power plants online we'll be fine. At worst we're back to the Pliocene for a few thousand years. If the warming continues and the Earth goes to a Miocene climate, Europe will end up looking a lot like the Malaysian archipelago does today and Greenland will boast lush rainforests.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2019, 10:17:58 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 16, 2019, 10:15:05 AM
Probably by the end of the 21st century there will be a massive carbon recapture infrastructure in place and that coupled with going full Brain, with 4th generation nuclear power plants online we'll be fine.

That is what I am hoping. I am really looking forward to seeing if we get results from the ITER project in 2025-2035.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2019, 10:36:35 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2019, 10:17:58 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 16, 2019, 10:15:05 AM
Probably by the end of the 21st century there will be a massive carbon recapture infrastructure in place and that coupled with going full Brain, with 4th generation nuclear power plants online we'll be fine.

That is what I am hoping. I am really looking forward to seeing if we get results from the ITER project in 2025-2035.

I also hope it works, but practical application will still be a long way off even if it is completely successful.  Keep in mind that they are just proving that creating excess heat energy is possible but this design is not going to produce sufficient power for net electrical production. 

Also keep in mind that without immediate steps we are going to reach 1.5 degrees of warming by 2034.  Likely earlier as the projection is refined with more recent data showing the arctic is warming faster than anticipated (and the resulting release of methane which will speed things up).

btw, here is a interesting site that has a countdown clock updated with current data regarding emissions.  You can look at the calculations for 1.5 and 2 degrees.

https://www.inverse.com/article/51531-how-long-till-global-temperatures-reach-1-5-degrees-celsius

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 08:27:31 AM
The salmon run this year was anticipated to be 5 million that has now been downgraded to 600,000

One of the main reasons identified in a report which made the reduced estimate is the significant warming of the ocean.

"An unprecedented heatwave, nicknamed "The Blob", dominated the Northeast Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 (Figure 2). This ocean warming contributed to physical and biological changes, some of which continue to persist. Sea-surface-temperatures (SST) during the heatwave were 3-5°C above seasonal averages, extending down to depths of 100 m (Bond et al. 2015, Ross and Robert 2018, Smale et al. 2019). Climate modeling has shown that this heatwave can best be explained by human- caused warming (Walsh et al. 2018)."


Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 09:54:37 AM
From Bolsonaro's foreign policy advisor: « He added: "If you are wondering who is going to save the Amazon, here's a very straightforward answer for you: It's not the empty, hysterical and misleading rhetoric of the mainstream media, transnational bureaucrats and NGOs."

It's the same rhetoric everywhere now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 23, 2019, 09:59:13 AM
So we have a Brazilian trump now. Yay
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 12:21:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 08:27:31 AM
The salmon run this year was anticipated to be 5 million that has now been downgraded to 600,000

One of the main reasons identified in a report which made the reduced estimate is the significant warming of the ocean.

"An unprecedented heatwave, nicknamed "The Blob", dominated the Northeast Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 (Figure 2). This ocean warming contributed to physical and biological changes, some of which continue to persist. Sea-surface-temperatures (SST) during the heatwave were 3-5°C above seasonal averages, extending down to depths of 100 m (Bond et al. 2015, Ross and Robert 2018, Smale et al. 2019). Climate modeling has shown that this heatwave can best be explained by human- caused warming (Walsh et al. 2018)."




Source?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 12:23:48 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 09:54:37 AM
From Bolsonaro's foreign policy advisor: « He added: "If you are wondering who is going to save the Amazon, here's a very straightforward answer for you: It's not the empty, hysterical and misleading rhetoric of the mainstream media, transnational bureaucrats and NGOs."

It's the same rhetoric everywhere now.

It isn't surprising that there is a pretty large chunk of the people in power and with wealth whose basic attitude towards climate change and human caused climate destruction is "I don't fucking care because I got mine".

What is really distressing is that those people have largely managed to throw this fig leaf of deniability over themselves, and then get a huge number of other people to support them. It's kind of baffling to me.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on August 23, 2019, 12:25:20 PM
Well, most people are stupid. I'm pretty sure we're doomed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 12:36:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 12:21:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 08:27:31 AM
The salmon run this year was anticipated to be 5 million that has now been downgraded to 600,000

One of the main reasons identified in a report which made the reduced estimate is the significant warming of the ocean.

"An unprecedented heatwave, nicknamed "The Blob", dominated the Northeast Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 (Figure 2). This ocean warming contributed to physical and biological changes, some of which continue to persist. Sea-surface-temperatures (SST) during the heatwave were 3-5°C above seasonal averages, extending down to depths of 100 m (Bond et al. 2015, Ross and Robert 2018, Smale et al. 2019). Climate modeling has shown that this heatwave can best be explained by human- caused warming (Walsh et al. 2018)."




Source?

https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/40807071.pdf
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 12:36:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 12:21:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 08:27:31 AM
The salmon run this year was anticipated to be 5 million that has now been downgraded to 600,000

One of the main reasons identified in a report which made the reduced estimate is the significant warming of the ocean.

"An unprecedented heatwave, nicknamed "The Blob", dominated the Northeast Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 (Figure 2). This ocean warming contributed to physical and biological changes, some of which continue to persist. Sea-surface-temperatures (SST) during the heatwave were 3-5°C above seasonal averages, extending down to depths of 100 m (Bond et al. 2015, Ross and Robert 2018, Smale et al. 2019). Climate modeling has shown that this heatwave can best be explained by human- caused warming (Walsh et al. 2018)."




Source?

https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/40807071.pdf

Thanks.

We need more of this....I think.

More concrete examples of actual bad outcomes.

Of course, this is a trailing indicator, which isn't ideal when it comes to a problem that has to do with, oh I don't know, massive damage to the environment.

But still, some actual measureable and tangible fucked up eco systems.

Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Habbaku on August 23, 2019, 01:49:02 PM
Probably too many bears. We need anti-bear squads.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on August 23, 2019, 01:49:39 PM
There was report I heard about salmon in a river in Alaska that were showing up dead with no obvious signs of injury or disease.  The best guess is that it might be temperature related.  One of the fisherman was remarkably unconcerned, saying something to the effect that Salmon are hardy and that they'll be fine.  The fact that they are hardy and still dying is why you should be worried. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 23, 2019, 05:07:53 PM
(https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/69108184_2336791383072629_1474500562350243840_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_oc=AQnvk_dSxTpqhv1KeabiEUpwe-xf-1-tRs77B2GWTN-4NZCWHGE8qfmLvslnUczJVeA&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=c332e32dc15499ea1e77e2c49f9a125a&oe=5DCFD4A7)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 05:24:52 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.

Precisely.

The crisis of evidence is not about the lack of it. It's a crisis of meaning and trust. What does the evidence mean, and who gets to ascribe that meaning. As far as I can tell, you can't fight that with more evidence. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 05:38:21 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 05:24:52 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.

Precisely.

The crisis of evidence is not about the lack of it. It's a crisis of meaning and trust. What does the evidence mean, and who gets to ascribe that meaning. As far as I can tell, you can't fight that with more evidence.

I'm gonna quote you in my government class this fall.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on August 23, 2019, 06:27:59 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 05:38:21 PM
I'm gonna quote you in my government class this fall.

When you get quoted by someone who witnessed the collapse of the Bronze Age Civilizations, you have made it
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 23, 2019, 07:10:00 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?

Because the technology already existed and the cost was not prohibitive.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 07:35:36 PM
Quote from: PDH on August 23, 2019, 06:27:59 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 05:38:21 PM
I'm gonna quote you in my government class this fall.

When you get quoted by someone who witnessed the collapse of the Bronze Age Civilizations, you have made it

I was napping that afternoon and missed it. :cry:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on August 23, 2019, 07:55:58 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 05:38:21 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 05:24:52 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.

Precisely.

The crisis of evidence is not about the lack of it. It's a crisis of meaning and trust. What does the evidence mean, and who gets to ascribe that meaning. As far as I can tell, you can't fight that with more evidence.

I'm gonna quote you in my government class this fall.

What is the proper citation for a forums post?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on August 23, 2019, 08:03:41 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 23, 2019, 07:10:00 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?

Because the technology already existed and the cost was not prohibitive.

Partially true.  The replacements for CFCs didn't exist during the first calls for bans in the late 70s.  As late as the 90s there were still companies claiming they didn't have suitable alternatives.

Cost is a better argument, although even there we see ass backwards stuff like subsidizing coal.  We aren't trying nearly as hard as we could even without raising economic costs.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 23, 2019, 09:35:33 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?
Because it was a cause tackled by right-wingers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 23, 2019, 11:23:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 23, 2019, 09:35:33 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?
Because it was a cause tackled by right-wingers.

GHW Bush did a good job. That was back when people generally agreed on the facts, they just disagreed on the solutions.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 24, 2019, 12:13:32 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 23, 2019, 11:23:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 23, 2019, 09:35:33 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 23, 2019, 06:57:26 PM
Serious question:  Why were we able to address ozone depletion in the 1980's, but not climate change now?
Because it was a cause tackled by right-wingers.

GHW Bush did a good job.
... And Brian Mulroney ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Savonarola on August 24, 2019, 08:33:15 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on August 23, 2019, 07:55:58 PM
What is the proper citation for a forums post?

Here you go. (https://style.mla.org/comment-in-online-forum/)

While it may sound silly; I've seen online forums quoted in an article in the Florida State Historic Journal.  (It was a sociological article about the Hispanic ghettos around Orlando; not a discussion of the Civil War or anything like that.)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 24, 2019, 04:43:18 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on August 23, 2019, 07:55:58 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 23, 2019, 05:38:21 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 05:24:52 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.

Precisely.

The crisis of evidence is not about the lack of it. It's a crisis of meaning and trust. What does the evidence mean, and who gets to ascribe that meaning. As far as I can tell, you can't fight that with more evidence.

I'm gonna quote you in my government class this fall.

What is the proper citation for a forums post?

Which system?
AMA?
MLA?
Chicago?
IEEE?
AMA?
ASA?

Purdue OWL has your back on those. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html)


In MLA:
Oexmelin. "Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread" Languish, August 23, 2019, http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,13519.msg1197263.html Accessed August 23, 2019

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on August 24, 2019, 10:29:51 PM
Thanks. Citing forum discussion posts did not come up when I was writing my thesis in grad school.
APA has a specific citation style for discussion forums which includes the message number, while MLA is pretty similar to their generic internet citation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 25, 2019, 02:24:49 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 12:36:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 23, 2019, 12:21:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 23, 2019, 08:27:31 AM
The salmon run this year was anticipated to be 5 million that has now been downgraded to 600,000

One of the main reasons identified in a report which made the reduced estimate is the significant warming of the ocean.

"An unprecedented heatwave, nicknamed "The Blob", dominated the Northeast Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 (Figure 2). This ocean warming contributed to physical and biological changes, some of which continue to persist. Sea-surface-temperatures (SST) during the heatwave were 3-5°C above seasonal averages, extending down to depths of 100 m (Bond et al. 2015, Ross and Robert 2018, Smale et al. 2019). Climate modeling has shown that this heatwave can best be explained by human- caused warming (Walsh et al. 2018)."




Source?

https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/40807071.pdf

Thanks.

We need more of this....I think.

More concrete examples of actual bad outcomes.

Of course, this is a trailing indicator, which isn't ideal when it comes to a problem that has to do with, oh I don't know, massive damage to the environment.

But still, some actual measureable and tangible fucked up eco systems.

Or hell, who am I kidding? If you can convince yourself that the entire planetary climate science establishment is engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake climate change, you can convince yourself that a 90% decline in salmon is either a lie, or due to something beyond our control anyway.

There is a good feature article about ocean warming and sea rise in the economist this week.  A hopeful sign that the need to take steps now is becoming less controversial.

We have a long way to go though.  The idea that mitigating the effects of climate change (ie reducing carbon now) is far less expensive then adapting to the effects of climate change is not a well known or accepted concept. But I guess it has always been is hard to convince people that short term pain for long term gain is a good idea.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on August 25, 2019, 09:49:44 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on August 23, 2019, 09:54:37 AM
From Bolsonaro's foreign policy advisor: « He added: "If you are wondering who is going to save the Amazon, here's a very straightforward answer for you: It's not the empty, hysterical and misleading rhetoric of the mainstream media, transnational bureaucrats and NGOs."

He's right of course. Those people can't save the Amazon when executive power is held by corrupt, ignorant fascists like Bolsonaro.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 06:45:19 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/29/heathrow-activists-fly-drones-attempt-ground-flights

QuoteActivists with Heathrow Pause, a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, have said they will operate small toy drones from 3am on Friday 13 September.

A spokesman for the organisation said it expected "somewhere between 50 to a couple of hundred people" to be involved in the action, with each person using a drone. With disruption intended to last for a number of days and potentially longer, the activists said they "can't stand aside" and had to act.


:bleeding:

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on August 29, 2019, 07:28:28 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 06:45:19 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/29/heathrow-activists-fly-drones-attempt-ground-flights

QuoteActivists with Heathrow Pause, a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, have said they will operate small toy drones from 3am on Friday 13 September.

A spokesman for the organisation said it expected "somewhere between 50 to a couple of hundred people" to be involved in the action, with each person using a drone. With disruption intended to last for a number of days and potentially longer, the activists said they "can't stand aside" and had to act.


:bleeding:

It is nice that they've already stated their intentions to break the law. Should make arresting them and convictions easier.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 10:22:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on August 29, 2019, 07:28:28 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 06:45:19 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/29/heathrow-activists-fly-drones-attempt-ground-flights

QuoteActivists with Heathrow Pause, a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, have said they will operate small toy drones from 3am on Friday 13 September.

A spokesman for the organisation said it expected "somewhere between 50 to a couple of hundred people" to be involved in the action, with each person using a drone. With disruption intended to last for a number of days and potentially longer, the activists said they "can't stand aside" and had to act.


:bleeding:

It is nice that they've already stated their intentions to break the law. Should make arresting them and convictions easier.

Most likely exactly why they announced it ahead of time.  They want the exposure to their message.  A lot better to announce ahead of time so people know why they are being arrested.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 10:24:34 AM
Also, at least people in the planes will know why they crash and die
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 10:59:42 AM
I assume the other goal of announcing before hand is to cause the airport to shut down as a precaution.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 11:04:24 AM
And Trump does more damage

QuoteThe Trump administration is set to announce on Thursday that it intends to sharply curtail the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change, according to an industry official with knowledge of the plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in a proposed rule, will aim to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to inspect for and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities.

The NYTimes article goes on to report that the large producers are opposed to the deregulation while the smaller producers who complain they cannot afford the added cost are supportive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/climate/epa-methane-greenhouse-gas.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 29, 2019, 11:19:33 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/28/politics/tongass-national-forest-donald-trump-alaska/index.html

QuoteWashington (CNN)President Donald Trump has asked his agriculture secretary to provide a regulations exemption in order to open millions of acres of protected land within Alaska's Tongass National Forest to "potential logging, energy and mining projects," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The Post, citing conversations with three people briefed on the issue, said Trump asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue earlier this month to exempt the 16.7-million acre forest from Clinton-era logging restrictions that prevented the area from being open to some commercial interests for nearly 20 years. According to the paper, the move would impact "more than half of the world's largest intact temperate rainforest," which is filled with "with old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers running with salmon, and dramatic fjords."

The move is the latest in ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to lift restrictions on protected lands in order to provide industry access to the land. Among other places, the administration has rolled back restrictions on Utah's Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument in what were two of the largest downsizes of protected lands in US history.

The Post, which noted that in 2016 the Forest Service completed a plan to "phase out old-growth logging" in the forest within 10 years, said it was "unclear how much logging would take place in the Tongass if federal restrictions were lifted because the Forest Service would have to amend its management plan to hold a new timber sale."

"The 2016 plan identified 962,000 acres as suitable for commercial timber and suggested no more than 568,000 acres of that should be logged," the Post said. It added that Congress had previously "designated more than 5.7 million acres of the forest as wilderness, which must remain undeveloped under any circumstances." Under Trump's plan, the paper said, 9.5 million acres could be impacted.

According to the paper, three unnamed sources said the President's request to Perdue came after a conversation in late June with Alaska's Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, who supports the exemption. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, also supports the move, according to the paper, and, along with Dunleavy, has "pressed" Trump to provide an exemption.

In a statement provided to both CNN and the Post, Murkowski said the state's entire congressional delegation has "always supported a full exemption" from the regulations, which she argued are "harming our ability to develop a sustainable, year-round economy for the Southeast region, where less than one percent of the land is privately held."

The paper said three unnamed people from the Forest Service, which is under the Department of Agriculture, said the agency was "forging ahead with an exemption at Perdue's instructions."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 11:30:54 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 10:59:42 AM
I assume the other goal of announcing before hand is to cause the airport to shut down as a precaution.

Which is stupid, as you can't shut down hundreds/thousands of flights because some people on the Internet claim they'll fly drones.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 11:44:14 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 11:30:54 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 10:59:42 AM
I assume the other goal of announcing before hand is to cause the airport to shut down as a precaution.

Which is stupid, as you can't shut down hundreds/thousands of flights because some people on the Internet claim they'll fly drones.

Nevertheless that is likely their goal - given the name of their organization.  Whether their strategy works depends on whether the authorities take the threat seriously enough to shut down the airport and can't find another way to mitigate the threat (which is more likely to occur) and remains to be seen.

I was responding to your comment that people would crash and die which is actually the least likely of all possible outcomes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 29, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 29, 2019, 11:30:54 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 10:59:42 AM
I assume the other goal of announcing before hand is to cause the airport to shut down as a precaution.

Which is stupid, as you can't shut down hundreds/thousands of flights because some people on the Internet claim they'll fly drones.

Which is stupid, because the announcement of it ahead of time means that authorities will be looking for the drones, and shutting down the airport in response to the sighting of drones, instead of waiting to shut down in response to the crashing of planes.

If the protesters are trying to be as moral as possible in their protests, they'll announce in advance that a hazard will be created, even if it increases their own risk of arrest.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 29, 2019, 11:54:22 AM
Hopefully they'll be dealt with harshly. Shutting down important infrastructure by threats of mass killings sounds like terrorism to me.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 29, 2019, 02:12:17 PM
Quote from: The Brain on August 29, 2019, 11:54:22 AM
Hopefully they'll be dealt with harshly. Shutting down important infrastructure by threats of mass killings sounds like terrorism to me.

Okay, Mono.  We get it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 29, 2019, 03:04:15 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 29, 2019, 02:12:17 PM
Quote from: The Brain on August 29, 2019, 11:54:22 AM
Hopefully they'll be dealt with harshly. Shutting down important infrastructure by threats of mass killings sounds like terrorism to me.

Okay, Mono.  We get it.

I'm sure those who depend on air transport or not being killed appreciate your soft spot for terrorism.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on August 29, 2019, 10:24:43 PM
 :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 30, 2019, 04:59:13 AM
Quote from: The Brain on August 29, 2019, 03:04:15 PM
I'm sure those who depend on air transport or not being killed appreciate your soft spot for terrorism.

Okay, Mono.  We get it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 30, 2019, 10:19:44 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2019, 11:04:24 AM
The NYTimes article goes on to report that the large producers are opposed to the deregulation while the smaller producers who complain they cannot afford the added cost are supportive.
It is no surprise.  Regulations always have an added cost that smalltime players are unable to afford completely while bigger corporations who made their money a long time ago can afford it. And they like it because it keeps the smaller players out there...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: fromtia on August 30, 2019, 12:23:49 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg)

Here is Margaret Thatcher giving a lengthy speech on the imminent danger of climate change and what can be done to avert the danger. This is from 1989.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on August 30, 2019, 12:36:18 PM
Quote from: fromtia on August 30, 2019, 12:23:49 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg)

Here is Margaret Thatcher giving a lengthy speech on the imminent danger of climate change and what can be done to avert the danger. This is from 1989.

Closing down coal mines did help.  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 30, 2019, 12:37:08 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on August 30, 2019, 12:36:18 PM

Closing down coal mines did help.  :P

It did. Maggie is a great environmentalist heroine.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on September 08, 2019, 02:37:58 PM
Well this is rather depressing:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?fbclid=IwAR0vrMXAocKkOH64rdVFarJR_H-eTN3qjuutqPfYXK6UIJqjBtb45hMagcM
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 08, 2019, 02:37:58 PM
Well this is rather depressing:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?fbclid=IwAR0vrMXAocKkOH64rdVFarJR_H-eTN3qjuutqPfYXK6UIJqjBtb45hMagcM

QuoteJonathan Franzen is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and the author of, most recently, the novel "Purity."

What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 08, 2019, 03:34:36 PM
We don't have psychohistory experts yet.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on September 08, 2019, 04:11:35 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.

Do you think experts are experts at communicating their expertise to a general audience?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 08, 2019, 07:18:46 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 08, 2019, 02:37:58 PM
Well this is rather depressing:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?fbclid=IwAR0vrMXAocKkOH64rdVFarJR_H-eTN3qjuutqPfYXK6UIJqjBtb45hMagcM

Depressing, yes.  But also realistic and pertinent.  It will be required reading in my government class this week.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 10:45:41 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on September 08, 2019, 04:11:35 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.

Do you think experts are experts at communicating their expertise to a general audience?

Some of them are, some of them are not.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on September 09, 2019, 12:41:45 AM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 10:45:41 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on September 08, 2019, 04:11:35 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.

Do you think experts are experts at communicating their expertise to a general audience?

Some of them are, some of them are not.

Great insight there buddy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 12:04:44 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 09, 2019, 12:41:45 AM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 10:45:41 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on September 08, 2019, 04:11:35 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.

Do you think experts are experts at communicating their expertise to a general audience?

Some of them are, some of them are not.

Great insight there buddy.

It wasn't obvious to everyone.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 12:13:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 08, 2019, 03:26:27 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 08, 2019, 02:37:58 PM
Well this is rather depressing:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?fbclid=IwAR0vrMXAocKkOH64rdVFarJR_H-eTN3qjuutqPfYXK6UIJqjBtb45hMagcM

QuoteJonathan Franzen is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and the author of, most recently, the novel "Purity."

What does he actually know about climate change, government action, or global cooperation? Maybe we should listen to experts on this critical issue.

Not maybe, we definitely should be listening to the climate experts, which is one of the points he makes  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 09, 2019, 01:41:17 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 08, 2019, 02:37:58 PM
Well this is rather depressing:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?fbclid=IwAR0vrMXAocKkOH64rdVFarJR_H-eTN3qjuutqPfYXK6UIJqjBtb45hMagcM

The underlying eschatology in these hysterical screeds is much more interesting than what's written per se.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 01:47:17 PM
What we can do right now is a massive expansion of nuclear power. It's a proven concept that would help in a significant way. But noooo, so called environmentalists are against it... "Ew, the color of this lifeboat is so not me! Sorry I can't do this."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 01:48:38 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 01:47:17 PM
What we can do right now is a massive expansion of nuclear power. It's a proven concept that would help in a significant way. But noooo, so called environmentalists are against it... "Ew, the color of this lifeboat is so not me! Sorry I can't do this."

Environmentalists have been that way about most solutions to the climate problem. I tend to view them with exasperation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 09, 2019, 01:50:42 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 01:47:17 PM
What we can do right now is a massive expansion of nuclear power. It's a proven concept that would help in a significant way. But noooo, so called environmentalists are against it... "Ew, the color of this lifeboat is so not me! Sorry I can't do this."

Yeah it's very aggravating.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 09, 2019, 02:01:09 PM
There are practical limitations to an immediate massive expansion of nuclear power.  The upfront capital commitments are tremendous and the pool of skilled engineers and workers has shrunk quite a bit.  The time to make that commitment was a decade ago if we wanted to ramp up now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 09, 2019, 02:28:58 PM
The levelized cost of energy of wind power is now so cheap that it appears to be the power generation of the future. It now significantly beats fossil fuels on cost alone, never mind environmental effects.

Problem with nuclear (aside from regulatory and environmentalist protest nonsense) was always the huge upfront financing gamble of building such plants: if other forms of energy decrease in cost, the poor suckers who invested in a nuclear plant supposed to generate power for twenty plus years at a certain fixed rate are screwed ... and that seems to be exactly what is happening: other forms of generating energy (particularly wind turbines) are getting much cheaper. Solar is making strides too, but is still I think more expensive than wind.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 02:33:16 PM
Wind and solar are great but we need baseload generation. Natural gas using modern combined cycle plants is a decent stop gap if nukes are, as I believe they are, a political impossibility.

I am looking over at ITER with great interest to see if that might be a future replacement.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 02:36:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2019, 10:36:35 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2019, 10:17:58 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 16, 2019, 10:15:05 AM
Probably by the end of the 21st century there will be a massive carbon recapture infrastructure in place and that coupled with going full Brain, with 4th generation nuclear power plants online we'll be fine.

That is what I am hoping. I am really looking forward to seeing if we get results from the ITER project in 2025-2035.

I also hope it works, but practical application will still be a long way off even if it is completely successful.  Keep in mind that they are just proving that creating excess heat energy is possible but this design is not going to produce sufficient power for net electrical production. 

Also keep in mind that without immediate steps we are going to reach 1.5 degrees of warming by 2034.  Likely earlier as the projection is refined with more recent data showing the arctic is warming faster than anticipated (and the resulting release of methane which will speed things up).

btw, here is a interesting site that has a countdown clock updated with current data regarding emissions.  You can look at the calculations for 1.5 and 2 degrees.

https://www.inverse.com/article/51531-how-long-till-global-temperatures-reach-1-5-degrees-celsius

Here is what I posted the last time you suggested ITER was something that might work in the future.  If it does work, any practical application is way too far off in the future to make a difference.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 02:39:40 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 09, 2019, 02:01:09 PM
There are practical limitations to an immediate massive expansion of nuclear power.  The upfront capital commitments are tremendous and the pool of skilled engineers and workers has shrunk quite a bit.  The time to make that commitment was a decade ago if we wanted to ramp up now.

And yet it has been done successfully even with no experience of nuclear power, so we know for a fact that it's possible. But we've been over this ground.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 02:41:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 02:36:30 PM
Here is what I posted the last time you suggested ITER was something that might work in the future.  If it does work, any practical application is way too far off in the future to make a difference.

Well we are not going to replace everything with fission nuclear plants by 2034 either. Hell even doing the rather conservative step of using very modern natural gas plants is not happening so soon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 02:41:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 02:41:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 02:36:30 PM
Here is what I posted the last time you suggested ITER was something that might work in the future.  If it does work, any practical application is way too far off in the future to make a difference.

Well we are not going to replace everything with fission nuclear plants by 2034 either.

Burn the heretic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 02:43:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 02:41:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 09, 2019, 02:36:30 PM
Here is what I posted the last time you suggested ITER was something that might work in the future.  If it does work, any practical application is way too far off in the future to make a difference.

Well we are not going to replace everything with fission nuclear plants by 2034 either.

No, but we can do a lot to avoid 1.5 now.  If ITER works, great.  But if we just sit on our hands until the proof of concept test results come in we are going to be in considerable trouble.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 09, 2019, 02:44:38 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2019, 02:33:16 PM
Wind and solar are great but we need baseload generation. Natural gas using modern combined cycle plants is a decent stop gap if nukes are, as I believe they are, a political impossibility.

I am looking over at ITER with great interest to see if that might be a future replacement.

Not necessarily.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475.4620

QuoteAbstract
Wind is the world's fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. Consequently, the array behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power. In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the Midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m/s (class 3 or greater). We found that an average of 33 % and a maximum of 47 % of yearly-averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point, then connecting that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for example, by 20 % with only a 1.6 % loss of energy. 2 Although most parameters, such as intermittency, improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected sites. 

Fact is, with a grid connected across North America, you won't need (extra) baseload generation capacity even if you have nothing but wind, because the chance of wind not blowing in enough of North America is basically zero. Add solar and tidal to the mix, and wind, ocean and sun have to simultaneously fail you across North America (to a significant extent) for baseload to become a problem. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 03:05:07 PM
And the cost of a grid that can shift that kind of power is low enough?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 10, 2019, 10:42:36 AM
Quote from: The Brain on September 09, 2019, 02:39:40 PM
And yet it has been done successfully even with no experience of nuclear power, so we know for a fact that it's possible. But we've been over this ground.

It took 20 years for the US to get nuclear to over 10% of electricity generation, despite focused federal subsidies.  And then another 15 years to break 20%.

The "good news" is that the US is still at about 20% so it isn't starting from scratch.  Bad news is a good chunk of that 20% is nearing or past obsolescence so big investments will be needed just to maintain share.

I agree the US should recommit but to get a significant amount built on a reasonable time scale will require heavy state investment. It won't happen because politically many Democrats would resist because of the big Nuclear bogeyman and the Republicans will resist because of the big Government bogeyman.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 10, 2019, 10:46:17 AM
Meanwhile our country is being led by a certifiable jackass who thinks wind power causes cancer whereas coal dust is a recommended part of a healthy daily diet.  Said jackass will be in charge for another 1.5 years during which time US energy policy will revolve around maximizing the number of industrial accidents and minimizing worker benefit packages.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 17, 2019, 09:15:47 PM
dammit!

Now it's getting serious :mad:

I just read that that silly polar vortex could establish itself just north of the NorthWest Territories in Canada and push even more cold air through Quebec for most winters to come.  :mad:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 18, 2019, 06:11:19 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 17, 2019, 09:15:47 PM
dammit!

Now it's getting serious :mad:

I just read that that silly polar vortex could establish itself just north of the NorthWest Territories in Canada and push even more cold air through Quebec for most winters to come.  :mad:

One thing I am still finding hard to stomach is the premise that EVERYWHERE it will be worse for humans to live due to climate change. I accept that most places will be, and some places will become downright uninhabitable or destroyed. But surely SOME areas of the globe will become less unfriendly to human life thanks to the changes?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 07:21:09 AM
Siberia. The Russians will suddenly have no more terrible places to send their undesirables.

"I sentence you to indefinite exile in...*dramatic pause*...SIBERIA!"

"Wahoo!"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 08:00:54 AM
Quote from: Tamas on September 18, 2019, 06:11:19 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 17, 2019, 09:15:47 PM
dammit!

Now it's getting serious :mad:

I just read that that silly polar vortex could establish itself just north of the NorthWest Territories in Canada and push even more cold air through Quebec for most winters to come.  :mad:

One thing I am still finding hard to stomach is the premise that EVERYWHERE it will be worse for humans to live due to climate change. I accept that most places will be, and some places will become downright uninhabitable or destroyed. But surely SOME areas of the globe will become less unfriendly to human life thanks to the changes?

If you can find evidence that it will better somewhere please post it.

Quote from: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 07:21:09 AM
Siberia. The Russians will suddenly have no more terrible places to send their undesirables.

"I sentence you to indefinite exile in...*dramatic pause*...SIBERIA!"

"Wahoo!"

I know you were joking but the melting permafrost turning the North into an inhabitable bog undermines Tamas' gut reaction.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PRC on September 18, 2019, 09:55:50 AM
Quote from: Tamas on September 18, 2019, 06:11:19 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 17, 2019, 09:15:47 PM
dammit!

Now it's getting serious :mad:

I just read that that silly polar vortex could establish itself just north of the NorthWest Territories in Canada and push even more cold air through Quebec for most winters to come.  :mad:

One thing I am still finding hard to stomach is the premise that EVERYWHERE it will be worse for humans to live due to climate change. I accept that most places will be, and some places will become downright uninhabitable or destroyed. But surely SOME areas of the globe will become less unfriendly to human life thanks to the changes?

If there are, those areas might see a massive influx of climate migrants, spoiling the Eden like serenity.  Build a wall!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 10:08:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on September 18, 2019, 06:11:19 AM
One thing I am still finding hard to stomach is the premise that EVERYWHERE it will be worse for humans to live due to climate change. I accept that most places will be, and some places will become downright uninhabitable or destroyed. But surely SOME areas of the globe will become less unfriendly to human life thanks to the changes?

I suspect that the main issue is that thinking of "climate change" as "it gets warmer" is too simplistic. If it just got warmer, some places, currently cold, would indeed be better off as far as humans go. 

Problem is that the change will result in a great deal of instability - both in weather and in life. We will see more extreme weather events - which nobody wants. Life, adapted to one set of climate factors, will have to change over to another set, leading to a lot of problems. Permafrost melting, that sort of thing. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 18, 2019, 10:47:47 AM
There is also the question of infrastructure. There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that are sited and constructed for the unheated world. This mismatch will be increasingly costly over time.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 10:58:06 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 18, 2019, 10:47:47 AM
There is also the question of infrastructure. There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that are sited and constructed for the unheated world. This mismatch will be increasingly costly over time.

And the question of reduction of sea life which reduces the amount of protein available to humans, reduction in farm yields because of reduction in soil quality not to mention loss of land itself.  The fact there are still some who try to say there is an upside is an indication that people don't yet fully understand the ramifications of climate change.  Its not a matter of nice weather moving north.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:25:37 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 18, 2019, 10:47:47 AM
There is also the question of infrastructure. There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that are sited and constructed for the unheated world. This mismatch will be increasingly costly over time.

Yes that will be most of the difficulty. On the other hand we're barely out of the Little Ice Age and it's quite reasonable to assume that we might have a balmy few centuries compared to the frozen hellscape of the last 4. Quiet work on newer, smaller and safer nuclear reactors and carbon recapture over the next century and a half will largely sort out the anxiety over our carbon emissions. It will be quite positive even if humans have accidentally geoengineered Earth to be resistant to the extreme Milankovitch cycles of semi-regular 100,000 year long Ice Ages as has been the case over the last 5 million years or so.

And whatever offsets we Westerners develop this century for our economies are going to be puny compared to the carbon output from India and Africa industrializing in the same time period.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 11:31:40 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:25:37 AM
And whatever offsets we Westerners develop this century for our economies are going to be puny compared to the carbon output from India and Africa industrializing in the same time period.

Huh? I thought you were saying we were going to sort this all out soon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 11:34:34 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:25:37 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 18, 2019, 10:47:47 AM
There is also the question of infrastructure. There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that are sited and constructed for the unheated world. This mismatch will be increasingly costly over time.

Yes that will be most of the difficulty. On the other hand we're barely out of the Little Ice Age and it's quite reasonable to assume that we might have a balmy few centuries compared to the frozen hellscape of the last 4. Quiet work on newer, smaller and safer nuclear reactors and carbon recapture over the next century and a half will largely sort out the anxiety over our carbon emissions. It will be quite positive even if humans have accidentally geoengineered Earth to be resistant to the extreme Milankovitch cycles of semi-regular 100,000 year long Ice Ages as has been the case over the last 5 million years or so.

And whatever offsets we Westerners develop this century for our economies are going to be puny compared to the carbon output from India and Africa industrializing in the same time period.

15 years or less to 1.5.  Don't worry be happy is exactly the worst message to give.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:38:40 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 11:31:40 AMHuh? I thought you were saying we were going to sort this all out soon.

Yes I'm quite optimistic. Short term though I think these people will use their fossil fuels to bootstrap themselves up to a suffciently high GDP where they start cleaning up their local enviornments.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:47:08 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 11:34:34 AM15 years or less to 1.5.  Don't worry be happy is exactly the worst message to give.

Whatever climate we'll have this century is already baked into the system. The timescale for these infrastructure improvements is a century and a half. We survived the Medieval warm period, we'll handle this century fine I reckon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 11:51:14 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:47:08 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 11:34:34 AM15 years or less to 1.5.  Don't worry be happy is exactly the worst message to give.

Whatever climate we'll have this century is already baked into the system. The timescale for these infrastructure improvements is a century and a half. We survived the Medieval warm period, we'll handle this century fine I reckon.

You should read the IPCC report.  Your conclusion that we are going to reach warming of 1.5 no matter what is not consistent with the science.  The report makes it clear that if we do nothing we will reach more than 2.0 in a short period of time but it we still have time to avoid 1.5 now.  Further your conclusion that we have seen all this before is also not consistent with the science.

You can reckon all you want.  I prefer to listen to the scientists.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on September 18, 2019, 11:52:22 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 18, 2019, 11:47:08 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 11:34:34 AM15 years or less to 1.5.  Don't worry be happy is exactly the worst message to give.

Whatever climate we'll have this century is already baked into the system. The timescale for these infrastructure improvements is a century and a half. We survived the Medieval warm period, we'll handle this century fine I reckon.

This is one of the most idiotic things I've read on this board.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on September 18, 2019, 12:17:10 PM
The Medieval warm period was a local climate change that almost doesn't even make a mark on the global climate.

The last time we had a global climate close to this hot was 5000 BC and it took 3500 years to get there from the 1961-90 average (and another 3000 to get back down).  We've done it in less than 50 years.

That pace of change is so radically different we really have no idea how well or how quickly the ecosystems will be able to adapt.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 12:17:10 PM
The Medieval warm period was a local climate change that almost doesn't even make a mark on the global climate.

The last time we had a global climate close to this hot was 5000 BC and it took 3500 years to get there from the 1961-90 average (and another 3000 to get back down).  We've done it in less than 50 years.

That pace of change is so radically different we really have no idea how well or how quickly the ecosystems will be able to adapt.

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 01:16:43 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.

Ah, agreed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 01:27:19 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.

I'd say it is absolutely guaranteed that enough others will survive - but they will likely not be the ones we humans want.

The concept here is "weed species". "Weed species" is a term sometimes used to define species, plants or animals, that adapt easily to new climates, resist all attempts at eradication, and spread widely - like rats, pigeons, dandelions or raccoons in urban environments. They are not susceptible to elimination by changes in environment. They are generalists and survivors.

I have no doubt that hardy weed species will survive and even thrive, as the competition gets killed off by climate change - but humans would probably find a planet full of "weed species" a lot less attractive. 

[Note that humans themselves are basically a "weed species"!]
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 18, 2019, 01:29:48 PM
Yi and FB at least.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 18, 2019, 02:46:46 PM
(https://britishbusinessenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/CO2-emissions.gif)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 18, 2019, 02:52:02 PM
Let's wait for the 2019 numbers before we panic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on September 18, 2019, 03:37:00 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 01:27:19 PM
I'd say it is absolutely guaranteed that enough others will survive - but they will likely not be the ones we humans want.

The concept here is "weed species". "Weed species" is a term sometimes used to define species, plants or animals, that adapt easily to new climates, resist all attempts at eradication, and spread widely - like rats, pigeons, dandelions or raccoons in urban environments. They are not susceptible to elimination by changes in environment. They are generalists and survivors.

I have no doubt that hardy weed species will survive and even thrive, as the competition gets killed off by climate change - but humans would probably find a planet full of "weed species" a lot less attractive. 

[Note that humans themselves are basically a "weed species"!]

Enough survive for what?  If it was just climate, just the temperature rising, I think you are right.  However there are a lot of ecosystems that are already undergoing tremendous stress from pollution, habitat destruction and human predation.  Some of them have already become mostly weed species with the resulting loss in diversity.

Humans will survive in the short term (100s of years) barring a complete and total environmental collapse (or other doomsday scenario such as nuclear war or asteroid).  However the number of humans that can effectively live on the planet may drop significantly due to big chunks of the food web getting blown away.  It's possible, with genetic engineering, we might be able to plug those holes but we are a ways off from doing that on the scale that may be necessary.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 03:53:13 PM
You are talking to Malthus here. He did once predict "positive checks" would stop the human population from getting too large.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 18, 2019, 07:19:27 PM
The problem is that it isn't a continuous change.  Not 1.5 degrees in fifteen years, then 2.0 degrees in 20 years, then 2.5 degrees in 25 years, etc.  Once 2.0 degrees sets in, Mother Nature says "fuck that" and unleashes 3.5 degrees five years later*  There's a lot of carbon held now in fragile environments that won't tolerate much heating before they break down. Today Borneo released more CO2 than the entire US did.

I used to be a believer, like Legbiter, in the technological solution.  That me now seems quaint to informed me.  Ignorance was so much more fun and hopeful.



* Generalized here, don't hold me to these precise numbers
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on September 18, 2019, 07:24:57 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 18, 2019, 03:53:13 PM
You are talking to Malthus here. He did once predict "positive checks" would stop the human population from getting too large.

Was that before, or after Observations on the Effects of Strollers?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 18, 2019, 10:52:18 PM
I'll play devil's advocate.

Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 10:58:06 AM
And the question of reduction of sea life which reduces the amount of protein available to humans,
Eat more plants, it's gonna save the world, or so I was told by the greens ;)
Fishes tend to move to the north.  Salmons are seen in the arctic nowadays.  A few of them, anyway.
Quotereduction in farm yields because of reduction in soil quality not to mention loss of land itself.
Well, that can be offseted as more and more northern and highter lands become available for culture.  Wine production should be relatively safe, House Torres has bought lands higher up in the Andes and other producers are starting to grow vines in Great Britain ;)
As long as I can die drinking wine, the rest is of no consequence. :P

Abitibiti (not too distant from Malthus' cottage) could become a land of culture. In fact, Chinese and other financials are already buying lands in the northern parts of Quebec and many places that used to have one or two harvest a year are now seeing one more.  In my own neck of the woods, there used to be a rarity of farmers who would harvest grain more than once a year.  Now, twice is the norm.


Quote
  The fact there are still some who try to say there is an upside is an indication that people don't yet fully understand the ramifications of climate change.  Its not a matter of nice weather moving north.
There is an upside to some.  Saying there is none is shooting yourself in the foot.
It's like alcohol.  A few drinks a week may gain you some positive health effect, but past a certain point, the negatives way outway the positive.
And we are at this point: the negative effects way outway the positive, and it will require a fuckton of money to adapt to it, if we can.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 18, 2019, 10:56:13 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 01:27:19 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.

I'd say it is absolutely guaranteed that enough others will survive - but they will likely not be the ones we humans want.

The concept here is "weed species". "Weed species" is a term sometimes used to define species, plants or animals, that adapt easily to new climates, resist all attempts at eradication, and spread widely - like rats, pigeons, dandelions or raccoons in urban environments. They are not susceptible to elimination by changes in environment. They are generalists and survivors.

I have no doubt that hardy weed species will survive and even thrive, as the competition gets killed off by climate change - but humans would probably find a planet full of "weed species" a lot less attractive. 

[Note that humans themselves are basically a "weed species"!]
dandelions make excellent soup, and racoons are excellent in a stew! :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 18, 2019, 10:58:29 PM
Quote from: grumbler on September 18, 2019, 07:19:27 PM
The problem is that it isn't a continuous change.  Not 1.5 degrees in fifteen years, then 2.0 degrees in 20 years, then 2.5 degrees in 25 years, etc.  Once 2.0 degrees sets in, Mother Nature says "fuck that" and unleashes 3.5 degrees five years later*  There's a lot of carbon held now in fragile environments that won't tolerate much heating before they break down. Today Borneo released more CO2 than the entire US did.

I used to be a believer, like Legbiter, in the technological solution.  That me now seems quaint to informed me.  Ignorance was so much more fun and hopeful.



* Generalized here, don't hold me to these precise numbers
technology will help us mitigate the impact though, so we can't lose faith.  But we can't rely on Faith alone.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 18, 2019, 11:11:47 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 18, 2019, 10:56:13 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 01:27:19 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.

I'd say it is absolutely guaranteed that enough others will survive - but they will likely not be the ones we humans want.

The concept here is "weed species". "Weed species" is a term sometimes used to define species, plants or animals, that adapt easily to new climates, resist all attempts at eradication, and spread widely - like rats, pigeons, dandelions or raccoons in urban environments. They are not susceptible to elimination by changes in environment. They are generalists and survivors.

I have no doubt that hardy weed species will survive and even thrive, as the competition gets killed off by climate change - but humans would probably find a planet full of "weed species" a lot less attractive. 

[Note that humans themselves are basically a "weed species"!]
dandelions make excellent soup, and racoons are excellent in a stew! :P

You are more country than I realized. :outback:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 07:44:19 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 18, 2019, 10:56:13 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 18, 2019, 01:27:19 PM
Quote from: frunk on September 18, 2019, 01:12:59 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 18, 2019, 12:54:49 PM

One small correction, we are beginning to get a pretty good idea that there will be a massive die off.  The significantly reduced salmon run in BC is one example of that.

I'd say it's guaranteed that some species will definitely suffer.  The question is whether enough others will survive, how well will they survive and how quickly can they fill in the niches left by those species that don't make it.

I'd say it is absolutely guaranteed that enough others will survive - but they will likely not be the ones we humans want.

The concept here is "weed species". "Weed species" is a term sometimes used to define species, plants or animals, that adapt easily to new climates, resist all attempts at eradication, and spread widely - like rats, pigeons, dandelions or raccoons in urban environments. They are not susceptible to elimination by changes in environment. They are generalists and survivors.

I have no doubt that hardy weed species will survive and even thrive, as the competition gets killed off by climate change - but humans would probably find a planet full of "weed species" a lot less attractive. 

[Note that humans themselves are basically a "weed species"!]
dandelions make excellent soup, and racoons are excellent in a stew! :P

As I said, humans are also a "weed species" ... though some of us are 'weedier' than others.  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 09:00:49 AM
This is encouraging - as pointed out earlier, people are starting to notice solar and wind power is now much cheaper than it was.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-19/solar-and-wind-power-so-cheap-they-re-outgrowing-subsidies

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:07:17 AM
Viper, go read about the effects of climate change.  All your claims are wrong.  But to summarize, we are not going to replace the protein lost from the sea because total farming output will drop - a lot. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 09:25:10 AM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 09:00:49 AM
This is encouraging - as pointed out earlier, people are starting to notice solar and wind power is now much cheaper than it was.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-19/solar-and-wind-power-so-cheap-they-re-outgrowing-subsidies

Business people have known this for awhile. They cannot build that stuff fast enough out here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 19, 2019, 09:30:28 AM
out around these parts in the country side a lot of the farms have solar panels. efficient, but ugly lol
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 09:32:20 AM
Quote from: HVC on September 19, 2019, 09:30:28 AM
out around these parts in the country side a lot of the farms have solar panels. efficient, but ugly lol

As time goes on they will be made more fashionable. I think with time solar panels will be the standard roofing material.

Oh boy my job is going to get more and more complicated as this happens.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:42:35 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 09:32:20 AM
Quote from: HVC on September 19, 2019, 09:30:28 AM
out around these parts in the country side a lot of the farms have solar panels. efficient, but ugly lol

As time goes on they will be made more fashionable. I think with time solar panels will be the standard roofing material.

Oh boy my job is going to get more and more complicated as this happens.

Lots of work being done on the grid 2.0 as well to accommodate multidirectional flow and storage.  I am actually optimistic   :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 19, 2019, 09:42:55 AM
Read an article that investment in wind energy in Germany is plummeting as public grants run out and because of strong NIMBY movements.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:44:39 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 19, 2019, 09:42:55 AM
Read an article that investment in wind energy in Germany is plummeting as public grants run out and because of strong NIMBY movements.

Buzzkill
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 09:45:49 AM
Offshore wind farms is where it's at, anyway.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 10:02:14 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 09:45:49 AM
Offshore wind farms is where it's at, anyway.

Problem with that is the price.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 10:04:50 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 19, 2019, 09:42:55 AM
Read an article that investment in wind energy in Germany is plummeting as public grants run out and because of strong NIMBY movements.

Germany has been working very hard to maximize its carbon emissions for some reason.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 19, 2019, 10:51:58 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 10:04:50 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 19, 2019, 09:42:55 AM
Read an article that investment in wind energy in Germany is plummeting as public grants run out and because of strong NIMBY movements.

Germany has been working very hard to maximize its carbon emissions for some reason.

The reason was a tsunami in Japan and Merkel bending to whims of public opinion. Which did keep her in power and popular for quite a while, but hey.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 11:59:18 AM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 10:02:14 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 09:45:49 AM
Offshore wind farms is where it's at, anyway.

Problem with that is the price.

Yeah, it is more expensive, but the output is higher and more constant that in land farms, so it has its advantages. Don't know where's the situation currently in terms of cost per unit of energy produced, though.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:28:08 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 07:44:19 AM
As I said, humans are also a "weed species" ... though some of us are 'weedier' than others.  ;)
Oh, I'm safe, by the time people realize they could feed their entire family for a year with me, everyone will be vegan! :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:33:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:07:17 AM
Viper, go read about the effects of climate change.  All your claims are wrong.
Nope, dandelions can be eaten, as well as raccoons ;)

I'll add to my statement that a 2 - 4 C could have positive effects in some places, globally worst for humans, but positive in some place; but since we're on target for 7 C, it will be way, way worst for everyone and you are right, I doubt any place of earth will be truly livable for humans on the short term.  I'm unsure about the living situation in the great north, once it starts melting, i.e. how much time does it require for the place to be transformed from a giant marsh to livable space.  I think it would be in centuries.

As for the microbes hidden in the earth and the ice, I am doubtful that they would kill everyone on Earth.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:34:50 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 09:32:20 AM
As time goes on they will be made more fashionable. I think with time solar panels will be the standard roofing material.

Oh boy my job is going to get more and more complicated as this happens.
there are solar tiles, and solar windows, but they are very expensive and they do not generate that much electricity.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 01:37:10 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:34:50 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 19, 2019, 09:32:20 AM
As time goes on they will be made more fashionable. I think with time solar panels will be the standard roofing material.

Oh boy my job is going to get more and more complicated as this happens.
there are solar tiles, and solar windows, but they are very expensive and they do not generate that much electricity.


I am aware hence I said "with time".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on September 19, 2019, 01:44:12 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:28:08 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 07:44:19 AM
As I said, humans are also a "weed species" ... though some of us are 'weedier' than others.  ;)
Oh, I'm safe, by the time people realize they could feed their entire family for a year with me, everyone will be vegan! :P

Probably only one person for a month or so (https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/), but that could probably be stretched out with other dietary sources.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 01:53:51 PM
Quote from: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 11:59:18 AM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 10:02:14 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 19, 2019, 09:45:49 AM
Offshore wind farms is where it's at, anyway.

Problem with that is the price.

Yeah, it is more expensive, but the output is higher and more constant that in land farms, so it has its advantages. Don't know where's the situation currently in terms of cost per unit of energy produced, though.

There are various sources found in the Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

For example, the US EA published a Projected LCOE in the U.S. by 2022 (as of 2016) $/MWh, which stated  for wind (onshore) was min - 43.4, max- 75.6. For wind (offshore) it was min 136.6, max 212.9.

So, lots more expensive. Though this source has been criticised for being too pessimistic about the cost of renewables.

Makes sense, as the cost of doing anything offshore is going to be high.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 02:00:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:33:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:07:17 AM
Viper, go read about the effects of climate change.  All your claims are wrong.
Nope, dandelions can be eaten, as well as raccoons ;)

Go ahead and try to get as much protein from a dandelion as you would from a salmon.  I dare you  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 03:18:55 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 02:00:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 01:33:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 09:07:17 AM
Viper, go read about the effects of climate change.  All your claims are wrong.
Nope, dandelions can be eaten, as well as raccoons ;)

Go ahead and try to get as much protein from a dandelion as you would from a salmon.  I dare you  :P
The raccoon stew is the key :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2019, 03:22:20 PM
 :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 03:58:00 PM
The whole climate situation is just an opportunity for Viper to eat racoons.  ;)

Edit: you should move to Toronto. We have lots of them here.  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 19, 2019, 07:59:58 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 19, 2019, 03:58:00 PM
Edit: you should move to Toronto. We have lots of them here.  :D
I have that in my backyard, and marmot too.  I'll have to try mixing both :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 23, 2019, 05:46:03 AM
2015-2019 is officially the warmest 5-year period since records began 150 years ago.



Meanwhile, on Twitter:

(https://i0.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PRI_86332878.jpg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 05:59:05 AM
Looks like D'Souza has learned the call everything racist trick.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 23, 2019, 08:00:36 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 23, 2019, 05:46:03 AM
Meanwhile, on Twitter:

Impressive. I have no idea who this person is nor have any clear idea what exactly he is talking about yet it still slightly made my life worse just by seeing it. Twitter is a powerful force.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: FunkMonk on September 23, 2019, 08:39:09 AM
My wife, who bikes to work most days, almost got hit by a truck that was backing up on the street because some of the major intersections in Washington DC are being blocked by climate change protestors deliberately trying to block traffic during Monday morning rush hour.

I'm totally on board with enacting good policies that address and counteract man-made climate change, but fuck these self-righteous fucktards. It is not a good idea to create unsafe traffic conditions in a city that is already 99% agreeing with you while also stranding tens of thousands of commuters, many of whom are POC just trying to get to their hourly-wage work. A couple thousand out-of-town privileged white people doing this is not a good fucking look.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 23, 2019, 08:41:41 AM
Yeah I don't think messing up people's commute once is really going to do much that is positive for the cause.

Heh though if they did that stunt in Austin the traffic is normally so shitty would we even notice?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 09:23:21 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 05:59:05 AM
Looks like D'Souza has learned the call everything racist trick.

And Funk too. What difference does it make what color the inconvenienced commuters are?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2019, 09:41:26 AM
Most recent report out yesterday makes it clear we are running out of time more rapidly than first anticipated.  The NDCs referred to in the quote are nationally determined contributions



QuoteThe emissions gap in 2030 between emission levels under full implementation of conditional NDCs and levels consistent with least-cost pathways to the 2 °C target is 13 GtCO2e. If only the unconditional NDCs are implemented, the gap increases to 15 GtCO2e. The gap in the case of the 1.5 °C target is 29 GtCO2e and 32 GtCO2e respectively. The gap numbers increased in 2018 compared with 2017, mainly as a result of the more detailed and diverse literature on 1.5 °C and 2°C pathways prepared for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C. Only minor changes to the gap numbers are expected in the 2019 report.

EG2
The current NDCs are estimated to lower global emissions in 2030 by up to 6 GtCO2e compared to a continuation of current policies. This level of ambition needs to be roughly tripled to be aligned with the 2 °C goal and increased around fivefold to align with the 1.5 °C goal.

Implementing the unconditional NDCs, and assuming that climate action continues consistently throughout the twenty-first century, would lead to a global mean temperature rise between 2.9 °C and 3.4 °C by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels, and continuing thereafter. Implementation of the conditional NDCs would reduce these estimates by 0.2 °C in 2100.

Technically, it is still possible to bridge the gap in 2030 to ensure global warming stays below 2 °C and 1.5 °C. The sectoral emission reduction potential in 2030 is estimated to be up to between 30 and 40 GtCO2e.

However, if NDC ambitions are not increased urgently and backed up by immediate action, exceeding the 1.5 °C goal can no longer be avoided. If the emissions gap is not closed by 2030, it is very plausible that the goal of a well-below 2°C temperature increase is also out of reach.

https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/united_in_science

I encourage you all to read the full report.  Tamas there is a section on agriculture that you may find interesting.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: FunkMonk on September 23, 2019, 09:50:56 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 09:23:21 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 05:59:05 AM
Looks like D'Souza has learned the call everything racist trick.

And Funk too. What difference does it make what color the inconvenienced commuters are?

#ShutdownDC #ShutdownLanguish
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 23, 2019, 10:15:25 AM
Interesting bbc item about our differing responses to climate change:

Quote
Climate change action: We can't all be Greta, but your choices have a ripple effect

Justin Rowlatt
Chief environment correspondent

Is individual action pointless in the face of climate change? Let's not beat around the bush: the simple answer has to be "yes".

Think about it: what difference does one person forgoing a lamb chop for a lentil bake, deciding to catch the bus rather than take their car, or deciding not to jet off for that autumn getaway in the Balearics make if the other 7,699,999,999 of us humans here on Earth don't do anything?

It is a dispiriting conclusion and begs an obvious question, and one that I am sure has already occurred to you: why bother?
.....

Full item here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49756280 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49756280)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: frunk on September 23, 2019, 10:25:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 23, 2019, 08:00:36 AM
Impressive. I have no idea who this person is nor have any clear idea what exactly he is talking about yet it still slightly made my life worse just by seeing it. Twitter is a powerful force.

D'Souza is quite possibly the dumbest person alive who has gotten people to pay him money to see his movies and read his books.  Also the target of one of Trump's pardons.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 23, 2019, 12:27:53 PM
I think this pattern is quite similar in lots of western countries:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFJ1WWhXUAA4YFS?format=png&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 23, 2019, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: mongers on September 23, 2019, 10:15:25 AM
Interesting bbc item about our differing responses to climate change:

Quote
Climate change action: We can't all be Greta, but your choices have a ripple effect

Justin Rowlatt
Chief environment correspondent

Is individual action pointless in the face of climate change? Let's not beat around the bush: the simple answer has to be "yes".

Think about it: what difference does one person forgoing a lamb chop for a lentil bake, deciding to catch the bus rather than take their car, or deciding not to jet off for that autumn getaway in the Balearics make if the other 7,699,999,999 of us humans here on Earth don't do anything?

It is a dispiriting conclusion and begs an obvious question, and one that I am sure has already occurred to you: why bother?
.....

Full item here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49756280 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49756280)

The BBC should know that to "beg the question" is not to pose the question, but rather to assume an answer to the question.  The question being begged here is whether people are only motivated to do the right thing because they think that their actions will be rewarded.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on September 23, 2019, 01:18:58 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 05:59:05 AM
Looks like D'Souza has learned the call everything racist trick.
:rolleyes:

You can be really tedious sometimes.  D'Souza has claiming the real racists are Democrats and always have been.  It's his Schick.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 23, 2019, 01:51:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2019, 09:41:26 AM
Most recent report out yesterday makes it clear we are running out of time more rapidly than first anticipated.  The NDCs referred to in the quote are nationally determined contributions

QuoteThe emissions gap in 2030 between emission levels under full implementation of conditional NDCs and levels consistent with least-cost pathways to the 2 °C target is 13 GtCO2e. If only the unconditional NDCs are implemented, the gap increases to 15 GtCO2e. The gap in the case of the 1.5 °C target is 29 GtCO2e and 32 GtCO2e respectively. The gap numbers increased in 2018 compared with 2017, mainly as a result of the more detailed and diverse literature on 1.5 °C and 2°C pathways prepared for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C. Only minor changes to the gap numbers are expected in the 2019 report.

EG2
The current NDCs are estimated to lower global emissions in 2030 by up to 6 GtCO2e compared to a continuation of current policies. This level of ambition needs to be roughly tripled to be aligned with the 2 °C goal and increased around fivefold to align with the 1.5 °C goal.

Implementing the unconditional NDCs, and assuming that climate action continues consistently throughout the twenty-first century, would lead to a global mean temperature rise between 2.9 °C and 3.4 °C by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels, and continuing thereafter. Implementation of the conditional NDCs would reduce these estimates by 0.2 °C in 2100.

Technically, it is still possible to bridge the gap in 2030 to ensure global warming stays below 2 °C and 1.5 °C. The sectoral emission reduction potential in 2030 is estimated to be up to between 30 and 40 GtCO2e.

However, if NDC ambitions are not increased urgently and backed up by immediate action, exceeding the 1.5 °C goal can no longer be avoided. If the emissions gap is not closed by 2030, it is very plausible that the goal of a well-below 2°C temperature increase is also out of reach.

https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/united_in_science (https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/united_in_science)

I encourage you all to read the full report.  Tamas there is a section on agriculture that you may find interesting.

China and India don't want to dismantle their coal plants, Russia has no intention of stopping oil&gaz production, and in fact, I think they welcome global warming so they can drill a little more in northern Siberia.  The US, well, let's just say they ain't moving anytime soon.

We are fucked.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:39:24 PM
Who is this Greta girl and why should people listen to her?

Serious question as I've no idea.  I just keep seeing video loops of her yelling at people today. :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 23, 2019, 03:40:40 PM
Quote from: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:39:24 PM
Who is this Greta girl and why should people listen to her?

Serious question as I've no idea.  I just keep seeing video loops of her yelling at people today. :hmm:

I don't know. Is she yelling anything we should be listening to?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2019, 03:43:28 PM
Quote from: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:39:24 PM
Who is this Greta girl and why should people listen to her?

Serious question as I've no idea.  I just keep seeing video loops of her yelling at people today. :hmm:

Because she's Swedish. I haven't followed news about her so I know nothing of what she's saying. The whole thing reminds of something though: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 23, 2019, 03:44:36 PM
Quote from: mongers on September 23, 2019, 12:27:53 PM
I think this pattern is quite similar in lots of western countries:

Some people travel a lot for work and most don't.  So what?

Interesting parallel between DC and Hong Kong.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:51:34 PM
We should listen to her because she's Swedish?  Ok Johan  :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 08:14:27 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 23, 2019, 01:18:58 PM
You can be really tedious sometimes. 

I know, I lack your stamina.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 23, 2019, 08:58:35 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pQiCew4P34

You can't accuse Greta of lacking earnestness.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Camerus on September 23, 2019, 09:11:18 PM
She seems a little mentally unstable. A sad spectacle on many levels.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Camerus on September 23, 2019, 09:19:30 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 23, 2019, 01:18:58 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 23, 2019, 05:59:05 AM
Looks like D'Souza has learned the call everything racist trick.
:rolleyes:

You can be really tedious sometimes.  D'Souza has claiming the real racists are Democrats and always have been.  It's his Schick.

Yes, he's basically a con who will try and peddle any wingnut right bullcrap if Gillette him.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 23, 2019, 11:26:10 PM
heh
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 24, 2019, 12:16:53 AM
Quote from: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:39:24 PM
Who is this Greta girl and why should people listen to her?

Serious question as I've no idea.  I just keep seeing video loops of her yelling at people today. :hmm:
Swedish asperger kid who's taken the mantle of political environmental fight.  She traveled by sail boat the UN in New York, she will be using a plane to get back, with some trees being planted to compensate.

Wether you should listen to her or not is upon you.  If you don't, it's simply because you are an horrible person.  But you already knew that.   :lol: :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 24, 2019, 12:22:45 AM
Does she really have Asbergers?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on September 24, 2019, 12:51:52 AM
Yes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 24, 2019, 01:00:36 AM
Quote from: Caliga on September 23, 2019, 03:39:24 PM
Who is this Greta girl and why should people listen to her?

Serious question as I've no idea.  I just keep seeing video loops of her yelling at people today. :hmm:

She's become one of the faces of the anti-climate change movement through he school strikes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_strike_for_climate
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 24, 2019, 01:18:31 AM
She's also been in CC's signature for the past year.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 24, 2019, 06:43:24 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.

The ability to be blunt is what makes her a good spokesperson for youth.  They have the most to lose.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 24, 2019, 07:08:38 AM
She's a 16 year old child angered by the older generations, that's us and our parents, wrecking our shared environment, why wouldn't she be outraged and upset. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 08:30:34 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.

Yeah I'm not too pleased with her parents. Scaring children witless in order to parade them in front of other adults to score a political point. The solution to climate change in this century will be patient work done by steely-eyed Brains and Valmys. More nuclear, wind and solar, carbon capture and reforestation and the problem will be dealt with. We're pretty good at tackling problems we see coming from a mile away like when the world banded together to protect the ozone layer. Switching up the entire energy sector for the species as a whole is of course trickier but is already being done. It's a big engineering challenge and so will take this century but no need to lose our marbles.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 24, 2019, 09:09:41 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 08:30:34 AM
Yeah I'm not too pleased with her parents. Scaring children witless in order to parade them in front of other adults to score a political point. The solution to climate change in this century will be patient work done by steely-eyed Brains and Valmys. More nuclear, wind and solar, carbon capture and reforestation and the problem will be dealt with. We're pretty good at tackling problems we see coming from a mile away like when the world banded together to protect the ozone layer. Switching up the entire energy sector for the species as a whole is of course trickier but is already being done. It's a big engineering challenge and so will take this century but no need to lose our marbles.

I'm not too pleased with the hyper-judgmental people who decide to blame Great's parents, rather than the evidence, for children being afraid for their future.  Claiming that concern for the future amounts to "scaring children witless in order to parade them in front of other adults to score a political point" is Trump-level intellectual dishonesty.  The rosy-glasses look at solving the world's crisis as "of course trickier but is already being done" is precisely the fatally flawed world view she is rightly criticizing.  The only position less honest than "there is no global climate change" is "there is global climate change but we are already solving the problem."  The former denies the validity of evidence; the latter admits that the evidence is valid in
problem identification but can be ignored when applied to problem-soling because using evidence to analyze the response to global climate change is too depressing to face.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 09:12:20 AM
Grumbler I have enormous sympathy for Greta herself and I hate the attacks I see on her by mental invalids on social media.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 24, 2019, 09:24:04 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 08:30:34 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.

Yeah I'm not too pleased with her parents. Scaring children witless in order to parade them in front of other adults to score a political point. The solution to climate change in this century will be patient work done by steely-eyed Brains and Valmys. More nuclear, wind and solar, carbon capture and reforestation and the problem will be dealt with. We're pretty good at tackling problems we see coming from a mile away like when the world banded together to protect the ozone layer. Switching up the entire energy sector for the species as a whole is of course trickier but is already being done. It's a big engineering challenge and so will take this century but no need to lose our marbles.

The thing is, that patient work will cost a lot of money and effort. There has to be public pressure for it to ever take off the ground.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 24, 2019, 09:42:04 AM
Quote from: Tamas on September 24, 2019, 09:24:04 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 08:30:34 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.

Yeah I'm not too pleased with her parents. Scaring children witless in order to parade them in front of other adults to score a political point. The solution to climate change in this century will be patient work done by steely-eyed Brains and Valmys. More nuclear, wind and solar, carbon capture and reforestation and the problem will be dealt with. We're pretty good at tackling problems we see coming from a mile away like when the world banded together to protect the ozone layer. Switching up the entire energy sector for the species as a whole is of course trickier but is already being done. It's a big engineering challenge and so will take this century but no need to lose our marbles.

The thing is, that patient work will cost a lot of money and effort. There has to be public pressure for it to ever take off the ground.

And patient work is almost as bad as no work.  Actually maybe worse.  Climate delayers give the false impression we have a lot of time.  We don't.  Read the most recent report I linked.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 24, 2019, 09:56:54 AM
and all that effort would amount to nothing if wee keep increasing our GHG emissions from all sources.  Carbon capture has its limit.  Nuclear is a great source of power for now, but lots of people have fears, and it won't be easy to have them accept a nuclear plant in their backyard.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 24, 2019, 10:05:06 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 24, 2019, 09:56:54 AM
and all that effort would amount to nothing if wee keep increasing our GHG emissions from all sources.  Carbon capture has its limit.  Nuclear is a great source of power for now, but lots of people have fears, and it won't be easy to have them accept a nuclear plant in their backyard.

I be;ieve that it is far too late to count on nuclear to provide anything more than a tiny fillip of power human civilization will need in the next critical thirty years or so.  It just takes too long to deploy.

The key to stopping catastrophic change will be the education of the average joes and janes in India, Burma, Zaire, etc that they need to change their plans to emulate the current first-world way of getting to the first world into a new way that is less environmentally damaging but still allows them to have hope that their children will have increased opportunity.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 24, 2019, 10:08:56 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on September 24, 2019, 08:30:34 AM
The solution to climate change in this century will be patient work ...

There won't be a solution to climate change in this century, we blew our chance for that.  It's now a matter of damage control and mitigation.

We don't lack solid science or policy options.  We do seem to lack is political will and sufficient popular pressure to generate meaningful and decisive action in the political sphere.  If Greta Thunberg is succeeding in mobilizing public opinion, I'm for that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 24, 2019, 10:20:45 AM
Let's face it, any grassroots movement has much better chances to persist if there's a public face or figure of identification to attach to. In this case Greta was the one who was at the right place at the right time (or wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it) to fall into that position.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 24, 2019, 10:24:34 AM
Personally, I think historians in 40, 50 years will look at the period 1990-2030 or so, and shake their heads how we got caught up for decades on unimportant little things instead of tackling the key topics that ensure maintaining a livable environment.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 24, 2019, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: grumbler on September 24, 2019, 10:05:06 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 24, 2019, 09:56:54 AM
and all that effort would amount to nothing if wee keep increasing our GHG emissions from all sources.  Carbon capture has its limit.  Nuclear is a great source of power for now, but lots of people have fears, and it won't be easy to have them accept a nuclear plant in their backyard.

I be;ieve that it is far too late to count on nuclear to provide anything more than a tiny fillip of power human civilization will need in the next critical thirty years or so.  It just takes too long to deploy.

The key to stopping catastrophic change will be the education of the average joes and janes in India, Burma, Zaire, etc that they need to change their plans to emulate the current first-world way of getting to the first world into a new way that is less environmentally damaging but still allows them to have hope that their children will have increased opportunity.

There is some actual good news on that score.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/experts-cautiously-welcome-pm-modis-pledge-to-double-renewable-energy-target/article29493015.ece

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-can-renewable-energy-power-the-world/

The point: renewable energy sources are increasingly inexpensive, countries such as India are indeed alert to climate change (as they will be hard hit by it), and they are doing things about it - the relative cheapness of the renewables technology is giving them the ability to actually carry out these plans. Hopefully.

While this is good, of course it is only mitigation. We will see problems. The issue is how severe they will be and whether we will actually carry out mitigation. A situation not helped by the head in the sand attitude of certain of our leaders. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
Quote from: Malthus on September 24, 2019, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: grumbler on September 24, 2019, 10:05:06 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 24, 2019, 09:56:54 AM
and all that effort would amount to nothing if wee keep increasing our GHG emissions from all sources.  Carbon capture has its limit.  Nuclear is a great source of power for now, but lots of people have fears, and it won't be easy to have them accept a nuclear plant in their backyard.

I be;ieve that it is far too late to count on nuclear to provide anything more than a tiny fillip of power human civilization will need in the next critical thirty years or so.  It just takes too long to deploy.

The key to stopping catastrophic change will be the education of the average joes and janes in India, Burma, Zaire, etc that they need to change their plans to emulate the current first-world way of getting to the first world into a new way that is less environmentally damaging but still allows them to have hope that their children will have increased opportunity.

There is some actual good news on that score.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/experts-cautiously-welcome-pm-modis-pledge-to-double-renewable-energy-target/article29493015.ece

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-can-renewable-energy-power-the-world/

The point: renewable energy sources are increasingly inexpensive, countries such as India are indeed alert to climate change (as they will be hard hit by it), and they are doing things about it - the relative cheapness of the renewables technology is giving them the ability to actually carry out these plans. Hopefully.

While this is good, of course it is only mitigation. We will see problems. The issue is how severe they will be and whether we will actually carry out mitigation. A situation not helped by the head in the sand attitude of certain of our leaders.

The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 24, 2019, 11:04:38 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.

Yep, they have been doing vital work despite what Mono would have you believe.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 24, 2019, 11:35:00 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 24, 2019, 11:04:38 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.

Yep, they have been doing vital work despite what Mono would have you believe.

At home but abroad they are building record numbers of coal electric plants
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 24, 2019, 11:54:42 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 24, 2019, 11:35:00 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 24, 2019, 11:04:38 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.

Yep, they have been doing vital work despite what Mono would have you believe.

At home but abroad they are building record numbers of coal electric plants

Both of those things are true.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 08:59:21 AM
For the don't worry everything will work out in time crowd, the IPCC report on oceans summary.  Read it and please stop suggesting we have time.

Also stop supporting politicians that are ignoring this.  Looking at you BB, since you are going to be the first of that group to vote.

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/SROCC_SPM_HeadlineStatements.pdf
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 25, 2019, 01:33:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.

They also burn half the world's coal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 25, 2019, 02:44:02 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 25, 2019, 01:33:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on September 24, 2019, 10:38:47 AM
The main investor worldwide in renewable energies in the last 5 years or so has been China.

They also burn half the world's coal.

And promote coal energy relentlessly abroad through the belt & road thingie. I didn't meant to say they were paragons of sustainability, only that they've been a huge actor in renewables lately.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:06:13 PM
China has been a big factor in why renewables are so cheap and effective now, but yeah it is not true that we should all be praising Beijing for saving the day.

The day is far from being saved.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 25, 2019, 03:18:42 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.
Yep. And I actually like that her scorn is for all the left-wing and liberal leaders who have spent many years "acting" on climate change.

She's said there's no point talking to Trump. Her message is for (and about) the Macrons and Trudeaus of the world.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:25:52 PM
I mean Macron tried to take a firm stand on that topic and had everybody putting on yellow vests. France is over 90% on using low or no emission energy. Kind of a weird target to pick out on that point.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 25, 2019, 03:18:42 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 24, 2019, 01:20:24 AM
I'm not too comfortable with the lionisation of this girl, it could well damage her badly further down the road. However, she is diagnosed as autistic and hence the lack of nuance in her approach to climate change. That is the best thing though, the lack of nuance, she is correct and unless we go all out to prevent climate change we are buggered.
Yep. And I actually like that her scorn is for all the left-wing and liberal leaders who have spent many years "acting" on climate change.

She's said there's no point talking to Trump. Her message is for (and about) the Macrons and Trudeaus of the world.

It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

But don't worry, we have recyclable drinking straws  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:33:14 PM
The drinking straws are about the plastic waste fucking shit up, not the same problem.

But we definitely failed to get the international community rallying around this issue. I am not sure what it will take.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:36:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:33:14 PM
The drinking straws are about the plastic waste fucking shit up, not the same problem.

But we definitely failed to get the international community rallying around this issue. I am not sure what it will take.

Yeah, I appreciate that. It reminds me of the unreformed catholicism of the middle ages; our pollution and climate change mitigation efforts are the 21st century equivalent of papal indulgences  :P

So far at least.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 25, 2019, 03:40:31 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:33:14 PM
The drinking straws are about the plastic waste fucking shit up, not the same problem.

But we definitely failed to get the international community rallying around this issue. I am not sure what it will take.

It's a 'tragedy of the commons' situation writ large. No nation wants to undertake the costs necessary for the common good, unless they can be sure everyone else is doing the same ... so a few bad actors have the power to wreck efforts for improvement.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:42:16 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 25, 2019, 03:40:31 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:33:14 PM
The drinking straws are about the plastic waste fucking shit up, not the same problem.

But we definitely failed to get the international community rallying around this issue. I am not sure what it will take.

It's a 'tragedy of the commons' situation writ large. No nation wants to undertake the costs necessary for the common good, unless they can be sure everyone else is doing the same ... so a few bad actors have the power to wreck efforts for improvement.

Truly.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:44:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

Yeah, close but off by a few decades, which is why governments need to act. Hence the pressure on progressive politicians.  The ones on the right are a waste of time at this point.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 25, 2019, 03:47:04 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 08:59:21 AM
For the don't worry everything will work out in time crowd, the IPCC report on oceans summary.  Read it and please stop suggesting we have time.

Also stop supporting politicians that are ignoring this.  Looking at you BB, since you are going to be the first of that group to vote.

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/SROCC_SPM_HeadlineStatements.pdf
And who is realistically promisuing to do something for the environment in this campaign?
Trudeau is saying whatever you want to hear so you'll vote for him.  Can't be trusted.
May reminds of the guy promising to levitate the deficit in the 90s so it will disapear in the atmosphere.
Singh has made clear his disdain for Quebec, even going as far as to promise federal money to Manitoba so they can compete with Quebec on the north american energy market.
Scheer's religious upbringing makes him dislikes gays, transexuals and anything not in the Bible.  But at least his energy corridor for Canada is a sensible idea, as long as it does not include only oil.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 25, 2019, 03:47:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:25:52 PM
I mean Macron tried to take a firm stand on that topic and had everybody putting on yellow vests. France is over 90% on using low or no emission energy. Kind of a weird target to pick out on that point.

Yup.  Yellow jackets should be her target audience.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:48:59 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 25, 2019, 03:47:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:25:52 PM
I mean Macron tried to take a firm stand on that topic and had everybody putting on yellow vests. France is over 90% on using low or no emission energy. Kind of a weird target to pick out on that point.

Yup.  Yellow jackets should be her target audience.

They are as well.  When she targets the "grown ups" she is not just referring to the politicians.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 25, 2019, 03:49:44 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:44:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

Yeah, close but off by a few decades, which is why governments need to act. Hence the pressure on progressive politicians.  The ones on the right are a waste of time at this point.
It's not like the left had done much except talking about it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:52:34 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 25, 2019, 03:47:04 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 08:59:21 AM
For the don't worry everything will work out in time crowd, the IPCC report on oceans summary.  Read it and please stop suggesting we have time.

Also stop supporting politicians that are ignoring this.  Looking at you BB, since you are going to be the first of that group to vote.

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/SROCC_SPM_HeadlineStatements.pdf
And who is realistically promisuing to do something for the environment in this campaign?
Trudeau is saying whatever you want to hear so you'll vote for him.  Can't be trusted.
May reminds of the guy promising to levitate the deficit in the 90s so it will disapear in the atmosphere.
Singh has made clear his disdain for Quebec, even going as far as to promise federal money to Manitoba so they can compete with Quebec on the north american energy market.
Scheer's religious upbringing makes him dislikes gays, transexuals and anything not in the Bible.  But at least his energy corridor for Canada is a sensible idea, as long as it does not include only oil.

You are correct that the Libs and Cons are hopeless on this issue.  It is one of the things that makes voting in this election difficult.  There is only one option in this election if you take the issue seriously.

May is the only one who is talking about doing the things that we need to do and can do.  Even if she accomplishes a fraction of what she promises it will be much better than the Liberals or Conservatives doing exactly what they promised.

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/mission-possible

Quote from: viper37 on September 25, 2019, 03:49:44 PM
It's not like the left had done much except talking about it.

Neither the NDP or Greens have had a chance  ;)

The Liberals held promise, which is one of the reasons I voted for them last time, but they have been a disaster.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:52:51 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:


The snowball is rolling. Which is great. Ten years ago I never would have dreamed how far we have come...and yet we are still losing.

But it surely cannot hurt to solve the CO2 thing too late. Better than not solving it at all.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:54:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:52:51 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:


The snowball is rolling. Which is great. Ten years ago I never would have dreamed how far we have come...and yet we are still losing.

But it surely cannot hurt to solve the CO2 thing too late. Better than not solving it at all.

If we solve it too late, its not going to matter all that much.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 25, 2019, 03:56:47 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:52:51 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:


The snowball is rolling.

FFS
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:56:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:54:27 PM
If we solve it too late, its not going to matter all that much.

See I am just an engineer, I don't know if that is true.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 04:05:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:56:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:54:27 PM
If we solve it too late, its not going to matter all that much.

See I am just an engineer, I don't know if that is true.

Perhaps it is a matter of grammar, when you say "too late" I read those words in terms of the IPCC report of what will happen with a high degree of certainty if we are too late.  If you read the report  tell me why fixing it too late is better than nothing. 

Your view of better late than never is part of the problem.  This is one of those times when better late than never is not going to be true.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 25, 2019, 04:16:09 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:
I saw that last weekend we had 80% low carbon energy (65% renewables; 15% nuclear) and, yes, it was a sunny blustery weekend. But it's still a big shift over the last decade.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on September 25, 2019, 04:24:09 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:46:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 25, 2019, 03:29:15 PM
It is important to remember that emissions are still going up. That, and the time lag between increased CO2 levels and the new equilibrium, mean that things are going to very bad as we move forward.

It is very frustrating because I feel like the solutions are so close. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are just taking off in a big way. If we only had a few more decades...ok a century.

I have been generally pessimistic, but i do have one optimistic hope about this. It is that the opportunities to make megabucks from green technologies are increasing; that being so it could be like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

Human greed to the rescue!  Well, just maybe  :hmm:

Indeed, that was more or less the title of an article I posted upthread, about how the relative value or renewables has increased dramatically.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 04:34:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 04:05:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:56:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:54:27 PM
If we solve it too late, its not going to matter all that much.

See I am just an engineer, I don't know if that is true.

Perhaps it is a matter of grammar, when you say "too late" I read those words in terms of the IPCC report of what will happen with a high degree of certainty if we are too late.  If you read the report  tell me why fixing it too late is better than nothing. 

Your view of better late than never is part of the problem.  This is one of those times when better late than never is not going to be true.

I am just giving myself the mental strength to carry on dude, hoping that my efforts will not totally be in vain. I am not sure what you think I am proposing here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 06:22:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 04:34:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 04:05:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 25, 2019, 03:56:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:54:27 PM
If we solve it too late, its not going to matter all that much.

See I am just an engineer, I don't know if that is true.

Perhaps it is a matter of grammar, when you say "too late" I read those words in terms of the IPCC report of what will happen with a high degree of certainty if we are too late.  If you read the report  tell me why fixing it too late is better than nothing. 

Your view of better late than never is part of the problem.  This is one of those times when better late than never is not going to be true.

I am just giving myself the mental strength to carry on dude, hoping that my efforts will not totally be in vain. I am not sure what you think I am proposing here.

I know you have good intentions but let's not give up hope just yet. :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on September 25, 2019, 10:17:17 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyULP9rk-iM
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 10:28:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 25, 2019, 10:17:17 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyULP9rk-iM

Brilliant scene but the IPCC says we have about 10 years to act still, so not as hopeless but pretty damn close.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 25, 2019, 10:35:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on September 25, 2019, 10:17:17 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyULP9rk-iM

Michael Scott was right.  <_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 25, 2019, 10:45:48 PM
The linked Mother Jones "fact check" was useless crap.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 26, 2019, 06:57:55 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 25, 2019, 04:16:09 PM
I saw that last weekend we had 80% low carbon energy (65% renewables; 15% nuclear) and, yes, it was a sunny blustery weekend. But it's still a big shift over the last decade.

Does the country import any energy?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 26, 2019, 12:15:39 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 25, 2019, 03:52:34 PM
Neither the NDP or Greens have had a chance  ;)
The NDP has held the power in some provinces.
The Parti Libéral du Québec and Parti Québécois are both centre-left parties that did nothing for the environment.

Quote
The Liberals held promise, which is one of the reasons I voted for them last time, but they have been a disaster.
Yes, everyone knew they would be a disaster.  They're the ones who voted to support Kyoto and done exactly nada to achieve its objectives, except coming up with the silly idea of a carbon tax later on.

Revenue neutral for the right meant that other taxes, like income tax, would be reduced.  Revenue neutral for the left only means all the money will be spent.

Use google translate:
"Green fund"'s money wasted (https://www.journaldequebec.com/2016/01/13/largent-du-fonds-vert-gaspilles)  ("The green Fund" (Le Fond vert)) is a government fund to sustain reliable development alternative that will reduce our ghg emissions.  It is mostly funded by a tax on gaz&fuel, but also with the carbon market we are part of)
Highlights:
GGE report for 2015 (http://www.environnement.gouv.qc.ca/changements/ges/2015/Inventaire1990-2015.pdf)
Govt papers report a small decrease of 8,8% between 1990 and 2015.

According to the latest news (nov 2018)], Quebec is on track to miss its targets. (https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/it-looks-like-greenhouse-gas-reduction-targets-are-out-of-quebecs-reach)

If you look at page 18 of the PDF document, you'll see a comparison between Quebec, Ontario, Canada, US and EU.
Noticed the dip around 2008...  Much more pronounced for Ontario and Canada than for Quebec, and we see an increase as soon as the economic recovery hits us.
While I don't have detailed figures for Canada, I see that for Quebec that industrial and municipal (waste management) sectors have consistantly decreased their emissions, compared with the transportation sector that completely went in the opposite direction.

I'm going to provide you with keyword translations from page 12:
Transportation
Road transport
Other transport
Aerial transportation
Railroad transportation
Maritime transportation
Industry
Industrial combustion
Industrial process
Fugitive emissions
Residential, commercial, institutional
Residential
Commercial and institutional
Agriculture
Enteric fermentation
Manure management
Agricultural grounds management
Liming and other carbonated fertilizers
Waste (trash)
Waste burial
Biological treatment of waste
Used waters treatment
Incineration of waste
Electricity

I'm not going to compare these numbers with every other provinces, but feel free to do it, of course.

anyway.
Road transport includes cars as well as big trucks.  Difficult to precisely determine if we drive more cars, if we drive longer, if we drive more often or if commercial road transport is stagnant or seeing an increase without other stats that I don't readily have available.
I can only provide an "eye" view of the thing: there are much, much more cars on the highway when I travel, and Quebec city is rapidly becoming a nightmare to get in and out of.  That's the net effect of having a Liberal government: no major infrastructure investments were made in the area for the last 4 years, except for finally announcing the financing of the tramway project for Quebec city last spring.

As long as greens try to fight new road developments that repair/complete existing road networks abandonment midway through construction or badly designed in the first place, we will get nowhere.  Public transit has its limits, and it's extremely difficult to extend it for interurban travels.  It's also really hard for cities to justify expenses to their core citizens so they can provide adequate services to suburbanites.  Even when they are technically part of the same city.

Jamming roads does not work.  People simply find other places to travel through, and by expanding their travel time, they increase their emissions (hell-o Plateau Mont-Royal! :) ).

When I travelled to university in 2010, road traffic delayed my trip by about 30 minutes for 3km if I arrived at 7h30 at the bridge's entrance.  Arriving before 7h15 only delayed for 15 minutes, 1km away from the bridge.

Nowadays, it's 1hr for 10km, even when there are no roadworks, and I must arrive before 7:00 if I want to be delayed by no more than 15 minutes.

The old bridge is totally rusted.  Ok, not totally, about 1/4 was repainted under the agreement made by the previous Liberal government and the Cons failed to make the CN budge on this, the court ruled against the government.  The 3/4 left is scary, and dangerous.

What is the left's solution?  Figth tooth and nails against a 3rd link on the St-Lawrence.  No word on the 6th link for Ottawa-Gatineau though...  It seems over there, it ain't a banana republic, compared to Quebec city.

Since you're not all familiar with the geography: Quebec city and Lévis are seperated by the St-Lawrence river, there are 3 lanes on the "newest" (1960s) Pierre-Laporte bridge with 3 lanes on each direction.  The old bridge (1916) has 3 lanes,  one alternating in each direction depending on traffic flows.  It belongs to the CN and has 2 tracks on it, as well as pedestrian and bike crosswalk.

The only public transit accross the river are buses.  It takes roughly 1hr to cross by bus from Lévis (downtown, near Desjardins HQ) and Université Laval.

The population of both Lévis and Quebec city has steadily increased for the last 15-20 years, while no new public transit or no new major links have been added either inside the cities themselves or accross them.

The tramway might densify Quebec city, but it offers no new means of transportation between the South and North shore of the St-Lawrence, as of now.  Nonetheless, the left finds nothing better than to complain about a new bridge that offers spaces for an eventual link between the two shores.

When I look at the Green's platform, all I see is cloud shoveling.
Take this, for example:
Respect the unionized employees of the federal public service and the bargaining process by rejecting
back-to-work legislation as a bargaining tool.

What that means is, unions will now be free to make outrageous demands and go on strike, using money from non public sector to pay for the strike fund of public employees.  We will see the return of endless strikes and disruption of public services for which we have no alternatives.

End offshore tax dodging by taxing funds hidden in offshore havens and requiring companies to prove that
their foreign affiliates are actual functioning businesses for tax purposes. Provide adequate funding to
GREEN PARTY OF CANADA 2019 33
the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to collect tax revenue hiding in offshore tax havens. Several Auditors
General have recommended that the CRA should focus on people who hide vast wealth, rather than
conduct random audits of ordinary Canadians.

See, that's the Liberal's approach.  And that proved to be wholly inneffective.  What you need to do is do as Harper did: create small, specialized teams, that go after the offenders and establish the level of proof required to nail them.  Otherwise, you are just adding bureaucracy and allowing another set of loophole by big corporations.

Impose a financial transactions tax of 0.2 per cent in the finance sector as France has done since 2012.
That didn't do much for France...

Eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies, including payments and tax write-offs
See, I'm all for that.  But the very capitalist Alberta will be totally against it.

Increase the federal corporate tax rate from 15 to 21 per cent to bring it into line with the federal rate in
the United States, our biggest trading partner.

See, that's wishful thinking and a total misunderstanding of our differing tax codes.
corporations based in the US have a much lower taxable benefit than our corporations.  And that is just one country.

Prohibit Canadian businesses from deducting the cost of advertising on foreign-owned sites such as
Google and Facebook which now account for 80 per cent of all spending on advertising Canada

Way to cripple our corporations.  It's not like American companies never spent here in advertising.

Eliminate the 50 per cent corporate meals and entertainment expense deduction, which includes season
tickets and private boxes at sporting events.

Yeah.  And then you'll see lots of small charitable and community events just die off from lack of funding.

Revamp national trade policy to align with national and international climate change plans. This includes
reducing the distances over which food is shipped by increasing domestic and local food production

I can't wait for my made-in-Quebec oranges and bananas! :)

Renegotiate Canada's trade and investment agreements to remove the Investor State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) provisions that give foreign corporations extraordinary powers to challenge the
laws and policies of democratically elected governments, and include binding labour, health, safety
and environmental standards.

Pandering to the left, again.  That is only used to challenge laws that give unfair advantage to a local company over a foreign one.  Instead, they raise the scarecrow that foreign entities can challenge our public schools, kindergardens, hospitals, ets to force privatize everything. I've been hearing that since the first FTA with the US.


Ensure professionals being considered for immigration have the licensing requirements for their
professions clearly explained before entry.
• Work with professional associations to create a robust system for evaluating the education and training
credentials of immigrants against Canadian standards, with the goal of expediting accreditation and
expanding professional opportunities for immigrants.

Basically, it's the "racists" policies of Quebec and of the last Federal campaign, as proposed by the Conservatives, but slightly better worded.

Enough clouds for now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 26, 2019, 03:58:10 PM
Quote from: Tamas on September 26, 2019, 06:57:55 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 25, 2019, 04:16:09 PM
I saw that last weekend we had 80% low carbon energy (65% renewables; 15% nuclear) and, yes, it was a sunny blustery weekend. But it's still a big shift over the last decade.

Does the country import any energy?
We import just under 10% of our electricity. I think the government policy is to try to get that up to 20% as we build more cables linking us to the Netherlands, Norway, France etc.

Energy overall I think about 35%, overwhelmingly oil and gas.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on September 27, 2019, 09:19:26 PM
Well, that was a Giant climate strike.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 28, 2019, 12:18:45 PM
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49838650

Quote'Alarming' extinction threat to Europe's trees

The conker tree has been put on the official extinction list.

Ravaged by moths and disease, the horse chestnut is now classified as vulnerable to extinction.

The tree is among more than 400 native European tree species assessed for their risk of extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

About half face disappearing from the natural landscape.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List unit, described the findings as "alarming".

"Trees are essential for life on Earth, and European trees in all their diversity are a source of food and shelter for countless animal species such as birds and squirrels, and play a key economic role," he said.

The conservation status of most animals in Europe has already been assessed for the inventory of endangered species known as the Red List.

Experts are now turning their attention to plants, with an assessment of all 454 tree species native to the continent.

The report found:

- 42% are threatened with extinction (assessed as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered)
- Among endemic trees - those that don't exist anywhere else on Earth - 58% are threatened.

Species highlighted include the horse chestnut, which is declining across Europe, and most of almost 200 trees in the family that includes the rowan and mountain ash.

The report identified a wide range of threats, including pests and diseases, competition from invasive plants, deforestation, unsustainable logging, changes in land use and forest fires.

Dr Steven Bachman, conservation scientist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who was not part of the report, said trees played a critical role in sustaining and enhancing our lives.

"This report fills an important knowledge gap on the threat status of European trees, but the results reveal a disturbingly high level of extinction risk that requires urgent and effective conservation action at all levels."

A second report found almost half of all Europe's shrub species are threatened with extinction, due to the loss and destruction of Europe's wild areas, as well as agriculture, invasive species and climate change.

Luc Bas, director of IUCN's European regional office, said human activities were causing tree population declines across Europe.

"This report has shown how dire the situation is for many overlooked, undervalued species that form the backbone of Europe's ecosystems and contribute to a healthy planet."

Recommendations included further research into the impact of climate change.

Mike Seddon, chief executive of Forestry England said the "climate crisis" was a real threat to woodlands, including the nation's forest they manage, increasing the risk from pests and diseases.

"Our efforts to have resilient forests include planting a greater variety of trees, including native species, only grown in the UK," he said.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 29, 2019, 12:17:39 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on September 27, 2019, 09:19:26 PM
Well, that was a Giant climate strike.
India and China were really impressed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on October 01, 2019, 07:18:53 AM
I don't know why they would care to look?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 01, 2019, 01:48:46 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 01, 2019, 07:18:53 AM
I don't know why they would care to look?
They're the worst polluters of the lot, most countries where the march occured actually had their emissions go down while these two increased by much more than what went down elsewhere.
As long as they refuse to move, we are kinda fucked.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 01, 2019, 03:16:12 PM
China's moving quite significantly. In part the economy's developing, in part the pollution was really really bad and causing unhappiness/unrest.

India is nowhere near China's level yet. The real risk is if India grows in the same way, using the same methods as China in which case we probably are just fucked. It's that extraordinary fact that half the carbon emitted since the industrial age started has been emitted in the last 30 years. That's not all China's industrialisation, but it is a significant chunk.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 06:28:27 AM
If I were some business heavily interested in inaction on climate change, I would strongly consider funding these morons:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/extinction-rebellion-protesters-spray-fake-blood-treasury-london


Such a great idea. They thought since they are for radical change to combat climate change, they should take some paint, contaminate a fire-truck worth of water with it, drive an effin' firetruck to the middle of London, and then just spray their shit all over.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 03, 2019, 06:37:41 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 06:28:27 AM
If I were some business heavily interested in inaction on climate change, I would strongly consider funding these morons:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/extinction-rebellion-protesters-spray-fake-blood-treasury-london


Such a great idea. They thought since they are for radical change to combat climate change, they should take some paint, contaminate a fire-truck worth of water with it, drive an effin' firetruck to the middle of London, and then just spray their shit all over.

An organic liquid containing beetroot is a contaminate?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 07:18:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 03, 2019, 06:37:41 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 06:28:27 AM
If I were some business heavily interested in inaction on climate change, I would strongly consider funding these morons:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/extinction-rebellion-protesters-spray-fake-blood-treasury-london


Such a great idea. They thought since they are for radical change to combat climate change, they should take some paint, contaminate a fire-truck worth of water with it, drive an effin' firetruck to the middle of London, and then just spray their shit all over.

An organic liquid containing beetroot is a contaminate?

Pretty high tech fire truck as well, if it goes on beetroot juice.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 03, 2019, 07:42:19 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 07:18:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 03, 2019, 06:37:41 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 06:28:27 AM
If I were some business heavily interested in inaction on climate change, I would strongly consider funding these morons:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/extinction-rebellion-protesters-spray-fake-blood-treasury-london


Such a great idea. They thought since they are for radical change to combat climate change, they should take some paint, contaminate a fire-truck worth of water with it, drive an effin' firetruck to the middle of London, and then just spray their shit all over.

An organic liquid containing beetroot is a contaminate?

Pretty high tech fire truck as well, if it goes on beetroot juice.

So really it was the driving a firetruck that got you, not the spraying of paint, which they didn't actually do? ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 07:56:02 AM
The whole nice bundle if idiotic hypocrisy that got me, really.

It's like how they chose a bloody sailboat as their mascot for their previous demos. I mean, how ELSE are you going to drag that into the middle of London than by burning a lot of fossil fuels? And then you proceed to demand people make sacrifices, when you can't even sacrifice your desperate need for attention to reduce emissions. Ridiculous.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on October 03, 2019, 08:13:51 AM
Please don't omit the slapstick next time,

QuoteFour Extinction Rebellion activists have been arrested after spraying fake blood at the Treasury in Westminster from the top of a fire engine.

(...)

They splattered the main HM Treasury building on Horseguards Road for several seconds until they lost control of the hose, drenching a bystander (me) as 1,800 litres of an organic liquid containing beetroot came out of the vehicle.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 03, 2019, 09:59:17 AM
Such a waste of beets. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 03, 2019, 10:20:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 03, 2019, 09:59:17 AM
Such a waste of beets. :(

The true source of Tamas' anger  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 10:35:52 AM
 :lol: Screw you guys
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on October 03, 2019, 10:39:30 AM
Well played lads.  :lol: :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 04, 2019, 03:38:14 PM
It doesn't really fit this thread but couldn't think a better one. The Guardian goes full The Guardian:

Quote"Live from the royal courts of justice," Extinction Rebellion London wrote. "It has been announced that all protesters arrested during the April rebellion will be prosecuted. We are asking the police and legal system to concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not non-violent protesters who are trying to save our planet."

For those with ears tuned to hear it, the dogwhistle sounded clear. Stop bothering us non-violent protesters; focus instead on those frightening inner-city neighbourhoods, where black children carry knives.

Advertisement

"It was feeding into a racist narrative," says Guppi Bola, an activist with the Wretched of the Earth, an environmental group that focuses on black, brown and indigenous voices. "When those kinds of things come up, then of course you are not going to feel welcome."
....

But from the start XR has faced questions over its ability to reach out to diverse communities. Some critics go further, suggesting its tactics, its framing of key issues and a series of communications missteps show a carelessness around issues of race – or even institutional racism.

:bleeding:

Article in its full glory:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/04/extinction-rebellion-race-climate-crisis-inequality
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 03:41:06 PM
The progressives, shooting themselves in the foot since 43AD.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 04, 2019, 03:42:02 PM
Knifing themselves in the foot rather.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 03:45:21 PM
A ballista was used.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 04, 2019, 04:35:16 PM
:lol: I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on October 04, 2019, 04:51:52 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 03, 2019, 07:56:02 AM

It's like how they chose a bloody sailboat as their mascot for their previous demos. I mean, how ELSE are you going to drag that into the middle of London than by burning a lot of fossil fuels?

Bring back slavery and take the whip to a couple hundred people? 

Or, since the Brits love inserting extra vowels, should that be "houndread"?


:)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 04, 2019, 06:02:01 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 04, 2019, 03:38:14 PM
It doesn't really fit this thread but couldn't think a better one. The Guardian goes full The Guardian:

Quote"Live from the royal courts of justice," Extinction Rebellion London wrote. "It has been announced that all protesters arrested during the April rebellion will be prosecuted. We are asking the police and legal system to concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not non-violent protesters who are trying to save our planet."

For those with ears tuned to hear it, the dogwhistle sounded clear. Stop bothering us non-violent protesters; focus instead on those frightening inner-city neighbourhoods, where black children carry knives.

Advertisement

"It was feeding into a racist narrative," says Guppi Bola, an activist with the Wretched of the Earth, an environmental group that focuses on black, brown and indigenous voices. "When those kinds of things come up, then of course you are not going to feel welcome."
....

But from the start XR has faced questions over its ability to reach out to diverse communities. Some critics go further, suggesting its tactics, its framing of key issues and a series of communications missteps show a carelessness around issues of race – or even institutional racism.

:bleeding:

Article in its full glory:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/04/extinction-rebellion-race-climate-crisis-inequality

Nothing to see hear, there is not problem with identity politics on the left. Move along.
Title: save -e
Post by: mongers on October 04, 2019, 07:44:43 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Yes, I like a quite a lot of what he has to say.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 08:22:38 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 04, 2019, 04:35:16 PM
:lol: I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

I think there is potential here for a mistake to be made. It is pretty obvious that XR protests do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the capital. But, on the other hand, it is the capital for all of the UK so protests in general might seem to be "too white" simply because of concerned citizens bussing themselves in from the parts of the country that are still overwhelmingly white.

My first instinct is to suspect that, like you said, a lot of worthy protests are bourgeois. So perhaps we should be asking why so few ethnic minority folk have found it possible to join this social category.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 04, 2019, 08:29:46 PM
Too busy working
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 04, 2019, 09:36:25 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 04, 2019, 04:35:16 PM
:lol: I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

But they are wrong, since they are claiming much more than that protests are predominately white.


edit: And actually, that is only the first thing, and not the most important thing, that they are wrong about.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 05, 2019, 01:39:59 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.


Agreed
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 05, 2019, 01:52:39 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Executive summary?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 05, 2019, 02:32:28 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 08:22:38 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 04, 2019, 04:35:16 PM
:lol: I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

I think there is potential here for a mistake to be made. It is pretty obvious that XR protests do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the capital. But, on the other hand, it is the capital for all of the UK so protests in general might seem to be "too white" simply because of concerned citizens bussing themselves in from the parts of the country that are still overwhelmingly white.

My first instinct is to suspect that, like you said, a lot of worthy protests are bourgeois. So perhaps we should be asking why so few ethnic minority folk have found it possible to join this social category.

White upper class kids have a lot less to fear from police.  Why would a minority kid give the police a reason to arrest him?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 05, 2019, 03:07:54 AM
I was under the impression that a lot of the XR people were quite old; getting arrested is not such a big deal once one's career is over. On that basis one of my nieces will be participating in their protests; she subsists on small earnings from freelance writing, it really doesn't matter if she gets arrested. Clearly that would be a no-go area for people like civil servants or accountants.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 05, 2019, 05:19:28 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 05, 2019, 02:32:28 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 08:22:38 PM
Why would a minority kid give the police a reason to arrest him?

Same reason as the white kid, because they believe in the cause.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 05, 2019, 07:46:16 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 05, 2019, 03:07:54 AM
I was under the impression that a lot of the XR people were quite old; getting arrested is not such a big deal once one's career is over. On that basis one of my nieces will be participating in their protests; she subsists on small earnings from freelance writing, it really doesn't matter if she gets arrested. Clearly that would be a no-go area for people like civil servants or accountants.
There are lots of older people at them, but the core is a but like UK Uncut. They are very young and painfully naive about the police.

There was one of the leaders of their attempts Gatwick who did a video about how the police basically said he should come in for a chat which would be the painless way to help, or they would do it the difficult way and arrest him.

He turns up at the police station and is stood waiting for his lawyer. Police come out and say, you know, why don't you just come in - you can wait for your lawyer inside.

Second he steps in the door they arrest him and take his phone (and watch him enter the code to lock it).

Environmentalists, of all movements, should be pretty cynical of the police and yet here we are.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 05, 2019, 07:56:00 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 08:22:38 PM
I think there is potential here for a mistake to be made. It is pretty obvious that XR protests do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the capital. But, on the other hand, it is the capital for all of the UK so protests in general might seem to be "too white" simply because of concerned citizens bussing themselves in from the parts of the country that are still overwhelmingly white.

My first instinct is to suspect that, like you said, a lot of worthy protests are bourgeois. So perhaps we should be asking why so few ethnic minority folk have found it possible to join this social category.
Sure and I get the Zephaniah point. Though I also think there's a point about class.

But I don't think it's crazy to say that Green politics in general - whether it's protests or the party - is a very middle class, well-heeled, white section of society. And it may be that the message doesn't resonate or the style which is probably worth considering because if they want change they need to build a broader coalition than a younger version of the middle class, well-heeled white folks who've made up the Green movement for the last fifty years.

And I think you can draw a contrast with Greta's approach which is getting far broader involvement and support.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 05, 2019, 08:00:47 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 04, 2019, 06:02:01 PM
Nothing to see hear, there is not problem with identity politics on the left. Move along.
I think it's way overblown. I mean I've always thought all politics at heart is identitiy politics.

Absurd fratricidal divisions on the left among different groupuscules has been a joke in the West for decades. It used to be six people in a flat in Cambridge arguing over the correct definition of a "vanguard party", now it's about identity, experience and history. I don't see a wild difference between this stuff and the world of the left in the 80s that John O'Farrell describes in Things Can Only Get Better.

Some of the ideas will survive and others will be rather odd details.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 05, 2019, 08:59:02 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 05, 2019, 01:52:39 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Executive summary?

If minorities are bitching about being left out, they should show up. Nobody is stopping them.

Also, the fact that a bunch of white people are protesting in a manner that aligns with their culture should come as no surprise. If they all showed up to a protest with dreadlocks we would bitch about cultural appropriation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 05, 2019, 09:29:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 05, 2019, 08:59:02 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 05, 2019, 01:52:39 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 04, 2019, 04:40:09 PM
I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Executive summary?

If minorities are bitching about being left out, they should show up. Nobody is stopping them.

Also, the fact that a bunch of white people are protesting in a manner that aligns with their culture should come as no surprise. If they all showed up to a protest with dreadlocks we would bitch about cultural appropriation.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 05, 2019, 01:23:49 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 05, 2019, 08:00:47 AM
I think it's way overblown. I mean I've always thought all politics at heart is identitiy politics.

Sure. In the same sense that everything is political. But blatant propaganda and virulent exclusionary nationalist shit are still bad, Trying to excuse it by claiming everything else is also tainted is not convincing to me. Sure there might be no platonically pure things out there, but so what?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 05, 2019, 01:33:51 PM
QuoteBut I don't think it's crazy to say that Green politics in general - whether it's protests or the party - is a very middle class, well-heeled, white section of society.

But there's a very simple answer to that I think. Being environment-conscious is the more expensive option both in terms of time and money, something the lower classes will have less of. And that's just about adopting your lifestyle choices, let alone spending even more time and money on protesting etc.


The fact that the middle class is largely white thus means that the environmental movement will largely be white.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 05, 2019, 01:54:40 PM
That does not mean caring about the environment is a form of white nationalist racism though. Since that seems to be a claim for some reason.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 05, 2019, 02:38:17 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 05, 2019, 01:33:51 PM
But there's a very simple answer to that I think. Being environment-conscious is the more expensive option both in terms of time and money, something the lower classes will have less of. And that's just about adopting your lifestyle choices, let alone spending even more time and money on protesting etc.

The fact that the middle class is largely white thus means that the environmental movement will largely be white.
I think that's part of it, there's also cultural factors going on. And with the more hardline environmental movement when you want zero or minus growth, or to severely reduce access to heavy polluters like airlines, all of that is an easier burden if you've got or are inheriting a nice house in Richmond.

For a long time green politics was home for people, middle class people, to be political without any risk of power. So it could be a place of purity and worthiness - see the Brighton Green Council experience where they won power and immediately collapsed into conflict between the mangoes (greens on the outside lib-dems on the inside) and watermelons (greens on the outside hard-left on the inside).

I think that's shifting all over Europe, especially Germany. But, and I know several people who are involved in XR and Green politics (currently big debate is whether you should abolish the military or decarbonise the military), it does still live on a little bit. And if environmentalist movements are to succeed they need to build a coaltion and engage with people who can't afford a Riverford box.

QuoteThat does not mean caring about the environment is a form of white nationalist racism though. Since that seems to be a claim for some reason.
Not in this case, which is more about their strategy of getting arrested which works more if you're in a position or background is that you'll probably have access to a lawyer and, honestly, more sympathy from a judge.

Though separately there's been an online eco-fascist movement percolating for a while and I think of sort-of "left-wing" movements environmentalism is particularly at risk from the far-right.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 05, 2019, 04:19:25 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 05, 2019, 01:33:51 PM
QuoteBut I don't think it's crazy to say that Green politics in general - whether it's protests or the party - is a very middle class, well-heeled, white section of society.

But there's a very simple answer to that I think. Being environment-conscious is the more expensive option both in terms of time and money, something the lower classes will have less of. And that's just about adopting your lifestyle choices, let alone spending even more time and money on protesting etc.


The fact that the middle class is largely white thus means that the environmental movement will largely be white.

It is?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 05, 2019, 04:28:27 PM
Takes you longer to bike to the next village than to drive.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 05, 2019, 04:51:21 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 05, 2019, 04:28:27 PM
Takes you longer to bike to the next village than to drive.

Does it?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 05, 2019, 05:25:02 PM
Generally.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 07, 2019, 12:28:21 AM
https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-waters-down-climate-bill-report/a-50719441

QuoteGerman government waters down climate bill — report

German government is preparing a law to fight climate change, but many of its elements have now been cut or scaled back, the Spiegel magazine has reported. The news comes ahead of an Extinction Rebellion rally.

The final draft of the new climate protection law, set to be adopted by Germany's government this week, has been significantly watered down from earlier proposals, Spiegel magazine reported.

German officials have cut the goal to limit national CO2 emission by 2040, according to the Sunday report. Also, the latest version of the bill drops the pledge that Germany would reach greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050. Instead, it only says this goal should be "pursued."

Another change considers the national climate council, the body of experts appointed by the government. The final draft removes the demand for the council to produce a yearly evaluation report. Also, the experts would no longer be required to provide advice to ministries on adjusting their CO2 rate to keep them on track
.

However, the bill keeps the goal for Germany to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2030 to a level corresponding to 55% percent of what the nation's output was in 1990.

Conservatives opposed

The partners in Germany's ruling coalition, Angela Merkel's conservative bloc and the center-left SPD, debated on a new climate protection bill in March. The proposals circulated at the time envisioned a much deeper change than the law's current iteration seen by Spiegel. Even so, climate activists and political opponents slammed the original draft as insufficient.

The conservative bloc has since pushed for the law to be scaled back
, according to sources inside the ruling coalition cited by the magazine.

Several lawmakers slammed the changes after Spiegel published its report on Sunday evening. Senior SPD representative Karl Lauterbach warned against standing "on the wrong side of history."

"If the climate protection package gets even more weakened by the conservatives, it will be just a paper tiger," he said.

Read more: Extinction Rebellion: How far can the protests go?

'Incredible!'

Britta Hasselmann, from the opposition Green party, described the move as a "declaration of bankruptcy."

"Incredible!" she wrote on Twitter, noting that even the original proposal would not be able to deliver on the goals set by the Paris climate accords. "It would seem that the government is lagging behind even that — it can't get any worse," she added.

The timing of the report could prove to be particularly harmful for the ruling coalition. On Monday, the global Extinction Rebellion movement is staging worldwide protests to protect the climate. The activists are expected to protest the limitation of the upcoming climate law in Berlin. Protesters have already set up camp in front of Angela Merkel's office and were reportedly preparing to block the streets.


TL;DR: German government, in long sessions agreed to a climate protection plan that was considered to either be insufficient or the bare minimum. This plan has now been further watered down.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 07, 2019, 01:46:30 AM
A sad states of affairs. It will be up to the courts to protect people against themselves.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 10, 2019, 12:20:39 PM
EDF just announced another 1.5 billion euro of overruns at its Flammanville project.  That would take costs to 14.4 billions (against 3.3 billion budgeted); the project is currently 3 years behind schedule.

Other EPR projects have suffered similar problems.  An EPR project in Finland is over a decade past schedule and closing in on triple cost overruns.  Hinckley Point is not quite as bad (yet) but also has been delayed and is likely to come in well above estimated cost.

This isn't just an EDF/EPR issue as Westinghouse's troubles with its AP1000 were so bad it forced the company into bankruptcy, rather than take responsibility for the billions in cost overruns it was sustaining on its US projects.

I'm just not seeing crash nuclear construction program as a feasible quick solution to climate change problems.  One of the problems for Westinghouse was finding experienced and reliable contractors to build plant components and due the on-site construction work.  That's a significant bottleneck that would hamstring any attempt at rapid increases in construction pace.

Given the costs, you have to ask what the payoff would be from investing that kind of money into battery development and storage infrastructure.  Solar has its issues but construction is laughably easy compared to nuclear.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 10, 2019, 12:43:27 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 10, 2019, 12:20:39 PM
EDF just announced another 1.5 billion euro of overruns at its Flammanville project.  That would take costs to 14.4 billions (against 3.3 billion budgeted); the project is currently 3 years behind schedule.

Other EPR projects have suffered similar problems.  An EPR project in Finland is over a decade past schedule and closing in on triple cost overruns.  Hinckley Point is not quite as bad (yet) but also has been delayed and is likely to come in well above estimated cost.

This isn't just an EDF/EPR issue as Westinghouse's troubles with its AP1000 were so bad it forced the company into bankruptcy, rather than take responsibility for the billions in cost overruns it was sustaining on its US projects.

I'm just not seeing crash nuclear construction program as a feasible quick solution to climate change problems.  One of the problems for Westinghouse was finding experienced and reliable contractors to build plant components and due the on-site construction work.  That's a significant bottleneck that would hamstring any attempt at rapid increases in construction pace.

Given the costs, you have to ask what the payoff would be from investing that kind of money into battery development and storage infrastructure.  Solar has its issues but construction is laughably easy compared to nuclear.

I'm pinning my hopes on solar and wind. The cost per output is ever decreasing, it is easy to expand, and there is allegedly evidence that base load issues aren't as big a problem as had been thought.

The major problem with nuclear has always been the upfront financial gamble is so vast and so subject to regulatory interference, and ever-cheaper wind and solar threaten to make that gamble even worse in the future. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 10, 2019, 12:47:03 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 10, 2019, 12:20:39 PM
EDF just announced another 1.5 billion euro of overruns at its Flammanville project.  That would take costs to 14.4 billions (against 3.3 billion budgeted); the project is currently 3 years behind schedule.

Other EPR projects have suffered similar problems.  An EPR project in Finland is over a decade past schedule and closing in on triple cost overruns.  Hinckley Point is not quite as bad (yet) but also has been delayed and is likely to come in well above estimated cost.

This isn't just an EDF/EPR issue as Westinghouse's troubles with its AP1000 were so bad it forced the company into bankruptcy, rather than take responsibility for the billions in cost overruns it was sustaining on its US projects.

I'm just not seeing crash nuclear construction program as a feasible quick solution to climate change problems.  One of the problems for Westinghouse was finding experienced and reliable contractors to build plant components and due the on-site construction work.  That's a significant bottleneck that would hamstring any attempt at rapid increases in construction pace.

Given the costs, you have to ask what the payoff would be from investing that kind of money into battery development and storage infrastructure.  Solar has its issues but construction is laughably easy compared to nuclear.

We have done crash expansion of nuclear before so we know it's physically possible. But we also know that you will never have to worry since it's politically impossible.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 10, 2019, 01:45:41 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts6vzuPDOwo

Extinction Rebellion shuts down London City Airport.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on October 10, 2019, 03:36:33 PM
It seems to me that arguments relating to the excessive cost of expanding nuclear power is similar to argument about the costs of the death penalty.  In both cases, those costs are only of our own making...in terms of regulation/safeguards...but the potential costs of doing without those is pretty terrible.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 10, 2019, 04:00:40 PM
Westinghouse's problems were not principally related to regulatory burden.  They did screw up some paperwork but that was an avoidable corporate screw up.  The bigger problem was that they committed a pre-fab design that was cost-effective on paper but in practice they couldn't find enough reliable suppliers to make the pre-fab components at a reasonable cost or on a reasonable schedule.  They also decided to streamline by acting as the general contractor on the US jobs and vastly underestimated what was entailed in doing that job. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 10, 2019, 04:03:13 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 10, 2019, 03:36:33 PM
It seems to me that arguments relating to the excessive cost of expanding nuclear power is similar to argument about the costs of the death penalty.  In both cases, those costs are only of our own making...in terms of regulation/safeguards...but the potential costs of doing without those is pretty terrible.

Regulatory costs are part of it. They are not the whole of it, though. Nor is the design problems Westinghouse experienced the whole problem either.

The problem also exists inherent in the nature of nuclear power.

Assume for the moment that regulatory costs were not a factor and the design is doable. The issue then becomes - you have to front nearly the whole of the cost of making nuclear power. This is because by far the greatest cost is making the plant itself. The fuel is a minor expense besides the enormous cost of building the plant.

This means that you have to put the money up first, then recoup that investment by selling power over the expected life of the plant. Assume the plant will last 30 years, at the end of which time it will be decommissioned. The cost of the power over each one of those 30 years must be high enough to cover the (huge) cost of building the plant, maintaining it for 30 years, and the (huge) cost of decommissioning it after 30 years - and make a profit on top.

This is great as long as you can charge enough for the power. However, if other forms of power are cheaper, the plant can start to feel like a big white elephant -  you are now locked in to selling its power at a fixed rate to make back your upfront investment and costs (like decommissioning) you can't get out of.

Of course, every other form of power has costs as well.  The difference is that new forms of power (solar, wind, geo) are rapidly becoming much cheaper, and each unit is much smaller and easier to replace than a conventional nuke plant. Moreover, even in the nuclear field, new kinds of plants that are much smaller than the traditional ones are becoming more feasible. Your 30-year investment in one type of tech selling power at a fixed price only works out if other forms of power don't come in cheaper - and all signs point to them doing just that.

In short, conventional nuclear is inherently financially risky.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 10, 2019, 04:42:44 PM
In comparison, solar is very easy to build. You need panels (which are now mass produced in the usual places), a bunch of posts to mount them on, some inverters, electrical cabling. Don't need to worry much about water, waste removal/treatment, ventilation, piping and all the crap that comes with big fossil fuel or nuke plants.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 10, 2019, 05:26:24 PM
Yeah. Batteries are very key to making renewables work.

But also the off-grid renewable energy emerging in Africa is very interesting. It's possibly developing an energy network in an entirely different way than any other part of the world and skipping steps in between, a bit like the mobile network.

It is part of what I like about the Green New Deal as a rhetorical device is I think we do just need to absolute throw money at research on this - on everything - in the way that the New Deal did. Something will work and even the stuff that doesn't will do something, like the biotech boom after the War on Cancer. I think the old rhetoric wouldstill  be a War on Carbon or Climate Change, but war as a rhetorical device is a little bit discredited.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 10, 2019, 05:32:27 PM
If the Green New Deal were just that, it would get a lot of support, and be hard to argue against.

If only.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 10, 2019, 05:36:40 PM
Sure, but I think it's a useful rhetorical device and the plan doesn't matter. I think it needs a mindset shift of being willing to spend a proportion of GDP that is like a war, a new deal, a moonshot or whatever.

The plan is secondary to that mindshift because I think cost/benefit analysis is probably not enough and not going to deliver results.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 10, 2019, 06:04:10 PM
A war in which most of the military spending goes to school debt forgiveness and guaranteed public employment.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on October 10, 2019, 07:00:04 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 10, 2019, 06:04:10 PM
A war in which most of the military spending goes to school debt forgiveness and guaranteed public employment.

What a terrible idea indeed.  :huh:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 10, 2019, 07:03:47 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on October 10, 2019, 07:00:04 PM
What a terrible idea indeed.  :huh:

It's a great idea if you don't give a fuck about winning the war.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 10, 2019, 08:33:25 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 10, 2019, 05:36:40 PM
Sure, but I think it's a useful rhetorical device and the plan doesn't matter. I think it needs a mindset shift of being willing to spend a proportion of GDP that is like a war, a new deal, a moonshot or whatever.

It is a terrible rhetorical device because it plays into the climate deniers basic claim that the entire thing is just a silly way for socialists to disguise their agenda to make us all into Socialists by exaggerating climate change.

Turning around and putting together a "rhetorical" plan to address climate change that mostly seems to involve a lot of very strictly socialist programs, seems like a poor way to win that rhetorical battle.

It makes people like me, who is anything BUT a climate denier, and who thinks we should absolutely be spending on this problem as if it was an existential war (because it is) pretty skeptical that those promoting the Green New Deal actually care much at all about climate change, and really care about socialism and social justice, and the climate crisis is just a handy tool to push that agenda.

So great, I get to choose between one side that pretends it doesn't exist, and another side that says it does exist, and is a excellent reason to give everyone health care, college, and reparations.

Money spent in a manner that cannot solve the problem is, I think, actually worse than money not spent at all to solve the problem. Either way, we still have the problem.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 12, 2019, 07:43:39 PM
As I say the details don't matter and won't get passed - from what I've read the plan is fairly incoherent, but actually quite an impressive political document.

What matters is it's the first attempt I can think of, from a political leader, of moving the debate on climate change from cost/benefit tinkering to: new deal, war on x, moonshot territory.

The other thing is you see this as a problem because it empowers climate change deniers. I think it's the opposite. I think this is the consequence of climate change denial. If the conservative right's entire response to climate change is trolling Greta Thurnberg and laughing at XR protesters in MacDonalds then they are ceding the entire debate to the left. Every solution will be a left-wing solution, because they're the only ones talking about the issue. If the most far right-wing person who cares about or is interested in this at all is, say, Joe Biden, then the solutions proposed will be left-wing.

I think that'll be a problem for conservatives shortly if they don't start engaging. If you're not acknowledging a big issue exists you're kneecapped when it comes to trying to solve it.

We don't have climate change deniers really in the UK mainstream, but there are more sceptical voices. But I do think Gove's time as Environment Secretary was interesting because he pushed climate change environmentalism with traditional conservationism. And I think there's a fairly strong right-wing potential version of environmentalism that emphasises reducing immigration, returning to traditional values, valorisation of the countryside over the urban. A sort of hard-edged Prince Charles - and those trends do feed into the far-right environmentalism.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 12, 2019, 08:23:57 PM
How is laughing at XRs removing oneself from the debate?  They're goofs.  It will probably piss off XR types, but that's their problem.

You keep talking about New Deal, war, moonshot, but no one had to be bought off to support those things.  The need to buy off interest groups undercuts the entire point you've been trying to make, that climate change is being elevated to a sacred mission.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 09:57:57 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 12, 2019, 08:23:57 PM
How is laughing at XRs removing oneself from the debate?  They're goofs.  It will probably piss off XR types, but that's their problem.
If that's the extent of what you're doing. As I say there are exceptions like Michael Gove. But if your entire response to climate change is to deny it or spend your time trolling a protester I don't think you get to act surprised or shocked

QuoteYou keep talking about New Deal, war, moonshot, but no one had to be bought off to support those things.  The need to buy off interest groups undercuts the entire point you've been trying to make, that climate change is being elevated to a sacred mission.
What do you mean by interest groups?

It's not about a sacred mission it's simply that if you believe the risk and the impact we're having, then I don't think climate change can be treated like other pollution or obesity or maybe even climate change 30 years ago. It's probably not enough to treat it as a purely economic issue if it is existential, it's like trying to beat the Nazis with a fascism tax. I think if we'd been putting those taxes and incentives in place 30 years ago, we might be in a different situation, but that didn't happen because not enough people cared and also I think there were fairly powerful industries lobbying against them.

That means we're in a worse position and need something like a new deal or war-effort to actually shift our economies.

And I do think there's a tension about this which the Green New Deal sort-of tries to address. Because if we do nothing we, in the West, have reasonably comfortable lives and in the future they will become more significantly more difficult and costly. There is stuff around research and infrastructure and supporting the right sort of changes by companies that government can do (this is also why I like the New Deal metaphor - it was all over the place, they were trying anything). But there will probably have to be some lifestyle changes of consuming less meat, flying less, using cars less which will potentially make our lives a little less enjoyable now. That's a really difficult ask politically, which is why I think it is probably necessary to chuck in a few bungs for current voters too. Personally I think the US left also needs to get over its weird issues with nuclear - nuclear on its own isn't sufficient but it's a useful part of the mix with renewables.

Edit: I suppose my point is I think it's a brand not a plan. The politics of climate to me is that if you see it as existential it can be overwhelming and cause inaction, if you treat as you would normally through cost/benefit etc then it's probably not enough. The Green New Deal seems like the only attempt going at threading that needle.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on October 13, 2019, 12:00:38 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 12, 2019, 08:23:57 PM

You keep talking about New Deal, war, moonshot, but no one had to be bought off to support those things.  The need to buy off interest groups undercuts the entire point you've been trying to make, that climate change is being elevated to a sacred mission.

:yeahright:

All of these events in US history needed special interests groups to be appeased before they could happen.  Note: I'm making an assumption that "war" was the 2nd World War.

Southern Democrats needed to be appease for the New Deal, an appeasement that required northern Democrats drop demands for civil rights, the war required convincing of the America First committee along with many Northern Democrats (predominately those with Irish or German backgrounds.  There is a reason that the US military was commanded by guys named Eisenhower, Nimitz, and Spaatz.  Roosevelt didn't pick these names out of a hat.)  There was significant left-wing opposition to the space program.  African Americans were particularly skeptical of the space program.  This was happening during the Civil Rights movement, the war on poverty, and the Vietnam War and most thought that there was better ways to spend money than shooting explosive junk in to the sky.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 12:35:32 PM
@Shelf

By interest groups I mean the people who stand to get free money from the Green New Deal.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 01:14:20 PM
@Shelf part 2

I think I understand the point you are trying to make about branding.  In your thinking, the important element of Green New Deal is the signaling of the magnitude of the effort required. 

The obvious problem, of course, is that "the effort" requires actual policies to implement.  FDR didn't just make a speech about making the world safe for democracy then wait for the Axis to surrender.  He conscripted millions of men, he built hundreds of thousands of tanks and planes, he poured billions into building atomic weapons.

So good luck holding on to the idea that the Green New Deal is valuable as an inspiring slogan while ignoring the fact that the actual details of the Green New Deal undercut your very premise.  If climate change is in fact such an urgent mission, and one that requires the equivalent of total war mobilization, what the hell are we doing devoting finite resources to issues totally unrelated to winning that war?  Forgiving student debt doesn't reduce emissions by a single atom of carbon.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on October 13, 2019, 01:28:24 PM
(https://cdn.climatechangenews.com/files/2013/02/USA-Today-Climate-Cartoon_466.jpg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 01:48:10 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 01:14:20 PMThe obvious problem, of course, is that "the effort" requires actual policies to implement.  FDR didn't just make a speech about making the world safe for democracy then wait for the Axis to surrender.  He conscripted millions of men, he built hundreds of thousands of tanks and planes, he poured billions into building atomic weapons.

This is the war effort - a comparatively simpler program which addressed a problem for which the solution - mobilization - was well within everybody's instinctual grasp, and following an attack that did much of the propaganda effort that all of the previous communications about the dangers of fascism could ever accomplish. The New Deal was considerably more messy, more socialist, and a lot more incoherent that you'd probably prefer. It poured a lot of money on public arts, for instance - something that was unlikely to solve the unemployment problem, but participated in a messy attempt to produce a sense of collective purpose. There is a point in forgiving crippling student debt, as an attempt to free up creativity and riskier initiatives from more than just people who enjoy the free money they have inherited.

But Sheilbh's tangential point still stands: what is the right's solution to bring stakes to the forefront? To propose plans and measures at the level of the stakes we face? So far, it seems to have been mocking whatever is being proposed, diluting it into irrelevance, or proposing to wait and see. The problem the current right will always be facing with the current crisis, is that it requires tremendous collective and coordinated action, a concept that is has been bred to distrust, mock and disparage.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 01:54:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 01:14:20 PM
@Shelf part 2

I think I understand the point you are trying to make about branding.  In your thinking, the important element of Green New Deal is the signaling of the magnitude of the effort required. 
Magnitude plus optimism.

I think one of the issues I have with XR is that if you do believe the predicted impact and that it's not slowing down - Uninhabitable Earth stuff - then I think it can be overwhelming. It's hopeless to try and stop it and it's so big that there's no political project or response that can address it.

What I like about the Green New Deal is as you say it signals the magnitude, but is also something that can be achieved. And it also legitimises failure which I think is really important. I think we need to spend lots on different projects and a lot of them may fail. This is also what I mean by war as a legitimising principle. In general in public policy you want something that's efficient and doesn't fail. With New Deal or war as part of the organising principle you accept that failure on certain parts is okay and you'll keep going to be effective and deliver, in the long run those failures may lead to better things/lines of research in the distant future. But in normal politics a waste of taxpayer money etc undermines normal policies - that's the other reason I like this sort of language.

It's a shame it's so US-centric, but it's something that is inspiring politicians in Europe to talk about what their Green New Deal would look like which, again, I think is a great thing.

QuoteThe obvious problem, of course, is that "the effort" requires actual policies to implement.  FDR didn't just make a speech about making the world safe for democracy then wait for the Axis to surrender.  He conscripted millions of men, he built hundreds of thousands of tanks and planes, he poured billions into building atomic weapons.
Sure but look at the New Deal. It was entirely incoherent and often contradictory: Emergency Banking Act, shutting the banks down; the Economy Act cutting expenditure hugely; then huge investment in infrastructure and support of industrial cartels. None of this makes sense as an "effort" similarly with WW2 there was just as much incoherence and contradiction it was the momentum of mobilisation that worked. I like FDR a lot, so I think the model of "bold, experimentation" is a really good one.

Personally I would prefer Moonshot as the branding because we don't have the tech at the minute - we cannot go 100% renewable because of our grid and because of our storage - but also the US landed on the moon but it feels likea  human accomplishment. While the New Deal is a very American reference and still quite a partisan one.

QuoteSo good luck holding on to the idea that the Green New Deal is valuable as an inspiring slogan while ignoring the fact that the actual details of the Green New Deal undercut your very premise.  If climate change is in fact such an urgent mission, and one that requires the equivalent of total war mobilization, what the hell are we doing devoting finite resources to issues totally unrelated to winning that war?  Forgiving student debt doesn't reduce emissions by a single atom of carbon.
Yeah. So I think there's a few angles going on there. The first is that I don't think this plan matters, I think it will change and different politicians will claim ownership and adapt it. I suspect the branding will last. Also if you are fighting a total war mobilisation I don't think you start planning with finite resources in mind.

Part of it as well I think is to distance itself from previous Democrat policies on the environment. That was focused on carbon taxing basically. The Green New Deal isn't a plan right now. It's a set of idea each of which would require loads of policies and we'll see where it develops. I think forgiving student debt would be a good idea anyway, given the levels it's at. But also if you're are going to try decarbonise the economy I think you need free education at multiple levels or you will be locking people out of jobs and entire communities out of the economy. I don't know how you try to entirely shift the economy without providing for education for people coming up, but also for adults. It's a bit like carbon taxing a punishment of the working class by the middle class.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 01:59:12 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 01:48:10 PM
But Sheilbh's tangential point still stands: what is the right's solution to bring stakes to the forefront? To propose plans and measures at the level of the stakes we face? So far, it seems to have been mocking whatever is being proposed, diluting it into irrelevance, or proposing to wait and see. The problem the current right will always be facing with the current crisis, is that it requires tremendous collective and coordinated action, a concept that is has been bred to distrust, mock and disparage.
Yeah. As I say I think "war" would have been the organising principle, but that's been debased by Vietnam, Iraq, the war on drugs, the war on terror. I don't think we'll see another American president declaring war on something - like Nixon and the war on cancer which caused huge biotech innovations in the 80s.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:11:09 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 01:48:10 PM
This is the war effort - a comparatively simpler program which addressed a problem for which the solution - mobilization - was well within everybody's instinctual grasp, and following an attack that did much of the propaganda effort that all of the previous communications about the dangers of fascism could ever accomplish. The New Deal was considerably more messy, more socialist, and a lot more incoherent that you'd probably prefer. It poured a lot of money on public arts, for instance - something that was unlikely to solve the unemployment problem, but participated in a messy attempt to produce a sense of collective purpose. There is a point in forgiving crippling student debt, as an attempt to free up creativity and riskier initiatives from more than just people who enjoy the free money they have inherited.

But Sheilbh's tangential point still stands: what is the right's solution to bring stakes to the forefront? To propose plans and measures at the level of the stakes we face? So far, it seems to have been mocking whatever is being proposed, diluting it into irrelevance, or proposing to wait and see. The problem the current right will always be facing with the current crisis, is that it requires tremendous collective and coordinated action, a concept that is has been bred to distrust, mock and disparage.

You call New Deal art funding messy and incoherent, I call it stupid and pointless.  That's hardly a compelling argument for including elements unrelated to the stated goal in the Green New Deal.

I'm straining to find polite language to describe my reaction to your insinuation, delivered in your elliptical literary style, that debt forgiveness will unleash creative solutions to climate change.

You and other posters have mentioned several times that the right is doing nothing, as if that somehow buttresses the Green New Deal.  How the fuck does that work?  There are alternatives to the Green New Deal, the most obvious being a carbon tax and cap and trade.  Why doesn't the absence of a rightist plan buttress those alternatives instead of the Green New Deal?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:17:58 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 01:54:36 PM
Sure but look at the New Deal. It was entirely incoherent and often contradictory: Emergency Banking Act, shutting the banks down; the Economy Act cutting expenditure hugely; then huge investment in infrastructure and support of industrial cartels. None of this makes sense as an "effort" similarly with WW2 there was just as much incoherence and contradiction it was the momentum of mobilisation that worked. I like FDR a lot, so I think the model of "bold, experimentation" is a really good one.

This argument might work if we had very little idea why global temperature is rising.  Unfortunately, we have a pretty good idea that it has something to do with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  So policies that have zero relationship to carbon emissions can't be defended on the basis of bold experimentation.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 13, 2019, 02:40:54 PM
I respect the attempt to implement an unrelated political agenda under the smokescreen of climate change. I would do the same if I had the same set of values and priorities.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 02:48:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:17:58 PM
This argument might work if we had very little idea why global temperature is rising.  Unfortunately, we have a pretty good idea that it has something to do with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  So policies that have zero relationship to carbon emissions can't be defended on the basis of bold experimentation.
But we want to retain our lifestyle broadly and we don't have the technology to decarbonise without a significant change in quality of life. We also know that decarbonising will have huge social impacts. I think any project that is around shifting the economy to zero carbon will need to protect people's lifestyles and employment.

For example we're moving to an electric future in all sorts of products, including vehicles. We're nowhere near producing enough energy for everything that could be electrified to be electrified. At the same time we don't have the tech anywhere in the world for our current electricity grids to work on majority renewable energy. Similarly what does a decarbonised construction industry look like?

So I get the point on reducing carbon emissions, but this is about building a zero carbon economy. I think the policies will need to be broader than just direct reduction of emissions - that's part of the shift from a cost/benefit economic policy of reducing emissions, to the larger shift of our entire economy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 03:18:30 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 02:48:30 PM
But we want to retain our lifestyle broadly and we don't have the technology to decarbonise without a significant change in quality of life. We also know that decarbonising will have huge social impacts. I think any project that is around shifting the economy to zero carbon will need to protect people's lifestyles and employment.

For example we're moving to an electric future in all sorts of products, including vehicles. We're nowhere near producing enough energy for everything that could be electrified to be electrified. At the same time we don't have the tech anywhere in the world for our current electricity grids to work on majority renewable energy. Similarly what does a decarbonised construction industry look like?

So I get the point on reducing carbon emissions, but this is about building a zero carbon economy. I think the policies will need to be broader than just direct reduction of emissions - that's part of the shift from a cost/benefit economic policy of reducing emissions, to the larger shift of our entire economy.

So now you're talking about mitigating the economic effects of zero carbon, which really has nothing to do with either bold experimentation or with the Green New Deal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 03:34:46 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:11:09 PMYou call New Deal art funding messy and incoherent, I call it stupid and pointless.  That's hardly a compelling argument for including elements unrelated to the stated goal in the Green New Deal.

I'm straining to find polite language to describe my reaction to your insinuation, delivered in your elliptical literary style, that debt forgiveness will unleash creative solutions to climate change.

It's not an insinuation. It's part of the rationale. I don't think we'll find common ground here.

QuoteThere are alternatives to the Green New Deal, the most obvious being a carbon tax and cap and trade.  Why doesn't the absence of a rightist plan buttress those alternatives instead of the Green New Deal?

Because, as Sheilbh mentions, this seems to be utterly insufficient to address the magnitude of the challenge, utterly unsuited to create necessary dispositions in people to undertake collectively that massive challenge, and seems, in that regard, quite counter productive. The Green New Deal is amorphous enough to be compatible with carbon tax and market mechanisms. By insisting that only carbon tax is legitimate, that right-wing position undermines any other attempts at changing course.

This is why I made my point about the lack of a right-wing plan. It seems to me you want a detailed plan, or nothing at all. I tend to think you have to first promote the idea that this is an extraordinary challenge that requires an extraordinary response. And to enact changes of that scale, you need collective and political buy-in that goes well beyond market mechanisms. It requires strong pressures from state institutions, regulations, international cooperation and diplomacy and collective mobilization. Unfortunately, a certain right has repudiated most of these collective and political buy-in, and has, indeed, done its best to undermine them. I'd actually be grateful to see anything from the right that is not "something else, but not that", "more of the same, but better", or "it'll all turn out well in the end".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 03:55:05 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:11:09 PM
You and other posters have mentioned several times that the right is doing nothing, as if that somehow buttresses the Green New Deal.  How the fuck does that work?  There are alternatives to the Green New Deal, the most obvious being a carbon tax and cap and trade.  Why doesn't the absence of a rightist plan buttress those alternatives instead of the Green New Deal?
It's not that the right are doing nothing, but that they're ceding the field. So carbon tax and cap and trade is in place in large parts of the world - the EU, China etc. It has issues, it's very open to lobbying and special interests (see the EU system) and there is a class issue of it increasing costs for the working class and supported by the middle class. But it's an efficient policy which is probably just not enough if we're working towards zero carbon.

But it is an alternative. The point I'm making is you can't be surprised if you get a left-wing policy agenda when the entire policy debate takes place between, say, the Greens on the left and New Labour on the right. I think the biggest threat to the left-Green movement is that the right does engage on a level beyond trolling.

QuoteSo now you're talking about mitigating the economic effects of zero carbon, which really has nothing to do with either bold experimentation or with the Green New Deal.
This may reflect how it's been used over here (again an advantage of the branding), but all of the conversation is around how you get to zero carbon and how that transition is done in a way that's just and doesn't abandon people. The transition to zero carbon is bound to require bold experimentation because it's going to be a huge shift in our entire economy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 03:58:02 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 03:34:46 PM
It's not an insinuation. It's part of the rationale. I don't think we'll find common ground here.

I'd be happy to support a pilot project to prove you wrong.  Say we forgive the student loans of 1,000 people, and see how many earth-saving inventions they come up with.

QuoteBecause, as Sheilbh mentions, this seems to be utterly insufficient to address the magnitude of the challenge, utterly unsuited to create necessary dispositions in people to undertake collectively that massive challenge, and seems, in that regard, quite counter productive. The Green New Deal is amorphous enough to be compatible with carbon tax and market mechanisms. By insisting that only carbon tax is legitimate, that right-wing position undermines any other attempts at changing course.

This is why I made my point about the lack of a right-wing plan. It seems to me you want a detailed plan, or nothing at all. I tend to think you have to first promote the idea that this is an extraordinary challenge that requires an extraordinary response. And to enact changes of that scale, you need collective and political buy-in that goes well beyond market mechanisms. It requires strong pressures from state institutions, regulations, international cooperation and diplomacy and collective mobilization. Unfortunately, a certain right has repudiated most of these collective and political buy-in, and has, indeed, done its best to undermine them. I'd actually be grateful to see anything from the right that is not "something else, but not that", "more of the same, but better", or "it'll all turn out well in the end".

No one has ever said only a carbon tax is legitimate.  People are totally free to propose other policies that actually reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

You claim the right has repudiated the political buy-in (with is obvious) but use that to defend a plan which purchases that buy-in from constituencies of the left.  If both left and right are indifferent to climate change, then they both are the problem.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 04:24:49 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 13, 2019, 03:55:05 PM
It's not that the right are doing nothing, but that they're ceding the field. So carbon tax and cap and trade is in place in large parts of the world - the EU, China etc. It has issues, it's very open to lobbying and special interests (see the EU system) and there is a class issue of it increasing costs for the working class and supported by the middle class. But it's an efficient policy which is probably just not enough if we're working towards zero carbon.

But it is an alternative. The point I'm making is you can't be surprised if you get a left-wing policy agenda when the entire policy debate takes place between, say, the Greens on the left and New Labour on the right. I think the biggest threat to the left-Green movement is that the right does engage on a level beyond trolling.

What does surprise have to do with it?  I've been talking about the desirability of  various policies, not how surprised I was when GND was announced.  And the absence of the right from the debate doesn't increase the desirability of a lefty proposal; that's a function of the merit.

QuoteThis may reflect how it's been used over here (again an advantage of the branding), but all of the conversation is around how you get to zero carbon and how that transition is done in a way that's just and doesn't abandon people. The transition to zero carbon is bound to require bold experimentation because it's going to be a huge shift in our entire economy.

If you want to mitigate the economic impact of zero carbon that doesn't require bold experimentation.  You give money to coal miners and companies, oil drillers, pipeline workers, etc. etc.  Basic national income and student debt forgiveness are not bold experiments to mitigate the economic impact of zero carbon.  They're not experiments of any kind.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 15, 2019, 06:11:11 AM
It was a bit eerie walking through Trafalgar Square this morning. Felt rather like a police state with police nearly at same numbers of tourists and workers walking to work. This being after last night when the police cleared out all of the protesters and encampments in the square.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EG5x3meX0AAyrMc.jpg:large)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 15, 2019, 12:00:02 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on October 13, 2019, 03:34:46 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 13, 2019, 02:11:09 PMYou call New Deal art funding messy and incoherent, I call it stupid and pointless.  That's hardly a compelling argument for including elements unrelated to the stated goal in the Green New Deal.

I'm straining to find polite language to describe my reaction to your insinuation, delivered in your elliptical literary style, that debt forgiveness will unleash creative solutions to climate change.

It's not an insinuation. It's part of the rationale. I don't think we'll find common ground here.

QuoteThere are alternatives to the Green New Deal, the most obvious being a carbon tax and cap and trade.  Why doesn't the absence of a rightist plan buttress those alternatives instead of the Green New Deal?

Because, as Sheilbh mentions, this seems to be utterly insufficient to address the magnitude of the challenge, utterly unsuited to create necessary dispositions in people to undertake collectively that massive challenge, and seems, in that regard, quite counter productive. The Green New Deal is amorphous enough to be compatible with carbon tax and market mechanisms. By insisting that only carbon tax is legitimate, that right-wing position undermines any other attempts at changing course.

This is why I made my point about the lack of a right-wing plan. It seems to me you want a detailed plan, or nothing at all. I tend to think you have to first promote the idea that this is an extraordinary challenge that requires an extraordinary response. And to enact changes of that scale, you need collective and political buy-in that goes well beyond market mechanisms. It requires strong pressures from state institutions, regulations, international cooperation and diplomacy and collective mobilization. Unfortunately, a certain right has repudiated most of these collective and political buy-in, and has, indeed, done its best to undermine them. I'd actually be grateful to see anything from the right that is not "something else, but not that", "more of the same, but better", or "it'll all turn out well in the end".
People from the right will always be fearful of any broad plan increasing govt intervention in all sectors of the economies, especially when it is ill defined and does not seem to really, totally, adress the situation it aims to solve.

Yi is right in that the left is using the environment to enact sweeping change to our society, how it is governed, how wealth should be (re)distributed, not created.

It is the same as with the debate on sovereignty in Quebec: the sovereignty is only a by product of the leftits economic policies.  Both parties promoting the idea want it to impose on us their radical, destructive, thinking.  Environment is the same: it's not as important as leftwing economic&social policies, and when a political party diverges from that, it is branded "as not a true leftist party" and is abandonned by the left.  Then the same left complains there's no plan to fight climate change and other environmental issues from the right...  You guys just won't vote for a rightwing party that proposes a figth to climate change if it is not accompanied by leftwing economic & social proposals.  Just as you said years ago the left would not accompany a rightwing party on the sovereignty issue.

As long as we are there, it will be extremely difficult to get a majority of rightwinger on board with the figth.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 15, 2019, 09:08:41 PM
On going Extinction rebellion protests in London, this time its the grand parents having a say:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50063449 (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50063449)

Quote
Extinction Rebellion Grandparents: Our generation is partly responsible

"This is a rebellion, our house is on fire," sang a crowd of pensioners to the tune of Elvis Presley's Hound Dog as they stood outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

"If we don't act now, it will be our funeral pyre."

The group, called Extinction Rebellion Grandparents, is part of the wider Extinction Rebellion campaign, which is currently in the middle of two weeks of protests in London.

.....

Satnam Kaur Khalsa, 63, from Hounslow, was joined at the protest by her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren, all who travelled from Mexico for the ongoing rallies.

"I want to help make sure there is a place for these children to live and prosper," said Ms Kaur Khalsa, "Like we had an opportunity to when we were young.

"We could plan our future. Their future is murky at the moment, they don't know what's going to happen.

"We didn't really think of the consequences."

Ms Kaur Khalsa's daughter, Harmeet, who has lived in Mexico for the past 15 years, said she wanted to join the Extinction Rebellion movement after seeing footage of the earlier rallies in April.
....

:hmm:

Maybe they still haven't thought of the consequences?

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 02:19:07 AM
That's OK, Germany wants to tax short distance flights. Its the plebs moving around in Europe that's the apparent scourge, not  well-of people criss-crossing the Atlantic for some virtue signalling
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 16, 2019, 02:27:12 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 02:19:07 AM
That's OK, Germany wants to tax short distance flights. Its the plebs moving around in Europe that's the apparent scourge, not  well-of people criss-crossing the Atlantic for some virtue signalling

Trains and buses aren't really an option for Mexico to London.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 16, 2019, 03:33:26 AM
Taxing short flights doesn't stop you from also taxing long flights.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 03:55:17 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 16, 2019, 03:33:26 AM
Taxing short flights doesn't stop you from also taxing long flights.

Except that has not been talked about in Germany AFAIK.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 03:57:56 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 16, 2019, 02:27:12 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 02:19:07 AM
That's OK, Germany wants to tax short distance flights. Its the plebs moving around in Europe that's the apparent scourge, not  well-of people criss-crossing the Atlantic for some virtue signalling

Trains and buses aren't really an option for Mexico to London.

I guess just not travelling so far for such a mundane reason is out of the question, right? Let's protest that everyone changes their life dramatically, but not me because my family is divided by the Atlantic so I cannot possibly be inconvenienced.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 04:01:26 AM
Also, do the climate protesters have some easily definable demand? The whole civil disobedience thing is a good idea, but I think it helps greatly when the goal can be defined more accurately than "let's fix global climate somehow" Like "Brits out of India". That was easy to define 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 16, 2019, 04:03:31 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 03:57:56 AM
I guess just not travelling so far for such a mundane reason is out of the question, right? Let's protest that everyone changes their life dramatically, but not me because my family is divided by the Atlantic so I cannot possibly be inconvenienced.

Are you supporting taxing intercontinental flights taken for the purpose of protesting climate change?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 04:08:33 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 16, 2019, 04:03:31 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 03:57:56 AM
I guess just not travelling so far for such a mundane reason is out of the question, right? Let's protest that everyone changes their life dramatically, but not me because my family is divided by the Atlantic so I cannot possibly be inconvenienced.

Are you supporting taxing intercontinental flights taken for the purpose of protesting climate change?

I do not support any policy which has as its sole aim an attempt to reverse the global technological and societal progress of the last twenty years. The way to solve the climate crisis is to move the world closer together and more interconnected, NOT trying to undo globalism.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 16, 2019, 04:23:52 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 04:01:26 AM
Also, do the climate protesters have some easily definable demand? The whole civil disobedience thing is a good idea, but I think it helps greatly when the goal can be defined more accurately than "let's fix global climate somehow" Like "Brits out of India". That was easy to define
XR is net zero by 2025.

Plus citizens assemblies, which have delivered change in Ireland. But I think the idea that they will lead to radical climate action rather than, say, introducing hanging for paedos strikes me as optimistic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 16, 2019, 05:09:25 AM
Yeah, direct democracy has ALMOST gotten us an independent Scotland (will do so next year, still) and has brought Brexit. I wouldn't put much hope in it sorting climate change out.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 16, 2019, 06:07:03 AM
Citizens assemblies aren't direct democracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)

Now I don't think they're a panacea, but I do think they're kind of interesting.

And the Irish ones on abortion (the eighth amendment) were apparently quite cathartic too.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 01:40:06 AM
And extinction rebellion has turned to targeting DLR and the Tube again...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 01:49:05 AM
Member of XR was pulled from top of train by members of the public furious at Canning Town.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 02:03:42 AM
Looks like they got a bit of a kicking to me. Luckily there seemed to be a couple of women who succeeded in calming things down.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 02:41:38 AM
I wonder why they decided it would be good to disrupt commuters in East London.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 02:47:29 AM
Yeah, Canning Town first thing in the morning; let's have a couple of middle class twats make the minimum wage workforce's life even worse  :mad:

Get yourself down to Westminster and the City you stupid bastards  :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 03:22:06 AM
And while XR takes on the East, the police spend their third day lounging in Trafalgar Square.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 17, 2019, 04:02:23 AM
The train altercation:

https://youtu.be/wzuZ_I3MPTA
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 05:22:49 AM
Apparently, "......an internal poll of XR members, shared with the Guardian, showed 72% opposed action on London's underground network under any circumstances."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/17/extinction-rebellion-activists-london-underground

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 17, 2019, 05:55:42 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 05:22:49 AM
Apparently, "......an internal poll of XR members, shared with the Guardian, showed 72% opposed action on London's underground network under any circumstances."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/17/extinction-rebellion-activists-london-underground

I bet that guy thought he'd be celebrated as a hero. "Yay, I get to be late from my zero-hour contract, to save the planet!"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 17, 2019, 07:09:24 AM
Good summary of the debate in Germany:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHA35nrX4AE2YJ4?format=jpg&name=small)

From left to right:
"No wind turbines in our forest!"
"Stop Coal Now! Save our climate and future!"
"Nuclear Power? No thanks!"

I guess that leaves solar, gas and hydro ...  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 17, 2019, 07:18:24 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 02:47:29 AM
Yeah, Canning Town first thing in the morning; let's have a couple of middle class twats make the minimum wage workforce's life even worse  :mad:

Get yourself down to Westminster and the City you stupid bastards  :lol:

If people against climate change action wanted a way to discredit the XR movement, this would be a very good way of doing it.   :secret:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 17, 2019, 07:35:01 AM
Quote from: mongers on October 17, 2019, 07:18:24 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 02:47:29 AM
Yeah, Canning Town first thing in the morning; let's have a couple of middle class twats make the minimum wage workforce's life even worse  :mad:

Get yourself down to Westminster and the City you stupid bastards  :lol:

If people against climate change action wanted a way to discredit the XR movement, this would be a very good way of doing it.   :secret:


:rolleyes:


Yeah the XR movement has truly proven itself to be devoid of silly people and ideas, NO WAY this was their doing.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 17, 2019, 08:26:59 AM

Quote

Train drivers' union Aslef said the Tube and other public transport services were "part of the solution to climate change, not the problem".

Extinction Rebellion should "stick to protesting against those who create the problem - not our industry, members and hard-working commuters", the union added.


Full item here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-50079716 (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-50079716)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 09:06:22 AM
I mean fuck Aslef.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 17, 2019, 10:03:39 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 17, 2019, 09:06:22 AM
I mean fuck Aslef.

So they're wrong on this issue? 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 17, 2019, 11:17:17 AM
Quote from: mongers on October 17, 2019, 10:03:39 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 17, 2019, 09:06:22 AM
I mean fuck Aslef.

So they're wrong on this issue? 

No, but not sure why you picked their viewpoint out to speak on the issue. They suck/they are probably just jealous that someone beat them to the punch and it wasn't them screwing over commuters. ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 17, 2019, 11:20:24 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 17, 2019, 09:06:22 AM
I mean fuck Aslef.

Hard core Brit-speak there  :bowler:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 17, 2019, 11:36:03 AM
All solidarity with ASLEF!
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edhallbanners.co.uk%2Fimages%2Fbanners%2Faslef_arnos_grove_branch_tmb.jpg&hash=29a4bce5820424e3631c24a716fb54f8ba068acc)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 18, 2019, 05:58:59 PM
Interesting graph:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKwDzBU4AYpmeN?format=jpg&name=medium)

And the article about it:

https://theicct.org/blog/staff/not-every-tonne-of-aviation-CO2 (https://theicct.org/blog/staff/not-every-tonne-of-aviation-CO2)


edit:
And the big 'take away' for me from that is, the Swiss have no taste, they're surrounded by France, Italy, Germany and Austria, yet choose to holiday far away.  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 19, 2019, 02:57:37 PM
I am impressed you can actually take a domestic flight in Israel.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on October 19, 2019, 03:17:50 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 19, 2019, 02:57:37 PM
I am impressed you can actually take a domestic flight in Israel.

I'm surprised one would need to.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 19, 2019, 03:51:46 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 18, 2019, 05:58:59 PM
And the big 'take away' for me from that is, the Swiss have no taste, they're surrounded by France, Italy, Germany and Austria, yet choose to holiday far away.  :D

I don't see how you can tell where the Swiss are flying to.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on October 19, 2019, 03:54:05 PM
I think the only reason HK isn't on that graph is because we aren't a country.  Otherwise we should be right up there with Singapore. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on October 22, 2019, 07:17:04 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 19, 2019, 03:51:46 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 18, 2019, 05:58:59 PM
And the big 'take away' for me from that is, the Swiss have no taste, they're surrounded by France, Italy, Germany and Austria, yet choose to holiday far away.  :D

I don't see how you can tell where the Swiss are flying to.

Connecting flights between Geneva and Zurich.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 08:55:03 AM
Eventually even Conservatives will have to admit we need to act

QuoteFor some time now it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/opinion/climate-change-costs.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 23, 2019, 09:03:11 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 19, 2019, 03:17:50 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 19, 2019, 02:57:37 PM
I am impressed you can actually take a domestic flight in Israel.

I'm surprised one would need to.

Undoubtedly flights to Eilat, for tourism (the Red Sea!). Diving is a big activity there, and crossing the entire Negev desert to get there would be a pain. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 23, 2019, 02:46:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 08:55:03 AM
Eventually even Conservatives will have to admit we need to act

QuoteFor some time now it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/opinion/climate-change-costs.html
I often think about the point Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal) makes about human existence. He argued that we're not normally special. We aren't in the middle of the galaxy, the sun doesn't revolve around us and so with other aspects of human existence.

So for example we are probably in the broad middle of human existence rather than very close to the beginning or very close to the end.

But - in that context what is the middle? As in is 200,000 probably around the middle of human existence, in which case we've got another 200,000 years? Or is it that the estimate 100 billion people ever having lived the middle, in which case we'll go through another 100 billion lives a lot quicker than it took to get here :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 02:58:32 PM
That theory has problems in a world where humans can bring their own existence to an end with the push of a button.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 23, 2019, 03:46:29 PM
I like to believe we're close to the beginning.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 04:13:30 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 23, 2019, 03:46:29 PM
I like to believe we're close to the beginning.

Mammals have an average evolutionary life span of about 1m years, so you are correct without accounting for our unique species superpower of having the ability to obliterate ourselves.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 23, 2019, 04:15:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 02:58:32 PM
That theory has problems in a world where humans can bring their own existence to an end with the push of a button.
I think that's his point. It took us 200,000 years to get this far, but if the "number of humans" is the midpoint we'd be done within a century.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 04:57:13 AM
Being convinced that the end of everything is imminent is one of the most common patterns through history, at least in Europe.

Sure, we seem to have more scientific evidence than ever that this is now, for a change, is true, but past generations were similarly convinced of their fact-based gloom, I am sure.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 07:17:29 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 04:57:13 AM
Being convinced that the end of everything is imminent is one of the most common patterns through history, at least in Europe.

Sure, we seem to have more scientific evidence than ever that this is now, for a change, is true, but past generations were similarly convinced of their fact-based gloom, I am sure.


The Victorians thought the end was imminent?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 07:38:11 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 07:17:29 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 04:57:13 AM
Being convinced that the end of everything is imminent is one of the most common patterns through history, at least in Europe.

Sure, we seem to have more scientific evidence than ever that this is now, for a change, is true, but past generations were similarly convinced of their fact-based gloom, I am sure.


The Victorians thought the end was imminent?

I know this is strictly about religion-induced and Messiah-expecting occurrences, and not global convictions of doom, but shows the inclination has always been there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 08:34:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 07:17:29 AM
The Victorians thought the end was imminent?

Sure.  Malthus's theories were widely believed din the mid-Nineteenth Century, Marx was popular, and the Iron Law of Wages was widely accepted.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 08:58:43 AM
Quote from: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 08:34:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 07:17:29 AM
The Victorians thought the end was imminent?

Sure.  Malthus's theories were widely believed din the mid-Nineteenth Century, Marx was popular, and the Iron Law of Wages was widely accepted.

First of all Marx was not popular during that time period.  But even if he was he thought a better age was inevitable not that we were doomed.  I grant you that Malthus thought the future would be bleak because we would outstrip our resources but his view was balanced by the enterprising ethic of the age.

@ Tamas- Yeah Christianity has at its core the belief that this world is about to end.  But generally there has been optimism about what the future holds.  This is really the first time that all scientists are in agreement that the future will definitely be not only worse but catastrophic unless we act quickly.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:01:05 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 23, 2019, 04:15:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2019, 02:58:32 PM
That theory has problems in a world where humans can bring their own existence to an end with the push of a button.
I think that's his point. It took us 200,000 years to get this far, but if the "number of humans" is the midpoint we'd be done within a century.

You cannot ignore quality.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:03:08 AM
I have a hard time seeing climate change as a civilization killer.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 09:50:08 AM
Hard to see gradual change
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 24, 2019, 10:03:40 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:03:08 AM
I have a hard time seeing climate change as a civilization killer.

How about God?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 10:07:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 08:58:43 AM
First of all Marx was not popular during that time period.  But even if he was he thought a better age was inevitable not that we were doomed.  I grant you that Malthus thought the future would be bleak because we would outstrip our resources but his view was balanced by the enterprising ethic of the age.

Sure, Marx was not popular because you say so... though the First International based on his wrks had 8 million members by 1872, but that is "not popular" because... reasons.

The collapse of society as the Victorians knew it (proletarianization) was part of the process that led to Marx's brave new wold, so certainly the Victorians considered that a doomsday scenario, even if there was a promise of a better world on the other side (just as they didn't look forward to death even if promised a reward in heaven).  I have no idea what "his view was balanced by the enterprising ethic of the age" means, but suspect that this is mere contrarianism due to its remarkable lack of specificity.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 10:17:19 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:03:08 AM
I have a hard time seeing climate change as a civilization killer.

I guess it depends. I don't think it will get worse than the fall of Rome. Was that a killer of civilisation, or just the same civilisation changing?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 10:47:54 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 24, 2019, 10:17:19 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:03:08 AM
I have a hard time seeing climate change as a civilization killer.

I guess it depends. I don't think it will get worse than the fall of Rome. Was that a killer of civilisation, or just the same civilisation changing?

Today's civilization is global which I think makes direct comparisons difficult.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:06:11 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 10:07:15 AM
Sure, Marx was not popular because you say so... though the First International based on his wrks had 8 million members by 1872, but that is "not popular" because... reasons.


I guess they really don't teach this stuff in US schools.  The First International was not 8 million Marxists.  Far from it.  That organization was not "based on his works".  By 1872 he was gaining prominence and the Communist Manifesto was beginning to gain favour and a following.  Prior to that Marx had been pretty much a failure and kept financially viable by his good friend Engels.  There was a great deal of opposition within the left to Marx.



Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 24, 2019, 12:15:19 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:06:11 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 10:07:15 AM
Sure, Marx was not popular because you say so... though the First International based on his wrks had 8 million members by 1872, but that is "not popular" because... reasons.


I guess they really don't teach this stuff in US schools.  The First International was not 8 million Marxists.  Far from it.  That organization was not "based on his works".  By 1872 he was gaining prominence and the Communist Manifesto was beginning to gain favour and a following.  Prior to that Marx had been pretty much a failure and kept financially viable by his good friend Engels.  There was a great deal of opposition within the left to Marx.





Man why do you always have to attack the US?

Anyway here is my careful analysis of the First International:

(https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/hagueCongress1872_1.png)

(https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/hagueCongress1872_2.png)

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 24, 2019, 12:15:19 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:06:11 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 24, 2019, 10:07:15 AM
Sure, Marx was not popular because you say so... though the First International based on his wrks had 8 million members by 1872, but that is "not popular" because... reasons.


I guess they really don't teach this stuff in US schools.  The First International was not 8 million Marxists.  Far from it.  That organization was not "based on his works".  By 1872 he was gaining prominence and the Communist Manifesto was beginning to gain favour and a following.  Prior to that Marx had been pretty much a failure and kept financially viable by his good friend Engels.  There was a great deal of opposition within the left to Marx.





Man why do you always have to attack the US?


Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.  Plus we have a US teacher employed by a prestigious US private high school who thought the First International was based on the writings of Marx.  Seems a good illustration of the stereotypical American.

The cartoon was great  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 24, 2019, 01:21:03 PM
@V - Because he is a dick. He may be our dick but that doesn't make him less of a dick. Actually probably more so.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 24, 2019, 02:15:56 PM
I don't think Karl Marx is our dick, in any sense.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 24, 2019, 03:27:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.
I'm not convinced Canadians are that superior.  We are fewer online though, that is a fact.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on October 24, 2019, 03:30:25 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 24, 2019, 10:03:40 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 24, 2019, 09:03:08 AM
I have a hard time seeing climate change as a civilization killer.

How about God?

He is already dead.  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 03:44:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 24, 2019, 03:27:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.
I'm not convinced Canadians are that superior.  We are fewer online though, that is a fact.

No claim Canadians are superior.  But an inference that it is not taught in US schools because I was talking to a US school teacher.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 25, 2019, 01:38:02 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 03:44:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 24, 2019, 03:27:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.
I'm not convinced Canadians are that superior.  We are fewer online though, that is a fact.

No claim Canadians are superior.  But an inference that it is not taught in US schools because I was talking to a US school teacher.
phrasing it "Because the US population is notoriously ill informed" infers Americans are inferior to ROTW, therefore Canadians are superior to Americans.

Not too sure about this.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 25, 2019, 02:19:04 AM
The Canucks I've talked to on the subject knew a shitload of American geography.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 25, 2019, 02:19:11 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 25, 2019, 01:38:02 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 03:44:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 24, 2019, 03:27:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.
I'm not convinced Canadians are that superior.  We are fewer online though, that is a fact.

No claim Canadians are superior.  But an inference that it is not taught in US schools because I was talking to a US school teacher.
phrasing it "Because the US population is notoriously ill informed" infers Americans are inferior to ROTW, therefore Canadians are superior to Americans.

Not too sure about this.

I don't think he meant every single American is more ill informed than ROTW, but on average. Canadians could still be inferior to inferior Americans.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 25, 2019, 01:24:57 PM
Qatar has a novel idea (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/)


Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 26, 2019, 06:54:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 03:44:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 24, 2019, 03:27:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2019, 12:40:17 PM
Because the US population is notoriously ill informed about matters involving geography and history beyond their borders.
I'm not convinced Canadians are that superior.  We are fewer online though, that is a fact.

No claim Canadians are superior.  But an inference that it is not taught in US schools because I was talking to a US school teacher.

The inference you miss completely is that of the fin de siècle:

Quote1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of the close of the 19th century and especially its literary and artistic climate of sophistication, world-weariness, and fashionable despair
(my bold).  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fin%20de%20si%C3%A8cle (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fin%20de%20si%C3%A8cle)

Your arguments were that it was not true that "The Victorians thought the end was imminent" and that "Marx was not popular during that time period."  I presented evidence to the contrary, and you went the ad hom route.  I'm not going to say that the difference between my presentation of evidence and your presentation of ad homs are due to nationality, of course.  Those kinds of generalizations are moronic.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 26, 2019, 07:16:44 PM
Interesting item about Extinction rebellion, concentrating on the organisation's finances:

Quote
'I gave up a six-figure salary to join Extinction Rebellion'
By Dan Ascher

Andrew Medhurst was a high-flyer. He earned a six-figure salary and had worked all over the world for the likes of Lloyds Bank and HSBC.
But he gave it all up to join Extinction Rebellion.

It was around Christmas last year when he suddenly snapped. He was designing pension plan policies aimed at encouraging young people to put money away for the future.
But after reading up on climate change, and as he reflected on the scorching summer of 2018, the 53-year-old came to the conclusion that pension schemes "looked almost fraudulent" because the effects of global warming threatened the future those young people were saving for.
He handed in his notice at Nest - the National Employment Savings Trust - and told colleagues he was leaving to campaign for the planet. His banking background made him an ideal person to look after the group's finances and donations.
.......
However, as a former businessman he also brings a certain gravitas to the matter. As leader of the organisation's finance team, he spends his time focusing as much on revenues as on revolution.

The press has pointed to the way it is "raking in" money from members to support its operations and Mr Medhurst says the group has raised more than £2.5m this year.

Between the beginning of March and the end of September, gifts from large donors - those giving £5,000 or more - totalled £1.2m. The list of benefactors includes the rock band Radiohead, which gave the organisation £300,000.
Meanwhile, an online fundraising page has attracted another £1m from smaller donors.

And the donations fund a sophisticated financial operation, with two limited companies in the UK and plans to set up an international branch in Europe, which will pay for the group's activism around the world.

But wherever the funds go its policy of "radical transparency" will be maintained, Mr Medhurst says.

Extinction Rebellion's site lists every single expense, from a £7,350 payment for coloured boats that were sent all over the country to a £1,313 insurance premium for a fire engine that was used in a bungled attempt to spray fake blood on the treasury.

But, perhaps surprisingly for an activist organisation, the group's biggest outgoing is its payroll.
Activists can claim so-called "volunteer living expenses" of up to £400 a week, which set the group back £130,000 for the months of June, July and August alone.
The aim is to make activism accessible to supporters with children to feed or mortgages to pay, Mr Medhurst says. It's a trust-based system, and supporters don't apply for expenses if, like him, they don't need them.

But protests are expensive in other ways too. October's events have cost the group around £1m, he says.
The expenses include £30,000 for hiring toilets, an electricity bill of around £30,000, sound equipment - like microphones and speakers - that cost another £25,000, while the bill to feed 20,000 activists three meals a day was about £50,000.

The group spent another £200,000 on things like leaflets and coaches to bus thousands of activists from as far afield as Scotland.

And then there's the hefty legal bill, following the 1,828 arrests of its activists (although only a fraction have been charged).

Another £120,000 went on "media and messaging" costs in October and it had put aside £70,000 to pay for so-called "regenerative culture", which includes providing "safe spaces" for activists that need to recover after being arrested.

But of course it's not just the movement itself that is incurring costs.
The Metropolitan Police say so far this year it has spent £37m policing Extinction Rebellion's activities - £21m on the October protests alone - more than twice the annual budget of the Violent Crime Taskforce, set up last year to deal with a rise in crime on the capital's streets.


.....

:hmm:

Professional protestors?

Full article here, worth a read:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50087022 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50087022)

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 27, 2019, 04:23:58 AM
Wow, if you put those numbers and all the ecological footprint like driving people around from edges of the country to boost numbers, and compare it to actual results they have achieved, I think it is safe to say they are a colossal failure and do way mor harm than good. But at least a lot of money gets to exchange hands.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 27, 2019, 05:21:49 AM
They will get replaced with automated robotic protestors soon though, hopefully powered with solar panels  :cool:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on October 27, 2019, 01:06:34 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 27, 2019, 04:23:58 AM
Wow, if you put those numbers and all the ecological footprint like driving people around from edges of the country to boost numbers, and compare it to actual results they have achieved, I think it is safe to say they are a colossal failure and do way mor harm than good. But at least a lot of money gets to exchange hands.

And what are you doing about all this?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 27, 2019, 05:42:36 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on October 27, 2019, 01:06:34 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 27, 2019, 04:23:58 AM
Wow, if you put those numbers and all the ecological footprint like driving people around from edges of the country to boost numbers, and compare it to actual results they have achieved, I think it is safe to say they are a colossal failure and do way mor harm than good. But at least a lot of money gets to exchange hands.

And what are you doing about all this?

And what are they?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on October 27, 2019, 11:57:39 PM
Awareness and all that jazz. To be fair I mostly agree with you that their public actions so far have been pretty stupid. It's just that you direct a visceral anger at those dimwits but not at the big polluters.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2019, 01:20:47 PM
I was having lunch with some elder members of the profession as the XR marched by in what looked to be thousands.  The whole of the downtown core was closed down for a couple of hours as a result.  We felt free to extend our lunch....

The reaction of the others at the table was a lot less curmudgeonly than that demonstrated on Languish.  Comments were made about how it was good to see the youth energized about the issue and that these sorts of events will stay with them as they move through their lives.  Comments by people who were of that age in the 60s.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 28, 2019, 01:43:07 PM
If only people who were that age in the 60s had proven more responsible in their adulthood.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2019, 01:45:15 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 28, 2019, 01:43:07 PM
If only people who were that age in the 60s had proven more responsible in their adulthood.

Probably why they are not as negative as some here
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 29, 2019, 08:07:05 AM
I worry that our societies simply lack the mechanisms to deal with long-term crises. Everyone is so short-sighted, focused on the next quarter's profits, the next election, the next issue to gain traction on social media. With the rise of nationalist populism, those international mechanisms that existed are being eroded when they need to be enhanced. 

Seeing big protests is somewhat encouraging, but unfortunately big protests are becoming too common and low-impact to matter much. They have become a socially acceptable aspect of our culture. They do not shock or change minds, and they do not change our society, which simply embraces them as letting off some steam, or are viewed as a minor annoyance, depending on who is asked. Remember the wall street protest?

Of course people whose attitudes were formed in the 60s look to the methods that worked in their era, to alleviate (obviously, not solve) the issues that mattered then. Other patterns spring to mind - like the Space Race, or WW2.

What is needed is an international mobilization of society against the menace, but our institutions, diplomatic, political and economic, including our informal institutions of protest, appear to not be up to the task.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 08:16:29 AM
I agree
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 29, 2019, 08:24:16 AM
I know we need the entire international community to rally but not even one of the major countries has rallied on their own yet.

Now progress is slowly being made and I think that is the only way we can really do it...but that is not good enough as you guys point out.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 09:36:08 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 29, 2019, 08:24:16 AM
I know we need the entire international community to rally but not even one of the major countries has rallied on their own yet.

Now progress is slowly being made and I think that is the only way we can really do it...but that is not good enough as you guys point out.

Too many people who know that change is required but find petty excuses for voting for parties that are full of deniers.  See the Canadian election thread for a good example of that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 29, 2019, 11:13:10 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 09:36:08 AM
Too many people who know that change is required but find petty excuses for voting for parties that are full of deniers.  See the Canadian election thread for a good example of that.
You mean like all those people who strategically voted for the Liberal Party of Canada at the last two elections?  Yeah, I agree, they're evil incarnate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 11:19:04 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 29, 2019, 11:13:10 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 09:36:08 AM
Too many people who know that change is required but find petty excuses for voting for parties that are full of deniers.  See the Canadian election thread for a good example of that.
You mean like all those people who strategically voted for the Liberal Party of Canada at the last two elections?  Yeah, I agree, they're evil incarnate.

I think it is intellectually dishonest to include the last election since the Liberals promised to be a lot more active on climate change policy.  They also promised to bring in PR which would meant the Greens would have had a greater say in Parliament this time round.  They broke both those promises in dramatic fashion.

No, I was mostly thinking about the idiots who claim they understand the science but vote Conservative anyway.

If you put both groups together, those who voted Liberal this time and those who voted Conservative, you quickly realize we are pretty much screwed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 30, 2019, 01:55:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 29, 2019, 11:19:04 AM
I think it is intellectually dishonest to include the last election since the Liberals promised to be a lot more active on climate change policy.  They also promised to bring in PR which would meant the Greens would have had a greater say in Parliament this time round.  They broke both those promises in dramatic fashion.
A guy hits his wife.  He sends her to the hospital.  He apoligizes, promise to never do it again, she does not press charges, she takes him back.
That's how I see a repeated offender, I mean, a Liberal voter.  ;)
Trudeau Sr promised Quebec Canada would change in 1980.  I haven't seen that yet.  Chrétien promised Canada would change in 1995, I haven't seen that yet.  Chrétien promised he'd abolished the GST and replace Canada's helicopter.  In 1993 and 1997.  Did we ever abolish the tax? Did a Liberal govt ever replaced our aging Sea Kings or did we wait until a new Conservative govt took the reign of the country?
Trudeau the younger promised he'd get tough on the environment, unlike his Conservative opponents, destroyer of planets.  What did he do?  He kept the same targets and didn't even try to achieve that objective.
Now he says with a new tax, and nothing else so far, carbon emissions will magically go down by themselves.  And that is simply untrue, it requires a lot more than that now.

The Liberals, every since the Trudeau Sr era, have been very strong on words, short on actions.  Except when it times to go hard on Quebec, to punish these truly horrible, evil beings, who insists on preserving their cultural identity in the face of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.  There, they always do their utmost to screw with our province, not mincing words and acting as if the State belonged to them.

So far, after 4 years of unopposed reign, I have seen nothing to convince me the Liberals are doing something different.
If you truly think the Liberals will act on their promise of doing something meaningful, other than simply taxing us, I believe I have a bridge to sell near Quebec city.  Requires a bit of paint, but is apparently is very good shape, according to the morons who sold it for 1$ without any guarantee of maintenance.  Sound investment, imho.  As sound as putting Faith in the promise of a Liberal government.


Quote
No, I was mostly thinking about the idiots who claim they understand the science but vote Conservative anyway
.Sure, I got that.  But it's not like his vote would make a difference.  And I did pinch my nose voting for the Greens.  They had no real economic plan for the country and their environmental platform was filled with holes.  After so many years talking of the issue, coming so short on seriousness just demonstrate that 'Greeners' need to walk the real life, and stop living in daydreamingland.


Quote
If you put both groups together, those who voted Liberal this time and those who voted Conservative, you quickly realize we are pretty much screwed.
I said we were screwed a while back.  No surprise here that I do not disagree with you on this.

I also said the environment is not as important as most people claim.  One party promised to do next to nothing and gets 1/3 of the vote.  One party did next to nothing for 4 years and got another third of the vote.

Might have been you, might have been another Canuck, said at the last election it was not so much as voting FOR as voting AGAINST to justify their individual vote. 

I believe this is what happenned at this election, for a lot of people:  Lots of people absolutely did not want the Liberals back in power, or in worst case scenario, they wanted the official opposition to be the party who stood the most chance of well, actually opposing them, and forcing the govt to listen to them once in a while.

Lots of people absolutely did not want the Conservatives back in power, or in worst case scenario, they wanted the official opposition to be the party who stood the most chance of well, actually opposing them, and forcing the govt to listen to them once in a while.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on October 30, 2019, 11:01:14 AM
and yet, you vote for the racist forced birth people.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 30, 2019, 03:15:35 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 30, 2019, 11:01:14 AM
and yet, you vote for the racist forced birth people.
People are free to have their opinion on any subject they want.  A political party is mainly a vehicle to advance such ideas that are freely expressed within the vehicle.  Once the driver have made its mind, we follow, or we get out.

For now, it seems, that the official party line has nothing to do with forced birth, ever since the party's foundation.

As for racistness, I don't see any racist actions by the previous government, or any proposals that might be construed as racist by this current incarnation of the party.  In as much as I know, the truly racist people were asked to leave, contrary to other parties, where francophobia and Quebec bashing is encouraged and is seen as a good way to enter a leader's grace.  Why do you hate your people so much?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:22:24 PM
I thought it was Alberta and the west the Libs hated.  :D That central Canada - including Quebec - was their power base that they favored over the rest of the nation.

Albertains claim Trudeau is busy favouring Quebec over them:

Quote"I think the federal government has a specific hate on" for Alberta, Moser said. "We have a federal government that wants to choke the Alberta economy for its own political reasons."
...
Long the malcontents of the Canadian confederation, Albertans complain the province's oil bounty is spread to other provinces through equalisation payments.

Trudeau's home province has been the largest recipient of such payments – a fact not lost on Albertans, who note that Quebec opposes pipelines, even as tankers transport oil down the St Lawrence River.

Amid the perceptions of antipathy from the federal government, some in the province have even revived the idea of separating from Canada. "I'd support it," George said. "But I'll hate it every step of the way."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/16/alberta-canada-election-justin-trudeau-oil

...

My gods, Canadian politics is infecting other threads ...

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 30, 2019, 03:26:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:22:24 PM
My gods, Canadian politics is infecting other threads ...

:menace:

Maybe it's for the best.  When you look at the madness going on in the US or UK, they should want to have our political system instead!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:28:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 30, 2019, 03:26:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:22:24 PM
My gods, Canadian politics is infecting other threads ...

:menace:

Maybe it's for the best.  When you look at the madness going on in the US or UK, they should want to have our political system instead!

Where we quite sanely if endlessly quarrel over which province our federal government party hates more?  :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 30, 2019, 03:44:20 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:28:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 30, 2019, 03:26:47 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:22:24 PM
My gods, Canadian politics is infecting other threads ...

:menace:

Maybe it's for the best.  When you look at the madness going on in the US or UK, they should want to have our political system instead!

Where we quite sanely if endlessly quarrel over which province our federal government party hates more?  :D

Precisely!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on October 30, 2019, 03:50:15 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 30, 2019, 03:44:20 PM
Precisely!

I think the only reasonable conclusion is that the Liberals hate everyone.

Except of course for Toronto. No Canadian, coast to coast, could possibly hate Toronto, as it is a city beloved by all.  :Canuck: :goodboy:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on October 30, 2019, 05:14:39 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 30, 2019, 01:55:45 AM
Chrétien promised he'd abolished the GST and replace Canada's helicopter. 

Only 1 helicopter in the whole country?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 30, 2019, 06:25:37 PM
Quote from: dps on October 30, 2019, 05:14:39 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 30, 2019, 01:55:45 AM
Chrétien promised he'd abolished the GST and replace Canada's helicopter. 

Only 1 helicopter in the whole country?

By this point - pretty much one fully operational
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on October 31, 2019, 08:05:39 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 30, 2019, 03:15:35 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 30, 2019, 11:01:14 AM
and yet, you vote for the racist forced birth people.
People are free to have their opinion on any subject they want.  A political party is mainly a vehicle to advance such ideas that are freely expressed within the vehicle.  Once the driver have made its mind, we follow, or we get out.

For now, it seems, that the official party line has nothing to do with forced birth, ever since the party's foundation.

As for racistness, I don't see any racist actions by the previous government, or any proposals that might be construed as racist by this current incarnation of the party.  In as much as I know, the truly racist people were asked to leave, contrary to other parties, where francophobia and Quebec bashing is encouraged and is seen as a good way to enter a leader's grace.  Why do you hate your people so much?

I wrote people, not party.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on November 01, 2019, 01:08:07 AM
(https://i.redd.it/v4y7f03rz2g31.png)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 01, 2019, 01:24:03 AM
That's goddamn bleak
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 01, 2019, 02:42:41 AM
Well half or more than half of people in nearly all states and provinces agree.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 01, 2019, 04:49:54 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 01, 2019, 02:42:41 AM
Well half or more than half of people in nearly all states and provinces agree.

43% of Americans don't think humans cause climate change, and it is upwards of a third even in the most progressive states. It's bleak as hell.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2019, 04:59:32 AM
Considering that a countrywide majority of opinion doesn't necessarily translate into parliamentary majorities, the numbers need to be significantly higher to have any significant effect.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 01, 2019, 05:27:14 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 01, 2019, 04:49:54 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 01, 2019, 02:42:41 AM
Well half or more than half of people in nearly all states and provinces agree.

43% of Americans don't think humans cause climate change, and it is upwards of a third even in the most progressive states. It's bleak as hell.

I'd wager many people don't really have an opinion.

Also, California is among the most progressive of states but approximately a quarter of the voting population register as republicans.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on November 01, 2019, 05:47:16 AM
I keep cheerleading for geoengineering, but everyone hates it:
1. The climate deniers because either the climate isn't changing, or because warming is good.
2. The climate change activists, because self-denial and sacrifice are morally more important than actually fixing the problem.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 01, 2019, 05:48:22 AM
There will not be a political solution for sure; our only hope is technology.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on November 01, 2019, 05:49:51 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 01, 2019, 05:48:22 AM
There will not be a political solution for sure; our only hope is technology.

Of course, but politics has to pull the trigger on the technology. I've seen climate hysterics argue that any discussion of geoengineering is treason to the cause. It's *people* who must change.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 01, 2019, 06:03:03 AM
Support for geoengineering may rise as the destruction caused by climate change becomes more visible. People can lower their most egregious CO2 emissions but not many will want to leave the 21st century. A certain intellectual honesty is required though; so I'm not hopeful.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 07:22:12 AM
Alberta  :x
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 01, 2019, 07:35:27 AM
I guess most people will always lean toward the path of least resistance in life, in anything. With climate change, that is -presently- to deny or brush it off.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 07:46:52 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EIO2JgQX0AIaaWV?format=jpg&name=small)

Fucking Alberta.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 01, 2019, 07:52:08 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 01, 2019, 04:49:54 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 01, 2019, 02:42:41 AM
Well half or more than half of people in nearly all states and provinces agree.

43% of Americans don't think humans cause climate change, and it is upwards of a third even in the most progressive states. It's bleak as hell.

Not answering "Yes" is not the same as answering "No".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 01, 2019, 08:01:49 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 01, 2019, 07:52:08 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 01, 2019, 04:49:54 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 01, 2019, 02:42:41 AM
Well half or more than half of people in nearly all states and provinces agree.

43% of Americans don't think humans cause climate change, and it is upwards of a third even in the most progressive states. It's bleak as hell.

Not answering "Yes" is not the same as answering "No".

Here apparently is the source information, blurb from what looks to be map author on reddit:

QuoteThese are the two most comparable polls on the subject I can find, but the wording of the question was not precisely the same. Canadians were asked to respond to: "Climate change is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities". Americans were asked to respond to "global warming is mostly caused by human activities". Question phrasing may bias results.

Canadian data: http://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018.1129_ClimateBeliefReleaseTables.pdf

American data: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2019, 08:08:33 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on November 01, 2019, 05:47:16 AM
I keep cheerleading for geoengineering, but everyone hates it:
1. The climate deniers because either the climate isn't changing, or because warming is good.
2. The climate change activists, because self-denial and sacrifice are morally more important than actually fixing the problem.

What kind of measures are you thinking about?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 01, 2019, 08:09:40 AM
https://environment.yale.edu/ycom/factsheets/MapPage/2017Partisan/?est=happening&group=rep&type=value&geo=national

https://environment.yale.edu/ycom/factsheets/MapPage/2018Partisan/?est=happening&group=rep&type=value&geo=national

Found these two which given you thoughts on global warming split by political registration.

They appear to show the following, demonstrating that Republicans are very much a problem.

31% Repubs thought caused by man in 2016 vs. 35% in 2018
65% Dems thought caused by man in 2016 vs. 79% in 2018

82% Dems thought global warming was happening vs 91% in 2018
50% Repubs thought global warming was happening vs 52% in 2018
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 01, 2019, 08:24:34 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on November 01, 2019, 05:47:16 AM
2. The climate change activists, because self-denial and sacrifice are morally more important than actually fixing the problem.

No, if self-denial and sacrifice are required it will never be fixed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 08:49:57 AM
Odd binary world you are perceiving Hami

I don't know anyone advocating self denial at the expense of fixing the problem.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Yea, the concerns I've heard is that the geoengineering solution then causes some other problem to fix.

If the idea is carbon-fixing plants then I'd support it wholeheartedly. If it's stratospheric aerosols then we need more information.

Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 01, 2019, 11:05:09 AM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Yea, the concerns I've heard is that the geoengineering solution then causes some other problem to fix.

If the idea is carbon-fixing plants then I'd support it wholeheartedly. If it's stratospheric aerosols then we need more information.

Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.

Indeed and especially your last point.

Also it doesn't have to be a binary choice as others have said, I see a need for global governmental action, crash technological programmes and individual adaption/lifestyle changes, all acting together.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on November 01, 2019, 11:08:31 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 07:46:52 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EIO2JgQX0AIaaWV?format=jpg&name=small)

Fucking Alberta.

You had your chance to live here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 01, 2019, 11:09:22 AM
Damn. You Canucks are all rich.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on November 01, 2019, 11:14:31 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 01, 2019, 11:09:22 AM
Damn. You Canucks are all rich.

Map is adjusted for PPP.  A similar graph in just straight per capita GDP would look very different.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 11:23:07 AM
I love how the Newfoundland figure is in Labrador.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:27:48 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 11:23:07 AM
I love how the Newfoundland figure is in Labrador.

You mean northeastern Quebec right  :sleep:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:30:24 AM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Yea, the concerns I've heard is that the geoengineering solution then causes some other problem to fix.

If the idea is carbon-fixing plants then I'd support it wholeheartedly. If it's stratospheric aerosols then we need more information.

Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.

I keep seeing that WW2 effort quote. Now I don't know the numbers so you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the most effective way to counter global warming be a massive reforestation effort?

A couple billion trees per 30 million people should do it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 11:35:40 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:27:48 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 11:23:07 AM
I love how the Newfoundland figure is in Labrador.

You mean northeastern Quebec right  :sleep:

Yes, of course. We should still call it Labrador tho.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 12:34:37 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:30:24 AM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Yea, the concerns I've heard is that the geoengineering solution then causes some other problem to fix.

If the idea is carbon-fixing plants then I'd support it wholeheartedly. If it's stratospheric aerosols then we need more information.

Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.

I keep seeing that WW2 effort quote. Now I don't know the numbers so you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the most effective way to counter global warming be a massive reforestation effort?

A couple billion trees per 30 million people should do it.
I think that should be part of the plan, but I think the main problem there is that trees grow slowly. The amount of CO2 they can absorb is going to be proportional to their size, or at least their leaf surface area. So that would probably be very effective in 30-50 years. This could be somewhat offset with intensive management, but then you get back to expense.

In addition any project that converts a significant portion of our "utilized" land into forest is going to require economic and/or social changes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 12:47:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 01, 2019, 11:14:31 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 01, 2019, 11:09:22 AM
Damn. You Canucks are all rich.

Map is adjusted for PPP.  A similar graph in just straight per capita GDP would look very different.
If the point of the graph is to show standard of living, my understanding is that per capita GDP is a bad metric. I'm not actually sure what the point of the graph is in this case.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 01, 2019, 12:52:17 PM
I don't know why it was made but I posted it to highlight the deniers in Alberta sure do benefit from their denial.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 06, 2019, 05:53:23 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/police-ban-on-extinction-rebellion-protests-ruled-illegal-by-high-court

QuoteExtinction Rebellion protesters may sue Met after protest ban ruled illegal

Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion protesters may now sue the Metropolitan police for unlawful arrest after the high court quashed an order banning the group's protests in London last month.

In a judgment handed down on Wednesday morning, Mr Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Chamberlain said the section 14 order imposed during XR's "autumn uprising" in October was unlawful.

Dingemans said: "Separate gatherings, separated both in time and by many miles, even if coordinated under the umbrella of one body, are not a public assembly within the meaning of ... the Act.

"The XR autumn uprising intended to be held from 14 to 19 October was not therefore a public assembly ... therefore the decision to impose the condition was unlawful because there was no power to impose it under ... the Act."

...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 06, 2019, 07:50:46 AM
Thanks for pointing out the courts of in the UK continue to function as they should.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on November 06, 2019, 12:24:42 PM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 12:34:37 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:30:24 AM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Yea, the concerns I've heard is that the geoengineering solution then causes some other problem to fix.

If the idea is carbon-fixing plants then I'd support it wholeheartedly. If it's stratospheric aerosols then we need more information.

Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.

I keep seeing that WW2 effort quote. Now I don't know the numbers so you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the most effective way to counter global warming be a massive reforestation effort?

A couple billion trees per 30 million people should do it.
I think that should be part of the plan, but I think the main problem there is that trees grow slowly. The amount of CO2 they can absorb is going to be proportional to their size, or at least their leaf surface area. So that would probably be very effective in 30-50 years. This could be somewhat offset with intensive management, but then you get back to expense.

In addition any project that converts a significant portion of our "utilized" land into forest is going to require economic and/or social changes.

I don't think the land usage would be a problem, in Canada at least. Coming from Europe, you really see how empty it is here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 06, 2019, 12:31:32 PM
Quote from: Maximus on November 01, 2019, 10:48:58 AM
Whatever the solution, it will require an economic mobilization at least on the order of WW2. It will still require sacrifices and social change.

It will take a massive disaster for that kind of mobilisation to happen.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 06, 2019, 12:43:41 PM
He was referring to our utilized land.  Our non utilized land is already mostly forest - in areas trees will grow that is.  Cities have been undertaking greening projects but a lot more could be done.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on November 06, 2019, 05:55:02 PM
About 90% of all land area in Canada is crown land. About 40% of all land area in Canada is forested. We have a lot of room to plant.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on November 06, 2019, 05:57:50 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 06, 2019, 05:55:02 PM
About 90% of all land area in Canada is crown land. About 40% of all land area in Canada is forested. We have a lot of room to plant.

I dunno how much we can do to change what's there already, though. Places currently without trees usually lack them because trees won't grow there.

Mind you, with global warming, the tree line will creep north.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on November 06, 2019, 06:00:15 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 06, 2019, 05:55:02 PM
About 90% of all land area in Canada is crown land. About 40% of all land area in Canada is forested. We have a lot of room to plant.

We have an awful lot of tundra in Canada :contract:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcnvc-cnvc.ca%2Fuploads%2Fveg_zones_2018%2Fhard_copy_maps%2Fcnvc_ll2_may11_2018.jpg&hash=afaea7892bd8d49f334b4b4c05a65d40eac78d63)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on November 06, 2019, 06:03:34 PM
Yup. Didn't think about the tree line and the Canadian arctic. Doh.

Still. I maintain we can plant more. Liberals campaigned on that iirc.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on November 06, 2019, 06:37:26 PM
One significant issue, in Canada, is that the areas of mixed deciduous forest are actually pretty limited (both by climate and the Canadian Shield) and those are exactly where people like to put both farms and cities - so much of that is gone under development.

One solution is to encourage mixed use of existing lands, to create more forestry in urban areas for example. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 06, 2019, 07:18:25 PM
I say we turn Oklahoma into one giant forest.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 06, 2019, 07:38:19 PM
Home of the Dust Bowl? I have a feeling it won't work.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 06, 2019, 08:08:41 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 06, 2019, 07:38:19 PM
Home of the Dust Bowl? I have a feeling it won't work.

What better way to prevent a second dust bowl?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:30:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 07:22:12 AM
Alberta  :x
Harper did support investment in carbon capture and R&D on the subject for Saskatchewan, I think...
Environmentalists were against it, of course.  But that was expected.  If we wait on them to solve the problem, we'll long be underwater.

I've read Mexico city has artificial trees that absorbs CO2.  Don't know what it does with it though, I can not remember if it converted it in oxygen like a real tree, but 24/24, or if it was subterean capture or something else.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 07, 2019, 03:32:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:30:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 07:22:12 AM
Alberta  :x
Harper did support investment in carbon capture and R&D on the subject for Saskatchewan, I think...
Environmentalists were against it, of course.  But that was expected.  If we wait on them to solve the problem, we'll long be underwater.

I've read Mexico city has artificial trees that absorbs CO2.  Don't know what it does with it though, I can not remember if it converted it in oxygen like a real tree, but 24/24, or if it was subterean capture or something else.

Not sure what research on carbon capture has to do with the graph that was shown.

fyi Manning advocated for carbon taxes.  ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:46:59 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 01, 2019, 11:30:24 AM
I keep seeing that WW2 effort quote. Now I don't know the numbers so you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the most effective way to counter global warming be a massive reforestation effort?

A couple billion trees per 30 million people should do it.
To be effective, these trees would need to be planted where most people tend to live, in the temperate zones of the countries, exactly where there used to be trees...

Planting trees in middle of a desert is no use, and planting trees in the boreal forest is apparently counter-productive to climate change (read Le Soleil, last week-end, scientific chronicle, sorry can't find it right now).

Make Longeuil and Laval great again!  Let's plant trees instead of buildings! :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:48:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2019, 03:32:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:30:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 07:22:12 AM
Alberta  :x
Harper did support investment in carbon capture and R&D on the subject for Saskatchewan, I think...
Environmentalists were against it, of course.  But that was expected.  If we wait on them to solve the problem, we'll long be underwater.

I've read Mexico city has artificial trees that absorbs CO2.  Don't know what it does with it though, I can not remember if it converted it in oxygen like a real tree, but 24/24, or if it was subterean capture or something else.

Not sure what research on carbon capture has to do with the graph that was shown.

fyi Manning advocated for carbon taxes.  ;)
Ah, I thought you were reacting to the carbon capture post. Sorry.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 07, 2019, 03:48:28 PM
Well we can plant cities in deserts now....
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 03:51:28 PM
One interesting point on Green New Deal and that rhetorical point.

Labour are campaigning on igniting a Green Industrial Revolution - which is more resonant in the UK than the New Deal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 07, 2019, 03:54:41 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:48:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2019, 03:32:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 03:30:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 01, 2019, 07:22:12 AM
Alberta  :x
Harper did support investment in carbon capture and R&D on the subject for Saskatchewan, I think...
Environmentalists were against it, of course.  But that was expected.  If we wait on them to solve the problem, we'll long be underwater.

I've read Mexico city has artificial trees that absorbs CO2.  Don't know what it does with it though, I can not remember if it converted it in oxygen like a real tree, but 24/24, or if it was subterean capture or something else.

Not sure what research on carbon capture has to do with the graph that was shown.

fyi Manning advocated for carbon taxes.  ;)
Ah, I thought you were reacting to the carbon capture post. Sorry.

It was in response to the graphic that showed Alberta has the strongest concentration of climate change deniers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 03:51:28 PM
One interesting point on Green New Deal and that rhetorical point.

Labour are campaigning on igniting a Green Industrial Revolution - which is more resonant in the UK than the New Deal.

It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 04:01:24 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Yeah - I think "Moon-Shot" would be better for the US.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 04:12:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 04:01:24 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Yeah - I think "Moon-Shot" would be better for the US.

Indeed, the whole rhetoric around the moon mission (well, minus the Cold War proxy fight with the Soviets  :D) would make an excellent analogy.

We are doing this for all humanity.

We are doing this, not because it is easy, but because it is hard and because it is necessary.

In doing this, we are demonstrating world leadership. The whole world will get behind this.

This may be expensive, but by doing this we will advance science and industry, benefitting ourselves as well as the whole world.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 04:48:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2019, 03:48:28 PM
Well we can plant cities in deserts now....
Great!  Let's move Toronto and Montreal to desert lands (the land in the arctic circles count as a desert too, no? ), and let's plant trees there instead.  I'm sure all these nature loving people will agree to a slight disturbance in their living patterns :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 07, 2019, 09:52:07 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 07, 2019, 04:48:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2019, 03:48:28 PM
Well we can plant cities in deserts now....
Great!  Let's move Toronto and Montreal to desert lands (the land in the arctic circles count as a desert too, no? ), and let's plant trees there instead.  I'm sure all these nature loving people will agree to a slight disturbance in their living patterns :P

Well I see Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas Nevada and it is clear one can just build a giant city of millions of people in the middle of a desert if you want.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 08, 2019, 02:07:04 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2019, 09:52:07 PM
Well I see Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas Nevada and it is clear one can just build a giant city of millions of people in the middle of a desert if you want.
Samarkand might have been first at the whole desert city thing.  You Americans, always copying others and claiming it as your own achievement! :P   

( :berkut: just kidding :) )
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 22, 2019, 08:39:59 AM
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/world-fossil-fuel-production-rise-guarantees-missing-paris-climate-goals/

QuoteDangerous levels of warming locked in by planned jump in fossil fuels output

Plans by the world's biggest oil, gas, and coal producers to vastly increase their output guarantees those countries will miss their stated Paris climate goals.


Global governments plan to produce 120 percent more fossil fuels by 2030, drastically at odds with the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) warming limit they all agreed to under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. All major fossil fuel-producing nations—including the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia—have ambitious plans to increase production, according to a new report by leading research organizations and the United Nations.

Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use totaled 37.1 billion tonnes in 2018, a new record. Substantially reducing those emissions will never happen without reducing fossil fuel production, says Michael Lazarus, a lead author of "The Production Gap Report" and the director of Stockholm Environment Institute's U.S. Center.

Using publicly-available government documents, the report found that countries' plans to increase production of coal, oil, and gas amounts to 120 percent more in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees F. Those plans include producing 280 percent more coal. That puts the world on a path to more than 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) of warming, says Lazarus.

"This report shows, for the first time, just how big the disconnect is between Paris temperature goals and countries' plans and policies for coal, oil, and gas production," Lazarus says. "Even countries claiming to be climate leaders like Canada and Norway say they want to maximize their fossil fuel exports," he said in an interview.

Such a rise in global temperatures would hasten the melting of Earth's ice sheets, raising sea levels; increase the number of big storms and the amount of rain they dump; force the migration of animals to new habitats as their homes heat up; and heighten the danger of infectious diseases to humans, among other effects.

In the report, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen says it introduces "the fossil fuel production gap, a new metric that clearly shows the gap between increasing fossil fuel production and the decline needed to limit global warming."

"Consider me shocked, but not surprised" by the report, says energy economist Gernot Wagner at New York University. If the world uses even 20 percent more fossil fuels in 2030 than today it is "bound to create massive systemic risks," says Gernot, who was not involved in the report.

"The incentives around fossil fuel extraction are all screwed up. Globally, we are still subsidizing fossil fuel use to the tune of half a trillion dollars per year," he writes in an email.

Investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure today "locks in" fossil fuel production. If it continues as planned countries will end up producing between 40 and 50 percent more oil and gas by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C). In a landmark report last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that 2 degrees C of warming would have enormous impacts and costs on the environment.

"For the first time the UN has presented the crystal clear science: we must stop the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry immediately," said May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org, an environmental organization.

Governments are key

Of the 27 fossil fuel-producing countries, the top nine account for over two-thirds of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions, the report says. The U.S. currently produces more oil and gas than any other country, and is the second largest producer of coal. Oil and gas production will increase to 30 percent above current levels by 2030 predicts the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The U.S. has begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris agreement.

Governments issue the extraction permits and provide production and consumption subsidies, so they'll have to take the lead on phasing down fossil fuel production, says Stephen Kretzmann of Oil Change International, a U.S. non-profit research organization focused on the costs of fossil fuels.

Yesterday, California, the sixth largest oil producing state, announced a comprehensive action to phase out California's oil and gas production, Kretzmann says. "That's what real climate leadership looks like."

Gov. Gavin Newsom has stopped approval of new hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in the state pending reviews by an independent panel of scientists. This was a step toward the phase-out of "our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on clean energy sources," Newsom said in a statement.

Countries have numerous options for closing the production gap, including limiting exploration and extraction, removing subsidies, and aligning future production plans with climate goals. The report details these domestic policy options by governments that can restrain—or at least not subsidize—the supply of fossil fuels, says Steve Davis, a climate researcher at the University of California, Davis, a contributor to the report.

Phasing down fossil fuel production needs to be done in ways that ensures those affected by social and economic change are not left behind, the report concludes. Germany, one of the world's largest coal producers, will phase out coal power plants entirely by 2038, as well as lignite coal mining. It has set aside $47 billion in government support to compensate those affected.

"Despite more than two decades of climate policy-making, fossil fuel production levels are higher than ever," says Stockholm Environment Institute's Executive Director, Måns Nilsson. "This report shows that governments' continued support for coal, oil, and gas extraction is a big part of the problem. We're in a deep hole—and we need to stop digging."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: dps on November 22, 2019, 08:46:15 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 04:01:24 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Yeah - I think "Moon-Shot" would be better for the US.

"The War on Climate".
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 23, 2019, 08:17:33 PM
Quote from: dps on November 22, 2019, 08:46:15 PM

"The War on Climate".

Oh dear God :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 23, 2019, 08:31:48 PM
The Sino-American Alliance is unstoppable!  :showoff:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 23, 2019, 08:49:05 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 23, 2019, 08:31:48 PM
The Sino-American Alliance is unstoppable!  :showoff:

Mono impression?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 23, 2019, 08:55:17 PM
Mono doesn't get to own that smilie.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 23, 2019, 09:04:52 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 23, 2019, 08:55:17 PM
Mono doesn't get to own that smilie.

It is just the whole composition of the post:

"Despicable shit happened :showoff:"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 23, 2019, 09:12:01 PM
But sarcastic in this case.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 24, 2019, 09:47:32 AM
Quote from: dps on November 22, 2019, 08:46:15 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 04:01:24 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Yeah - I think "Moon-Shot" would be better for the US.

"The War on Climate".
Actually year - war on carbon, war on climate change. But I think the rhetoric of war as a unifying motivating factor is dead now. Mainly because of all the actual war.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 24, 2019, 10:14:21 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 24, 2019, 09:47:32 AM
Quote from: dps on November 22, 2019, 08:46:15 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 07, 2019, 04:01:24 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 07, 2019, 03:57:44 PM
It makes a great deal more sense.

"New Deal" has overtones of 'make-work for the sake of paying people who would otherwise be unemployed', as that is mainly what people remember that era for. This creates the unfortunate impression that green proposals are basically 'make-work'. Which is far from the truth.
Yeah - I think "Moon-Shot" would be better for the US.

"The War on Climate".
Actually year - war on carbon, war on climate change. But I think the rhetoric of war as a unifying motivating factor is dead now. Mainly because of all the actual war.

So what about this instead:

Peace On Climate


:bowler:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on November 24, 2019, 10:52:55 AM
The lowest hanging fruit will be China and India switching this century to the new generation, smaller, modular nuclear reactors instead of coal. The rest is tinkering at the edges. Britain and Canada for instance aren't even rounding errors compared to China.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 24, 2019, 04:07:13 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on November 24, 2019, 10:52:55 AM
The lowest hanging fruit will be China and India switching this century to the new generation, smaller, modular nuclear reactors instead of coal. The rest is tinkering at the edges. Britain and Canada for instance aren't even rounding errors compared to China.

Well building new coal generation plants is a real problem. Those things cost millions to build, they are not just going to shut down new generation in a few years.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 06, 2019, 06:43:37 AM
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/12/arctic/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=twitter::cmp=editorial::add=tw20191204science-arcticconsequences::rid=&sf225332291=1

QuoteWarming at the poles will soon be felt globally in rising seas, extreme weather

Ice loss, permafrost thaw, fires: Trouble in the Arctic and Antarctic could cause shocks to the world's weather and sea levels sooner than thought, says a new study.

ERIC POST HAS observed seasons at the same location on the West Greenland tundra for 26 years. Over that time, he's seen profound changes. When he first started working there, hundreds of caribou covered the hills. Now, he says, the herd is down to around 90.

"You find yourself thinking they'll be back next spring; numbers will go up again," Post says, "but year after year goes by and the big groups just aren't there the way they used to be."

As Earth trudges steadily toward a dangerously warm future, a new report on the outlook for the polar regions says the Arctic is already there—with consequences on the horizon for everyone.

"There is a real possibility that we will be entering a phase of accelerated Arctic warming in the next two to four decades if mitigation action isn't taken soon," says Post, a climate change ecologist at the University of California, Davis.

Post is lead author of the report published today in Science Advances, in which an international group of scientists looks at current and future impacts of polar warming across a range of disciplines.

The Arctic is warming far more quickly than anywhere else on the planet. Temperatures climbed nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 Celsius) in the past decade alone. At the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the North is on track to warm 7.2 F (4 C) year-round—and top 12.6 F (7 C) in autumns—by the middle of this century, according to the report. That's about when the planet as a whole is projected to reach the 3.6 F (2 C) warming often cited as the threshold for disastrous impacts.

Already, the High North is seeing unprecedented changes, including drastic ice losses on land and sea, galloping permafrost thaw, raging wildfires, unseasonal storms, earlier springs, and more. Summer sea ice this year shrank to its second lowest extent since satellite measurements began in 1979, while record July heat melted billions of tons of ice off the Greenland ice sheet. Wildfires blazed across millions of acres from Alaska to Siberia.

"Consequences of recent Arctic warming have already been widespread and pronounced, and yet we haven't even seen what's expected to be the most rapid phase of warming," Post says.

While both the Arctic and Antarctic are experiencing rising temperatures, thinning glaciers, disturbed ecosystems, and other alarming shifts as heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions build up, changes are sweeping the northern region far faster. The impacts of a warming Arctic will be felt well beyond the high latitudes in the near future, the report warns.

Sea ice losses

One of scientists' top concerns as the planet warms is the loss of Arctic sea ice. Summer sea ice, which has been shrinking more than 10 percent a decade over the past 40 years, is projected to essentially disappear within 20 to 25 years at the current emissions rate. Some put it even sooner.

Co-author Julienne Stroeve, a specialist in remote sensing of the polar regions with the University of Manitoba in Canada and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, thinks Arctic warming may already have pushed summer sea ice past its threshold.

"I know it's a dangerous thing to say," says Stroeve, "but at this point, regardless of what we commit to with CO2 reductions, and the warming that we try to limit things to... we will likely see ice-free summers emerging."

Her latest work suggests that Arctic sea ice is now shrinking faster than most current climate models project. That ice loss fuels Arctic amplification—the force that's speeding up northern warming. As the ocean's protective lid thaws, more sunlight enters the water, causing more warming, leading to yet more ice loss, in a feedback spiral.

Peeling back that ice cover could also unleash more extreme weather on the Northern Hemisphere's mid-latitudes, including droughts, floods, and heatwaves. Although a topic of current debate among scientists, some studies suggest Arctic warming makes the jet stream weaker and wavier, letting cold polar air reach further south and warm air stretch north.

"The accelerated Arctic warming impacts weather down here in the lower 48 and around the entire Northern Hemisphere by changing the temperature contrast between mid and high latitudes," explains co-author Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University atmospheric scientist.

"That temperature contrast is responsible for the existence of the jet stream, and when it decreases, the jet stream tends to slow down and weather systems linger longer in the same location," he says.

Mann says the phenomenon has been linked with relentless hot spells like the ones that baked Europe this summer, and brutal cold snaps like the recent "Arctic blast" that froze the eastern and midwestern United States.

Rising concerns

Sea-level rise is another looming concern. Arctic land ice—particularly the vast ice sheet atop Greenland—is thawing faster than current climate models suggest, and could raise sea levels substantially more than the 3 feet projected by the end of the century in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report released in September.

Arctic permafrost thaw is also escalating, releasing the potent greenhouse gas methane and spiking atmospheric levels, with profound global warming effects.

Another recent study projects Arctic wildfire intensity doubling each year as thawing ground dries out
.

Meanwhile, warming is already knocking the Arctic's seasonal clock off-kilter. Spring plant growth is coming earlier and earlier, meaning tundra animals like the caribou at Post's Greenland research site arrive at their annual birthing grounds after the plants they eat have passed their nutritional peak. Flowers open before the insects that pollinate them can get there, and migrating birds miss the spring flush. The shifts are accelerating, the report says, and in future could exceed ecosystems' ability to adapt.

Arctic warming also stands to disrupt the marine food web, increase mortality for polar bears and seals, and threaten the livelihoods of the region's indigenous people. One bright note in the outlook: So far whales seem to be benefitting from range expansion as sea ice recedes.

The Antarctic is not the Arctic

While temperatures are surging in the Arctic—by century's end, they could soar as much as 23.4 F (13 C) during parts of the year, according to the report—Antarctic warming has been similar to the global average, although some parts are warming much faster.

Both polar regions are changing, says co-author Richard Alley, a Penn State glaciologist and Antarctica specialist. "But it's not as simple as they all do the same thing. The Arctic is not the Antarctic and the Antarctic is not the Arctic."

Antarctica is surrounded by the vast Southern Ocean, which is soaking up much of the atmosphere's excess heat. "And if it goes into the ocean," says Alley, "then it's not staying in the air."

Like the Arctic, ice on the southernmost continent is also being eaten away by warming. Major glaciers—most notably the Florida-sized Thwaites—are rapidly retreating, while the floating ice shelves that hold them in place are thinning above and below. Those trends worry scientists.

"Warming of the air or ocean can weaken the ice shelves, and beyond some threshold, they tend to break off," says Alley.

If ice shelves in West Antarctica failed, and the Thwaites and other glaciers collapsed, sea levels could rise an additional foot or more by 2100—and a whopping 10 feet or more in the following century if irreversible glacier loss tipping points are crossed.

"That's the thing that that really worries us with West Antarctica," says Alley. "A reasonably small difference in how things evolve could end up making a really big difference in what happens with sea levels."

Antarctic sea ice has waxed and waned. The past two years, however, have seen record autumn lows. Moreover, the warming Southern Ocean could provide a route for invasive species and diseases to reach the isolated continent. And Antarctica's penguins, some of which are already having to shift their ranges as coastal conditions change, may face widespread displacement in future. The iconic emperor penguins could all but vanish by the end of the century, another new report projects.

The polar outlook is a "generally solid assessment of the changes and how they depend on these emissions scenarios," says University of Alaska-Fairbanks atmospheric scientist John Walsh, who was not involved with the study. "The article makes the point that even with the low emissions scenario—and a 2 degrees C warmer world is down at the low end of the emissions scenario spectrum—the Arctic is a changed place."

Cutting fossil fuel emissions can lower or delay Arctic warming by several decades, the authors say.

"In a way, the Arctic is speaking to us," say Post. "The question is whether we are listening."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Savonarola on January 10, 2020, 12:16:03 PM
CB and I saw a lecture last night on coral reefs last night; put on by a researcher at the local university.  While most of the news concerning coral reefs has been bad; he pointed out a couple bright spots.  Both deep water reefs (below 30 m) and reefs near thermal vents (such as those in Papua New Guinea) have, thus far, not been experienced bleaching.  (The former may be significant as it's unknown how extensive the deep water reefs are.)  He also spoke about his the reefs near his home town of Eilat (on the gulf of Aqaba) were restored from almost complete devastation to their 1960s levels after commercial fisheries were banned by both Israel and Jordan in 2008.

One problem that he did mention was the increased acidity of the oceans.  Carbon is washed from the atmosphere by rainwater creating carbonic acid.  (This is part of the carbon cycle and has helped regulate temperatures on earth even before the emergence of life.)    While carbonic acid is mild; in the abundance that it's produced by our industrialized world it has started increasing ocean acidity.  He speculated that if CO2 production continues to grow at its present rate coral reefs (as well as mollusks) may diminish in number.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on January 10, 2020, 12:21:39 PM
But what effect will that have on Trump's properties NOW?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 10, 2020, 01:01:28 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 10, 2020, 12:16:03 PM
CB and I saw a lecture last night on coral reefs last night; put on by a researcher at the local university.  While most of the news concerning coral reefs has been bad; he pointed out a couple bright spots.  Both deep water reefs (below 30 m) and reefs near thermal vents (such as those in Papua New Guinea) have, thus far, not been experienced bleaching.  (The former may be significant as it's unknown how extensive the deep water reefs are.)  He also spoke about his the reefs near his home town of Eilat (on the gulf of Aqaba) were restored from almost complete devastation to their 1960s levels after commercial fisheries were banned by both Israel and Jordan in 2008.

One problem that he did mention was the increased acidity of the oceans.  Carbon is washed from the atmosphere by rainwater creating carbonic acid.  (This is part of the carbon cycle and has helped regulate temperatures on earth even before the emergence of life.)    While carbonic acid is mild; in the abundance that it's produced by our industrialized world it has started increasing ocean acidity.  He speculated that if CO2 production continues to grow at its present rate coral reefs (as well as mollusks) may diminish in number.

Interesting.

Though it's not just a problem, maybe it's even The problem? :unsure:

A friend of mine is an climate scientist specializing in oceanographic stuff and his Big concern ocean acidification. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 13, 2020, 04:08:32 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/ocean-temperatures-hit-record-high-as-rate-of-heating-accelerates

The heating of the oceans is accelerating. 

QuoteThe results show heat increasing at an accelerating rate as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. The rate from 1987 to 2019 is four and a half times faster than that from 1955 to 1986. The vast majority of oceans regions are showing an increase in thermal energy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 01:38:23 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeb-irMs4w

Greta doing her Greta thing at Davos.  Doesn't sound at all autistic to me.  Also sounds full of herself. 
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 21, 2020, 02:23:14 PM
Are you suggesting she is not autistic?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on January 21, 2020, 02:48:46 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 01:38:23 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeb-irMs4w

Greta doing her Greta thing at Davos.  Doesn't sound at all autistic to me.  Also sounds full of herself.

That's just because you are used to her way of speaking nowadays. Also, she's 17. 17 years old are full of themself.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 21, 2020, 07:19:01 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 01:38:23 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeb-irMs4w

Greta doing her Greta thing at Davos.  Doesn't sound at all autistic to me.  Also sounds full of herself.

That's an 'accusation' you could make of nearly everyone on this board; people with opinions tend to sound opinionated!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 07:22:12 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 21, 2020, 07:19:01 PM
That's an 'accusation' you could make of nearly everyone on this board; people with opinions tend to sound opinionated!

I was responding to her implied belief that concern about climate change and the response to it started with her speech at the UN.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on January 21, 2020, 07:50:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 21, 2020, 07:19:01 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 01:38:23 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeb-irMs4w

Greta doing her Greta thing at Davos.  Doesn't sound at all autistic to me.  Also sounds full of herself.

That's an 'accusation' you could make of nearly everyone on this board; people with opinions tend to sound opinionated!

Eh, there are plenty of opinionated people with a poor self-image.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on January 22, 2020, 11:36:58 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on January 21, 2020, 07:50:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 21, 2020, 07:19:01 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 01:38:23 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeb-irMs4w

Greta doing her Greta thing at Davos.  Doesn't sound at all autistic to me.  Also sounds full of herself.

That's an 'accusation' you could make of nearly everyone on this board; people with opinions tend to sound opinionated!

Eh, there are plenty of opinionated people with a poor self-image.

:yes: katmai has enormous body issues.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 22, 2020, 12:33:17 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2020, 07:22:12 PM
Quote from: mongers on January 21, 2020, 07:19:01 PM
That's an 'accusation' you could make of nearly everyone on this board; people with opinions tend to sound opinionated!

I was responding to her implied belief that concern about climate change and the response to it started with her speech at the UN.

Not sure how you formed that inference.  She always says explicitly it is not about her.  No matter how much her detractors try to make it so.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 24, 2020, 05:28:59 PM
Posted mainly for our own resident Minsky

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-the-great-climate-shift-has-already-created-one-costly-minsky-moment/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on January 24, 2020, 05:47:02 PM
I'm sure the Globe and Mail subscribers will find that enlightening.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 25, 2020, 10:41:16 AM
As do I
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 27, 2020, 05:32:39 AM
(https://mk0brilliantmaptxoqs.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/global-warming-latitudes.gif)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 03, 2020, 01:13:03 PM
https://www.wired.com/story/the-10000-year-clock-is-a-waste-of-time/

Quote[...]

Another author with deep roots in the tech scene, Doug Rushkoff, wrote an eye-opening essay called "Survival of the Richest" in 2018. Rushkoff was flown to a private island and given the largest speaker's fee of his life to deliver his insights on "the future of technology" to an audience of five hedge fund billionaires. They weren't interested in his prepared remarks. What they wanted to discuss was "the Event." "That was their euphemism," Rushkoff explains, "for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down." And what they really wanted to ask him was "How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?" Rushkoff did his best, recommending that they were better off treating people well right now and working to prevent the Event. But he says the hedge funders laughed off his suggestion. They weren't interested in preventing the jackpot; they were interested in winning it.

One of the grim realities of climate politics today is that the elites bankrolling climate-denier politicians have made a simple calculation. They aren't betting that the scientific consensus is wrong. They are betting that the impacts of climate change won't fall directly on them. They'll either die before the jackpot begins or their wealth will help shield them from its impacts.

The worst thing about this calculation is that I'm not entirely sure it is incorrect. It's catastrophically immoral, certainly. But the impacts of climate disasters won't be evenly distributed. Think back to Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was devastated, but the wealthy areas were just fine. One answer to climate change is "just buy land on higher ground." That answer won't work for the 99.9 percent. But for the ultrawealthy, it's a viable strategy. And that means, in the short term, that the ultrawealthy can oppose any policy proposals that would radically reshape the economy to prevent, or at least mitigate, climate disasters. Those proposals will cost them money, individually. Those proposals will leave them, individually, less secure.

[...]
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on February 03, 2020, 01:18:42 PM
Quote from: Syt on February 03, 2020, 01:13:03 PM
https://www.wired.com/story/the-10000-year-clock-is-a-waste-of-time/

Quote[...]

Another author with deep roots in the tech scene, Doug Rushkoff, wrote an eye-opening essay called "Survival of the Richest" in 2018. Rushkoff was flown to a private island and given the largest speaker's fee of his life to deliver his insights on "the future of technology" to an audience of five hedge fund billionaires. They weren't interested in his prepared remarks. What they wanted to discuss was "the Event." "That was their euphemism," Rushkoff explains, "for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down." And what they really wanted to ask him was "How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?" Rushkoff did his best, recommending that they were better off treating people well right now and working to prevent the Event. But he says the hedge funders laughed off his suggestion. They weren't interested in preventing the jackpot; they were interested in winning it.

One of the grim realities of climate politics today is that the elites bankrolling climate-denier politicians have made a simple calculation. They aren't betting that the scientific consensus is wrong. They are betting that the impacts of climate change won't fall directly on them. They'll either die before the jackpot begins or their wealth will help shield them from its impacts.

The worst thing about this calculation is that I'm not entirely sure it is incorrect. It's catastrophically immoral, certainly. But the impacts of climate disasters won't be evenly distributed. Think back to Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was devastated, but the wealthy areas were just fine. One answer to climate change is "just buy land on higher ground." That answer won't work for the 99.9 percent. But for the ultrawealthy, it's a viable strategy. And that means, in the short term, that the ultrawealthy can oppose any policy proposals that would radically reshape the economy to prevent, or at least mitigate, climate disasters. Those proposals will cost them money, individually. Those proposals will leave them, individually, less secure.

[...]

That article got me listening to Rushkoff's podcast on my commute. I don't agree with him on everything but he brings in a lot of interesting personalities.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2020, 03:21:36 PM
A rather effortless pivot by the author from catastrophic virus, devastating computer failure, etc., to funding climate deniers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 04, 2020, 06:53:50 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2020, 03:21:36 PM
A rather effortless pivot by the author from catastrophic virus, devastating computer failure, etc., to funding climate deniers.
it's the most pressing concern of all.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 04, 2020, 07:09:56 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2020, 03:21:36 PM
A rather effortless pivot by the author from catastrophic virus, devastating computer failure, etc., to funding climate deniers.

Logic seems to follow.  If you believe that catastrophe will come in one's lifetime, whatever the cause, there is no point in addressing long term problems of any kind - indeed, if addressing them would be very costly and likely to lead to higher tax burdens on the rich, it is better to act as if it doesn't exist.  And climate change is the highest profile long term problem.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 04, 2020, 07:46:42 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 04, 2020, 07:09:56 PM
Logic seems to follow.  If you believe that catastrophe will come in one's lifetime, whatever the cause, there is no point in addressing long term problems of any kind - indeed, if addressing them would be very costly and likely to lead to higher tax burdens on the rich, it is better to act as if it doesn't exist.  And climate change is the highest profile long term problem.

If that's the natural human response, why should five billionaire hedge fund managers be singled out?  Noblesse oblige?

My point was the author leapt from hearing they were concerned about planning for a variety of catastrophic scenarios, only one of which was disastrous sudden climate change, to assuming they were indifferent to solving long term problems and were bankrolling climate deniers.  The second part does not follow from the first.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 05, 2020, 02:05:48 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 04, 2020, 07:46:42 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 04, 2020, 07:09:56 PM
Logic seems to follow.  If you believe that catastrophe will come in one's lifetime, whatever the cause, there is no point in addressing long term problems of any kind - indeed, if addressing them would be very costly and likely to lead to higher tax burdens on the rich, it is better to act as if it doesn't exist.  And climate change is the highest profile long term problem.

If that's the natural human response, why should five billionaire hedge fund managers be singled out?  Noblesse oblige?

My point was the author leapt from hearing they were concerned about planning for a variety of catastrophic scenarios, only one of which was disastrous sudden climate change, to assuming they were indifferent to solving long term problems and were bankrolling climate deniers.  The second part does not follow from the first.
the sample is extremly low, but it is coherent with a lot of what I'm hearing on the right.  Maxime Bernier even campaigned on this during the last election.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 05, 2020, 03:21:40 AM
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
CEO Nwabudike Morgan - The Ethics of Greed
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 07:41:07 AM
This is now considered feasible, turning the entire North Sea (and Baltic) into a lake to control sea level rise.

I guess it will be cheaper than rebuilding all the coastal cities inland. But the damage to the marine ecosystem would be immense.

(https://images1.persgroep.net/rcs/OqbQONrYhClXr6AdiC5ADHjOxE0/diocontent/167176166/_fitwidth/1240?appId=93a17a8fd81db0de025c8abd1cca1279&quality=0.9)

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 07:50:18 AM
What would this solve?  :huh:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:02:42 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 07:50:18 AM
What would this solve?  :huh:

Sea level rise. Once you isolate a body of water, you can control its level.
But it will turn into a fresh water lake over time.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 08:07:09 AM
Quote from: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:02:42 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 07:50:18 AM
What would this solve?  :huh:

Sea level rise. Once you isolate a body of water, you can control its level.
But it will turn into a fresh water lake over time.

So basically the ROTW would get more sea level rise with this, plus the total upheaval of marine life, in order to protect the coastal cities and towns around it. Bit of a dick move, isn't it?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on February 26, 2020, 08:15:29 AM
Here's an article about it - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea

Doesn't seem particularly newsworthy given likelihood of this paper being adopted as policy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:25:16 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 08:07:09 AM


So basically the ROTW would get more sea level rise with this, plus the total upheaval of marine life, in order to protect the coastal cities and towns around it. Bit of a dick move, isn't it?

That's pretty much the effect of any dam.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:31:12 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 26, 2020, 08:15:29 AM
Here's an article about it - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea

Doesn't seem particularly newsworthy given likelihood of this paper being adopted as policy.

Ideas like these (including the one where we abandon half the country) should become part of public discourse. That's what the paper is for.  :huh:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 08:33:58 AM
Quote from: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:31:12 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 26, 2020, 08:15:29 AM
Here's an article about it - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea

Doesn't seem particularly newsworthy given likelihood of this paper being adopted as policy.

Ideas like these (including the one where we abandon half the country) should become part of public discourse. That's what the paper is for.  :huh:

This is far from being a Netherlands-only thing, though.

It fails on having to include the UK, alone. A lot of people would go positively ape over the thought of blocking fish migration routes for the mere benefit of saving millions of livelihoods.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 26, 2020, 08:40:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2020, 08:33:58 AM


This is far from being a Netherlands-only thing, though.

It fails on having to include the UK, alone. A lot of people would go positively ape over the thought of blocking fish migration routes for the mere benefit of saving millions of livelihoods.

True. A lot of people would go ape over London being submerged, too.

The Afsluitdijk is being remodeled to accomodate fish migration at the moment, it's pretty cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDo6DX7hksc

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 09:01:09 AM
In 2019, US emissions were down 2.9%, Europe was down 5%, Japan down 4%.

Get to work Americans.  Buy more Teslas.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 26, 2020, 11:52:32 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 09:01:09 AM
In 2019, US emissions were down 2.9%, Europe was down 5%, Japan down 4%.

Get to work Americans.  Buy more Teslas.
Double bonus, since they destroy forests in Europe to build new plants.  Yuros emissions will be up, while US will be down.  Trump could brag about it, if he was smart...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 26, 2020, 12:00:07 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 26, 2020, 11:52:32 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 09:01:09 AM
In 2019, US emissions were down 2.9%, Europe was down 5%, Japan down 4%.

Get to work Americans.  Buy more Teslas.
Double bonus, since they destroy forests in Europe to build new plants.  Yuros emissions will be up, while US will be down.  Trump could brag about it, if he was smart...

What new plants are they building? Is Europe having an expanding load? Their population is not exactly radically expanding.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 12:04:45 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 26, 2020, 12:00:07 PM
What new plants are they building? Is Europe having an expanding load? Their population is not exactly radically expanding.

He's talking about Elon's Berlin factory, which is blocked right now by tree huggers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on February 26, 2020, 12:05:28 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 12:04:45 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 26, 2020, 12:00:07 PM
What new plants are they building? Is Europe having an expanding load? Their population is not exactly radically expanding.

He's talking about Elon's Berlin factory, which is blocked right now by tree huggers.

Oh. I missed that he was talking about Tesla.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on February 26, 2020, 06:49:29 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 26, 2020, 12:00:07 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 26, 2020, 11:52:32 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2020, 09:01:09 AM
In 2019, US emissions were down 2.9%, Europe was down 5%, Japan down 4%.

Get to work Americans.  Buy more Teslas.
Double bonus, since they destroy forests in Europe to build new plants.  Yuros emissions will be up, while US will be down.  Trump could brag about it, if he was smart...

What new plants are they building? Is Europe having an expanding load? Their population is not exactly radically expanding.
I've read over the week-end they were planning to build a new plant in Germany and they would destroy a large forest to do so.  Can't remember where.  Maybe it was FB...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on February 27, 2020, 02:09:35 AM
I've heard that the forest where Tesla hopes to build their factory is a pine monoculture; there are quite a lot of these in Germany. That being so an obvious compromise would be for Tesla to build their factory there and to commit to funding 70 hectares of mixed woodland somewhere else.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 27, 2020, 06:20:51 AM
Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on February 27, 2020, 06:47:23 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2020, 06:20:51 AM
Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.

Quite sad it takes a court ruling to remind the government of their commitment to the Paris Accord.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on February 27, 2020, 07:04:58 AM
Extending Heathrow is a silly idea anyway.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 27, 2020, 08:59:19 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2020, 06:20:51 AM
Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.

Not really.  The UK has a law that requires the impact of a development on carbon emissions to be considered.  The evidence before the court is that was not done.  While the law was passed in response to the Paris Accord, it is the failure to comply with UK law that was the problem.  A pretty straight forward finding on a judicial review.  Also easily fixed.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 26, 2020, 06:34:16 AM
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/methane-permian-basin-oil-gas-climate-change/?__twitter_impression=true#

QuoteSatellite images reveal huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields

Oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing area in the United States, are spewing more than twice the amount of methane emissions into the atmosphere than previously thought — enough wasted energy to power 7 million households in Texas for a year. That's the result of a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Permian Basin stretches across a 250-mile by 250-mile area of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and accounts for over a third of the crude oil and 10% of the natural gas in the U.S.

The study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, also found that the rate of leakage of methane gas makes up 3.7% of all the gas extracted in the basin, which is about 60% higher than the national average leakage rate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and since the Permian Basin is so large, this excess waste is a significant contribution to our already warming climate.

"These are the highest emissions ever measured from a major U.S. oil and gas basin," said study co-author Dr. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

To map the methane emissions, the team employed a space-borne sensor on a European Space Agency satellite called the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) from May 2018 to March 2019.

Since 2005, the rapid increase in oil and natural gas production in the United States has been driven primarily by hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) and horizontal drilling.

While some see the leaked methane gas as a big waste of natural resources, others are focused on the danger posed by methane. Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas, much more potent than its more well-known counterpart, carbon dioxide (CO2).

There is 225 times less methane in the atmosphere than there is CO2, but because of its powerful heat-trapping qualities, methane is contributing about 25% of the current rate of global warming
.

Since the Industrial Revolution, global methane concentrations have doubled due mostly to human activities like livestock farming, decay from landfills, and from burning fossil fuels.

"I am very concerned about increasing methane emissions," said Dr. Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and expert on methane from Cornell University, who was not involved with the study. "Methane is 120 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, compared mass-to-mass for the time both gases are in the atmosphere," he explains.

According to Hamburg, the methane gas escaping the Permian Basin is so excessive that it has tripled the typical heating impact it would have otherwise had through burning the gas. Evidence of this massive leakage undercuts the case made by proponents of natural gas who tout its cleaner-burning qualities over that of its normally dirtier-burning cousin, coal.

"The most up-to-date thinking is that for comparing coal and natural gas to generate electricity, gas is worse than coal if the methane emission rate is greater than 2.7%," said Howarth. However, this research found the Permian Basin's emission rate is higher than that — 3.7% of the gross gas extracted. Therefore, the leakage in the Permian Basin is so high it makes gas and oil emissions more intensive than even coal.

"After staying level for the first decade of the 21st century, methane emissions have been rising quickly over the past decade," said Howarth, "My research indicates that shale gas development in the U.S. is responsible for at least one-third of the total increase in these emissions globally."

The Harvard/EDF paper attributes the high methane leakage rate to extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas.

On the other hand, the paper concludes, the higher-than-average leakage rate in the Permian Basin implies an opportunity to reduce methane emissions through better design, more effective management, regulation and infrastructure development.

But over the past few years, regulations on fossil fuels have gone in the opposite direction. "Trump's EPA has proposed to substantially weaken or even eliminate regulations, adopted during the Obama administration, to control methane emissions from oil and gas facilities," said Romany Webb, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

Webb says the Texas Railroad Commission — the state's oil and gas regulator — has its own rules controlling venting and flaring. Venting and flaring is permitted up to 10 days after completion of well drilling; after that operators can apply for an exemption from the commission. "Recently, the number of exemptions granted by the commission has increased dramatically, leading to concerns that it is simply acting as a rubber stamp," said Webb.

"To detect emissions takes sophisticated approaches and highly trained personnel," Howarth said. "To date, the best any government has done is to come up with regulations that rely on industry self-reporting. I find that rather useless."

If the world has any hope of meeting the target for reducing emissions outlined in the Paris climate agreement, reducing CO2 cannot accomplish this alone — the climate responds far more quickly to methane, explains Howarth. To keep the level of warming below the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, controlling methane leakage is essential. Without it, humanity is bound to fall short.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: MadImmortalMan on April 29, 2020, 04:40:26 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 26, 2020, 06:34:16 AM
Satellite images reveal huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields

Oh, you mean like into peoples' basements?  <_<
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on April 29, 2020, 06:04:08 AM
Methane leaks tend to increase with age.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2020, 03:02:27 AM
If nothing else, at least this entire Corona virus thing has finally got people to stop going on and on about the fucking climate change bullshit!
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 02, 2020, 03:15:42 AM
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146647/parched-conditions-in-germany-again

I got you covered, berk. :P

Similar conditions to the article below in Austria, too. :(

QuoteParched Conditions in Germany Again

Germany may be heading toward its third summer of drought in a row due to high temperatures and sparse precipitation. Forests have been threatened by drought and disease in recent months. In April 2020, the Rhine River was reportedly running low and hampering cargo ship traffic through the country. If no significant rain falls in May, some forecasters believe the country's agricultural industry could be headed for trouble.

The parched conditions in spring 2020 follow the warmest December to February on record for Europe. Germany also had a particularly dry spring, with little to no rain in many areas since mid-March. The German Meteorological Service reported that April 2020 was the sunniest and third driest April on record. Meteorologists were forecasting rain for early May but were unsure how much it might offset the precipitation deficit.

The map above shows root zone soil moisture in Germany for April 2020; the maps below show the same measurement for April through September from 2016-2019. The colors depict the wetness percentile; that is, how the amount of soil moisture compared to long-term records for the month. Orange and red areas depict deficits in soil moisture, while blue areas hold more water that usual.

(https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/146000/146647/germany_grc_2016-2019.png)

The maps are based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO) mission, a pair of spacecraft that detect the movement of water based on variations in Earth's gravity field. GRACE measures subtle shifts in gravity from month to month. Variations in land topography or ocean tides change the distribution of Earth's mass; the addition or subtraction of water in various regions also changes the gravity field. Those data are integrated with other ground-based observations into a numerical model of water and energy processes at the land surface.

In 2016, Europe experienced one of its hottest years on record in the wake of a strong El Niño. In 2018, drought caused harvest damage of "national proportions", leading the government to provide financial aid to farmers. 2019 also brought significant crop failures and income loss due to drought conditions.

These recent years fit a longer trend of warmer temperatures and reduced groundwater storage. According to the German government's Climate Monitoring Report, available water in agricultural soils has decreased over the past 50 years. Also, hot days—where temperatures rise above 30°C (86°F)—are also becoming more common. In 1951, Germany experienced about three hot days in an average year; now, there are ten.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 02, 2020, 03:59:53 AM
Yeah, another drought here as well. In a land that's supposed to be on the verge of drowning.
As if we didn't have enough problems already.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on May 02, 2020, 04:50:52 AM
The UK just had the sunniest April on record. It was getting weird for a couple of weeks or so no rain around our parts at least. Was unusual.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on May 02, 2020, 11:17:28 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 02, 2020, 04:50:52 AM
The UK just had the sunniest April on record. It was getting weird for a couple of weeks or so no rain around our parts at least. Was unusual.

The 'Other New Normal'* ?


*formerly the old New Normal, till the newest New Normal, coronavirus, elbowed it out of the way.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 06, 2020, 01:03:33 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52543589

QuoteClimate change: More than 3bn could live in extreme heat by 2070

More than three billion people will be living in places with "near un-liveable" temperatures by 2070, according to a new study.

Unless greenhouse gas emissions fall, large numbers of people will experience average temperatures hotter than 29C.

This is considered outside the climate "niche" in which humans have thrived for the past 6,000 years.

Co-author of the study Tim Lenton told the BBC: "The study hopefully puts climate change in a more human terms".

Researchers used data from United Nations population projections and a 3C warming scenario based on the expected global rise in temperature. A UN report found that even with countries keeping to the Paris climate agreement, the world was on course for a 3C rise.

According to the study, human populations are concentrated into narrow climate bands with most people residing in places where the average temperature is about 11-15C. A smaller number of people live in areas with an average temperature of 20-25C.

People have mostly lived in these climate conditions for thousands of years.

However, should global warming cause temperatures to rise by three degrees, a vast number of people are going to be living in temperatures considered outside the "climate niche".

Mr Lenton, climate specialist and director of the global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, conducted the study with scientists from China, the US and Europe.

He told the BBC: "The land warms up faster than the ocean so the land is warming more than three degrees. Population growth is projected to be in already hot places, mostly sub-Saharan Africa, so that shifts the average person to a hotter temperature.

"It's shifting the whole distribution of people to hotter places which themselves are getting hotter and that's why we find the average person on the planet is living in about 7C warmer conditions in the 3C warmer world."

Areas projected to be affected include northern Australia, India, Africa, South America and parts of the Middle East.

The study raises concerns about those in poorer areas who will be unable to shelter from the heat.

"For me, the study is not about the rich who can just get inside an air-conditioned building and insulate themselves from anything. We have to be concerned with those who don't have the means to isolate themselves from the weather and the climate around them," Mr Lenton said.

Mr Lenton says the main message from the team's findings is that "limiting climate change could have huge benefits in terms of reducing the number of people projected to fall outside of the climate niche.

"It's about roughly a billion people for each degree of warming beyond the present. So for every degree of warming, we could be saving a huge amount of change in people's livelihoods."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 30, 2020, 11:38:14 AM
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/locust-attack-india-amid-coronavirus-covid-19-crisis-and-heat-wave/

QuoteCoronavirus-battered India is now battling a plague of locusts

New Delhi — India is scrambling drones, sending teams to spray insecticide and issuing alerts as swarms of locusts descend on its western states. The drones are helping track the voracious insects as they destroy crops, increasing fears over food security and economic malaise in a country already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Swarms of desert locusts have attacked parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh states. Delhi, in central India, also issued alerts after suggestions the swarms could reach the Indian capital, too, given forecast wind directions. 

As if the dual menaces of COVID-19 and crop-killing insects wasn't enough, a wide swathe of India was also suffering under record heat. As the locusts ravaged fields in Rajasthan, farmers already reeling from the effects of a national coronavirus lockdown were left to watch helplessly in 122-degree heat.

It's the worst locust infestation India has seen since 1993, according to the country's Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), but the swarms aren't new to the nation. Usually they arrive from Pakistan between July and October and remain focused in Rajasthan. This time, however, weather conditions have helped the swarms spread into neighboring states.

Videos posted on social media show swarms not only in the farm fields but also in urban areas, including the popular tourist city of Jaipur, where they've never been seen before.

What is a locust?

Locusts are similar to grasshoppers, but can migrate over much large distances: A swarm can cover about 90 miles in a day. The desert locusts are known to form particularly dense, and highly mobile swarms, according to the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) desert locust information center.

They don't attack people or animals, but they're considered the most destructive migratory pest in the world, with a small swarm of about 40 million locusts capable of gobbling up enough food for 35,000 people.

Damage in India

A 1-kilometer swarm (covering just under half of a square mile) can have up to 80 million locusts, and at least 10 such swarms were chewing through crops in India as of Wednesday, according to the LWO.

Several Indian media outlets reported that about 123,500 acres of cropland had already been destroyed in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states.

The crop damage comes as many farmers were already struggling with the impact of India's 2-month coronavirus lockdown, which left them largely without the workers to tend to their crops. The double crisis could pose a serious threat to India's food security in the coming months. 

Experts have warned that more swarms, still devouring crops in Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, could migrate to India in June.

Warmer weather, more locusts

Scientists have said extreme weather is to blame for the unusually large and widespread swarms this year.

"The outbreak started after warm waters in the western Indian Ocean in late 2019 fueled heavy amounts of rains over east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula," explained Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll, a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. "These warm waters were caused by the phenomenon called the Indian Ocean Dipole — with warmer than usual waters to its west, and cooler waters to its east. Rising temperatures due to global warming amplified the dipole and made the western Indian Ocean particularly warm."

"Heavy rain triggers the growth of vegetation in arid areas where desert locusts can then grow and breed," said Koll. "These locusts, which migrated to India early this year, might have found greener pastures as the pre-monsoon rains during March–May were in excess over north India."

Keith Cressman, the senior locust forecasting officer at the U.N.'s FAO, said there's been an undeniable and significant increase in the frequency of severe rain storms at both the beginning and the end of the summer and, "if this trend continues, whether it is specifically attributed to climate change or not, it's likely to lead to more Desert Locust outbreaks and upsurges in the Horn of Africa."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 04, 2020, 05:54:09 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/rapid-arctic-meltdown-in-siberia-alarms-scientists/2020/07/03/4c1bd6a6-bbaa-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

QuoteRapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists

Alexander Deyev can still taste the smoke from last year's wildfires that blanketed the towns near his home in southeastern Siberia, and he is dreading their return.

"It just felt like you couldn't breathe at all," said Deyev, 32, who lives in Irkutsk, a Siberian region along Lake Baikal, just north of the Mongolian border.

But already this year, fires in the spring arrived earlier and with more ferocity, government officials have said. In the territory where Deyev lives, fires were three times as large this April as the year before. And the hot, dry summer lies ahead.

Much of the world remains consumed with the deadly novel coronavirus. The United States, crippled by the pandemic, is in the throes of a divisive presidential campaign and protests over racial inequality. But at the top of the globe, the Arctic is enduring its own summer of discontent.

Wildfires are raging amid ­record-breaking temperatures. Permafrost is thawing, infrastructure is crumbling and sea ice is dramatically vanishing.

In Siberia and across much of the Arctic, profound changes are unfolding more rapidly than scientists anticipated only a few years ago. Shifts that once seemed decades away are happening now, with potentially global implications.

"We always expected the Arctic to change faster than the rest of the globe," said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "But I don't think anyone expected the changes to happen as fast as we are seeing them happen."

Vladimir Romanovsky, a researcher at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said the pace, severity and extent of the changes are surprising even to many researchers who study the region for a living. Predictions for how quickly the Arctic would warm that once seemed extreme "underestimate what is going on in reality," he said. The temperatures occurring in the High Arctic during the past 15 years were not predicted to occur for 70 more years, he said.

Neither Dallas nor Houston has hit 100 degrees yet this year, but in one of the coldest regions of the world, Siberia's "Pole of Cold," the mercury climbed to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) on June 20.

If confirmed, the record-breaker in the remote Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow, would stand as the highest temperature in the Arctic since record-keeping began in 1885.

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RQ3OE4V5SMI6VF6BNTYRN77CNQ.jpg&w=916)

The triple-digit record was not a freak event, either, but instead part of a searing heat wave. Verkhoyansk saw 11 straight days with a high temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) or above, according to Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The average June high at that location is just 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 Celsius).

This week, Ust'-Olenek, Russia, about 450 miles north of the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 93.7 degrees (34.3 Celsius), about 40 degrees above average for the date. On May 22, the Siberian town of Khatanga, located well north of the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit — about 46 degrees above normal.

Much of Siberia experienced an exceptionally mild winter, followed by a warmer-than- average spring, and it has been among the most unusually warm regions of the world during 2020. During May, parts of Siberia saw an average monthly temperature that was a staggering 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 Celsius) above average for the month, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

"To me, these are kind of the key ingredients of things you expect in a warming climate," Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at Copernicus, said of the recent heat records, coupled with prolonged months of higher-than-average temperatures.

The persistent warmth has helped to fuel wildfires, eviscerate sea ice and destabilize homes and other buildings constructed on thawing permafrost. It allegedly even contributed to a massive fuel spill in Norilsk in late May that prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a state of emergency in the environmentally sensitive region.

Already, sea ice in the vicinity of Siberia is running at record-low levels for any year since reliable satellite monitoring began in 1979.

Scientists have long maintained that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. But in reality, the region is now warming at nearly three times the global average. Data from NASA shows that since 1970, the Arctic has warmed by an average of 5.3 degrees (2.94 Celsius), compared with the global average of 1.71 degrees (0.95 Celsius) during the same period. Scientists refer to the phenomenon as "Arctic amplification."

The melting of snow and ice earlier in the spring exposes darker land surfaces and ocean waters. This switches these areas from being net reflectors of incoming solar radiation to heat absorbers, which further increases land and sea temperatures. That means more warmth in the air, more melting of snow and ice, and drying of vegetation in a way that creates more fuel for wildfires.

What happens in the Arctic matters for the rest of the globe. Greenland ice melt is already the biggest contributor to sea-level rise worldwide, studies show. The loss of Arctic sea ice is also thought to be leading to more-
extreme weather patterns far outside the Arctic, in a complex series of ripple effects that may be partly responsible for extreme heat and precipitation events that have claimed thousands of lives in recent years.

The fires that have erupted in Siberia this summer have been massive, sending out plumes of smoke that have covered a swath of land spanning about 1,000 miles at times. While much of the fire activity has occurred in the Sakha Republic, known for such blazes, scientists are observing more fires farther north, above the Arctic Circle, in peatlands and tundra.

"This seems to be a new pattern," said Jessica McCarty, a researcher at Miami University in Ohio. In past years, fires "were sparse if not unheard of in these regions."

One concern is that such fires could be destabilizing peatlands and permafrost — the carbon-rich frozen soil that covers nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's land mass, stretching across large parts of Alaska, Canada, Siberia and Greenland.

Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said fires in Siberia are burning "in areas where we expect permafrost to be more vulnerable." Typically, these fires would break out in July and August, but this year they spiked in May, a sign of the unusual heat and early snow melt.

Turetsky said the fires are removing the blanket of vegetation that covers permafrost, making it more vulnerable to melting.

Satellite observations of Arctic wildfires in June also showed that fires this year are emitting more greenhouse gases than the record Arctic fires in 2019, according to Mark Parrington, who tracks wildfires around the world with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

Some of these blazes appear to be what are known as "zombie fires," which survive the winter season smoldering underground only to erupt again once snow and ice melts the following spring. Similar fires have been observed in Alaska this summer.

Ted Schuur, a professor at Northern Arizona University who researches permafrost emissions, said the rapid warming is turning the Arctic into a net emitter of greenhouse gases — a disconcerting shift that threatens to dramatically hasten global warming. The unusually mild conditions in Siberia are particularly worrisome, as the region is home to the largest zone of continuous permafrost in the world.

There has long been concern throughout the scientific community that the approximately 1,460 billion to 1,600 billion metric tons of organic carbon stored in frozen Arctic soils, from Russia to Alaska to Canada, could be released as the permafrost melts. That is almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere. Recent research by Schuur and others shows that warmer temperatures allow microbes within the soil to convert permafrost carbon into carbon dioxide and methane.

A report late last year that Schuur co-authored found that permafrost ecosystems could be releasing as much as 1.1 billion to 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year — nearly as much as the annual emissions of Japan and Russia in 2018, respectively.

"A decade ago we thought more of the permafrost would be resistant to change," said Schuur. The more scientists look for destabilizing permafrost and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the more they find such evidence.

Rapid warming has altered their calculations. "We're basically setting records in the Arctic year after year," Schuur said. "These emissions are now adding to our climate change problem. What happens in Siberia is going to affect everything through the global climate system."

Researchers have watched as the changes sweeping the Arctic threaten major infrastructure, including homes and cities in the region.

"Will roads, buildings, oil and gas pipelines be able to survive without emergency [interventions], due to permafrost degradation?" Alexander Fedorov, deputy director of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in the regional capital of Yakutsk, said in an email. "One must live on stable lands. In Siberia and the Arctic, many settlements and infrastructure were built before global warming, before there were problems. The main thing is not to be late with the solutions, because many villages are located in dangerous and vulnerable areas."

For all the disconcerting signals coming out of the Arctic right now, the potential for troubling events remains high in the coming months, Meier said.

Sea ice typically reaches its minimum in September, he noted. Ice melt accelerates in Greenland during June and July. Wildfires have the potential to worsen as summer drags on. Intense summer storms can cause permafrost degradation and worsen coastal erosion.

"Certainly, 2020 is a strange year all around, for a lot of reasons beyond climate," Meier said. "But it's certainly setting up to be an extreme year in the Arctic."

That might seem like a distant problem to the rest of the world. But those who study the Arctic insist the rest of us should pay close attention.

"When we develop a fever, it's a sign. It's a warning sign that something is wrong and we stop and we take note," Turetsky said. "Literally, the Arctic is on fire. It has a fever right now, and so it's a good warning sign that we need to stop, take note and figure out what's going on."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 04, 2020, 12:26:58 PM
Yeah this summer has been disastrous for the ice caps. I mean if you can keep track of all the disasters as they go by.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 15, 2020, 12:08:18 AM
https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/us-has-sustained-10-billion-dollar-weather-disasters-already-in-2020/776164

QuoteUS has sustained 10 billion-dollar weather disasters already in 2020

Severe weather is on the rise in the United States, and the result is costly. As of July 8, 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that U.S. has experienced 10 weather disasters that exceed $1 billion in damages. This makes 2020 the sixth year in a row with at least 10 weather events so extreme -- a record in and of itself.

The NOAA report takes into account damages from by tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves, severe local storms, wildfires, crop freeze events and winter storms. All 10 events this year that have reached the billion-dollar threshold were severe storms, which resulted in a combined total of 80 deaths, the agency reported.

The annual average for the years 1980 through 2019 is 6.6 billion-dollar events. However, looking at a smaller window of time causes that average to more than double. The annual average over the last five years (2015-2019) was higher at 13.8 events, which cost an average of $107.1 billion each year.

The 10 billion-dollar disasters through the first half of the year fell just short of the record of 11 such disasters during the January through June timeframe set in 2017. 2020 tied 2011 and 2016 for 10 weather disasters within the first six months of the year, according to NOAA. But, 2020 reached this bleak milestone quicker than any other year on record, since tracking began in January 1980.

"2020 was the earliest year to experience 10 separate Billion-dollar events during the first 5 months of the year," Adam Smith, a climatologist at NOAA, told AccuWeather in an e-mail.

Changes taking place with the planet's climate are "likely playing a role in the increased frequency of disasters," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said. "With a warming planet there is more water vapor available for storms to produce even heavier precipitation."

"Extreme warming in the far northern latitudes may also be playing a role of slowing the jet stream in the mid latitudes, which in turn may be causing extreme storms to move more slowly, which can mean a longer period of heavy precipitation and a greater risk for flooding," Anderson said.

These billion-dollar events account for 80% of U.S. losses for both severe weather and climate-related events each year.

From 1980 to the present day, the years that have seen more than 10 billion-dollar weather disasters have been 1998, 2008, 2011, 2012, and the period from 2015 through 2020. According to Smith, the U.S. may continue to see more severe weather than ever before during the remainder of this year.

"The big story is the fact that we haven't even gotten to the hyperactive hurricane season, which is widely predicted in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Ocean states," Smith told CNN. "We also haven't gotten to the wildfire season out West. For California, particularly Northern California, Oregon and Washington, the wildfire season could be another strong season." AccuWeather forecasters have been calling for a "very active" Atlantic hurricane season, and the basin has already had six named tropical systems as of mid-July, with record-breaking Tropical Storm Fay being the most recent.

The first billion-dollar weather event of 2020 was an outbreak of tornadoes in the South and Northeast flooding and storms that struck Jan. 10 to 12. The most recent were hailstorms in South Texas on May 27. The data does not yet include information from July.

According to Anderson, flooding can wash away infrastructure, damage homes, wash away top soil to the point where fields cannot be used for farming and even damage water supplies, which could eventually lead to disease outbreaks. Erosion is also a concern.

Tornadoes can also cause "catastrophic damage," he said, but because they are very localized, they do not cover as large of a land area as other forms of severe weather.

"The last thing we want is to have another 2017 or 2018 type of year in the fall, where we have these historically damaging and costly hurricanes and wildfires. And there is potential for that," Smith said.


(https://wordpress.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-billion-dollar-disaster-map.png?w=1200)

(https://wordpress.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Jan1980-June2020-U.S.-Billion-dollar-disaster-frequency-chart.png?w=1200)

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on July 15, 2020, 08:51:50 AM
Dollar amounts aren't great ways of measuring disaster impact over time because they're highly correlated with growth and development.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 16, 2020, 07:49:23 AM
If there is a silver lining to COVID in the US it has provided the chance for Biden to include funding to transition to renewables by 2035 in his platform as part of his economic recovery plan.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 19, 2020, 06:43:38 PM
Climate change, 0-2019 in 20 seconds (https://preview.redd.it/cmuej419oxh51.gif?format=mp4&s=85fb83fe6e290c5956a787231c05136553a89418)

I'm successfully on my way to a beach front property!!  :yeah:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 23, 2020, 11:11:56 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/23/earth-lost-28-trillion-tonnes-ice-30-years-global-warming?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco

QuoteEarth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years

'Stunned' scientists say there is little doubt global heating is to blame for the loss

A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994. That is stunning conclusion of UK scientists who have analysed satellite surveys of the planet's poles, mountains and glaciers to measure how much ice coverage lost because of global heating triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists – based at Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London – describe the level of ice loss as "staggering" and warn that their analysis indicates that sea level rises, triggered by melting glaciers and ice sheets, could reach a metre by the end of the century.

"To put that in context, every centimetre of sea level rise means about a million people will be displaced from their low-lying homelands," said Professor Andy Shepherd, director of Leeds University's Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.

The scientists also warn that the melting of ice in these quantities is now seriously reducing the planet's ability to reflect solar radiation back into space. White ice is disappearing and the dark sea or soil exposed beneath it is absorbing more and more heat, further increasing the warming of the planet.

In addition, cold fresh water pouring from melting glaciers and ice sheets is causing major disruptions to the biological health of Arctic and Antarctic waters, while loss of glaciers in mountain ranges threatens to wipe out sources of fresh water on which local communities depend.

"In the past researchers have studied individual areas – such as the Antarctic or Greenland – where ice is melting. But this is the first time anyone has looked at all the ice that is disappearing from the entire planet," said Shepherd. "What we have found has stunned us."

The level of ice loss revealed by the group matches the worst-case-scenario predictions outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he added.

The group studied satellite surveys of glaciers in South America, Asia, Canada and other regions; sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic; ice sheets that cover the ground in Antarctica and Greenland; and ice shelves that protrude from the Antarctic mainland into the sea. The study covered the years 1994 to 2017.

The researchers' conclusion is that all the regions have suffered devastating reductions in ice cover in the past three decades and these losses are continuing.

"To put the losses we've already experienced into context, 28 trillion tonnes of ice would cover the entire surface of the UK with a sheet of frozen water that is 100 metres thick," added group member Tom Slater from Leeds University. "It's just mind-blowing."

As to the cause of these staggering losses, the group is adamant: "There can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth's ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming," they state in their review paper, which is published in the online journal Cryosphere Discussions.

"On average, the planetary surface temperature has risen by 0.85C since 1880, and this signal has been amplified in the polar regions," they state. Both sea and atmospheric temperatures have risen as a result and the resulting double whammy has triggered the catastrophic ice losses uncovered by the group.

In the case of the melting ice sheet in Antarctica, rising sea temperatures have been the main driver while increasing atmospheric temperatures have been the cause of ice loss from inland glaciers such as those in the Himalayas. In Greenland, ice loss has been triggered by a combination of both sea and atmospheric temperatures increasing.

The team stressed that not all the ice that was lost over that period would have contributed to sea level rises. "A total of 54% of the lost ice was from sea ice and from ice shelves," said Leeds University researcher Isobel Lawrence. "These float on water and their melting would not have contributed to sea level rises. The other 46% of meltwater came from glaciers and ice sheets on the ground, and they would have added to sea level rise."

The group's results were published 30 years after the first assessment report of the IPCC was published, at the end of August 1990. This outlined, in stark terms, that global warming was real and was being triggered by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

Despite warnings from scientists, these emissions have continued to rise as global temperatures continued to soar. According to figures released by the Met Office last week, there was a 0.14C increase in global temperatures between the decade 1980-89 and the decade 1990-1999, then a 0.2C increase between each of the following decades. This rate of increase is expected to rise, possibly to around 0.3C a decade, as carbon emissions continue on their upward trajectory.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on August 23, 2020, 12:42:47 PM
Quote from: Syt on August 23, 2020, 11:11:56 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/23/earth-lost-28-trillion-tonnes-ice-30-years-global-warming?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco

QuoteEarth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years


It's always in the last place you look.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 05, 2020, 11:28:01 PM
Nano-diamond self charging batteries (https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batteries-ndb/)

The company says they have proof of concept done, and they can start working on low powered appliances (phones, medical equipment, UPS, etc) to be commercialized withing 2 years.  They also claim their higher power version, which could potentially replace lithium batteries in electric cars would be ready 5 years from now.

They use nuclear waste to produce their batteries.  Solving two problems with one stone. :)

It's a very interesting concept, but we'll have to wait :)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 06, 2020, 01:38:06 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 05, 2020, 11:28:01 PM
Nano-diamond self charging batteries (https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batteries-ndb/)

The company says they have proof of concept done, and they can start working on low powered appliances (phones, medical equipment, UPS, etc) to be commercialized withing 2 years.  They also claim their higher power version, which could potentially replace lithium batteries in electric cars would be ready 5 years from now.

They use nuclear waste to produce their batteries.  Solving two problems with one stone. :)

It's a very interesting concept, but we'll have to wait :)

There does seem to exist a Dr. John Shawe-Taylor, but he appears to be Director of the Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning (CSML). Even if his quote isn't just made up it isn't obvious to me why he would be relevant to a discussion about using energy from C-14 to run civilization.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 08, 2020, 11:34:57 PM
I had no idea where to put this since we don't have a "2020 fucking sucks" megathread...

I had an asthma attack tonight, am still struggling to breath, and now have a throbbing headache. Yes, that's right, boys! It's fire season in Portland! And right now, the fire is pretty much right down the road from me (about 20 miles down the road). My son lost power when a transformer blew up down the street from his apartment, which is slightly problematic because they're closer to the current fire than I am.

No though for real,  2020 can fuck right off.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 09, 2020, 03:19:40 AM
 :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 01:28:55 PM
My son and his girlfriend are in the Evac Level 2 zone. They were told last night to have a bug-out bag ready and a place to evac to. I'm spending my lunch hour cleaning my bedroom, shampooing the carpet, etc. so they have somewhere soft to land. (I'll sleep in my office.)

The Evac Level 1 zone is now six miles from my apartment.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 09, 2020, 02:03:04 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 01:28:55 PM
My son and his girlfriend are in the Evac Level 2 zone. They were told last night to have a bug-out bag ready and a place to evac to. I'm spending my lunch hour cleaning my bedroom, shampooing the carpet, etc. so they have somewhere soft to land. (I'll sleep in my office.)

The Evac Level 1 zone is now six miles from my apartment.

So...where will you go if you have to evacuate?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2020, 02:25:53 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 01:28:55 PM
My son and his girlfriend are in the Evac Level 2 zone. They were told last night to have a bug-out bag ready and a place to evac to. I'm spending my lunch hour cleaning my bedroom, shampooing the carpet, etc. so they have somewhere soft to land. (I'll sleep in my office.)

The Evac Level 1 zone is now six miles from my apartment.

My lungs are hurting just from the smoke coming up from Washington State.  You must be going through hell.  :console:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2020, 02:33:26 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 01:28:55 PM
My son and his girlfriend are in the Evac Level 2 zone. They were told last night to have a bug-out bag ready and a place to evac to. I'm spending my lunch hour cleaning my bedroom, shampooing the carpet, etc. so they have somewhere soft to land. (I'll sleep in my office.)

The Evac Level 1 zone is now six miles from my apartment.

:hug:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 09, 2020, 02:45:01 PM
The entire world is orange right now, and that is not a Trumpism.  Fires all over, smoke high up, medium, and low altitude.  It was dark because of a smoke/fog combination this morning, night like til 9:30 am.

I feel for you Meri, the best thing to do in these situations is gather as much information as you can and process it - too many are making things up, misunderstanding, or simply too moronic to gauge the situation properly right now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 02:59:34 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 09, 2020, 02:03:04 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 01:28:55 PM
My son and his girlfriend are in the Evac Level 2 zone. They were told last night to have a bug-out bag ready and a place to evac to. I'm spending my lunch hour cleaning my bedroom, shampooing the carpet, etc. so they have somewhere soft to land. (I'll sleep in my office.)

The Evac Level 1 zone is now six miles from my apartment.

So...where will you go if you have to evacuate?

My other son lives further inland, so that's one place, but it would temporary. If my neighborhood burns, the entire city will burn. There are evacuation centers in some schools, but that would be very dangerous for those of us who are high-risk for COVID.

So, in short, I'm not sure right now.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 03:05:19 PM
Quote from: PDH on September 09, 2020, 02:45:01 PM
The entire world is orange right now, and that is not a Trumpism.  Fires all over, smoke high up, medium, and low altitude.  It was dark because of a smoke/fog combination this morning, night like til 9:30 am.

I feel for you Meri, the best thing to do in these situations is gather as much information as you can and process it - too many are making things up, misunderstanding, or simply too moronic to gauge the situation properly right now.

The only information that I'm getting is from the Fire & Safety emergency line. I get emailed and texted updates. I don't have any friends out here who would feed me information (I'm outside their circle for that stuff).

Honestly, until Valmy asked, I didn't even think of where we would go. I don't know. And now I'm scared because I don't know.

And I'm so tired of being scared.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 09, 2020, 03:48:05 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 03:05:19 PM
Quote from: PDH on September 09, 2020, 02:45:01 PM
The entire world is orange right now, and that is not a Trumpism.  Fires all over, smoke high up, medium, and low altitude.  It was dark because of a smoke/fog combination this morning, night like til 9:30 am.

I feel for you Meri, the best thing to do in these situations is gather as much information as you can and process it - too many are making things up, misunderstanding, or simply too moronic to gauge the situation properly right now.

The only information that I'm getting is from the Fire & Safety emergency line. I get emailed and texted updates. I don't have any friends out here who would feed me information (I'm outside their circle for that stuff).


Honestly, until Valmy asked, I didn't even think of where we would go. I don't know. And now I'm scared because I don't know.

And I'm so tired of being scared.

Ok, start using a map that shows IR hotspots, if you can find one that has winds as well that can help.  A quick search came up with https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2020-09-08..2020-09-09;l:street;@-122.5,45.4,13z
from NASA.  I was using a California made one that gave more detail.

The traffic on these sites is extremely high, so be prepared to wait.    This information will not take the place of anything, but it will give that bit more.  Your goal is to recognize you are scared, then make sure you know what to do instead of having that fear turn into panic.  Too many people combine panic with a lack of information to make a deadly combination.  For instance, it seems to the north and west of Portland is the easier travel area, that is how you should look to go if you evacuate instead of trying to figure this out at the last moment.

None of this really helps, but knowing anything can be better than trying to Trump your way through this.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 04:15:49 PM
Going north from Portland will be a nightmare. There are only two bridges across, and they will be packed. I'm looking at going to the Bridge of the Gods to the east, then heading north? Assuming fires don't close the gorge pass. The area directly east of the mountains in Washington looks clear right now. Of course, a new fire could start at any point because we now live in bizarro world that's trying to kill everyone, so who knows what will happen between now and evac time?

Seedy is feeling the smoke in Spokane, and air quality maps show almost the entire state of Oregon under duress.

I want to go home to the Midwest. The air just hurts my face there. It doesn't try to suffocate me. :cry:

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 04:16:57 PM
PDH, you and you alone are keeping me from blind panic. Thank you.  :wub:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on September 09, 2020, 04:31:28 PM
Pictures from Salem, Oregon: https://twitter.com/UglyBoyJ2/status/1303414683693506560
Crazy shit. Stay safe Meri  :hug:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 09, 2020, 04:33:12 PM
Looking at the IR hotspots, unless the winds really pick up you are mostly facing problems to the SSW.  I would avoid going up the river to cross, as in Washington there are hotspots and the boonies are not a great place to drive into during wildfires.

That said, heading down the Columbia to the west might be a decent option if you need to bug out.  There is no shame in being scared, but that shouldn't preclude making preparations.  Knowing you, you have a the emergency supplies ready, but given what I see, I do not expect the fire to reach into the main part of Portland.  It is incredibly hard to make firelines in the mountains, it is actually easier when you get closer to developed areas.

Right now, pray that no wind picks up.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 04:48:58 PM
No wind "picks up"?? :lmfao:

Peedy, we're dealing with gusts up to 50mph right now. Mostly from the south. It's the wind that has everyone freaked out. Well, that and how fucking dry everything is. It's our dry season. No real rain in a while.

Going northwest from here, especially up the gorge, will have us caught in a significant traffic mess. Portland has deliberately kept major highways to a minimum to force people to commute/ride bikes. A mass evacuation is going to fuck all of us up. And I live on the far east end of the city, in the foothills of the mountains. If I try to go west from here, I'll sit in a parking lot.

But your point is taken regarding not going away from civilization. Going to the Bridge of the Gods, then turning west will be our best option

Found this, by the way:

https://tools.oregonexplorer.info/OE_HtmlViewer/Index.html?viewer=wildfireplanning
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 04:55:36 PM
Jesus Christ. Even the coastal cities are on fire.

https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2020/09/swath-of-lincoln-city-ordered-to-evacuate-as-wildfires-close-highways-force-evacuations.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 09, 2020, 05:04:28 PM
Glad all I have to worry about are dying hurricanes.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 09, 2020, 05:07:48 PM
We are not getting the winds here, that is helping.  The wind maps seem to have the wind mainly coming down the Columbia River Valley then swinging the southwest.  Salem looks a lot more in trouble than Portland today (wind map from 10:30 this morning).

http://hint.fm/wind/
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 09, 2020, 05:15:24 PM
Zoom.Earth has an amazing view of all the fires right now, as well as the smoke. Fun times.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 11, 2020, 11:49:53 AM
Here's hoping you stay safe in this madness, meri.

(https://i.insider.com/5f59a440e6ff30001d4e7eb7?width=700&format=jpeg)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 11, 2020, 12:06:43 PM
We have had orange skies for 5 straight days yet, dark looming smoke/fog with just a faint orange ball in the sky.  As I have said elsewhere I have been expecting two small gentlemen to go by looking for a volcano to chuck a ring into.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 11, 2020, 12:17:30 PM
From the A's stadium yesterday. This looks to be pregame, so maybe around noon (first pitch was 12:40 pm)?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhhdluQX0AAFD2T?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 11, 2020, 12:19:52 PM
You can't just play a game on the surface of Mars.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 11, 2020, 01:39:14 PM
It's smoky everywhere right now. My apartment isn't air conditioned, so we have to leave the windows open. They open sideways and are four-feet tall, so window air conditioners are out. Right now I have a box fan in the bottom with a furnace air filter taped to it, and another furnace air filter taped above it. That leaves only about 18" open with a screen. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. There are no air purifiers left. It's also 85f so closing the windows aren't an option.

The sky is a gray yellow. It looks like there's a perpetual eclipse. (I have a phobia of eclipses.) I try not to look outside. I try not to breathe too deeply. I was wearing a cloth mask inside until I was told it doesn't help with smoke particles. Now I just try not to breathe much. I'm using my inhaler every couple of hours, drinking hot coffee like crazy, and showering far too often. So far, no ER visits required for my asthma, but that's probably sheer stubbornness rather than good sense.

The fires are still spreading. People are optimistic that this will stop before it hits the suburbs, but I'm not sure why they think that. Rain isn't due until Tuesday, and that's a long way away. Air quality is "Very Hazardous" in my area, so even if I didn't have asthma, I'd be struggling, I think. It's supposed to stay that way until the rain comes. So, you know.

If I get COVID now, I am probably dead. Katmai, you get Kepler. Seedy gets Tycho.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on September 11, 2020, 01:55:12 PM
Their are vertical A/C units.

But that's a small comfort, stay safe.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 12, 2020, 05:37:46 PM
Peedy, they made a short about the Bay Area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_m9TUP_t_Y&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_m9TUP_t_Y&feature=youtu.be)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 12, 2020, 07:33:53 PM
It looked like that here too last week.  Today there is more sun, but still the AQ is nasty.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 12, 2020, 07:49:43 PM
AQ here is 375 right now. Bad enough for those who are healthy. For folks like me, it's... yeah...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 12, 2020, 08:17:29 PM
The only thing saving Santa Cruz is that the smoke creates weird weather patterns that leads to the coastal layer of cold fog coming in more - and the heavy mist brings down some of the ash and keeping it cold enough that we can keep the windows shut (64f/18c temps).
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 13, 2020, 10:12:05 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdUedldXUAAyJJi.jpg)

"This is fine."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 13, 2020, 10:30:52 AM
That's old pic though. :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 13, 2020, 10:37:48 AM
You're right :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: celedhring on September 13, 2020, 10:54:45 AM
I had a moment very much like that pic in the summer of '94, which was a record year for forest fires over here. The forested areas near my hometown were burning, my parents (and a lot of my friends' parents) had voluntereed to help the firefighting efforts, but me and my friends met at the football pitch like every afternoon. You could see the fires from the football pitch, but damn if we'd stop playing just for some fire  :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on September 13, 2020, 12:06:33 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 11, 2020, 01:39:14 PM
Seedy gets Tycho.

:ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 13, 2020, 12:29:36 PM
Quote from: Maladict on September 13, 2020, 12:06:33 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 11, 2020, 01:39:14 PM
Seedy gets Tycho.

:ph34r:

My kitty. :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 13, 2020, 12:40:01 PM
Air quality in my neighborhood is now Hazardous at 318. My chest and throat feel incredibly tight, my eyes are red and itching, and I can't stop coughing. Everything is shut down and I have two fans with filters on them going. Thank the gods that it's cool out today.

I can't stay here. I'm thinking about getting a hotel room somewhere, but the only place within an easy drive is the coast, and they're packed. No thank you. COVID right now will kill me.

Seedy said that the air quality up by him isn't much better thanks to a shift in the wind. He's getting our smoke, plus there are new fires in his area.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 13, 2020, 01:32:59 PM
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-hasnt-warmed-this-fast-in-tens-of-millions-of-years/

QuoteEarth Hasn't Warmed This Fast in Tens of Millions of Years

Chemical analyses of ancient sediments allowed scientists to put together one of the most comprehensive climate histories of the planet

Scientists just completed one of the most comprehensive investigations of Earth's climate history—and the findings aren't favorable.

They found that the planet could eventually warm to levels it hasn't reached in at least 34 million years.

The researchers, led by Thomas Westerhold of the University of Bremen in Germany, constructed datasets using chemical analyses of ancient sediments, drilled from the bottom of the ocean. These sediments, some of which are 66 million years old, are filled with the preserved shells of tiny organisms that can tell scientists about the temperature and chemical composition of the ocean when they were formed.

The sediments, collected from around the world over the course of many years, allowed the researchers to reconstruct Earth's climate history going back to the mass extinction that killed three-quarters of the planet's species, including dinosaurs.

They found that the planet has passed through four distinct climate phases: warmhouse, hothouse, coolhouse and icehouse states.

Transitions from one state to another have generally depended on changing greenhouse gas levels, often driven by volcanic eruptions and other natural processes, and shifts in the Earth's orbit that affected the amount of solar energy reaching the planet.

In the hottest phases, more than 50 million years ago, temperatures on Earth were more than 10 degrees Celsius hotter than they are today. But it's important to note that it took the planet thousands or even millions of years to reach these levels—and that was long before humans ever walked the Earth.

That's in stark contrast to the kind of climate change that human activity is driving today.

For several million years now, the world has been in an icehouse state. But that's quickly changing. If human societies do nothing to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, in just a few centuries the Earth could once again reach a temperature threshold not seen for at least 34 million years.

Before the industrial era, such a magnitude of warming would have taken thousands of years to occur, at least.

"If you look at the worst-case scenario [by 2300], the change in mean global temperature is larger than most of the natural variability going back over the last 66 million years related to changes in the Earth's orbit," said Jim Zachos, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a co-author of the new study, which was published Thursday in the journal Science.

It's not an inevitable future. With immediate and stringent action to reduce climate change, the world can keep global temperatures from rising more than a few degrees above their preindustrial levels.

But the study does warn that without these efforts, Earth is on track for some of the strongest, fastest climate change the planet has ever experienced.

The study may also provide some important insights into how climate change could unfold in the coming decades and centuries.

Earth's climate doesn't always shift in linear, predictable ways. There are all kinds of feedback processes that can speed things up or slow things down—such as the speed at which glaciers and sea ice melt or the way that clouds change in response to future warming.

In the ancient past, for instance, the study suggests that the world's ice sheets played an important role in regulating the pace and predictability of the Earth's climate response to natural changes in greenhouse gases or orbital shifts. Today, scientists believe that the world's melting ice may also have a big impact on future climate change.

These kinds of feedback processes can make it challenging to predict future change, especially over relatively short periods of time.

Reconstructing the Earth's long-term climate history can help scientists test the models they use to predict its future. If a model can accurately simulate the past, scientists may have more confidence in its ability to simulate present-day climate processes.

"That's the beauty of this record," Zachos said. "It's something we've always wanted to have because of the applicability to testing climate theory."

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 13, 2020, 04:05:47 PM
Still can't do nuclear though. It is imperative that we wait for a unicorn.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 14, 2020, 09:19:47 AM
Air quality is 228 this morning - Very Unhealthy. 

But an improvement on what we had over the past week.

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 10:14:04 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 14, 2020, 09:19:47 AM
Air quality is 228 this morning - Very Unhealthy. 

But an improvement on what we had over the past week.

Down to 340 today! :w00t: From 580 overnight.

No, I'm not breathing any easier.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 14, 2020, 10:58:00 AM
I would die.  I would literally die.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 11:29:22 AM
I'm headed to convenient care right now. Breathing shouldn't be this hard.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 14, 2020, 12:27:48 PM
Worst it has been here has been 300, but since we're right on the coast and the winds push things inland it has "only" been in the low 100s for about a week.  Now, inland gets all the extra stuff and it has been about twice what it is here.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 01:51:13 PM
Doc said that yes, I appear to be struggling from the air quality. She gave me enough prednisone to get me through the next three days, told me to stay inside until the AQ is under 200, and pray for rain tomorrow. If things don't improve, go to the ER.

Great. American healthcare is now on the prayer train. :glare:

;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 14, 2020, 02:01:19 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 01:51:13 PM

Great. American healthcare is now on the prayer train. :glare:



What's the going rate?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 14, 2020, 02:03:13 PM
I will pray for you sister Meri :pope:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 02:04:13 PM
Quote from: Tamas on September 14, 2020, 02:01:19 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 01:51:13 PM

Great. American healthcare is now on the prayer train. :glare:



What's the going rate?

My copay was $30? :unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 04:41:22 PM
'It's A Bit Surreal': Oregon's Air Quality Suffers As Fires Complicate COVID-19 Fight (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/14/912701172/its-a-bit-surreal-oregon-fights-smoke-from-record-wildfires-during-a-pandemic)

QuoteWildfires are destroying homes and communities on the West Coast — and they are also creating some of the world's worst air pollution in a region usually known for its clean living and stunning views. The fires and massive plumes of smoke are also affecting the fight to control COVID-19.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air quality monitoring website Airnow.gov currently lists Portland's air as "hazardous" Monday, with air quality index readings that have ranged from 350 to more than 515.

"When the forecast is Purple (very unhealthy), everyone needs to cut back on outdoor activities," the EPA site advises. It forecasts "very unhealthy" air quality for Tuesday.


"It's a bit surreal," says Dr. Jennifer Vines, the lead health officer for the Portland metro region, "to have these compounding public health issues," air quality risks and a pandemic.

Health experts are urging residents to stay indoors to avoid inhaling smoke and ash particles from the unprecedented fires.

The international air quality monitoring website IQAir.com ranked Portland as No. 1 for worst air quality among the world's cities on Monday morning – worse than notoriously polluted spots in countries such as India, China and Israel. Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles were also in the top 10, reflecting the wildfires' huge size and broad impact.

Dozens of large blazes have now burned more than 4.6 million acres in 10 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That includes more than 1.5 million acres in Oregon and Washington, the Northwest Coordination Center says.

Wildfire smoke can be lethal. While it often appears as a large cloud, Vines says the smoke is made up of lots of tiny particles, each much smaller than the diameter of a human hair. "These particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and even cross into the bloodstream," she adds.

People who are most in danger are older and those with underlying lung or heart conditions. Children are also at a greater risk, Vines says, "because they breathe higher air volumes relative to the size of their bodies and because their airways are smaller."

The wildfires are also complicating Oregon's COVID-19 strategies.

Before the fires, health care professionals were urging people to get outdoors — but now they've reversed that advice. Testing rates for the coronavirus have dropped. And as people get out of harm's way, many of them are also mixing together indoors.

"We're going to be watching COVID testing numbers and hospital capacity really closely in the coming weeks," Vines says. She adds, "But I think right now many of us are just going one day at a time," trying to keep people safe.

What's worse, Vines says, "it's the same people who are at higher risk of complications from wildfire smoke and from COVID. We know many of them in the Portland area are Black, Indigenous or people of color."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is urging employers to provide N95 masks if employees are asked to work outdoors. If employees have underlying medical conditions, the agency is asking that they be allowed to stay home.

The National Weather Service issued a dense smoke and fog advisory for the northern Oregon coast Monday, saying visibility would be reduced to as little as 50 feet.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 14, 2020, 04:42:44 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 14, 2020, 01:51:13 PM
Doc said that yes, I appear to be struggling from the air quality. She gave me enough prednisone to get me through the next three days, told me to stay inside until the AQ is under 200, and pray for rain tomorrow. If things don't improve, go to the ER.

Great. American healthcare is now on the prayer train. :glare:

;)

Now? :unsure:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 15, 2020, 02:20:19 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/trump-biden-climate-change-fires.html

QuoteAs Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a 'Climate Arsonist'

The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. "I don't think science knows" what is happening, he said.

WASHINGTON — With wildfires raging across the West, climate change took center stage in the race for the White House on Monday as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called President Trump a "climate arsonist" while the president said that "I don't think science knows" what is actually happening.

A day of dueling appearances laid out the stark differences between the two candidates, an incumbent president who has long scorned climate change as a hoax and rolled back environmental regulations and a challenger who has called for an aggressive campaign to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for increasingly extreme weather.

Mr. Trump flew to California after weeks of public silence about the flames that have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, wiped out communities and forests, burned millions of acres, shrouded the region in smoke and left at least 27 people dead. But even when confronted by California's governor and other state officials, the president insisted on attributing the crisis solely to poor forest management, not climate change.

Mr. Biden, for his part, assailed Mr. Trump's record on the climate, asserting that the president's inaction and denial had fed destruction, citing not just the current emergency on the West Coast but flooding in the Midwest and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. In an outdoor speech at a museum in Wilmington, Del., the Democratic presidential nominee sought to paint a second Trump term as a danger to the nation's suburbs, flipping an attack on him by the president.

"If we have four more years of Trump's climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?" Mr. Biden asked. "How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms? If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?"

The politicking came as firefighting teams across the West Coast battled shifting winds and drier weather on Monday, sparking additional fire fronts that threatened to make new kindling out of forests and cover more of the country with hazardous smoke and falling ash. By Monday afternoon, haze had spread across much of the United States and could be seen over New York and Washington.

Heavy smoke kept some firefighting aircraft grounded as fire pushed into new areas, prompting fresh evacuations in Idaho, Oregon and California.

In Oregon, with a confirmed death toll of 10 along with 22 others missing, Gov. Kate Brown said the state was getting firefighting support from as far as North Dakota and Michigan. She expressed gratitude for the national assistance, saying the state could use all the help it could get. "Without question, our state has been pushed to its limits," Ms. Brown said.

Doug Grafe, the chief of fire protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry, said crews had made progress containing fires. But he said rains anticipated to fall Monday were not materializing and winds threatened to exacerbate fire conditions in some areas. Mr. Grafe said the rains that may now come on Wednesday or Thursday could also include lightning, raising the danger of new fires.

Mr. Trump, who had come under intense criticism for barely addressing the crisis before, interrupted a western campaign swing to make a two-hour visit to an airport in McClellan Park outside Sacramento, where Air Force One descended through a smoky haze. Not far away, one of the biggest fires, now largely contained, recently burned more than 363,000 acres.

As soon as the president disembarked from the plane at Sacramento McClellan Airport, where the stench of smoke filled the air, he did not wait for his scheduled briefing to tell reporters that the cause of the conflagration was poor forest management, not climate change.

"When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick," Mr. Trump said. "And they can explode. Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it's just fuel for the fires."

At his subsequent briefing, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his top environmental adviser pushed the president to acknowledge the role of climate change. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, made a point of doing so exceedingly politely, reaffirming his working relationship with the president, thanking him for federal help and agreeing that forest management needed to be improved.

But Mr. Newsom noted that only 3 percent of land in California is under state control while 57 percent is federal forest land, meaning under the president's management as governed by federal law.

"As you suggest, the working relationship I value," Mr. Newsom said. But he said climate change clearly was a factor. "Something's happening to the plumbing of the world, and we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this."

He went on: "And so I think there's an area of at least commonality on vegetation, forest management. But please respect — and I know you do — the difference of opinion out here as it relates to this fundamental issue on the issue of climate change."

Mr. Trump did not argue the point. "Absolutely," he said, and then turned the floor over to another briefer.

But Wade Crowfoot, California's secretary for natural resources, pressed Mr. Trump more bluntly. "If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation management, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians," he told the president.

This time, Mr. Trump rejected the premise. "It'll start getting cooler," he insisted. "You just watch."

"I wish science agreed with you," Mr. Crowfoot replied.

"Well, I don't think science knows, actually," Mr. Trump retorted, maintaining a tense grin.


Other California officials who were not present rejected Mr. Trump's view. Mayor Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento said it was a positive development that the president made the trip to demonstrate concern. "Showing up matters," he said in an interview. "But more important is what you actually do. The country desperately needs national leadership around the climate emergency."

Some environmental specialists said that Mr. Trump had a point about forest management but that it should not be an excuse to deny climate science and refuse to take action.

"Raking the leaves and forest floors is really inane. That doesn't make sense at all," said Ralph Propper, the president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento. "We're seeing what was predicted, which is more extremes of weather."

Mr. Trump got some backing from hundreds of supporters who gathered outside the airport, some of them echoing his point about culling forests to prevent the kind of outbreak consuming the region. "I think they should have been cutting trees" ahead of fire season, said Rachel Moses, 43, of Roseville, Calif., who was wearing a pink Trump hat and brought her two sons with her.

Experts say climate change, the management of public lands and decisions over where to site housing all contribute to wildfires. Mr. Trump has exclusively blamed poor forest management and last year issued an executive order directing agencies to cut down more trees, arguing that expanding timber harvesting would reduce forest fires.

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has proposed spending $2 trillion over four years to escalate the use of clean energy and ultimately phase out the burning of oil, gas and coal. He has pledged to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and eliminate carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035.

In his speech at the Delaware Museum of Natural History, Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump of making the country more vulnerable by denying climate change. He made a case for treating the reduction of fossil fuel emissions as a nonpartisan issue that could create manufacturing jobs while preserving the planet.

"We have to act as a nation," Mr. Biden said. "It shouldn't be so bad that millions of Americans live in the shadow of an orange sky, and they're left asking: 'Is doomsday here?'"

Mr. Biden also sought to tie Mr. Trump's rejection of the scientific consensus on climate to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

"I think this is a larger narrative that you're just now starting to see emerge out of the Biden campaign," said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. "Climate change becomes Exhibit A in a much broader case he's making about the fact that Donald Trump is out of touch with reality."

Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant, said Mr. Trump was not helping himself politically by continuing to reject climate science. "It's gotten to the point," he said, "where denying the fundamental reality of climate change is no longer a credible position."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 15, 2020, 12:17:18 PM
Because why even fucking pretend anymore?



https://www.npr.org/2020/09/12/912301325/longtime-climate-science-denier-hired-at-noaa

QuoteLongtime Climate Science Denier Hired At NOAA

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Legates confirmed to NPR that he was recently hired as NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. The position suggests that he reports directly to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency that is in charge of the federal government's sprawling weather and climate prediction work.

Neither Legates nor NOAA representatives responded to questions about Legates' specific responsibilities or why he was hired. The White House also declined to comment.

Legates has a long history of using his position as an academic scientist to publicly cast doubt on climate science. His appointment to NOAA comes as Americans face profound threats stoked by climate change, from the vast, deadly wildfires in the West to an unusually active hurricane season in the South and East.

Global temperatures have already risen nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Warming is happening the fastest at the Earth's poles, where sea ice is melting, permafrost is thawing and ocean temperatures are heating up, with devastating effects on animals and humans alike.

In 2007, Legates was one of the authors of a paper that questioned previous findings about the role of climate change in destroying the habitat of polar bears. That research was partially funded by grants from Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute lobbying group and ExxonMobil, according to InsideClimate News.

The same year, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner sent a letter to Legates expressing concern about his opinions on climate change, given that he was the state climatologist at the time. Minner asked him to refrain from casting doubt on climate science when he was acting in his official role. Legates stepped down in 2011.

Legates also appeared in a video pushing the discredited theory that the sun is the cause of global warming. In testimony before the U.S. Senate in 2014, Legates argued that a climate science report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change erroneously stated that humans are causing global warming.

Legates is a professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. He is also affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has poured money into convincing Americans that climate change is not happening and that the scientific evidence — including evidence published by the agency that now employs Legates — is uncertain or untrustworthy.

Advocates who reject mainstream climate science, such as those at Heartland, have had a leading role in shaping the Trump administration's response to global warming, including the decision to exit the Paris climate accord.

Steve Milloy, a Heartland board member and part of Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team, says he welcomes the Legates appointment. "David Legates is a true climate scientist and will bring a great deal of much-needed science to NOAA," Milloy writes in an email to NPR.

But climate researchers slammed NOAA's decision to appoint Legates to a key scientific position.

"He's not just in left field — he's not even near the ballpark," says Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and head of NOAA under President Barack Obama.

Contrarians in science are welcome, Lubchenco says, but their claims have to be scientifically defensible. That's why official groups like the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change review the entire range of scientific research before reaching a conclusion.

Over the last 20 years, in his work and public statements, Legates has rejected the overwhelming peer-reviewed research that shows human activity is the main driver of a dangerously changing climate.

Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, says in an email to NPR that Legates has, throughout his career, "misrepresented the science of climate change, serving as an advocate for polluting interests as he dismisses and downplays the impacts of climate change."

Mann adds: "At a time when those impacts are playing out before our very eyes in the form of unprecedented wildfires out West and super-storms back East, I cannot imagine a more misguided decision than to appoint someone like Legates to a position of leadership at an agency that is tasked with assessing the risks we face from extreme weather events."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 15, 2020, 12:48:43 PM
How big is the organization that "deputy assistant secretary" is considered a position of leadership?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2020, 12:54:55 PM
Not a secretary in the sense you might be thinking.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 15, 2020, 01:05:02 PM
I'm thinking the government sense. Still, two qualifiers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2020, 01:06:01 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 15, 2020, 01:05:02 PM
I'm thinking the government sense. Still, two qualifiers.

Reporting directly to the Head of the organization.  So top of whatever denial bullshit division they have created for him.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on September 15, 2020, 04:15:34 PM
The smoke from the fires have reached southern Quebec.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 15, 2020, 04:26:06 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2020, 12:54:55 PM
Not a secretary in the sense you might be thinking.

No spankings? :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 15, 2020, 05:58:49 PM
Things were supposed to be better here today. They're only marginally better: 260 instead of 360. At least it's not hazardous? :unsure: Though it will be tonight, and for the rest of the week. Friday they're predicting rain, which may or may not help.

I'm going to die. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 15, 2020, 06:09:47 PM
Rain will help.  It will coat everything with a massive and fast hardening layer of ick, but that is what helped us get our air back with the large fires a couple of years ago to the north.

Here, the wind is blowing straight off the ocean today, so things are a wee bit better.  In the Central Valley it is really bad though.

I'm going to die as well, eventually.  Not from this, however. 

What doesn't kill us only weakens us slowly so some lightweight and worthless thing will kill us.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 15, 2020, 06:15:29 PM
Heard an interesting theory the other day. That this gung ho anti environment shit in the US is heavily linked to evangelicalism. That if you believe the end of the universe is inevitably coming within your lifetime then global warming is quite irrelevant and is clearly just nonsense spread by those who don't believe the end is nigh.
More worryingly some even go full accelerationist and see the climate going to hell as something to encourage to hasten judgement day.
Sure makes sense for explaining the craziest of the crazies. Quite how much it filters out into people who don't drink paint is another question.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2020, 06:49:49 PM
I can see the sky!!!!!!

But it is only supposed to last a couple of hours and then the smoke is coming back.  But it is amazing how good it is for the soul to actually see the sun again.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on September 15, 2020, 10:01:24 PM
Still smoky as fuck here in Kelowna.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Berkut on September 15, 2020, 10:55:58 PM
Quote from: Tyr on September 15, 2020, 06:15:29 PM
Heard an interesting theory the other day. That this gung ho anti environment shit in the US is heavily linked to evangelicalism. That if you believe the end of the universe is inevitably coming within your lifetime then global warming is quite irrelevant and is clearly just nonsense spread by those who don't believe the end is nigh.
More worryingly some even go full accelerationist and see the climate going to hell as something to encourage to hasten judgement day.
Sure makes sense for explaining the craziest of the crazies. Quite how much it filters out into people who don't drink paint is another question.

I think even if you don't think the world is going to end, a certain kind of religious thought makes it easy to dismiss concerns about over use of climate damage.

After all, if the entire universe is created and governed by some supreme being for the primary purpose of having somewhere to stick humans, then we don't really have to worry about the idea that reality could be set up in such a way that we could actually break it, right?

Surely if the Earth is getting warmer, it is because it SHOULD be getting warmer, because that is what God wants - and it probably really isn't anyway.

Religion in the best case leaves an out for denial of science, because at the end of the day, even actual science is just a creation of god anyway, and clearly he is not to be bound by it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 15, 2020, 11:19:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2020, 06:49:49 PM
I can see the sky!!!!!!

But it is only supposed to last a couple of hours and then the smoke is coming back.  But it is amazing how good it is for the soul to actually see the sun again.

Quote from: Zoupa on September 15, 2020, 10:01:24 PM
Still smoky as fuck here in Kelowna.

You guys have no idea..... :glare:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 16, 2020, 10:10:46 AM
yeah we have not gone over 300, that must be hell.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 11:14:32 AM
AQI is only 191 this morning!! :w00t: :yeah:  :showoff:

We're just unhealthy!! :wub:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:20:13 AM
I needed a frame of reference, so I checked. We're at 15.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2020, 11:23:20 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:20:13 AM
I needed a frame of reference, so I checked. We're at 15.

Edmonton is at 11.   :showoff:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:27:30 AM
And a balmy 11 degrees too.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Caliga on September 16, 2020, 11:28:34 AM
We're at 41.  Probably worse than Beeb and Eddie since the Ohio Valley enjoys trapping smog.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 16, 2020, 11:29:55 AM
Quote from: Caliga on September 16, 2020, 11:28:34 AM
We're at 41.  Probably worse than Beeb and Eddie since the Ohio Valley enjoys trapping smog.

Ours is 53...odd everything looks ok.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 16, 2020, 11:32:45 AM
25 in Toronto
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2020, 11:33:14 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:27:30 AM
And a balmy 11 degrees too.

As if. :rolleyes:

It's +9c/49f
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maximus on September 16, 2020, 11:36:02 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:27:30 AM
And a balmy 11 degrees too.
11 degrees is pretty much the perfect outdoor temperature.

AQI is 101 here. Not sure why. Maybe pollen?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2020, 11:40:06 AM
Quote from: Maximus on September 16, 2020, 11:36:02 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 11:27:30 AM
And a balmy 11 degrees too.
11 degrees is pretty much the perfect outdoor temperature.

AQI is 101 here. Not sure why. Maybe pollen?

The ideal outdoor temperature is probably a daytime high of -5.  Nice snow cover, but warm enough to not have to bundle up heavily - plus outdoor ice rinks are open.  So around here, that period from about mid-February into early March.  :cool:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 16, 2020, 11:45:35 AM
Strong winds from the south, far more clear today - AQ is 61 right now.  I could see the sun come up today for the first time in about a month...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 12:03:28 PM
I hate all of you. :glare:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 16, 2020, 12:45:55 PM
Don't worry - surely filthy New York City is as bad or worse.

Checking . . .  30.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 16, 2020, 01:49:48 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 12:03:28 PM
I hate all of you. :glare:

apparently its 17 in Beijing right now :lol:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 16, 2020, 02:17:43 PM
39 here
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 03:25:17 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 16, 2020, 12:45:55 PM
Don't worry - surely filthy New York City is as bad or worse.

Checking . . .  30.

We're nearly 10x that again. :weep:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2020, 04:01:15 PM
Quote from: HVC on September 16, 2020, 01:49:48 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 12:03:28 PM
I hate all of you. :glare:

apparently its 17 in Beijing right now :lol:

No shit?

The future is Chinese.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2020, 04:46:11 PM
I guess time of day matters a lot, because as I check Edmonton now we're at 55.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 16, 2020, 04:49:07 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 11:14:32 AM
AQI is only 191 this morning!! :w00t: :yeah:  :showoff:

We're just unhealthy!! :wub:

Currently 160 - we join you in being a just unhealthy for the moment.

The last two weeks have been the summer we missed in August, would have had sunny skies with warm temperatures.  Instead we get this nuclear winter dread.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 04:55:25 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2020, 04:46:11 PM
I guess time of day matters a lot, because as I check Edmonton now we're at 55.

It's been worst at night, from sundown to sunup. I'm not sure why. That being said, we're over 300 now and heading steadily toward 400.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 16, 2020, 04:55:33 PM
Right before the lightning storm that started all the California wildfires along the coast it was hot, hot hot.  Records set, over 100/38 in Santa Cruz.  Then the smoke rolled in and changed the weather.  The Marine Layer Fog returned and mixed with the smoke, the temps dropped to daytime highs in the mid 60s/18 since, with just a few warmer days.  The last two days the sun has been visible as more than a red orb, the Marine Layer has gone back out to sea, and temps are in the upper 70s/25 again. 

I am ready to be done with this, but really, we are just in the midst of the wildfire season.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 05:48:14 PM
Quote from: PDH on September 16, 2020, 04:55:33 PM
Right before the lightning storm that started all the California wildfires along the coast it was hot, hot hot.  Records set, over 100/38 in Santa Cruz.  Then the smoke rolled in and changed the weather.  The Marine Layer Fog returned and mixed with the smoke, the temps dropped to daytime highs in the mid 60s/18 since, with just a few warmer days.  The last two days the sun has been visible as more than a red orb, the Marine Layer has gone back out to sea, and temps are in the upper 70s/25 again. 

I am ready to be done with this, but really, we are just in the midst of the wildfire season.

Yeah, down there it's terrifying. The rains will start here in a few weeks, in theory. Usually end of September, early October. For you guys... damn. :weep:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: 11B4V on September 16, 2020, 06:14:25 PM
292 here
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 16, 2020, 06:22:16 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 05:48:14 PM
Yeah, down there it's terrifying. The rains will start here in a few weeks, in theory. Usually end of September, early October. For you guys... damn. :weep:

We might get some rain by the end of next month - but even in a normal year the rains don't start until november, and it hasn't been normal for a while.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 08:17:42 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on September 16, 2020, 06:14:25 PM
292 here

Yeah. I've a few friends up there complaining about our fires. :glare:

We're nearing 400 again now. My head is throbbing, and I haven't slept in two nights from it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: 11B4V on September 16, 2020, 09:54:17 PM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 08:17:42 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on September 16, 2020, 06:14:25 PM
292 here

Yeah. I've a few friends up there complaining about our fires. :glare:

We're nearing 400 again now. My head is throbbing, and I haven't slept in two nights from it.

It's like Fallout down there.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on September 16, 2020, 10:14:17 PM
We had a few 400+ days in Shanghai from air pollution. That sucked, but it was for just a week or so, then it went back to the usual 50-150.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 17, 2020, 11:44:49 AM
Quote from: merithyn on September 16, 2020, 08:17:42 PM
We're nearing 400 again now. My head is throbbing, and I haven't slept in two nights from it.
that sucks :(
I hope it gets better soon.  Kinda hard to escape the smoke of such a large fire and still be able to work.

If you could work remotely, maybe try some friend out of State, if you have any.  You will be exhausted quickly from living in these conditions and if you're still suffering from asthma, it certainly won't do you any good :(

depending on your medication, maybe you could increase your dosage temporarily to compensate for the smoke.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 17, 2020, 01:47:11 PM
I do work remotely, and leaving the state has come up. But I have animals here, too, so I would have to drive. Nearest space with decent air quality is 9-10 hours away.

The convenient care doctor gave me prednisone, which has helped. I'm loathe to take it too often or for too long, but that can't be worse than asphyxia due to breathing wood smoke.

If the air quality doesn't improve by tomorrow (after the rain tonight), I'm going to look into throwing a suitcase, my dog and cat, and my work computer into my car and driving the 2000 miles home. They'd stay there until I move in March, which would kill me, but there's no point in doing that twice. :(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 17, 2020, 02:29:29 PM
Where are you moving?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 17, 2020, 02:47:37 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 17, 2020, 02:29:29 PM
Where are you moving?

Not Chicago-area, Illinois
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 18, 2020, 09:35:14 AM
Quote from: merithyn on September 17, 2020, 02:47:37 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 17, 2020, 02:29:29 PM
Where are you moving?

Not Chicago-area, Illinois

Say what you want about that midwest weather, there are few earthquakes and wild fires.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 18, 2020, 10:22:50 AM
People in this region (maybe the whole West Coast) are of course leery of wildfires and earthquakes, but it is a long "known" danger that people live with.  I have had people here talk to me with near terror about Tornados "back east" and they cannot understand how anyone can live with that threat all the time.  Throw in coastal hurricanes, winter storms and the like, and West Coast people are certain that the east is constantly on the edge of being obliterated.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2020, 12:23:11 PM
Quote from: PDH on September 18, 2020, 10:22:50 AM
People in this region (maybe the whole West Coast) are of course leery of wildfires and earthquakes, but it is a long "known" danger that people live with.  I have had people here talk to me with near terror about Tornados "back east" and they cannot understand how anyone can live with that threat all the time.  Throw in coastal hurricanes, winter storms and the like, and West Coast people are certain that the east is constantly on the edge of being obliterated.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are a certainty every year the only question is where will they hit the hardest.  Major earthquakes rarely occur - we used to be able to say the same about major wild fires but global warming has changed that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 20, 2020, 03:07:42 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 18, 2020, 09:35:14 AM
Quote from: merithyn on September 17, 2020, 02:47:37 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 17, 2020, 02:29:29 PM
Where are you moving?

Not Chicago-area, Illinois

Say what you want about that midwest weather, there are few earthquakes and wild fires.

And I happen to love and miss midwestern winters.  :wub:

Quote from: PDH on September 18, 2020, 10:22:50 AM
People in this region (maybe the whole West Coast) are of course leery of wildfires and earthquakes, but it is a long "known" danger that people live with.  I have had people here talk to me with near terror about Tornados "back east" and they cannot understand how anyone can live with that threat all the time.  Throw in coastal hurricanes, winter storms and the like, and West Coast people are certain that the east is constantly on the edge of being obliterated.

It's funny to me how terrified of tornados people out here are. I never really thought about them. I'd forget it was tornado season until I'd see the purple and green clouds, then be like,  "Oh. Right." Then just stay out watching for funnels.

It's all about what you know.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on September 28, 2020, 10:41:27 AM
Aaaaand, the next big fire burst out - high winds this weekend north of San Francisco meant a new big fire right outside of Santa Rosa (where my brother and his family live).

This is California, so at best rains are a month off, more likely mid-November or December even.  Expect more, all the fires contained will be smoldering until the rainy season (if there is one).

Had there not been a run on air purifiers, I could have bought one.  Oh well, just call me "cement lungs"
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on September 28, 2020, 10:58:40 AM
15 °C, rainy and windy. Autumn is there!
Maybe 20°C tomorrow, but with rain. Good for the aquifers I guess.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 29, 2020, 05:11:49 PM
Quote from: PDH on September 28, 2020, 10:41:27 AM
Had there not been a run on air purifiers, I could have bought one.  Oh well, just call me "cement lungs"
import one from Canada.  It's going to cost a lot in shipping, but the high value of the USD will make it roughly the same as the us prices.

But I see Amazon.com has some smaller models on hand.  Might work for you, depending on how big a unit you were expecting to buy.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 29, 2020, 05:19:05 PM
Forecast says the smoke from the latest outbreak will be hitting us this evening.  A week smoke free was too good to be true.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 29, 2020, 09:12:33 PM
:(
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 30, 2020, 11:24:54 AM
Smoke has moved in as predicted, the only good thing is it is high level so it is currently only blocking out the sun.  Hoping it will not come down to infiltrate our lungs again.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 30, 2020, 10:14:58 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 30, 2020, 11:24:54 AM
Smoke has moved in as predicted, the only good thing is it is high level so it is currently only blocking out the sun.  Hoping it will not come down to infiltrate our lungs again.
I had to live only two weeks with that smoke, and it was really hard.  Can't imagine living in this for 2 months.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on September 30, 2020, 11:07:28 PM
Peedy, air quality is good here, and will only go to moderate so far. If you need somewhere to go to breathe (assuming you can leave your area), I have space.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on October 01, 2020, 12:12:05 AM
The winds are holding steady coming from the ocean, which means all the smoke ain't coming here so far.  I figure it's heading to Wyoming which has its own wildfire problems.  Funny that.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 01, 2020, 09:51:16 AM
Quote from: PDH on October 01, 2020, 12:12:05 AM
The winds are holding steady coming from the ocean, which means all the smoke ain't coming here so far.  I figure it's heading to Wyoming which has its own wildfire problems.  Funny that.

If you are looking for your smoke, I found some of it.  Feel free to come and get it.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 08, 2020, 07:28:50 PM
More good news on the climate front :)
A world without clouds? (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-world-without-clouds?utm_source=pocket-newtab)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 10, 2020, 10:02:01 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/07/asia/russia-kamchatka-toxic-marine-life-death-intl/index.html

QuoteA suspected toxic spill in Russia's Far East has killed 95% of marine life on the seabed

(CNN)A suspected toxic spill along a beach on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula has killed 95% of marine life on the surrounding seabed, local scientists have said, following a weeks-long campaign to investigate the mysterious incident.

Local surfers were the first to spot that something was wrong at Khalaktyr beach after about 20 people in a surf camp experienced severe retina burns and symptoms similar to food poisoning.

In early September, the water changed color to a greyish-yellow, with a thick milky foam on the surface, and a strong foul smell filled the air. A few days later, octopuses, seals and other sea creatures began to wash up on the beach.

The local authorities at first dismissed the reports. But amid mounting pressure, Russia's Investigative Committee Wednesday launched a criminal probe into suspected violations in the use of environmentally hazardous substances and waste and marine pollution.

In a meeting with Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov, local scientists reported that the majority of marine life on the seabed was dead.

"On the shore, we did not find any large dead sea animals or birds," scientist Ivan Usatov said according to a report posted on the governor's official website. "However, when diving, we found that there is a mass death of benthos [bottom-dwelling organisms] at depths from 10 to 15 meters -- 95% are dead. Some large fish, shrimps and crabs have survived, but in very small numbers."

The scientists said they believe the contaminated area is much larger than the parts they examined and that the remaining marine life is under threat due to lack of any sustenance left for them to survive on.

A photographer who participated in the underwater expedition with the scientists also experienced a retina burn, the report added.

The findings concur with earlier accounts from locals posted on social media.

"Our guys went diving and they came back to surface with tears on their eyes! The entire seabed was full of dead animals' corpses," a local tour guide Kristina Rozenberg wrote on her Instagram page. "All of our underwater beauty is of gray and yellow colors, the fish looks like they've been boiling in hot water... and this is all happening just 200 meters away from the house I live in."

Initially, Kamchatka's Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology insisted there was no such issue, saying the color of the water and the smell was normal in the area and that "nothing abnormal" had been recorded.

That statement drew a social media backlash, which gained more traction after a post from a prominent YouTuber Yury Dud, featuring drone shots of a dark layer on the surface of the water and dozens of dead animals on the shore, went viral.

It is still unclear what caused the contamination. Initial probes showed that levels of phenol, a substance often used as antiseptic or disinfectant, were 2.5 times higher than normal, and petroleum levels 3.6 times higher. Local media outlets have speculated about a possible oil tanker leak or military drills gone wrong, which the Defense Ministry denied.

"The investigators are checking all possible sources of pollution, including the territories of landfills adjacent to the Avachinsky Bay and the coastal strip of Khalaktyr where toxic chemicals are stored," the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The Russian branch of Greenpeace pointed to a nearby toxic waste dump as a possible source of the leak. Kamchatka officials revealed Tuesday that the perimeter at Kozelsky site, which stores over 100 tons of toxic substances, including pesticides, had been breached.

The Kamchatka governor insisted Wednesday that the area would be recultivated "no matter what."

This is the latest in a string of ecological disasters Russia has seen in recent years, coming four months after 20,000 tons of fuel from a damaged tank poured into a nearby river in the Siberian city of Norilsk.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on October 10, 2020, 03:13:13 PM
No more Kamchatka crab for a while?  :o
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 11, 2020, 09:13:29 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on October 10, 2020, 03:13:13 PM
No more Kamchatka crab for a while?  :o
not a huge loss :P

btw, Quebec&Canada produce crab, and with our wonderful economic treaty, I'm sure our fishermens would gladly ship a few tons your way ;)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on October 15, 2020, 12:38:03 AM
You've got to be kidding me....

Friends said there were a few fires back in Illinois. :mellow: Half the state is on a fire watch, with multiple fires in fields from Galesburg to south of Effingham. (That's roughly 300 miles.)


QuoteUPDATE 9:19 P.M. -- The National Weather Service says peak winds over the last 12 hours reached 43 miles per hour at the Peoria Airport and 45 miles per hour at the Central Illinois Regional Airport.

The highest wind speeds were seen at the Willard Airport in Champaign County at 49 miles per hour.

(WEEK) -- Central Illinois saw multiple field and brush fires reported Wednesday.

The National Weather Service at Lincoln issued a Red Flag Warning for much of the area until 7 p.m -- meaning critical fire conditions are occurring or will occur. Low humidity and winds up to 20-30 miles per hour are expected.

The NWS as of 2:59 p.m. also reports several fires have developed and have gotten out of control.

High winds have knocked down a utility pole in the northwest area of Peoria on Southport Road that caused a brush fire.

Limestone Fire Chief Larry Gilmore says a utility pole was blown over and a loose wire sparked a fire.

The incident happened at about 3:20 p.m. Wednesday in the 3900 block of Southport Road.

A Peoria city official said the westbound lanes were blocked, but are now open as of 4:30 p.m.

In Tazewell County, roughly 12 fire departments are responding to a field fire near Delavan and Green Valley, according to the Tazewell County Consolidated Communications Center.

Delavan Fire Chief Rodney Ashby said the fire was contained as of 5:28 p.m., which was a combine that caught on fire south of Toboggan Avenue.

"With the high wind that we have today, it did jump Toboggan and Fisher road and continued north," Ashby said.

Ashby added with smoke blowing across the roadways, visibility was poor, causing a multiple vehicle accident.

"A couple of vehicles trying to drive through the smoke on before we were able to get the road shut down all the way there was an accident," Ashby said.

No injuries were reported, but one firefighter was getting checked out for smoke inhalation.

TazCom also says a house fire in Pekin in the 1400 block of Mechanic is being reported due to a power line.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on October 15, 2020, 08:31:31 AM
Did you piss off Surtr?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: merithyn on October 17, 2020, 12:04:42 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on October 15, 2020, 08:31:31 AM
Did you piss off Surtr?

I mean, I did recently kill a Fire Giant in my Scion game. :unsure: :ph34r:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 26, 2020, 09:06:20 AM
Is this still even a thing, what with politicking over Coronavirus and Trump's twitter feed tacking centre stage?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 26, 2020, 02:00:04 PM
The fires? Yes. Yes they are.

Fortunately snow is coming to the Rockies which I hope puts an end to this at least for this year.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 26, 2020, 02:21:33 PM
Yep, unfortunately California still not out of danger.  New fire started today.  22 wildfires still burning

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/california-wildfires-pge-outages.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: PDH on October 26, 2020, 02:50:39 PM
Normally the rainy season here in CA doesn't start for a few more weeks.  As it is this year, we are likely going to see no rain.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 27, 2020, 12:48:07 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-giant-arctic-methane-deposits-starting-to-release-scientists-find?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Quote'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the "sleeping giants of the carbon cycle" – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal.

High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating.

The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases – known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilisation as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change.

The international team onboard the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh said most of the bubbles were currently dissolving in the water but methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected and this was venting into the atmosphere.

"At this moment, there is unlikely to be any major impact on global warming, but the point is that this process has now been triggered. This East Siberian slope methane hydrate system has been perturbed and the process will be ongoing," said the Swedish scientist Örjan Gustafsson, of Stockholm University, in a satellite call from the vessel.

The scientists – who are part of a multi-year International Shelf Study Expedition – stressed their findings were preliminary. The scale of methane releases will not be confirmed until they return, analyse the data and have their studies published in a peer-reviewed journal.

But the discovery of potentially destabilised slope frozen methane raises concerns that a new tipping point has been reached that could increase the speed of global heating.

The Arctic is considered ground zero in the debate about the vulnerability of frozen methane deposits in the ocean.

With the Arctic temperature now rising more than twice as fast as the global average, the question of when – or even whether – they will be released into the atmosphere has been a matter of considerable uncertainty in climate computer models.

The 60-member team on the Akademik Keldysh believe they are the first to observationally confirm the methane release is already under way across a wide area of the slope about 600km offshore.

At six monitoring points over a slope area 150km in length and 10km wide, they saw clouds of bubbles released from sediment.

At one location on the Laptev Sea slope at a depth of about 300 metres they found methane concentrations of up to 1,600 nanomoles per litre, which is 400 times higher than would be expected if the sea and the atmosphere were in equilibrium.

Igor Semiletov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who is the chief scientist onboard, said the discharges were "significantly larger" than anything found before. "The discovery of actively releasing shelf slope hydrates is very important and unknown until now," he said. "This is a new page. Potentially they can have serious climate consequences, but we need more study before we can confirm that."

The most likely cause of the instability is an intrusion of warm Atlantic currents into the east Arctic. This "Atlantification" is driven by human-induced climate disruption.

The latest discovery potentially marks the third source of methane emissions from the region. Semiletov, who has been studying this area for two decades, has previously reported the gas is being released from the shelf of the Arctic – the biggest of any sea.

For the second year in a row, his team have found crater-like pockmarks in the shallower parts of the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea that are discharging bubble jets of methane, which is reaching the sea surface at levels tens to hundreds of times higher than normal. This is similar to the craters and sinkholes reported from inland Siberian tundra earlier this autumn.

Temperatures in Siberia were 5C higher than average from January to June this year, an anomaly that was made at least 600 times more likely by human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. Last winter's sea ice melted unusually early. This winter's freeze has yet to begin, already a later start than at any time on record.


Article on the Siberian sinkholes here: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/world/craters-tundra-siberia-trnd-scn/index.html
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 27, 2020, 12:50:15 PM
False positive triggered by an event in Alaska?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 17, 2020, 08:17:54 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-cause-global-aviation-emissions-study-covid-19

Quote1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions – study

Frequent-flying "'super emitters" who represent just 1% of the world's population caused half of aviation's carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study.

Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers.

Only 11% of the world's population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports.

The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis that affected everyone.

They said the 50% drop in passenger numbers in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic should be an opportunity to make the aviation industry fairer and more sustainable. This could be done by putting green conditions on the huge bailouts governments were giving the industry, as had happened in France.

Global aviation's contribution to the climate crisis was growing fast before the Covid-19 pandemic, with emissions jumping by 32% from 2013-18. Flight numbers in 2020 have fallen by half but the industry expects to return to previous levels by 2024.

"If you want to resolve climate change and we need to redesign [aviation], then we should start at the top, where a few 'super emitters' contribute massively to global warming," said Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the new study.

"The rich have had far too much freedom to design the planet according to their wishes. We should see the crisis as an opportunity to slim the air transport system."

Dan Rutherford, at the International Council on Clean Transportation and not part of the research team, said the analysis raised the question of equality.

"The benefits of aviation are more inequitably shared across the world than probably any other major emission source," he said. "So there's a clear risk that the special treatment enjoyed by airlines just protects the economic interests of the globally wealthy."

The frequent flyers identified in the study travelled about 35,000 miles (56,000km) a year, Gössling said, equivalent to three long-haul flights a year, one short-haul flight per month, or some combination of the two.

The research, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, collated a range of data and found large proportions of people in every country did not fly at all each year – 53% in the US, 65% in Germany and 66% in Taiwan. In the UK, separate data shows 48% of people did not fly abroad in 2018.

The analysis showed the US produced the most emissions among rich nations. China was the biggest among other countries but it does not make data available. However, Gössling thinks its aviation footprint is probably only a fifth of that of the US.

On average, North Americans flew 50 times more kilometres than Africans in 2018, 10 times more than those in the Asia-Pacific region and 7.5 times more than Latin Americans. Europeans and those in the Middle East flew 25 times further than Africans and five times more than Asians.

The data also showed a large growth in international flights from 1990-2017, with numbers tripling from Australia and doubling from the UK.

...
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 17, 2020, 08:51:57 AM
According to the ICAO there were about 8,000 billion passenger-kilometres travelled last year. If the article is correct and the climate damage is about $100bn then a levy of 1.25 cents per kilometre would cover that. I don't think that such a levy would stop any but the most frivolous air travel, a return flight from London to New York would cost $140 more for example. The problem would be spending the money raised on effective climate change mitigation.

I would welcome such a charge as it would enable me to fly with a clearer conscience; Filipino migrant workers might not be so keen though.

One should also note that passenger jets usually also have high-value freight in their holds; some part of the cost could be charged there.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 17, 2020, 08:53:36 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 17, 2020, 08:51:57 AM
According to the ICAO there were about 8,000 billion passenger-kilometres travelled last year. If the article is correct and the climate damage is about $100bn then a levy of 1.25 cents per kilometre would cover that. I don't think that such a levy would stop any but the most frivolous air travel, a return flight from London to New York would cost $140 more for example. The problem would be spending the money raised on effective climate change mitigation.

I would welcome such a charge as it would enable me to fly with a clearer conscience; Filipino migrant workers might not be so keen though.

One should also note that passenger jets usually also have high-value freight in their holds; some part of the cost could be charged there.

I keep saying the whole "tax air travel!!1111" thing is mostly about middle class and upward not keen on having to share the airways with the plebs the last decade or so.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: garbon on November 17, 2020, 09:20:24 AM
Maybe just price up the premium seating options? Would that do enough?

Of course, in that article, they are actively wanting to discourage travelers.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 17, 2020, 09:21:26 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 17, 2020, 09:20:24 AM
Maybe just price up the premium seating options? Would that do enough?

Of course, in that article, they are actively wanting to discourage travelers.

Unless you go full VIP you still encounter plebs at the gate.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 17, 2020, 10:19:05 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 17, 2020, 09:20:24 AM
Maybe just price up the premium seating options? Would that do enough?
I think they often travel at 1/2 to 3/4 capacity for their premium seating options, so, no, I don't think it'll be enough :(

It's tempting, though.  Maybe begin with this, if at least to simply show that the rich are doing their part, then extend it to regular seating options if it's not enough.

Trains should be used more extensively for travels along the east and west coast, keep airplane traffic for inter-continental and coast-to-coast travel where it's most effective.  A high speed train between Montreal and New York would likely be faster than an airplane, when you figure the time needed wasted in the airport.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 17, 2020, 10:32:24 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 17, 2020, 08:53:36 AM

I keep saying the whole "tax air travel!!1111" thing is mostly about middle class and upward not keen on having to share the airways with the plebs the last decade or so.

Or because air travel should be taxed properly, like others modes of transport.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 17, 2020, 10:38:03 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 17, 2020, 10:32:24 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 17, 2020, 08:53:36 AM

I keep saying the whole "tax air travel!!1111" thing is mostly about middle class and upward not keen on having to share the airways with the plebs the last decade or so.

Or because air travel should be taxed properly, like others modes of transport.

Keeping the working class from vacationing in Thailand is just a pleasant bonus.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 03, 2020, 08:56:44 AM
2020 shapes up to be the warmest year in European history.

(https://images.derstandard.at/img/2020/12/02/hitzeg.jpg?w=1600&s=cdc8af2c)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on December 03, 2020, 09:06:29 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 17, 2020, 10:32:24 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 17, 2020, 08:53:36 AM

I keep saying the whole "tax air travel!!1111" thing is mostly about middle class and upward not keen on having to share the airways with the plebs the last decade or so.

Or because air travel should be taxed properly, like others modes of transport.

Kerosene tax? After a quick websearch, only the Netherlands have it.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on December 03, 2020, 09:15:27 AM
Looks like it might be a good idea to invest in Siberian viticulture.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 03, 2020, 10:34:44 AM
Nah, one of Putin's cronies will steal it from you.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on December 03, 2020, 12:50:36 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on December 03, 2020, 09:06:29 AM
Quote from: Maladict on November 17, 2020, 10:32:24 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 17, 2020, 08:53:36 AM

I keep saying the whole "tax air travel!!1111" thing is mostly about middle class and upward not keen on having to share the airways with the plebs the last decade or so.

Or because air travel should be taxed properly, like others modes of transport.

Kerosene tax? After a quick websearch, only the Netherlands have it.  :hmm:

We do? Apparently yes, but only for domestic flights, which don't really exist apart from general aviation.

Tax on kerosene but also VAT on tickets is long overdue. Failing that, mandatory CO2 offset is probably the highest realistic goal.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on December 08, 2020, 02:21:20 AM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-06/water-futures-to-start-trading-amid-growing-fears-of-scarcity

QuoteCalifornia Water Futures Begin Trading Amid Fear of Scarcity

Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.

Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against -- or bet on -- future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world's fifth-largest economy. CME Group Inc.'s January 2021 contract, linked to California's $1.1 billion spot water market, last traded Monday at 496 index points, equal to $496 per acre-foot.

The contracts, a first of their kind in the U.S., were announced in September as heat and wildfires ravaged the U.S. West Coast and as California was emerging from an eight-year drought. They are meant to serve both as a hedge for big water consumers, such as almond farmers and electric utilities, against water prices fluctuations as well a scarcity gauge for investors worldwide.

"Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," said RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray. "We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops."

The United Nations has long warned that human-driven climate change is leading to severe droughts and more flooding, making water availability increasingly less predictable. In California, the most recent acute dry spell stretched from December 2011 until March of last year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The most dire effects took hold in July 2014, with 58% of the state's land suffering "exceptional drought," leading to crop and pasture losses and other water emergencies.

The futures are tied to the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which was started two years ago and measures the volume-weighted average price of water. The January 2021 water contract that went live Monday had two trades.

"I'm delighted we've had trades," said Clay Landry, managing director at consulting firm WestWater Research, which provides the data used to calculate the water index. "In the physical market, it's so hard to get a deal done. This feels like lightning fast to me."

The index sets a weekly benchmark spot price of water rights in California, underpinned by the volume-weighted average of the transaction prices in the state's five largest and most actively traded markets.

The futures are financially settled, as opposed to requiring the actual physical delivery. Contracts include quarterly ones through 2022, with each representing 10 acre-feet of water, equal to roughly 3.26 million gallons.

According to Chicago-based CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.

Two billion people now live in nations plagued by water problems, and almost two-thirds of the world could face water shortages in just four years, Tim McCourt, global head of equity index and alternative investment products at CME, said in an interview. "The idea of managing risks associated to water is certainly increased in importance."

Currently, if a farmer wants to know what water will cost in California six months from now, it's kind of a "best guess," Patrick Wolf, senior manager and head of product development at Nasdaq, said in an interview.

The futures will allow market participants to see "what is everybody's best guess," he said.

Barton "Buzz" Thompson, a professor of natural-resources law at Stanford University, said while he has "no idea" if the futures will be successful, he doesn't see it as a transformation of the water market.

"I don't think the futures contract itself is really changing the water markets," Thompson said. "Nor is it changing the risk that exists out there that water in the future at some point will be in shorter supply, it's simply responding to those things."

CME declined to identify potential market participants, except to note that the exchange has heard from California agriculture producers, public water agencies, utilities as well as institutional investors like asset managers and hedge funds.

Landry of WestWater Research said in addition to the likelihood of a "great deal of interest" from Wall Street, he expects the early water futures adopters to be large and small agriculture businesses.

"Without this tool people have no way of managing water supply risk," Boise, Idaho-based Landry said in an interview. "This may not solve that problem entirely, but it will help soften the financial blow that people will take if their water supply is cut off."
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on December 08, 2020, 02:41:51 AM
There are so many trains coming down the tracks to run over my country sometimes I lose track. And this one has the benefit that it dooms everybody.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on December 17, 2020, 05:28:33 AM
In one of the Hungarian national parks, a forested, rocky, montaneous area (well, mountains on a Hungarian scale) some years ago somebody planted a bunch of cactii on a rocky area, with great care.

Thanks to the milder winters these are surviving, and especially some fig cactii have become downright invasive, workers of the national park have to do annual cullings of it and they have not been able to eradicate them.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 17, 2020, 12:25:30 PM
Quote from: Syt on December 08, 2020, 02:21:20 AM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-06/water-futures-to-start-trading-amid-growing-fears-of-scarcity

QuoteCalifornia Water Futures Begin Trading Amid Fear of Scarcity

Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.

Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against -- or bet on -- future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world's fifth-largest economy. CME Group Inc.'s January 2021 contract, linked to California's $1.1 billion spot water market, last traded Monday at 496 index points, equal to $496 per acre-foot.

The contracts, a first of their kind in the U.S., were announced in September as heat and wildfires ravaged the U.S. West Coast and as California was emerging from an eight-year drought. They are meant to serve both as a hedge for big water consumers, such as almond farmers and electric utilities, against water prices fluctuations as well a scarcity gauge for investors worldwide.

"Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," said RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray. "We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops."

The United Nations has long warned that human-driven climate change is leading to severe droughts and more flooding, making water availability increasingly less predictable. In California, the most recent acute dry spell stretched from December 2011 until March of last year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The most dire effects took hold in July 2014, with 58% of the state's land suffering "exceptional drought," leading to crop and pasture losses and other water emergencies.

The futures are tied to the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which was started two years ago and measures the volume-weighted average price of water. The January 2021 water contract that went live Monday had two trades.

"I'm delighted we've had trades," said Clay Landry, managing director at consulting firm WestWater Research, which provides the data used to calculate the water index. "In the physical market, it's so hard to get a deal done. This feels like lightning fast to me."

The index sets a weekly benchmark spot price of water rights in California, underpinned by the volume-weighted average of the transaction prices in the state's five largest and most actively traded markets.

The futures are financially settled, as opposed to requiring the actual physical delivery. Contracts include quarterly ones through 2022, with each representing 10 acre-feet of water, equal to roughly 3.26 million gallons.

According to Chicago-based CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.

Two billion people now live in nations plagued by water problems, and almost two-thirds of the world could face water shortages in just four years, Tim McCourt, global head of equity index and alternative investment products at CME, said in an interview. "The idea of managing risks associated to water is certainly increased in importance."

Currently, if a farmer wants to know what water will cost in California six months from now, it's kind of a "best guess," Patrick Wolf, senior manager and head of product development at Nasdaq, said in an interview.

The futures will allow market participants to see "what is everybody's best guess," he said.

Barton "Buzz" Thompson, a professor of natural-resources law at Stanford University, said while he has "no idea" if the futures will be successful, he doesn't see it as a transformation of the water market.

"I don't think the futures contract itself is really changing the water markets," Thompson said. "Nor is it changing the risk that exists out there that water in the future at some point will be in shorter supply, it's simply responding to those things."

CME declined to identify potential market participants, except to note that the exchange has heard from California agriculture producers, public water agencies, utilities as well as institutional investors like asset managers and hedge funds.

Landry of WestWater Research said in addition to the likelihood of a "great deal of interest" from Wall Street, he expects the early water futures adopters to be large and small agriculture businesses.

"Without this tool people have no way of managing water supply risk," Boise, Idaho-based Landry said in an interview. "This may not solve that problem entirely, but it will help soften the financial blow that people will take if their water supply is cut off."

The DC area is looking at one of its rainiest years. If anyone in CA needs some extra water, I've got plenty in my backyard.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on December 19, 2020, 06:50:34 PM
There's a scheme here offering free heat pumps. I'm tempted. Cut down on carbon and small bill improvements too.
But... Thicker radiators required and expansion is made hard. Also needs some hefty equipment in the garden and garage. Not sure what to think if I do get picked.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on December 19, 2020, 08:11:17 PM
I love my heat pump. Changed my life, especially in the summer. Well worth the 12 large.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2020, 08:28:03 PM
Confused by larger radiators.  Here radiators are the big iron contraptions that hiss steam.  Is that the Pomish word for heating/ac vent?

Also suprised that a heat pump can hack the Canadian winter.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on December 20, 2020, 01:30:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2020, 08:28:03 PM
Also suprised that a heat pump can hack the Canadian winter.

Could handle Vancouver's, not Edmonton's. It can handle Montreal's because of new technology and climate change. I need my 2ndary heating for about 2 weeks in late January, early February.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 08, 2021, 04:56:09 AM
2020 was the hottest year on record in Europe.

(https://preview.redd.it/n6fo831gk2a61.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=6079c5bf964d8b4644c9e0a27a5629b62df49f78)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Maladict on January 08, 2021, 08:01:49 AM
That giant Siberian fart is going to be unavoidable, isn't it?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on January 08, 2021, 08:19:55 AM
Ireland feels aggrieved.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 08, 2021, 11:50:00 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 20, 2020, 01:30:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2020, 08:28:03 PM
Also suprised that a heat pump can hack the Canadian winter.

Could handle Vancouver's, not Edmonton's. It can handle Montreal's because of new technology and climate change. I need my 2ndary heating for about 2 weeks in late January, early February.

Can't really call what we get Winter, more like extended Fall.  Would certainly never trade the Winters Yi experiences for the ones we get.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on January 22, 2021, 12:39:23 PM
Maybe we're not fucked, after all?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/climate-change-after-pandemic.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Quote
[...]
hen trying to share good news about climate, it pays to be cautious, since so many have looked foolish playing Pollyanna. A turning point isn't an endgame, or a victory, or a cessation of the need to struggle — for speedier decarbonization, for a sturdier future, for climate justice. Already, a future without profound climate suffering has been almost certainly foreclosed by decades of inaction, which means the burden of managing those impacts equitably will be handed down, generation to generation, into an indefinite and contested climate future.

But if the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House feels like something of a fresh start, well, to a degree it is. The world's most conspicuous climate villain has been deposed, and though Biden was hardly the first choice of environmentalists, his victory signals an effective end to the age of denial and the probable beginning of a new era of climate realism, with fights for progress shaped as much by choices as by first principles.

The change is much bigger than the turnover of American leadership. By the time the Biden presidency finds its footing in a vaccinated world, the bounds of climate possibility will have been remade. Just a half-decade ago, it was widely believed that a "business as usual" emissions path would bring the planet four or five degrees of warming — enough to make large parts of Earth effectively uninhabitable. Now, thanks to the rapid death of coal, the revolution in the price of renewable energy, and a global climate politics forged by a generational awakening, the expectation is for about three degrees. Recent pledges could bring us closer to two. All of these projections sketch a hazardous and unequal future, and all are clouded with uncertainties — about the climate system, about technology, about the dexterity and intensity of human response, about how inequitably the most punishing impacts will be distributed. Yet if each half-degree of warming marks an entirely different level of suffering, we appear to have shaved a few of them off our likeliest end stage in not much time at all.

The next half-degrees will be harder to shave off, and the most crucial increment — getting from two degrees to 1.5 — perhaps impossible, dashing the dream of avoiding what was long described as "catastrophic" change. But for a climate alarmist like me, seeing clearly the state of the planet's future now requires a conspicuous kind of double vision, in which a guarded optimism seems perhaps as reasonable as panic. Given how long we've waited to move, what counts now as a best-case outcome remains grim. It also appears, miraculously, within reach.
[...]
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on January 22, 2021, 12:41:03 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 19, 2020, 08:11:17 PM
I love my heat pump. Changed my life, especially in the summer. Well worth the 12 large.
At 12k$, it ain't a small thermopump?  You got the whole unit in the basement?
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Valmy on January 22, 2021, 01:49:32 PM
Yeah it is just engineering. There was never this big threat of an economic collapse due to simply designing our energy systems differently that pro-industry scare mongers put out there. If we had started sooner in earnest I bet we could have avoided this entire issue entirely with little economic damage.

As it is we still might. Just got to keep at it. Once you set the priorities to reducing carbon emissions and provide a little incentive it is amazing what can get done in both the public and private sectors.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on January 22, 2021, 02:02:48 PM
Quote from: viper37 on January 22, 2021, 12:41:03 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 19, 2020, 08:11:17 PM
I love my heat pump. Changed my life, especially in the summer. Well worth the 12 large.
At 12k$, it ain't a small thermopump?  You got the whole unit in the basement?

No, there is nothing in my basement. I didn't have air ducts, still don't.
It's why it cost so much, it's a attic system that mimics central air by installing ducts in there.

http://www.climatech.ca/climatech_products/french/mitsubishi/M-Series-CEILING-CONCEALED-SLIM-AC-HP_fr.pdf
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on January 22, 2021, 04:19:29 PM
I see, hence the price tag.  Mine is a conventional one room unit.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on January 25, 2021, 03:54:14 PM
I've Said Goodbye to 'Normal.' You Should, Too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/opinion/new-normal-climate-catastrophes.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR2RGXvnGjs2cNyjEvfycIrZ96vHEncu2KraFnhSxnw4c3GNyp0l1fDsWE4
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 26, 2021, 05:29:59 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/25/ice-melt-quickens-greenland-glaciers/

QuoteEarth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it's going to get worse.

Ice is melting faster worldwide, with greater sea-level rise anticipated, studies show.

Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming new research published this month.

From the thin ice shield covering most of the Arctic Ocean to the mile-thick mantle of the polar ice sheets, ice losses have soared from about 760 billion tons per year in the 1990s to more than 1.2 trillion tons per year in the 2010s, a new study released Monday shows. That is an increase of more than 60 percent, equating to 28 trillion tons of melted ice in total — and it means that roughly 3 percent of all the extra energy trapped within Earth's system by climate change has gone toward turning ice into water.

"That's like more than 10,000 'Back to the Future' lightning strikes per second of energy melting ice around-the-clock since 1994," said William Colgan, an ice-sheet expert at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. "That is just a bonkers amount of energy."

There is good reason to think the rate of ice melt will continue to accelerate. A second, NASA-backed study on the Greenland ice sheet, for instance, finds that no less than 74 major glaciers that terminate in deep, warming ocean waters are being severely undercut and weakened.

And it asserts that the extent of this effect, along with its implications for rising seas, is still being discounted by the global scientific community.

Failing to fully account for the role of ocean undercutting means sea-level rise from the ice sheets may be underestimated by "at least a factor of 2," the new paper in the journal Science Advances finds.

"It's like cutting the feet off the glacier rather than melting the whole body," said Eric Rignot, a study co-author and a glacier researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Irvine. "You melt the feet and the body falls down, as opposed to melting the whole body."

"I think this is an example that the current projections are conservative," Rignot said. "As we peer below we realize these feedbacks are kicking in faster than we thought."

Together, the two studies present a worrying picture.

The first finds that the current ice losses, which are accelerating quickly, are on pace with the worst scenarios for sea-level rise put out by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That expert body found that ice sheets could drive as much as 16 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.

But on top of that, the new NASA work on Greenland suggests that the IPCC, whose sea-level projections have long been faulted as being conservative, could underestimate future sea-level rise if the panel, which has a new report expected later this year, does not take full account of the power of the ocean to knock the ice backward and undermine it.

A new tally of vanishing ice

The first study, in the journal The Cryosphere and led by University of Leeds researcher Thomas Slater, is basically an enormous work of accounting. It tallies losses from the vast Greenland ice sheet, to the jagged peaks of the Himalayas and then southward to Antarctica during the 23-year period from 1994 through 2017.

Not all the ice the planet has lost translates directly into rising seas. For instance, 7.6 trillion tons, the largest single total, comes from the melting of the floating ice cover of the Arctic Ocean, which does not raise seas at all. Nor do the 6.5 trillion tons subtracted from Antarctic ice shelves, as those, too, were already afloat.

Still, the loss of floating ice paves the way for the unlocking of ice on land in Greenland and Antarctica, where 99 percent of all the planet's fresh water sits in frozen form, crushing down the invisible landforms beneath it. Greenland and Antarctica together have lost 6.3 trillion tons since 1994, the research finds, leaving out the past three years, which would surely add at least another trillion on top of that.

So far, the world's mountain glaciers have actually been keeping pace with the ice sheets, losing 6.1 trillion tons of ice over the same time period and thus adding roughly the same amount to sea level. Over time — probably starting right around now — the polar ice sheets will begin to massively outdistance the losses from mountain glaciers and become the dominant drivers of global sea-level rise.

"It is no surprise that the ice on our planet is melting," said Robin Bell, an expert on the polar ice sheets at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "We have turned up the temperature, and just like you can watch an ice cube in your glass melt on a hot summer day, our actions are melting our planet's ice."

The question now becomes: Just how fast will climate change lead to the melting of the biggest and thickest ice, the ice atop Greenland and Antarctica?

Where Greenland's toes dip into the sea, ice is melting

That's where the results of a six-year NASA campaign to study the influence of warming ocean waters on the melting of Greenland's glaciers have some unsettling news.

Together with the University of Leeds study, the NASA research helps show why global ice loss is likely to further speed up as global warming continues. One of the main mechanisms causing Greenland's glaciers to flow faster into the sea, unlocking inland ice and allowing it to slide toward the coast as well, is the encroachment of warm water underneath the ice in the many deep fjords of coastal Greenland.

Scientists have observed accelerating ice loss in nearly every sector of the Greenland ice sheet. While researchers have suspected that warming ocean waters, rather than increasing air temperatures alone, may be behind the melting of glaciers in typically frigid northwest Greenland, for example, the evidence had previously been lacking.

The new study, led by glaciologist Mike Wood, also of UC-Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, relies on measurements taken via hundreds of instruments deployed by aircraft and ships for the past six years, revealing the shape of the land that lurks under the ice where 226 glaciers terminate in the sea, as well as the temperature structure of waters coming into contact with the ice.

Glaciers that flow into Greenland's deepest fjords are losing the most ice, Wood said. The 74 glaciers situated in deep, steep-walled valleys accounted for nearly half of Greenland's total ice loss between 1992 and 2017, the study found. Greenland is now the largest contributor to global sea-level rise.

"In these deep fjords, warm water lurks hundreds of feet below the ocean surface, melting the glaciers from below," Wood said. "When those warm waters become even warmer — a phenomenon we saw through the early 2000s — the melt increases, causing the glaciers to recede, become unstable and lose ice."

The science produced by the six-year field campaign, known as Oceans Melting Greenland, may force modelers to rethink their estimates for future ice loss, not just in Greenland but also for glaciers where similar dynamics are at work in Antarctica, such as in the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The NASA-led research shows that the undercutting of glaciers by relatively mild ocean waters explains why so many of Greenland's glaciers have sped their movement into the ocean, adding to sea-level rise, while some others have not accelerated as much.

In many coastal locations, relatively mild, salty waters sit below a layer of colder, fresher water in glacial fjords. These mild waters are coming into contact with the base of glaciers, where ice meets bedrock, which destabilizes the ice.

"A large amount of a glacier's stability depends on ice at its base," Wood said. "Remove it and you destabilize the whole thing, like Achilles' heel."

At the same time, during the summer months, meltwater from inland areas can flow all the way to the base of glaciers that end in the sea and pour into the fjords. This fresh water can drag some of the heavier, warm water toward the surface, accelerating melting further.

The NASA data shows that the shape of the land undergirding glaciers and the water temperatures in coastal areas help determine the rate of Greenland's ice loss, but this information isn't being translated yet into projections for sea-level rise.

"Very few ice-sheet models include that ice process at the frontal margin with realistic forcing," Rignot said. If models were to include undercutting, their estimates of sea-level rise from the faster loss of coastal glaciers could be up to twice what they are now, the study shows.

"I think that's a big deal," Rignot said. "You have to account for ocean temperatures in fjords and undercutting. If it's not in your model, you won't get the prediction right."

The Greenland results add urgency for research into the mechanisms that are destabilizing ice in Antarctica, where melting from warming oceans coming into contact with the base of glaciers is the main contributing factor, rather than increasing air temperatures.

"Because scientific progress is so often built small step on top of small step, I am not surprised by their findings," Twila Moon, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said of the Greenland results. Moon was not involved in either study. "But their results are still devastating, further confirming that we are losing ice both from a warming atmosphere and from a warming ocean."

"Ice loss is not a process that will stop itself," Moon said. "We humans are the ones with our hand on the climate control knob, and our decisions are the most important in determining the future of Greenland ice."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Josquius on February 01, 2021, 04:57:16 AM
First I've heard of this donut model. It makes a lot of sense as an outlook. Could help with bringing on board those who are paranoid green initiatives hurt the poor

https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/

Quote

Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment. Could It Also Replace Capitalism?

One evening in December, after a long day working from home, Jennifer Drouin, 30, headed out to buy groceries in central Amsterdam. Once inside, she noticed new price tags. The label by the zucchini said they cost a little more than normal: 6¢ extra per kilo for their carbon footprint, 5¢ for the toll the farming takes on the land, and 4¢ to fairly pay workers. "There are all these extra costs to our daily life that normally no one would pay for, or even be aware of," she says.

The so-called true-price initiative, operating in the store since late 2020, is one of dozens of schemes that Amsterdammers have introduced in recent months as they reassess the impact of the existing economic system. By some accounts, that system, capitalism, has its origins just a mile from the grocery store. In 1602, in a house on a narrow alley, a merchant began selling shares in the nascent Dutch East India Company. In doing so, he paved the way for the creation of the first stock exchange—and the capitalist global economy that has transformed life on earth. "Now I think we're one of the first cities in a while to start questioning this system," Drouin says. "Is it actually making us healthy and happy? What do we want? Is it really just economic growth?"

In April 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, Amsterdam's city government announced it would recover from the crisis, and avoid future ones, by embracing the theory of "doughnut economics." Laid out by British economist Kate Raworth in a 2017 book, the theory argues that 20th century economic thinking is not equipped to deal with the 21st century reality of a planet teetering on the edge of climate breakdown. Instead of equating a growing GDP with a successful society, our goal should be to fit all of human life into what Raworth calls the "sweet spot" between the "social foundation," where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the "environmental ceiling." By and large, people in rich countries are living above the environmental ceiling. Those in poorer countries often fall below the social foundation. The space in between: that's the doughnut.

Marieke van Doorninck, deputy mayor for sustainability, is trying to make Amsterdam a "doughnut city"
Marieke van Doorninck, deputy mayor for sustainability, is trying to make Amsterdam a "doughnut city" Judith Jockel—Guardian/eyevine/Redux
Amsterdam's ambition is to bring all 872,000 residents inside the doughnut, ensuring everyone has access to a good quality of life, but without putting more pressure on the planet than is sustainable. Guided by Raworth's organization, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), the city is introducing massive infrastructure projects, employment schemes and new policies for government contracts to that end. Meanwhile, some 400 local people and organizations have set up a network called the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition—managed by Drouin— to run their own programs at a grassroots level.

It's the first time a major city has attempted to put doughnut theory into action on a local level, but Amsterdam is not alone. Raworth says DEAL has received an avalanche of requests from municipal leaders and others seeking to build more resilient societies in the aftermath of COVID-19. Copenhagen's city council majority decided to follow Amsterdam's example in June, as did the Brussels region and the small city of Dunedin, New Zealand, in September, and Nanaimo, British Columbia, in December. In the U.S., Portland, Ore., is preparing to roll out its own version of the doughnut, and Austin may be close behind. The theory has won Raworth some high-profile fans; in November, Pope Francis endorsed her "fresh thinking," while celebrated British naturalist Sir David Attenborough dedicated a chapter to the doughnut in his latest book, A Life on Our Planet, calling it "our species' compass for the journey" to a sustainable future.

Now, Amsterdam is grappling with what the doughnut would look like on the ground. Marieke van Doorninck, the deputy mayor for sustainability and urban planning, says the pandemic added urgency that helped the city get behind a bold new strategy. "Kate had already told us what to do. COVID showed us the way to do it," she says. "I think in the darkest times, it's easiest to imagine another world."

In 1990, Raworth, now 50, arrived at Oxford University to study economics. She quickly became frustrated by the content of the lectures, she recalls over Zoom from her home office in Oxford, where she now teaches. She was learning about ideas from decades and sometimes centuries ago: supply and demand, efficiency, rationality and economic growth as the ultimate goal. "The concepts of the 20th century emerged from an era in which humanity saw itself as separated from the web of life," Raworth says. In this worldview, she adds, environmental issues are relegated to what economists call "externalities." "It's just an ultimate absurdity that in the 21st century, when we know we are witnessing the death of the living world unless we utterly transform the way we live, that death of the living world is called 'an environmental externality.'"

Almost two decades after she left university, as the world was reeling from the 2008 financial crash, Raworth struck upon an alternative to the economics she had been taught. She had gone to work in the charity sector and in 2010, sitting in the open-plan office of the antipoverty nonprofit Oxfam in Oxford, she came across a diagram. A group of scientists studying the conditions that make life on earth possible had identified nine "planetary boundaries" that would threaten humans' ability to survive if crossed, like the acidification of the oceans. Inside these boundaries, a circle colored in green showed the safe place for humans.

But if there's an ecological overshoot for the planet, she thought, there's also the opposite: shortfalls creating deprivation for humanity. "Kids not in school, not getting decent health care, people facing famine in the Sahel," she says. "And so I drew a circle within their circle, and it looked like a doughnut."

Inner Ring: Twelve essentials of life that no one in society should be deprived of; Outer Ring: Nine ecological limits of earth's life-­supporting systems that humanity must not collectively overshoot; Sweet Spot: The space both environmentally safe and socially just where humanity can thrive Lon Tweeten for TIME
Raworth published her theory of the doughnut as a paper in 2012 and later as a 2017 book, which has since been translated into 20 languages. The theory doesn't lay out specific policies or goals for countries. It requires stakeholders to decide what benchmarks would bring them inside the doughnut—emission limits, for example, or an end to homelessness. The process of setting those benchmarks is the first step to becoming a doughnut economy, she says.

Raworth argues that the goal of getting "into the doughnut" should replace governments' and economists' pursuit of never-ending GDP growth. Not only is the primacy of GDP overinflated when we now have many other data sets to measure economic and social well-being, she says, but also, endless growth powered by natural resources and fossil fuels will inevitably push the earth beyond its limits. "When we think in terms of health, and we think of something that tries to grow endlessly within our bodies, we recognize that immediately: that would be a cancer."

The doughnut can seem abstract, and it has attracted criticism. Some conservatives say the doughnut model can't compete with capitalism's proven ability to lift millions out of poverty. Some critics on the left say the doughnut's apolitical nature means it will fail to tackle ideology and political structures that prevent climate action.

Cities offer a good opportunity to prove that the doughnut can actually work in practice. In 2019, C40, a network of 97 cities focused on climate action, asked Raworth to create reports on three of its members—Amsterdam, Philadelphia and Portland—showing how far they were from living inside the doughnut. Inspired by the process, Amsterdam decided to run with it. The city drew up a "circular strategy" combining the doughnut's goals with the principles of a "circular economy," which reduces, reuses and recycles materials across consumer goods, building materials and food. Policies aim to protect the environment and natural resources, reduce social exclusion and guarantee good living standards for all. Van Doorninck, the deputy mayor, says the doughnut was a revelation. "I was brought up in Thatcher times, in Reagan times, with the idea that there's no alternative to our economic model," she says. "Reading the doughnut was like, Eureka! There is an alternative! Economics is a social science, not a natural one. It's invented by people, and it can be changed by people."



The new, doughnut-shaped world Amsterdam wants to build is coming into view on the southeastern side of the city. Rising almost 15 ft. out of placid waters of Lake IJssel lies the city's latest flagship construction project, Strandeiland (Beach Island). Part of IJburg, an archipelago of six new islands built by city contractors, Beach Island was reclaimed from the waters with sand carried by boats run on low-emission fuel. The foundations were laid using processes that don't hurt local wildlife or expose future residents to sea-level rise. Its future neighborhood is designed to produce zero emissions and to prioritize social housing and access to nature. Beach Island embodies Amsterdam's new priority: balance, says project manager Alfons Oude Ophuis. "Twenty years ago, everything in the city was focused on production of houses as quickly as possible. It's still important, but now we take more time to do the right thing."

Lianne Hulsebosch, IJburg's sustainability adviser, says the doughnut has shaped the mindset of the team, meaning Beach Island and its future neighbor Buiteneiland are more focused on sustainability than the first stage of IJburg, completed around 2012. "It's not that every day-to-day city project has to start with the doughnut, but the model is really part of our DNA now," she says. "You notice in the conversations that we have with colleagues. We're doing things that 10 years ago we wouldn't have done because we are valuing things differently."

The city has introduced standards for sustainability and circular use of materials for contractors in all city-owned buildings. Anyone wanting to build on Beach Island, for example, will need to provide a "materials passport" for their buildings, so whenever they are taken down, the city can reuse the parts.

On the mainland, the pandemic has inspired projects guided by the doughnut's ethos. When the Netherlands went into lockdown in March, the city realized that thousands of residents didn't have access to computers that would become increasingly necessary to socialize and take part in society. Rather than buy new devices—which would have been expensive and eventually contribute to the rising problem of e-waste—the city arranged collections of old and broken laptops from residents who could spare them, hired a firm to refurbish them and distributed 3,500 of them to those in need. "It's a small thing, but to me it's pure doughnut," says van Doorninck.

The city says the Beach Island development will prioritize balancing the needs of humans and nature Gemeente Amsterdam
The local government is also pushing the private sector to do its part, starting with the thriving but ecologically harmful fashion industry. Amsterdam claims to have the highest concentration of denim brands in the world, and that the average resident owns five pairs of jeans. But denim is one of the most resource-intensive fabrics in the world, with each pair of jeans requiring thousands of gallons of water and the use of polluting chemicals.

In October, textile suppliers, jeans brands and other links in the denim supply chain signed the "Denim Deal," agreeing to work together to produce 3 billion garments that include 20% recycled materials by 2023—no small feat given the treatments the fabric undergoes and the mix of materials incorporated into a pair of jeans. The city will organize collections of old denim from Amsterdam residents and eventually create a shared repair shop for the brands, where people can get their jeans fixed rather than throwing them away. "Without that government support and the pressure on the industry, it will not change. Most companies need a push," says Hans Bon of denim supplier Wieland Textiles.

Of course, many in the city were working on sustainability, social issues or ways to make life better in developing countries before the city embraced the doughnut. But Drouin, manager of Amsterdam's volunteer coalition, says the concept has forced a more fundamental reckoning with the city's way of life. "It has really changed people's mindset, because you can see all the problems in one picture. It's like a harsh mirror on the world that you face."



Doughnut economIcs may be on the rise in Amsterdam, a relatively wealthy city with a famously liberal outlook, in a democratic country with a robust state. But advocates of the theory face a tough road to effectively replace capitalism. In Nanaimo, Canada, a city councillor who opposed the adoption of the model in December called it "a very left-wing philosophy which basically says that business is bad, growth is bad, development's bad."

In fact, the doughnut model doesn't proscribe all economic growth or development. In her book, Raworth acknowledges that for low- and middle-income countries to climb above the doughnut's social foundation, "significant GDP growth is very much needed." But that economic growth needs to be viewed as a means to reach social goals within ecological limits, she says, and not as an indicator of success in itself, or a goal for rich countries. In a doughnut world, the economy would sometimes be growing and sometimes shrinking.

Still, some economists are skeptical of the idealism. In his 2018 review of Raworth's book, Branko Milanovic, a scholar at CUNY's Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, says for the doughnut to take off, humans would need to "magically" become "indifferent to how well we do compared to others, and not really care about wealth and income."

In cities that are grappling with the immediate social and economic effects of COVID-19, though, the doughnut framework is proving appealing, says Joshua Alpert, the Portland-based director of special projects at C40. "All of our mayors are working on this question: How do we rebuild our cities post-COVID? Well, the first place to start is with the doughnut." Alpert says they have had "a lot of buy-in" from city leaders. "Because it's framed as a first step, I think it's been easier for mayors to say this is a natural progression that is going to help us actually move out of COVID in a much better way."

Drouin says communities in Amsterdam also have helped drive the change. "If you start something and you can make it visible, and prove that you or your neighborhood is benefiting, then your city will wake up and say we need to support them." In her own neighborhood, she says, residents began using parking spaces to hold dinners with their neighbors during summer, and eventually persuaded the municipality to convert many into community gardens.

Citizen-led groups focused on the doughnut that are forming in places including São Paulo, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur and California bring the potential to transform their own areas from the bottom up. "It's powerful when you have peers inspiring peers to act: a teacher inspires another teacher, or a schoolchild inspires their class, a mayor inspires another mayor," Raworth says. "I'm really convinced that's the way things are going to happen if we're going to get the transformation that we need this decade."

COVID-19 has the potential to massively accelerate that transformation, if governments use economic-stimulus packages to favor industries that lead us toward a more sustainable economy, and phase out those that don't. Raworth cites Milton Friedman—the diehard free-market 20th century economist—who famously said that "when [a] crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." In July, Raworth's DEAL group published the methodology it used to produce the "city portrait" that is guiding Amsterdam's embrace of the doughnut, making it available for any local government to use. "This is the crisis," she says. "We've made sure our ideas are lying around."

Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 11, 2021, 06:43:42 AM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00097-8

QuoteCountry-based rate of emissions reductions should increase by 80% beyond nationally determined contributions to meet the 2 °C target

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep global warming by 2100 to below 2 °C, with 1.5 °C as a target. To that end, countries agreed to reduce their emissions by nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Using a fully statistically based probabilistic framework, we find that the probabilities of meeting their nationally determined contributions for the largest emitters are low, e.g. 2% for the USA and 16% for China. On current trends, the probability of staying below 2 °C of warming is only 5%, but if all countries meet their nationally determined contributions and continue to reduce emissions at the same rate after 2030, it rises to 26%. If the USA alone does not meet its nationally determined contribution, it declines to 18%. To have an even chance of staying below 2 °C, the average rate of decline in emissions would need to increase from the 1% per year needed to meet the nationally determined contributions, to 1.8% per year.


Full long article at the link.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 22, 2021, 07:45:14 AM
Germany's annual temperature average compared to long term average.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu1MXIWXAAA7amC?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 22, 2021, 10:38:52 AM
Some of the detail from the Nature article

QuoteOur results suggest that even if all countries meet their promises under the Paris Agreement and continue to reduce emissions at the same rate thereafter, it is unlikely that warming would stay under 2 °C, a conclusion also reached by other authors using different approaches13,14. We, therefore, ask more precisely, what further reductions would be needed to ensure this? Or, to put it another way, by how much would the emissions reductions promised in the NDCs need to be increased?

QuoteSimilar calculations indicate that to make it likely (90% probability) to stay below 2 °C of warming by 2100, rather than just an even chance, would require more than quadrupling the annual rate of decline in emissions. This would require reaching close to global net zero emissions (10% of the current level) by 2070. Many individual countries would need to reach net zero CO2 emissions earlier to achieve this goal.

To have an even chance of staying below 1.5 °C would require multiplying the annual rate of decline by about 8, reaching close to global net zero emissions by 2045. To make it likely (90% probability) to stay below 1.5 °C would require multiplying the annual rate of decline by almost 30, and reaching close to global net zero by 2023. It is not too surprising that staying below 1.5 °C would be so difficult, given that there is already estimated committed warming of 1.1 °C



Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 25, 2021, 12:17:54 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.

You care somewhat for ice hockey, by saying hockey, since Brits are more likely to say hockey for field hockey.  :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on February 25, 2021, 12:20:12 PM
I don't think anyone, even Brits, give a damn about field hockey.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 25, 2021, 12:25:30 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.

For the Bizillionth time, Edmonton is not Canada.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Barrister on February 25, 2021, 12:37:05 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.

I can teach you! :w00t:
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 25, 2021, 12:41:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 25, 2021, 12:25:30 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.

For the Bizillionth time, Edmonton is not Canada.

BC is the minority. you have mild temps, but pay the price in rain :D
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 25, 2021, 12:42:09 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 25, 2021, 12:37:05 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 25, 2021, 12:16:31 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists


It's weird the title focuses on the US East Coast and Europe in general, where as I understand if the Gulf Stream was to stop, UK would turn into Canada in a hurry.

Which is worrying as I don't care for hockey.

I can teach you! :w00t:

Tamas, if BB start mentioning "measuring for you cup", that would be the time to start worrying :P
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 01, 2021, 03:30:37 AM
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/freshwater-fish-catastrophic-extinction-endangered-species-climate-change/

QuoteFreshwater fish are in "catastrophic" decline with one-third facing extinction, report finds

Thousands of fish species are facing "catastrophic" decline — threatening the health, food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world. New research shows that one-third of all freshwater fish now face extinction.

According to a report published Tuesday by 16 global conservation groups, 18,075 species of freshwater fish inhabit our oceans, accounting for over half of the world's total fish species and a quarter of all vertebrates on Earth. This biodiversity is critical to maintaining not only the health of the planet, but the economic prosperity of communities worldwide.

About 200 million people across Asia, Africa and South America rely on freshwater fishers for their main source of protein, researchers said in "The World's Forgotten Fishes" report. About one-third of those people also rely on them for their jobs and livelihoods.

Despite their importance, freshwater fishes are "undervalued and overlooked," researchers said — and now freshwater biodiversity is declining at twice the rate of that in oceans and forests.

Eighty freshwater species have already been declared extinct — 16 of them in 2020 alone.

"Nowhere is the world's nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and wetlands, and the clearest indicator of the damage we are doing is the rapid decline in freshwater fish populations. They are the aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine, and we must heed the warning," said Stuart Orr of the World Wildlife Fund. "Despite their importance to local communities and indigenous people across the globe, freshwater fish are invariably forgotten and not factored into development decisions about hydropower dams or water use or building on floodplains."

Migratory species have dropped by more than three-quarters in the last 50 years, while populations of larger species, known as "megafish," have declined by a "catastrophic" 94%.

Freshwater ecosystems face a devastating combination of threats — including habitat destruction, hydropower dams, over-abstraction of water for irrigation, various types of pollution, overfishing, the introduction of invasive species and ongoing climate change. 

Organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Global Wildlife Conservation and The Nature Conservancy have now called for governments to implement an "Emergency Recovery Plan" to save freshwater biodiversity. They recommend protecting and restoring rivers, water quality and crucial habitats — undoing the damages caused by overfishing.

"Freshwater fish matter to the health of people and the freshwater ecosystems that all people and all life on land depend on," Orr said. "It's time we remembered that."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 01, 2021, 03:33:36 AM
Quote18,075 species of freshwater fish inhabit our oceans

(https://i.ibb.co/zx8pjbz/Doubt.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 01, 2021, 03:36:18 AM
Do you also have something useful to add for a change?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 01, 2021, 03:38:15 AM
Outlook not so good.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on March 01, 2021, 03:41:45 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 25, 2021, 12:20:12 PM
I don't think anyone, even Brits, give a damn about field hockey.
It's not a massively popular sport as the failure of the national hockey stadium shows.
But hockey is definitely more well known and played at some point by more people than ice hockey. Its pretty standard in school PE lessons.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on March 03, 2021, 02:36:04 PM
Quote from: Syt on March 01, 2021, 03:36:18 AM
Do you also have something useful to add for a change?

If he didn't make you question the idea that freshwater fishes inhabit the ocean, then it is not useful to try to make you question anything.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 03, 2021, 03:40:03 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 03, 2021, 02:36:04 PM
Quote from: Syt on March 01, 2021, 03:36:18 AM
Do you also have something useful to add for a change?

If he didn't make you question the idea that freshwater fishes inhabit the ocean, then it is not useful to try to make you question anything.

It is pretty funny how sloppy that reporting is - and how badly they screwed up what the report actually said.  The point of the report was to protect rivers, lakes and wetlands as habitats for freshwater fish species.

Here is a better version of the stat CBS mangled:

https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/freshwater_practice/the_world_s_forgotten_fishes/

Quote51% of all known species of fish live in freshwater - 18,075 species.
Title: Re: Everything's fine/fucked? - Climate Change Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 03, 2021, 10:12:53 PM
Quote from: Syt on January 26, 2021, 05:29:59 AM
Where Greenland's toes dip into the sea, ice is melting

That's where the results of a six-year NASA campaign to study the influence of warming ocean waters on the melting of Greenland's glaciers have some unsettling news.

Make Greenland green again?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 29, 2021, 09:31:21 AM
Apparently, the Earth's axis has changed due to polar ice melting:
https://www.ign.com/articles/climate-change-has-shifted-earths-axis-scientists-explain-in-new-study
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 29, 2021, 09:45:31 AM
https://www.ft.com/content/6be3ea51-653d-47c2-8ef9-96ebc6064e0b

QuoteConstitutional court strikes down German climate law

Ruling is setback for Angela Merkel and will force government to rewrite legislation by end of year

Germany's top court has demanded changes to Germany's climate law, saying it places too much of a burden on future generations to reduce carbon emissions, in a key victory for young climate campaigners.

The court said the law "violate(s) the freedoms of the complainants, some of whom are still very young" because it "irreversibly offload(s) major emission reduction burdens on to periods after 2030".

The measures the government had set out for the post-2030 period were "not sufficient to ensure that the necessary transition to climate neutrality is achieved in time", it said, and demanded authorities set out clear goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2030.

Luisa Neubauer, the climate activist behind Germany's Fridays for Future demonstrations, called the decision a "huge win for the climate movement".

"Today, the German constitutional court has decided that climate justice is a fundamental right," she tweeted. "Today's inaction mustn't harm our freedom & rights in the future."

The verdict is a setback for Angela Merkel, who had touted the 2019 law as a turning point in Germany's efforts to battle climate change. It requires the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030, relative to 1990 levels, and to have virtually no emissions by 2050. It also sets out how much CO2 certain sectors such as transport, agriculture or buildings are allowed to emit per year.

The complainants against the law included Sophie Backsen, whose family live on the island of Pellworm in the North Sea, not far from Hamburg. She had argued the island was threatened by rising sea levels caused by global warming, and the German government's failure to address the problem adequately amounted to a violation of her fundamental rights.

Ministers welcomed the court's decision, which requires the government to rewrite the law by the end of the year. Peter Altmaier, economy minister, described it as a "great, historic ruling, of crucial importance for the rights of young people and the younger generation as a whole". He said it was also good for business because it helped them "plan long-term for the future".

That comment triggered a swift response from Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat finance minister, who blamed Altmaier's centre-right CDU/CSU bloc for the weaknesses in the original climate change law. "As far as I can remember it was you and the CDU/CSU who prevented us doing what the constitutional court has now advised us to do," he tweeted, addressing Altmaier. "But we can correct that quickly. Are you with us?"

Experts said the court's ruling could have a profound impact on government policy. Germany might, they said, be forced to bring forward its planned phaseout of the use of coal by 2038. "A simple calculator shows that this will be necessary," said Roda Verheyen, a lawyer for Sophie Backsen and her brothers and sisters.

The court said the German climate law in effect backloaded Germany's carbon reductions, saying "the reductions still necessary after 2030 will have to be achieved with ever greater speed and urgency".

"These future obligations to reduce emissions have an impact on practically every type of freedom, because virtually all aspects of human life still involve the emission of greenhouse gases and are thus potentially threatened by drastic restrictions after 2030," the judges said.

In their ruling they said the authorities should avoid a situation in which one generation gets off relatively lightly and the "radical burden" of reducing emissions is placed on future generations, who are also "exposed to a loss of freedoms that affect their whole lives".

The government had an obligation to leave the natural foundations of life "in such condition that future generations who wish to continue preserving these foundations are not forced to engage in radical abstinence".

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on April 29, 2021, 11:29:18 AM
Good decision. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2021, 12:14:50 PM
Ok, but what can the court do if the government doesn't meet their conditions? Write their own law?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2021, 04:26:08 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2021, 12:14:50 PM
Ok, but what can the court do if the government doesn't meet their conditions? Write their own law?


Germany has elections.  Presumably this will be a pressing issue for the current government to address before the next one.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on April 30, 2021, 05:03:38 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2021, 12:14:50 PM
Ok, but what can the court do if the government doesn't meet their conditions? Write their own law?

We had something similar. The court ordered the Dutch government to do more to tackle climate change, as they are directly endangering the safety of future generations by dragging their feet. Obviously, things like sea level rise carry some weight here.
But technically the court can order the government to whatever is needed to meet the Paris accord agreement, for example, even though it is non-binding in itself.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on April 30, 2021, 05:14:25 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2021, 12:14:50 PM
Ok, but what can the court do if the government doesn't meet their conditions? Write their own law?
The idea of our constitution, I guess just like in every rule of law jurisdiction, is that the executive implements the decision of the judiciary. So far, that was always the case. I think it is the same in the US.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on April 30, 2021, 01:46:33 PM
Quote from: Zanza on April 30, 2021, 05:14:25 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2021, 12:14:50 PM
Ok, but what can the court do if the government doesn't meet their conditions? Write their own law?
The idea of our constitution, I guess just like in every rule of law jurisdiction, is that the executive implements the decision of the judiciary. So far, that was always the case. I think it is the same in the US.
That's not quite how it works in the US.  The executive implements the decisions of the legislature in accordance with the constitution.  The judicial branch simply resolves disputes over what the law or constitution actually say relative to a given issue.  The judiciary makes (at least in theory) no decisions except relative to the constitution and legislation.

In the German case, the judiciary was interpreting the German constitution to include an individual right to "climate justice," if I am reading the reports correctly.  So the government is being tasked to obey the constitution, not the judiciary per se.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on April 30, 2021, 05:05:14 PM
Well yes, that's what I meant. But I read the decision in more detail now and the executive was not even a party in the proceedings.

In the current case, the opponent of the constitutional complaint was not the executive, but the legislature. The simple statute they passed for climate protection in 2019 was insufficient to fulfill the requirements of the constitution (which had been amended by parliament some years back to include an obligation for the state to protect the basic necessities of life, i.e. our environment). So the statute was partially voided by the court and the court ordered parliament to pass a law that actually fulfills the constitutional obligation. How that law looks in detail is of course up to parliament, but the court indicated how the constitution should be read.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on April 30, 2021, 05:15:23 PM
Quote from: Zanza on April 30, 2021, 05:05:14 PM
Well yes, that's what I meant. But I read the decision in more detail now and the executive was not even a party in the proceedings.

In the current case, the opponent of the constitutional complaint was not the executive, but the legislature. The simple statute they passed for climate protection in 2019 was insufficient to fulfill the requirements of the constitution (which had been amended by parliament some years back to include an obligation for the state to protect the basic necessities of life, i.e. our environment). So the statute was partially voided by the court and the court ordered parliament to pass a law that actually fulfills the constitutional obligation. How that law looks in detail is of course up to parliament, but the court indicated how the constitution should be read.

:thumbsup:  I appreciate the clarification.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on May 07, 2021, 08:12:25 AM
QuoteWyoming stands up for coal with threat to sue states that refuse to buy it
Republican governor says measure sends message that Wyoming is 'prepared to bring litigation to protect our interests'

Wyoming is faced by a transition to renewable energy that's gathering pace across America, but it has now come up with a novel and controversial plan to protect its mining industry – sue other states that refuse to take its coal.

A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming's governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming's coal.

Wyoming is America's largest coal-producing state, digging up nearly 40% of the coal produced nationally each year. The state is heavily dependent upon revenues from mining to run basic services and as it produces 14 times more energy than it consumes, selling coal to other states is a vital source of income.

The measure sends a message that Wyoming is "prepared to bring litigation to protect her interests," said a spokesman for Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of the deeply conservative state, which strongly backed Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.
(...)
"We have seen a spike in states trying to block Wyoming's access to consumer markets to advance their political agenda," said Jeremy Haroldson, a Republican state legislator who introduced the new law.

Fellow Republicans previously proposed banning the closure of any coal plants in the state. Haroldson said phasing out coal would risk the sort of disastrous power blackouts suffered by Texas in February. "It is time we start truly caring about the future," he said.

Legal experts have said the new strategy is on shaky ground.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on May 07, 2021, 08:15:31 AM
$1.2 million isn't going to buy a lot of lawtalker time.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on May 07, 2021, 08:45:21 AM
Quote from: The Larch on May 07, 2021, 08:12:25 AM
QuoteWyoming stands up for coal with threat to sue states that refuse to buy it
*Snip*

Haroldson said phasing out coal would risk the sort of disastrous power blackouts suffered by Texas in February. "It is time we start truly caring about the future," he said.

*Snip*

That's an interesting choice of words
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on May 07, 2021, 09:59:53 AM
Quote from: The Larch on May 07, 2021, 08:12:25 AM
QuoteWyoming stands up for coal with threat to sue states that refuse to buy it
Republican governor says measure sends message that Wyoming is 'prepared to bring litigation to protect our interests'

Wyoming is faced by a transition to renewable energy that's gathering pace across America, but it has now come up with a novel and controversial plan to protect its mining industry – sue other states that refuse to take its coal.

A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming's governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming's coal.

Wyoming is America's largest coal-producing state, digging up nearly 40% of the coal produced nationally each year. The state is heavily dependent upon revenues from mining to run basic services and as it produces 14 times more energy than it consumes, selling coal to other states is a vital source of income.

The measure sends a message that Wyoming is "prepared to bring litigation to protect her interests," said a spokesman for Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of the deeply conservative state, which strongly backed Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.
(...)
"We have seen a spike in states trying to block Wyoming's access to consumer markets to advance their political agenda," said Jeremy Haroldson, a Republican state legislator who introduced the new law.

Fellow Republicans previously proposed banning the closure of any coal plants in the state. Haroldson said phasing out coal would risk the sort of disastrous power blackouts suffered by Texas in February. "It is time we start truly caring about the future," he said.

Legal experts have said the new strategy is on shaky ground.

I'll forward this to the Quebec government. Maybe we can sue US States into accepting our green energy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 07, 2021, 12:01:30 PM
It is always good to know the other side is not prepared to appropriately fund their litigation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 07, 2021, 09:18:43 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on May 07, 2021, 09:59:53 AM
I'll forward this to the Quebec government. Maybe we can sue US States into accepting our green energy.
they already do.  It's the Canadian provinces that won't have anything to do with the seperatist devils.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on May 26, 2021, 12:41:52 AM
Yaaaaaay! BRING BACK AIRSHIPS!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/airships-for-city-hops-could-cut-flyings-co2-emissions-by-90
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 01:17:15 AM
Seattle to Vancouver?

I'm in!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Monoriu on May 26, 2021, 01:23:42 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 26, 2021, 12:41:52 AM
Yaaaaaay! BRING BACK AIRSHIPS!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/airships-for-city-hops-could-cut-flyings-co2-emissions-by-90

Way too slow. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 07:48:40 AM
Seattle to Vancouver doesn't make a lot of sense given the low speed, but island hops certainly do. Very cool
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on May 26, 2021, 08:43:15 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 07:48:40 AM
Seattle to Vancouver doesn't make a lot of sense given the low speed, but island hops certainly do. Very cool

Border crossings can sometimes make sense if border is backed up... I think it was the first time I went tod go to Vancouver by car.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 09:47:12 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 26, 2021, 08:43:15 AM

Border crossings can sometimes make sense if border is backed up... I think it was the first time I went tod go to Vancouver by car.

The two times I crossed the US-Canada border on public transport were pretty bad, now that I think of it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 10:00:46 AM
Dutch court orders Shell to reduce their CO2 ouput by 45% before 2030. They also have to make substantial effort towards 45% reduction of CO2 emitted through the use of their products.
Shell will appeal but the high court upheld the earlier, similar verdict against the Dutch government. This might set an interesting precedent.


Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on May 26, 2021, 10:12:50 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 10:00:46 AM
Dutch court orders Shell to reduce their CO2 ouput by 45% before 2030. They also have to make substantial effort towards 45% reduction of CO2 emitted through the use of their products.
Shell will appeal but the high court upheld the earlier, similar verdict against the Dutch government. This might set an interesting precedent.

Will they sell off part of their operations?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:28:20 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 10:00:46 AM
Dutch court orders Shell to reduce their CO2 ouput by 45% before 2030. They also have to make substantial effort towards 45% reduction of CO2 emitted through the use of their products.
Shell will appeal but the high court upheld the earlier, similar verdict against the Dutch government. This might set an interesting precedent.

How the hell is that supposed to work?  At it's heart it's an oil company.  It's just supposed to sell less oil?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on May 26, 2021, 10:37:06 AM
I know BP is already making quite big efforts to pivot towards renewables. I'd be surprised if Shell wasn't too. Though that's a tough demand.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 11:39:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.

:contract:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:40:14 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:28:20 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 10:00:46 AM
Dutch court orders Shell to reduce their CO2 ouput by 45% before 2030. They also have to make substantial effort towards 45% reduction of CO2 emitted through the use of their products.
Shell will appeal but the high court upheld the earlier, similar verdict against the Dutch government. This might set an interesting precedent.

How the hell is that supposed to work?  At it's heart it's an oil company.  It's just supposed to sell less oil?

They actually set that target themselves, only by 2035. They're being ordered to do it faster.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:06:56 PM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 07:48:40 AM
Seattle to Vancouver doesn't make a lot of sense given the low speed, but island hops certainly do. Very cool

Spoken like a person who has never experienced the traffic North of Seattle.   :P


or South of Vancouver for that matter.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on May 26, 2021, 12:13:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.
If I had my way it probably wouldn't be cheap because I would insist on full Art Deco interiors, an open bar and the possibility of a murder to investigate on every trip :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:24:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.

Because time is money. Paying more to go there slower doesn't make much sense, so maybe if it was pleasant with art deco and blackjack tables people might use it anyway.

On the other hand if it is cheaper than flying, and potentially driving, then it might be worth spending a few extra hours in the air.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 12:28:33 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

I guess this is the stick part of the carrot and stick approach.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 12:29:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

If it happens, I'll do it at least once. Whether I'll do it more than once depends on the actual execution - comfort, convenience, price.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 12:39:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.

Except it still goes through the air (thus over people and property), so would undoubtedly hit a massive barrier of red-tape, bureaucracy, and security limitations, no matter where they take off from.

Agitators that like to bring explosives onto enclosed aerial vehicles ruin things for everybody.  :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on May 26, 2021, 12:45:05 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 12:39:15 PM
Except it still goes through the air (thus over people and property), so would undoubtedly hit a massive barrier of red-tape, bureaucracy, and security limitations, no matter where they take off from.

Agitators that like to bring explosives onto enclosed aerial vehicles ruin things for everybody.  :(
Sure - but practicalities aside, it could have a dock on top of the Space Needle! :o
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:52:12 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:24:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.

Because time is money. Paying more to go there slower doesn't make much sense, so maybe if it was pleasant with art deco and blackjack tables people might use it anyway.

On the other hand if it is cheaper than flying, and potentially driving, then it might be worth spending a few extra hours in the air.

The part you are missing is the Vancouver-Seattle trip would be faster than driving and about the same time as flying once you factor in the fact you dont have to make the drive to and from the airport.

So on your theory that time is money (which isnt really true but that is another topic) they could charge a premium.

edit: another time you probably should have read the link before expressing a view on what is proposed in the link  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:54:11 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 12:39:15 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.

Except it still goes through the air (thus over people and property), so would undoubtedly hit a massive barrier of red-tape, bureaucracy, and security limitations, no matter where they take off from.

Agitators that like to bring explosives onto enclosed aerial vehicles ruin things for everybody.  :(

We have seaplane flights that go inner harbour to inner harbour.  I am not sure what the difference would be.  Btw, if you have a chance to take one of those flights, it is highly recommended - very scenic.  And that would also be a huge attraction for the airships.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 01:24:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:52:12 PM
The part you are missing is the Vancouver-Seattle trip would be faster than driving and about the same time as flying once you factor in the fact you dont have to make the drive to and from the airport.

So on your theory that time is money (which isnt really true but that is another topic) they could charge a premium.

edit: another time you probably should have read the link before expressing a view on what is proposed in the link  :P

I read it. Those are all assumptions you are presenting, that if correct would make it worthwhile. Of course Vancouver and Seattle were also not the only locations mentioned in the article and I never said anything specifically about just them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 01:47:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 01:24:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:52:12 PM
The part you are missing is the Vancouver-Seattle trip would be faster than driving and about the same time as flying once you factor in the fact you dont have to make the drive to and from the airport.

So on your theory that time is money (which isnt really true but that is another topic) they could charge a premium.

edit: another time you probably should have read the link before expressing a view on what is proposed in the link  :P

I read it. Those are all assumptions you are presenting, that if correct would make it worthwhile. Of course Vancouver and Seattle were also not the only locations mentioned in the article and I never said anything specifically about just them.

Valmy the article states those things.  They are not my assumptions.  Don't go full internet asshat on me.  I was talking about the Seattle Vancouver Run.  You disagreed with my post.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:12:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 11:39:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.

:contract:

Well, it can be once when they go after all of the other companies in the production chains. The judge basically ruled that all companies need to take their responsibility, independent of government regulations. Simply complying with legal limits may not be good enough.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 02:14:22 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 26, 2021, 12:45:05 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 12:39:15 PM
Except it still goes through the air (thus over people and property), so would undoubtedly hit a massive barrier of red-tape, bureaucracy, and security limitations, no matter where they take off from.

Agitators that like to bring explosives onto enclosed aerial vehicles ruin things for everybody.  :(
Sure - but practicalities aside, it could have a dock on top of the Space Needle! :o

That would be the problem. 

The guvmint would not be able to help itself but to mess up the entire process...TSA would demand a security checkpoint in the Needle, and the atrocious lines that already exist  (well, pre-COVID anyway) just to go up the elevators would get even worse.  :P

Not to mention crap like a "security/safety exclusion zone" around the Needle...Seattle Center already has tons of foot traffic all around that area...all you need is one accident and the entire concept goes tits up.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 02:16:44 PM
I was even thinking of the Hindenburg disaster as a comparison (because of that lovely utility tower in the foreground  :P )...what is really amazing about that event, especially taking in account the follow-on impact, is how many survivors there were from it.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Hindenburg_disaster.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:16:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 01:47:16 PM
Valmy the article states those things.  They are not my assumptions.  Don't go full internet asshat on me.  I was talking about the Seattle Vancouver Run.

Oh for fuck sake dude. I said those were assumptions, not your assumptions.

QuoteYou disagreed with my post.

When did I disagree with any of your posts? I posted something, you asked for clarification, which I provided. Then you started attacking my reading comprehension. I don't recall ever disagreeing with anything you said, except for the reading comprehension part.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 02:19:15 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 02:14:22 PM
That would be the problem. 

The guvmint would not be able to help itself but to mess up the entire process...TSA would demand a security checkpoint in the Needle, and the atrocious lines that already exist  (well, pre-COVID anyway) just to go up the elevators would get even worse.  :P

Not to mention crap like a "security/safety exclusion zone" around the Needle...Seattle Center already has tons of foot traffic all around that area...all you need is one accident and the entire concept goes tits up.

Customs/ Immigration/ TSA on the harbour to harbour flight between Vancouver and Seattle are orders of magnitude better than those at the airport and for cars at the border.

If the checks for the airships are similar to those for the train or better, then that'll be a big advantage for the airships compared to driving or flying via the major airport.

The real competition on the Vancouver - Seattle line would be the train and the float planes, not driving or major airport flights I think.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:12:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 11:39:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.

:contract:

Well, it can be once when they go after all of the other companies in the production chains. The judge basically ruled that all companies need to take their responsibility, independent of government regulations. Simply complying with legal limits may not be good enough.

YOu can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 02:21:54 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
You can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.

Are those choices not being made in this case?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:22:09 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
YOu can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.

Well I do find it amusing we keep revolving foreign policy and war around securing fossil fuel supplies while providing huge subsidies for fossil fuel companies on one hand, while giving them trouble on the other to reduce CO2. Either support fossil fuels or don't and let them sink or swim. Our policies make no sense.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 02:24:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 26, 2021, 02:19:15 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on May 26, 2021, 02:14:22 PM
That would be the problem. 

The guvmint would not be able to help itself but to mess up the entire process...TSA would demand a security checkpoint in the Needle, and the atrocious lines that already exist  (well, pre-COVID anyway) just to go up the elevators would get even worse.  :P

Not to mention crap like a "security/safety exclusion zone" around the Needle...Seattle Center already has tons of foot traffic all around that area...all you need is one accident and the entire concept goes tits up.

Customs/ Immigration/ TSA on the harbour to harbour flight between Vancouver and Seattle are orders of magnitude better than those at the airport and for cars at the border.

I believe it...TSA (and the very few foreign equivalents I have personal experience with) is often pretty good when operating at a small location or on a small scale.

This concept would have to remain so if the above were to remain true.

But all that aside, I think the concept is very cool (I love air travel) and would certainly consider a longer, scenic, airship ride over a car/train/regular cattle-car airplane.  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:41:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:12:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 11:39:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.

:contract:

Well, it can be once when they go after all of the other companies in the production chains. The judge basically ruled that all companies need to take their responsibility, independent of government regulations. Simply complying with legal limits may not be good enough.

YOu can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.

Why is that? The company has complete freedom to choose how to cut their emissions, as long as they do it. Which is in line with the Paris agreement.

And the government has been ordered to do likewise by the same court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation

I mean, I'm not happy about the prospect of courts ordering the entire country to get on with it. But since the government and the large corporations keep dragging their feet, and if this is what it takes to get it done, then that's fine by me.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 02:50:24 PM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:41:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 02:12:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 11:39:46 AM
Quote from: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 11:37:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on May 26, 2021, 10:33:38 AM
Yes?

I feel like we've had this debate before.  You can't tackle climate change by just going after pipelines and oil companies.  The demand for petroleum will still exist.  You have to go after the demand for petroleum - switch to alternate forms of heating, electricity, transportation, etc.

Hence the second part of the ruling. Although that can't be enforced as much.

:contract:

Well, it can be once when they go after all of the other companies in the production chains. The judge basically ruled that all companies need to take their responsibility, independent of government regulations. Simply complying with legal limits may not be good enough.

YOu can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.

Why is that? The company has complete freedom to choose how to cut their emissions, as long as they do it. Which is in line with the Paris agreement.

And the government has been ordered to do likewise by the same court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation

I mean, I'm not happy about the prospect of courts ordering the entire country to get on with it. But since the government and the large corporations keep dragging their feet, and if this is what it takes to get it done, then that's fine by me.


Because a company isn't in any position to make the hard choices necessary. They are a for profit business, and their desire to make a profit will always be their primary motivation.

So demanding that they "do something" without specifying what they ought to be doing is going to result in a shitty outcome, almost by definition. They will end up doing whatever it is that meets some interpeted letter of the law (or not meeting it, but surmising that the cost of not meeting it is less then the cost of actually doing something) while trying to protect their bottom line.

You need to state, government, to define the constraints under which they are expected to operate, or to create the proper financial incentives to promote the desired behavior, then let the for profit businesses figure out how to make money under that new reality.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on May 26, 2021, 03:27:56 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 02:50:24 PM

Because a company isn't in any position to make the hard choices necessary. They are a for profit business, and their desire to make a profit will always be their primary motivation.

So demanding that they "do something" without specifying what they ought to be doing is going to result in a shitty outcome, almost by definition. They will end up doing whatever it is that meets some interpeted letter of the law (or not meeting it, but surmising that the cost of not meeting it is less then the cost of actually doing something) while trying to protect their bottom line.

You need to state, government, to define the constraints under which they are expected to operate, or to create the proper financial incentives to promote the desired behavior, then let the for profit businesses figure out how to make money under that new reality.

The government has done that, in the climate agreement it made with Shell and other companies in 2019.

And the court has not ruled Shell to be in breach of the agreement, but ruled that Shell's plans to reach their goals are insufficient and they have to come up with something better and more concrete.



Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 03:50:52 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:22:09 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 26, 2021, 02:20:00 PM
YOu can't just wave a magic wand and order the economy to "reduce CO2 emissions".  There's a whole series of hard policy choices that need to be made by governments.

Well I do find it amusing we keep revolving foreign policy and war around securing fossil fuel supplies while providing huge subsidies for fossil fuel companies on one hand, while giving them trouble on the other to reduce CO2. Either support fossil fuels or don't and let them sink or swim. Our policies make no sense.

AS an aside, I keep hearing about these "huge subsidies" we give to oil and gas companies.  There was a story in Alberta a month or two ago - but when they dug in most (almost all?) of the "subsidies" were tax credits or benefits given to all businesses.  For example last year - wage subsidies to prevent layoffs due to Covid.  Or orphan well remediation.  Or ordinary tax deductions that all companies use.

The googling I have done suggests that while in the past there were specific credits tied to exploration in Canada at least, but that now there are no specific benefits that go specifically to oil and gas companies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 04:00:21 PM
When I say "we" I mean the United States.

And when wind gets tax credits they are called subsidies so I don't see why tax credits for others are not also subsidies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 04:08:47 PM
A tax credit is definitely a subsidy, but it isn't that interesting a subsidy if it isn't unique to the particular industry, and it is downright dishonest to characterize a tax credit that everyone enjoys as a subsidy for a subset of those who are eligible for it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 04:11:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 04:08:47 PM
A tax credit is definitely a subsidy, but it isn't that interesting a subsidy if it isn't unique to the particular industry, and it is downright dishonest to characterize a tax credit that everyone enjoys as a subsidy for a subset of those who are eligible for it.

I have absolutely no idea how it works, but I have only ever heard tax credits as subsidies to declare that the government is unfairly trying to benefit wind. So if I was misled by people being downright dishonest in characterizing tax credits I was certainly bamboozled.

But still if the future of the world depends on moving away from fossil fuels, why give them tax credits?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 04:44:18 PM
We definitely should not be, but the reason is the same reason all companies get tax credits. Because buying them off is often politically desired. Classic prisoners dilemna.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 07:32:59 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:16:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 01:47:16 PM
Valmy the article states those things.  They are not my assumptions.  Don't go full internet asshat on me.  I was talking about the Seattle Vancouver Run.

Oh for fuck sake dude. I said those were assumptions, not your assumptions.

QuoteYou disagreed with my post.

When did I disagree with any of your posts? I posted something, you asked for clarification, which I provided. Then you started attacking my reading comprehension. I don't recall ever disagreeing with anything you said, except for the reading comprehension part.

Assumptions?  There is pretty good data on how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  Go full languish and make your argument to your last breath, no matter how much you need to tie yourself in a knot doing it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on May 26, 2021, 08:54:42 PM
Good

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/26/business/exxon-annual-meeting-climate-oil/index.html

QuoteActivist investor ousts at least two Exxon directors in historic win for pro-climate campaign

By Matt Egan and Alexis Benveniste, CNN Business

Updated 1940 GMT (0340 HKT) May 26, 2021

New York (CNN Business)A hedge fund that's criticized ExxonMobil's climate strategy won enough shareholder support to oust at least two directors from the oil giant's board, a major loss for the once-mighty company.

For the first time in modern history, America's largest oil company faced a credible challenge from an activist investor, Engine No. 1. Upset with Exxon's financial performance and its foot-dragging on climate, the hedge fund sought to oust four directors at the company's annual shareholder meeting.

Engine No. 1 won two board seats in the shareholder vote. Two additional board seats were still too close to call Wednesday afternoon.

The vote is a major milestone in the climate battle because it's the first proxy campaign at a major US company in which the case for change was built around the shift away from fossil fuels.

The ouster of at least two Exxon (XOM) directors sends a loud message to other fossil fuel companies at a time when the International Energy Agency has warned the world it needs to immediately stop drilling for oil and gas to prevent a climate catastrophe. Engine No. 1 has criticized Exxon's reluctance to diversify into renewable energy and steps to maximize oil production.

"Investors are no longer standing on the sidelines. This is a day of reckoning," Anne Simpson, managing investment director at the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), said in a statement. CalPERS is among the prominent investors and pension funds that backed the activist campaign.

"Investors have sent a shot across the bow of Exxon, but its impact will ricochet across the boards of every major fossil fuel company," Mark Campanale, founder and executive chair of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, said in a statement.

Exxon's board will reconsider two shareholder proposals that received majority shareholder approval, according to the company. The proposals include Item No. 9, which calls for a report on lobbying, and Item No. 10, which requests a report on climate lobbying.

"We've been actively engaging with shareholders and received positive feedback and support, particularly for our announcements relating to low-carbon solutions and progress in efforts to reduce costs and improve earnings," Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil said in a statement. "We heard from shareholders today about their desire to further these efforts, and we are well positioned to respond."
Stumbles opened the door to rebellion

Critically, this fight with activists comes after a period of dismal performance for Exxon.

The world's most valuable company as recently as 2013, Exxon has lost nearly $200 billion in market capitalization since its peak. It had enjoyed an unbroken run as a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1928 until it was kicked out of the exclusive index last summer.

During the five years prior to the pandemic, Exxon's total return (including dividends) fell by 17.5%, according to Engine No. 1. That was easily last among the five biggest oil companies over that span, with Exxon the only one suffering a loss. The S&P 500 surged nearly 80% during the same time frame.

However, Exxon has rebounded in 2021 as oil prices have climbed. The share price is up 41% this year, nearly quadrupling the S&P 500's advance. Still, Exxon remains far from the record highs hit in mid-2014.

'Questionable strategy'
Engine No. 1 argued the climate crisis poses an existential threat to Exxon — one the company hasn't taken seriously enough. Unlike BP, Royal Dutch Shell and other
European oil majors, Exxon has doubled down on oil and gas despite growing concern about the climate crisis.

"A refusal to accept that fossil fuel demand may decline in decades to come has led to a failure to take even initial steps towards evolution, and to obfuscating rather than addressing long-term business risk," Engine No. 1 wrote in its investor presentation.
Institutional Shareholder Services advised shareholders to vote in favor of three of Engine No. 1's candidates.

Citing Exxon's "questionable strategy" for the future and "diminishing returns," Glass Lewis, another influential advisory firm, urged shareholders to back two of the four candidates.

"We believe Engine No. 1 has presented a compelling case that, without a more concerted response and well-developed strategy ... related to the global energy transition, Exxon's returns, cash flow and dividend, and thus its shareholder value, are increasingly at threat," Glass Lewis wrote in its report.

Big Three hold the key

Engine No. 1 holds just 0.02% of Exxon's shares. However, the hedge fund won backing from major institutional investors, including the New York Common Retirement Fund, the Church of England, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS).
But like most proxy fights, the battle hinges on which side gets the support of the Big Three asset managers. BlackRock, State Street (STT) and Vanguard collectively owned nearly 19% of Exxon's shares as of the end of March, according to Refinitiv.

That's why it's a very big deal that Reuters reported BlackRock has voted for three of Engine No. 1's four candidates to join the Exxon board. A BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment on the report, and it's not clear how the company voted.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is under fire itself from activists demanding it live up to its own climate promises. The campaign is being led by BlackRock's Big Problem, a coalition that includes the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action network and Friends of the Earth.

"We question whether BlackRock is ready to hold the biggest oil and gas polluters — and their financiers — accountable. Anything less is lipservice — and greenwashing," Roberta Giordano, one of the organizers, wrote in a memo on Monday.
Beyond the board battle, Exxon also faces multiple climate-related shareholder proposals.

Both Glass Lewis and ISS recommend shareholders back three separate proposals calling for Exxon to issue reports detailing the financial impacts of the IEA's net zero 2050 scenario, on lobbying payments and policy and on corporate climate lobbying being aligned with the Paris climate agreement.

Exxon promises to keep refreshing its board
Exxon has defended its strategy by pointing to projections for continued demand for oil and natural gas, particularly in emerging markets. The company has also pointed to efforts to reduce emissions and invest in carbon capture and storage as well as hydrogen. Exxon has estimated carbon capture alone could be a $2 trillion market by 2040.

"We believe success in developing these technologies will be critical to both advancing society's ambitions for a lower-carbon future and in delivering long-term shareholder value," Woods and Exxon lead director Ken Frazier wrote in a letter to shareholders Monday.

However, Glass Lewis said it doesn't believe Exxon "has made a compelling case" that carbon capture will become economically viable or grow to the scale required to become the centerpiece of the company's energy transition strategy.
"We're left with the feeling Exxon isn't doing enough in terms of preparing or investing for the future," Glass Lewis wrote.

In a sign of the pressure facing Exxon, the company also promised to add two new directors over the next 12 months, one with energy industry experience and one with climate experience. That would be on top of the six new directors that have been added since 2017.

For its part, Engine No. 1 urged shareholders not to be swayed by what it called Exxon's "cynical, last minute maneuvering."

"This is the same company that for years has refused to take even gradual material steps towards being better positioned for the long-term in a decarbonizing world," Engine No. 1 said in a statement.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 26, 2021, 09:44:28 PM
It is funny to see CC berate someone for "going full Languish". ^_^
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 11:55:22 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 07:32:59 PM
Assumptions?  There is pretty good data on how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  Go full languish and make your argument to your last breath, no matter how much you need to tie yourself in a knot doing it.

Dude I am not even disagreeing with anything you are saying. What would I be making an argument about?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on May 27, 2021, 01:03:23 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 26, 2021, 09:44:28 PM
It is funny to see CC berate someone for "going full Languish". ^_^

:)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 11:30:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 27, 2021, 01:03:23 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 26, 2021, 09:44:28 PM
It is funny to see CC berate someone for "going full Languish". ^_^

:)


You and Eddie should really get a room sometime
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 11:37:02 AM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:24:36 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 12:17:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 12:10:06 PM
I don't know. That would only make sense if it is cheap.

But it might be cheap, I don't know.

It might also be more pleasant than a plane if you can move around and look at the views and do things during your trip.

Why would it have to be cheap.  I would be willing to pay a non cheap price to get to Seattle faster than driving.  Going city centre to city centre and not having to go through airports has its perks.

Because time is money. Paying more to go there slower doesn't make much sense, so maybe if it was pleasant with art deco and blackjack tables people might use it anyway.

On the other hand if it is cheaper than flying, and potentially driving, then it might be worth spending a few extra hours in the air.

Valmy, I guess the problem is you are not actually reading, or if you are reading, not understanding my posts.  Here I disagree I point out that the fare would not have to be cheap because I could get to Seattle faster than driving.  That is in fact what the article stated would be the case.  You then responded as if you had not read my post or the article when asserting that air travel would be slower and so would have to be cheaper.

This is a disconnect I frequently have with you.  I am not sure why.  But it often seems to me that you are not actually reading what I am writing. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on May 27, 2021, 01:16:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 11:30:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 27, 2021, 01:03:23 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 26, 2021, 09:44:28 PM
It is funny to see CC berate someone for "going full Languish". ^_^

:)


You and Eddie should really get a room sometime

I'm a married man.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 27, 2021, 02:34:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 26, 2021, 04:08:47 PM
and it is downright dishonest to characterize a tax credit that everyone enjoys as a subsidy for a subset of those who are eligible for it.
Not all companies could claim benefits during the pandemic, only those that were susceptible to layoff.  Construction companies could not qualify for such subsidies before they were considered to be at risk of laying off employees during this time, given the boom in the industry over here.

Since I haven't seen demand for oil&gaz drastically reduced outside of the first few months of the pandemic when we literally shutdown everything, if they received up to 18 billion$ in help to "maintain operations and not layoff employees" while not everyone could claim it, it's definately a subsidy.

Aside that, being paid to repair environmental damages you caused in the first place is a subsidy.  Double more so if the company shuts down before the repairs and the govt still picks up the tab.  Something that seems to happen a lot for abandonned well leaking methane, or in another sector, abandonned mines.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 05:21:37 PM
Quote40% chance Earth will be hotter than Paris goal within 5 years, WMO forecasts

90% chance of new 'hottest year' record by 2025

There's a 40 per cent chance that the world will get so hot in the next five years that it will temporarily push past the temperature limit the Paris climate agreement is trying to prevent, meteorologists said.

A new World Meteorological Organization forecast for the next several years also predicts a 90 per cent chance that the world will set yet another record for the hottest year by the end of 2025 and that the Atlantic will continue to brew more potentially dangerous hurricanes than it used to.

For this year, the meteorologists say large parts of land in the Northern Hemisphere will be 0.8 C warmer than recent decades and that the U.S. Southwest's drought will continue.

The 2015 Paris climate accord set a goal of keeping warming to a few tenths of a degree warmer from now. The report said there is a 40 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years will be 1.5 C (2.7 F) higher than pre-industrial times — the more stringent of two Paris goals. The world is already 1.2 C (2.2 F) warmer than pre-industrial times.

Last year, the same group forecasted a 20 per cent chance of it happening.

The doubling of the odds is due to improvements in technology that show it has "actually warmed more than we thought already," especially over the lightly-monitored polar regions, said Leon Hermanson, a climate scientist at the United Kingdom's Met Center who helped on the forecast.

"It's a warning that we need to take strong action," Hermanson said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn't part of the report, said he is "almost certain" the world will exceed that Paris warming threshold at least once in the next few years. But he said one or two years above 1.5 C (2.7 F) isn't as worrisome as when the overall trend of temperatures stays above that level.

Mann said that won't happen probably for decades and could still be prevented.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/wmo-forecast-1.6042309
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 08:26:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 07:32:59 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:16:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 01:47:16 PM
Valmy the article states those things.  They are not my assumptions.  Don't go full internet asshat on me.  I was talking about the Seattle Vancouver Run.

Oh for fuck sake dude. I said those were assumptions, not your assumptions.

QuoteYou disagreed with my post.

When did I disagree with any of your posts? I posted something, you asked for clarification, which I provided. Then you started attacking my reading comprehension. I don't recall ever disagreeing with anything you said, except for the reading comprehension part.

Assumptions?  There is pretty good data on how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  Go full languish and make your argument to your last breath, no matter how much you need to tie yourself in a knot doing it.

Valmy, this is as close to a concession on CC's part as you will get.  Take it and run.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 08:27:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 11:55:22 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 07:32:59 PM
Assumptions?  There is pretty good data on how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  Go full languish and make your argument to your last breath, no matter how much you need to tie yourself in a knot doing it.

Dude I am not even disagreeing with anything you are saying. What would I be making an argument about?

Don't try to comprehend, just bail.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 28, 2021, 10:03:04 AM
Quote from: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 08:26:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 07:32:59 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 26, 2021, 02:16:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 26, 2021, 01:47:16 PM
Valmy the article states those things.  They are not my assumptions.  Don't go full internet asshat on me.  I was talking about the Seattle Vancouver Run.

Oh for fuck sake dude. I said those were assumptions, not your assumptions.

QuoteYou disagreed with my post.

When did I disagree with any of your posts? I posted something, you asked for clarification, which I provided. Then you started attacking my reading comprehension. I don't recall ever disagreeing with anything you said, except for the reading comprehension part.

Assumptions?  There is pretty good data on how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  Go full languish and make your argument to your last breath, no matter how much you need to tie yourself in a knot doing it.

Valmy, this is as close to a concession on CC's part as you will get.  Take it and run.

How cute, that you repeat comments made about you.  Some sort of fetish?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 10, 2021, 08:38:13 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/
Wasn't this the plot of a Chinese movie?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 10, 2021, 02:05:43 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/

Gohmert is one of the stupidest people in Texas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on June 10, 2021, 03:43:04 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/

Even more funny that he thinks that the US Forest Service could take that on.  :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on June 11, 2021, 06:48:02 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on June 10, 2021, 03:43:04 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/

Even more funny that he thinks that the US Forest Service could take that on.  :D

Not if he thinks that they can grow trees tall enough to push the moon back into its proper orbit.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 11, 2021, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AM
Texas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/

Geoengineering concepts like this and more direct methods like carbon air capture are still just meme-tier at this stage. :hmm: For instance the carbon recapture plant being constructed here will annually sequester 4000 metric tons of carbon dioxide once it's up and running. According to this calculator https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator) that's the annual carbon emission output of around 900 passenger cars. In the grand scheme of things that's nothing, just proof of concept really. Yet these technologies are always just around the corner and have been for 20 years it feels.

40.000.000 metric tons of carbon dioxide captured and petrified into basaltic rock annually would be like 10 coal power plants, small but at least noticeable on a global scale.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 11, 2021, 10:15:16 AM
My very general feeling is that if we can scale up shit that messes up the planet enough to make a noticeable impact, we can scale up the stuff that cleans it up as well.

I guess that isn't strictly true. The Law of Entropy does say its a lot easier to break things then it is to fix them....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: PDH on June 11, 2021, 10:38:59 AM
Can we send Louie Gohmert into a changed orbit?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 24, 2021, 12:17:47 AM
Annual days of 25°C or more per decade in Germany:

(https://external-preview.redd.it/xfy5TS2GDIuQs0xjFKni_86gX8C2jkDuWOj8TV0O4fM.png?auto=webp&s=25f185ec9e20072d395e50dd0b289634ba75a46a)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 24, 2021, 02:31:09 AM
Donnerwetter!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 24, 2021, 04:11:57 AM
I was recently reading a very good book on the Comanche empire, and it was quite alarming to read how rapidly an entire society can collapse when the environmental conditions it was built on change drastically. There are few to no direct parallels of course, we have a much better understanding of why and what's happening than they did with the disappearing buffalos, but we are not doing much more to prevent it than they did/could.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 09, 2021, 06:29:05 PM
Man,the 'half the world' is burning and it doesn't get a mention in now, have 'we' accepted it as the new normal?  <_<
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 09, 2021, 08:58:14 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 09, 2021, 06:29:05 PM
Man,the 'half the world' is burning and it doesn't get a mention in now, have 'we' accepted it as the new normal?  <_<

Pretty much yep. 

There are a large number of wildfires in BC atm.  A decade ago this would have been headline type stuff.  But we all recognize it is what we can expect because of climate change.  That is not suggest that people, other than the climate change deniers, don't think we should do something to stop the warming of the planet.  Its just that the effects of climate change are not particularly news worthy now.  We all know it is happening.

Hopefully that widespread recognition will translate into political action.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on July 09, 2021, 09:01:34 PM
The new narrative is that climate changes, sure, but humans have little or nothing to do with it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 09, 2021, 09:29:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 09, 2021, 09:01:34 PM
The new narrative is that climate changes, sure, but humans have little or nothing to do with it.

Isn't it true that based on solar conditions we should expect the Earth to be cooling right now?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 09, 2021, 09:36:48 PM
Hottest June on record for the US.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 10, 2021, 03:51:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 09, 2021, 09:29:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 09, 2021, 09:01:34 PM
The new narrative is that climate changes, sure, but humans have little or nothing to do with it.

Isn't it true that based on solar conditions we should expect the Earth to be cooling right now?
yes.
Maybe.

There is a study about Earth's magnetic field which could impact global warming, as in, make the Earth warmer than it should be.
But strictly speaking of solar output, we are supposed to be receiving less solar energy than the average.  Would that make a zero-sum or would it still make the Earth cooler, I'm not certain.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 10, 2021, 03:51:58 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 09, 2021, 09:36:48 PM
Hottest June on record for the US.

Good.  The Northerners won't feel compelled to invade Florida's beaches then :P

EDIT:  :whistle:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 10, 2021, 05:15:55 PM
I think they have more than one.  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 14, 2021, 11:49:07 AM
The EU has unveiled their climate strategy, which is aimed to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990, with a 24% reduction already achieved).

By 2035, there will be no sales of CO2 emitting cars in the EU according to the plan.

There's lots of other stuff in there too, I'm just beginning to read up on it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 11:54:18 AM
It is very ambitious, I like it.
However, it needs a unanimous vote from all member states to pass, which seems exceedingly unlikely.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 14, 2021, 12:09:13 PM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 11:54:18 AM
It is very ambitious, I like it.
However, it needs a unanimous vote from all member states to pass, which seems exceedingly unlikely.

But why though? There are no big oil and gas producers in the EU.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 12:27:03 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2021, 12:09:13 PM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 11:54:18 AM
It is very ambitious, I like it.
However, it needs a unanimous vote from all member states to pass, which seems exceedingly unlikely.

But why though? There are no big oil and gas producers in the EU.

Sure there are. But the problem is political, eastern Europe is the EU's GOP.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 14, 2021, 12:57:44 PM
fanatics, the lot of them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 14, 2021, 01:07:49 PM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 12:27:03 PM
Sure there are. But the problem is political, eastern Europe is the EU's GOP.

They are broke and corrupt though. Pay them off.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on July 14, 2021, 06:17:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2021, 01:07:49 PM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 12:27:03 PM
Sure there are. But the problem is political, eastern Europe is the EU's GOP.

They are broke and corrupt though. Pay them off.

It would be cheaper and easier just to clandestinely fund Hexit and Pexit campaigns and let them leave in a huff.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2021, 11:31:15 PM
NYT has apparently published a nice tool.  It's a behind a paywall and my usual tricks don't work, but for subscribers or those who manage to access it:
How much hotter is your hometown since your birth year (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/30/climate/how-much-hotter-is-your-hometown.html)


Although not as precise as the other tool, this one shows a map of Earth with the relative temperature changes since 1894.  Blue is colder than 1894, red is warmer (duh!).
https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 15, 2021, 04:10:15 AM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 12:27:03 PMSure there are. But the problem is political, eastern Europe is the EU's GOP.
I don't think that's fair. The GOP deny climate change exists - eastern European countries accept it but will be disproportionately impacted by reducing reliance on carbon (Poland is still a big coal producer, for example). The question is how the costs for that are distributed and there needs to be really very significant burden sharing, I think it'd be unfair otherwise (and politically challenging). I think this is a fight that is going to happen repeatedly within countries and internationally. Civil servants in Brussels have admitted that current plans on carbon cost for cars and heating for example are basically regressive - but I think that is a challenge everyone globally is going to face (generally the people with the most energy efficient, old fashioned heating systems and cars are people who can't afford to upgrade them and will be hit hardest by any tax on them). I keep talking about it but I think the distribution of costs for the energy transition is probably going to be the biggest political issue for the next few decades (and is probably ripe for a populist revolt).

But I'd also add that German carbon emissions from energy production have also increased (they're using lignite burning coal plants) because of the respose to Fukushima - so maybe if eastern Europe is the GOP on this there is also a perhaps unrealistic (maybe Germany as California?) wing of European politics that because of their views on nuclear is making energy transition particularly difficult.

France, on the other hand, is a model to us all :w00t: :wub:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 15, 2021, 08:51:10 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 15, 2021, 04:10:15 AM
France, on the other hand, is a model to us all :w00t: :wub:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_09RkRYnCP0M%2FSHe7JPayLzI%2FAAAAAAAAAtY%2FAjechl_FCw0%2Fw1200-h630-p-k-no-nu%2FOs%252Bsans-culottes%252Beram%252Bartes%25C3%25A3os%2C%252Btrabalhadores%252Be%252Bat%25C3%25A9%252Bpequenos%25252&hash=81e7c8894dd7e4da3c3ce30c9853f6494fd26124)

May the impure blood of those responsible for global warming water our fields and plains.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 15, 2021, 09:00:58 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 15, 2021, 08:51:10 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 15, 2021, 04:10:15 AM
France, on the other hand, is a model to us all :w00t: :wub:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_09RkRYnCP0M%2FSHe7JPayLzI%2FAAAAAAAAAtY%2FAjechl_FCw0%2Fw1200-h630-p-k-no-nu%2FOs%252Bsans-culottes%252Beram%252Bartes%25C3%25A3os%2C%252Btrabalhadores%252Be%252Bat%25C3%25A9%252Bpequenos%25252&hash=81e7c8894dd7e4da3c3ce30c9853f6494fd26124)

May the impure blood of those responsible for global warming water our fields and plains.
Formez vos bataillons!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 15, 2021, 10:14:16 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2021, 11:31:15 PM
NYT has apparently published a nice tool.  It's a behind a paywall and my usual tricks don't work, but for subscribers or those who manage to access it:
How much hotter is your hometown since your birth year (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/30/climate/how-much-hotter-is-your-hometown.html)


Although not as precise as the other tool, this one shows a map of Earth with the relative temperature changes since 1894.  Blue is colder than 1894, red is warmer (duh!).
https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine

My hometown has already reached the range estimated for the number of very hot days that would be experience by the end of the century.

Another data point that this is all happening more quickly than anticipated by the climate models.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 15, 2021, 07:05:59 PM
tornado in Barrie, ON, north of Toronto.  Massive floods in Belgium and Germany.

It's almost as if something weird was happening with Earth's climate.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 10:56:15 PM
That's from the flood Viper mentioned. At least 60 dead, 1000s unaccounted for as some villages can only be reached with helicopters. Two dams are on the verge of breaking. And they expect extreme rain again today, up to 200 liters per square meter.

(https://i.redd.it/9fdhwvte8fb71.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2021, 11:02:21 PM
That's devastating :(

1000s missing :(

Question: do you know what L/ square meter translate to in terms of mm or cm of rain?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 15, 2021, 11:06:41 PM
1 l per square meter is one mm (since one cubic meter is 1000 liters).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 15, 2021, 11:11:00 PM
But yeah, experts say these kind of events are made significantly more likely by the ongoing climate change. Even the CDU chancellor candidate said the efforts to fight climate change need to be increased. (In 2019 he said in a talk show "for some reason the climate change topic is suddenly a global topic" and has since not really been a proponent of even moderate measures against it.)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 11:12:09 PM
The 1000s missing are most likely okay, but the phone network has gone down in some of those villages, so they can't be reached.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 11:13:39 PM
Braunkohle-Achim will of course pay lip service in the face of this catastrophe. But there is no real conviction.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 15, 2021, 11:16:48 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 11:13:39 PM
Braunkohle-Achim will of course pay lip service in the face of this catastrophe. But there is no real conviction.

Agreed, but he could also keep ignoring it, so I guess his advisers know what the people want (or want to hear, rather).

Someone posted a picture of a flooded open pit coal mine on Twitter, asking, "Maybe a good time to reflect on whether these two things are related."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 15, 2021, 11:21:18 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 15, 2021, 04:10:15 AM
Quote from: Maladict on July 14, 2021, 12:27:03 PMSure there are. But the problem is political, eastern Europe is the EU's GOP.
I don't think that's fair. The GOP deny climate change exists - eastern European countries accept it but will be disproportionately impacted by reducing reliance on carbon (Poland is still a big coal producer, for example). The question is how the costs for that are distributed and there needs to be really very significant burden sharing, I think it'd be unfair otherwise (and politically challenging). I think this is a fight that is going to happen repeatedly within countries and internationally. Civil servants in Brussels have admitted that current plans on carbon cost for cars and heating for example are basically regressive - but I think that is a challenge everyone globally is going to face (generally the people with the most energy efficient, old fashioned heating systems and cars are people who can't afford to upgrade them and will be hit hardest by any tax on them). I keep talking about it but I think the distribution of costs for the energy transition is probably going to be the biggest political issue for the next few decades (and is probably ripe for a populist revolt).

But I'd also add that German carbon emissions from energy production have also increased (they're using lignite burning coal plants) because of the respose to Fukushima - so maybe if eastern Europe is the GOP on this there is also a perhaps unrealistic (maybe Germany as California?) wing of European politics that because of their views on nuclear is making energy transition particularly difficult.

France, on the other hand, is a model to us all :w00t: :wub:

I don't really disagree with any of that, and mine was just a throwaway remark, but I do think the PiS and Fidesz of this world will object on principle, because it is a very lefty supranational EU type plan that triggers them immensely. They would veto anything called a climate plan even if what it contains actually benefits them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 15, 2021, 11:26:22 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 15, 2021, 11:11:00 PM
But yeah, experts say these kind of events are made significantly more likely by the ongoing climate change. Even the CDU chancellor candidate said the efforts to fight climate change need to be increased. (In 2019 he said in a talk show "for some reason the climate change topic is suddenly a global topic" and has since not really been a proponent of even moderate measures against it.)

It's pretty devastating, what's happening in Germany and Belgium.  :(
Lots of evacuations here and lots of flooding, but we seem to escape the worst of it.

But it gives plenty to think about. We just completed two decades of rebuilding river defenses to deal with once a century flood levels, and it already happened.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2021, 11:33:37 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 15, 2021, 11:06:41 PM
1 l per square meter is one mm (since one cubic meter is 1000 liters).

So that's 200 mm in a day. That's intense.

Meanwhile we've had no rain at all for weeks :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2021, 11:34:41 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 11:12:09 PM
The 1000s missing are most likely okay, but the phone network has gone down in some of those villages, so they can't be reached.

Oh good. That's a relief to hear.

I think I would call it 1000s "out of contact" or something like that....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 15, 2021, 11:54:17 PM
Looks pretty bad on the ground there:
(https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/ba3dd4af-91e0-4016-a325-25b58d237d47_w920_r1.3333333333333333_fpx54_fpy50.jpg)

(https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/73c3ffc2-6369-4d71-be92-55943beb83c3_w920_r1.5_fpx33.34_fpy50.jpg)

(https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/cb803c9b-36e9-4db7-a9ba-a6de73f683c2_w920_r1.5_fpx41.34_fpy50.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 12:43:40 AM
Major floods in Germany are usually around the major rivers, like Elbe, Rhine, etc. after prolonged periods of rain. Intense flash floods in a larger area like this are quite unusual.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 01:47:21 AM
Death toll now stands at 81. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 16, 2021, 02:34:04 AM
I simply don't expect things like this to happen in Germany  :(

Talking to a friend online, who lives about 4 miles away from part of the flood, even the mobile network was down for a number of hours; that is now back up of course so the number of "missing" must be falling rapidly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 16, 2021, 02:47:34 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 16, 2021, 02:34:04 AM
I simply don't expect things like this to happen in Germany  :(


Yeah. :(

A month or so ago there was a tornado at the Czechs that I think caused injuries and a lot of damage (I seem to remember a few deaths but I am probably wrong), which is miniscule stuff compared to this one but still struck me as way out of place.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on July 16, 2021, 04:10:20 AM
1300 missing :o

https://www.voanews.com/europe/german-floods-leave-least-80-dead-1300-missing
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 16, 2021, 04:16:33 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 16, 2021, 04:10:20 AM
1300 missing :o

https://www.voanews.com/europe/german-floods-leave-least-80-dead-1300-missing

:rolleyes: Read the thread Tim.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 04:34:06 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ZgoBHWYAYuhzy?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/e89f653e-9090-4a38-bef1-7ff80e136515_w948_r1.778_fpx59_fpy41.jpg)

Death count still rising, close to 100 now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 16, 2021, 04:39:28 AM
 :( This is terrible
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
An entire house swimming in a river:

https://mobile.twitter.com/hiwiradler/status/1415798153568296969
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
Asked about an earlier exit from coal generated power, Laschet said, "You don't just change policy because of a day like this."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 16, 2021, 04:40:23 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
Asked about an earlier exit from coal generated power, Laschet said, "You don't just change policy because of a day like this."

Hey, but at least you got rid of nuclear power!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:42:03 AM
What's likely not helping is that Germany has decades of of straightening rivers and creeks (sometimes putting them in concrete beds), building on flood land etc. which obviously exacerbates weather events like this.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:43:42 AM
https://www.dw.com/en/is-climate-change-fueling-floods-in-germany/a-58282637

QuoteIs climate change fueling floods in Germany?

Overnight flooding has caused devastation across parts of western Europe, claiming dozens of lives. Scientists say that climate change had a role in it.

Around 46 people were reported dead and dozens missing Thursday in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Heavy storms and overnight rainfall caused rivers and water reservoirs to burst their banks and flash floods turned streets into raging torrents, sweeping away cars and destroying buildings.

Over the past several weeks, Germany has experienced a roller coaster ride of high temperatures and dryness followed by episodes of heavy precipitation.

On Wednesday and Thursday, that phenomenon was punctuated by catastrophic flooding in multiple regions across western Germany and neighboring countries. Experts say such extreme weather used to happen once in a generation but may happen more frequently in the future — and with more intensity — a sign that climate change is impacting our lives.

Is this weather normal for Germany?

"Ordinarily, we only see weather like this in winter," as Bernd Mehlig, an environment official from the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) — the region hit hardest by the rains — told public broadcaster WDR. "Something like this, with this intensity, is completely unusual in summer."

Speaking with WDR Thursday, a spokesperson for the city of Hagen's crisis team predicted that water would reach levels not seen more than four times a century, with parts of the city reported inaccessible and isolated due to high water.

"This is the new normal," said Johannes Quaas, meteorologist at Leipzig University. "Climate change is also changing the definition of normal weather. We are slowly approaching a new normal that includes different rainfall patterns."

Did climate change make the flooding worse?

Rising temperatures make extreme weather events more intense. When air heats up it contains more moisture, a phenomenon scientists discovered back in the 19th century. A one-degree increase in temperature increases air's capacity to hold moisture by 7%. Rising global temperatures are also leading to a more rapid evaporation of water on land and at sea — subsequently causing more extreme precipitation events and heavier storms.

"The rainfall we've experienced across Europe over the past few days is extreme weather whose intensity is being strengthened by climate change — and will continue to strengthen further with more warming," said Friederike Otto from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

"As an industrial country, Germany is heating up twice as fast as the global warming rate," said Johannes Quass. "That means the chances of heavy rainfall are 20% higher compared to the 19th century — and 10% higher than when I was born, about four decades ago."

When soil and drainage systems cannot absorb water quickly, or factors like urban development prevent rainfall from dissipating, surface runoff can develop into torrential flash flooding and cause significant damage.

Predicting extreme weather is not difficult but it is still almost impossible to accurately predict where exactly a storm will dump immense amounts of rain and what areas will be hit hardest, said Quass, adding that this makes it difficult for communities to prepare for disaster and mitigate losses.

Moreover, with the destruction of certain vegetation and other land barriers as a result of changing temperature and weather patterns, many natural flood zones have disappeared.

"As long as we keep on emitting CO2, we are likely to keep seeing such heavy rains," said Quass.


(The article is from yesterday, listing a then current death toll.)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:48:38 AM
Meanwhile there's a small and persistent chorus of people saying the disaster shouldn't be politicized (same people who call climate change predictions "fear mongering" on disaster-free days), there's always been floods, it just looks worse because we measure more, etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 04:57:37 AM
@Syt and German speakers:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SoerenLorensen/status/1415417178132783105
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 05:18:19 AM
Quote from: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 04:57:37 AM
@Syt and German speakers:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SoerenLorensen/status/1415417178132783105

Basically that, yes. Gotta laugh to not cry.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: celedhring on July 16, 2021, 05:24:04 AM
God damn, this is terrible.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 05:26:02 AM
Also, this guy:

https://twitter.com/postillleaks/status/1415915026645504000?s=20

Translation of his comments at the start basically: "Whoa, what a disaster! White water rafting"
When he spots the white car in front of him: "LOL he's floating! He's just floating there! ROFL!"
*keeps driving*
"Oh no, I'm floating too! I fucked up! I fucked up big time!"

I'm partially wondering what he thought would happen when he sees a guy floating with his car in front of him, and keeps driving towards him. :bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on July 16, 2021, 07:59:08 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 05:26:02 AM
Also, this guy:

https://twitter.com/postillleaks/status/1415915026645504000?s=20

Translation of his comments at the start basically: "Whoa, what a disaster! White water rafting"
When he spots the white car in front of him: "LOL he's floating! He's just floating there! ROFL!"
*keeps driving*
"Oh no, I'm floating too! I fucked up! I fucked up big time!"

I'm partially wondering what he thought would happen when he sees a guy floating with his car in front of him, and keeps driving towards him. :bleeding:
He thought that the candy ass was faking it and he was an alpha male who wouldn't even notice obstacles.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 16, 2021, 08:47:28 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:42:03 AM
What's likely not helping is that Germany has decades of of straightening rivers and creeks (sometimes putting them in concrete beds), building on flood land etc. which obviously exacerbates weather events like this.
There's a similar thing that always happens with floods here - they are normally made worse due to reductions in the amount of river-dredging to stop rivers becoming too narrow and rapid which makes flash flood more likely.

And I'm sure it is part of the problem, but in the context of a global climate emergency it feels like a relatively small detail that some people choose to fixate on to avoid looking at climate.

Really devastating pictures - it'll take a long time for those communities :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 08:50:41 AM
Words fail.

(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs02.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)

(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs03.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)

(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs07.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)

(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs08.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 16, 2021, 09:59:19 AM
Quote from: Maladict on July 15, 2021, 11:26:22 PM
[
Lots of evacuations here and lots of flooding, but we seem to escape the worst of it.


Retracted. Reports now of a breach and imminent dike collapse.
I thought we had our shit together for once.  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 10:00:05 AM
A home for intellectually disabled persons was flash-flooded at night and the water level rose to the ceiling within a minute. Twelve inhabitants drowned just there as the nightguards could not evacuate them fast enough.  :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 16, 2021, 10:02:22 AM
Quote from: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 10:00:05 AM
A home for intellectually disabled persons was flash-flooded at night and the water level rose to the ceiling within a minute. Twelve inhabitants drowned just there as the nightguards could not evacuate them fast enough.  :(

:(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 16, 2021, 10:06:15 AM
Quote from: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 10:00:05 AM
A home for intellectually disabled persons was flash-flooded at night and the water level rose to the ceiling within a minute. Twelve inhabitants drowned just there as the nightguards could not evacuate them fast enough.  :(

Oh no  :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 16, 2021, 10:10:54 AM
Oh that's awful :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 10:11:49 AM
Quote from: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 10:00:05 AM
A home for intellectually disabled persons was flash-flooded at night and the water level rose to the ceiling within a minute. Twelve inhabitants drowned just there as the nightguards could not evacuate them fast enough.  :(

Read about it this morning; this stuff is heartbreaking. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 16, 2021, 10:28:56 AM
Heart breaking
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 16, 2021, 01:34:16 PM
Before/after:

(https://i.redd.it/pabqhj6bglb71.png)

Reverse view: this quarry probably made it so the water could get into the ground more easily, leading to the destruction.

(https://i.imgur.com/7kAOAHv.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 16, 2021, 03:47:17 PM
Wow. Never heard of quarries screwing things in this way.
Isn't it a standard thing to do with them when done to turn them into wetlands? :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 16, 2021, 03:49:03 PM
That's wild :o
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 16, 2021, 05:36:29 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
Asked about an earlier exit from coal generated power, Laschet said, "You don't just change policy because of a day like this."

What kind of day does one need to have?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 16, 2021, 06:43:16 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 16, 2021, 04:57:37 AM
@Syt and German speakers:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SoerenLorensen/status/1415417178132783105 (https://mobile.twitter.com/SoerenLorensen/status/1415417178132783105)
I see my German is still stuck at Rammstein's level.  Couldn't understand anything. :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 17, 2021, 02:39:17 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ekkd5XIAU-L9R?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 17, 2021, 02:46:04 AM
A lot more wood in that rubble than I'd expect. So many barrels.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 17, 2021, 03:07:38 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 08:50:41 AM
(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs07.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)

What's the deal with all the plastic bottles?  Did a recycling center or bottling plant get hit?

My condolences Germany.  Looks bad.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 17, 2021, 06:46:09 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 16, 2021, 05:36:29 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
Asked about an earlier exit from coal generated power, Laschet said, "You don't just change policy because of a day like this."

What kind of day does one need to have?

Fukushima disaster day-style, since it was enough to alter German energy policy.  :smarty:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 17, 2021, 12:46:27 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 17, 2021, 03:07:38 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 08:50:41 AM
(https://img.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs/hochwasserkatastrophe-unwetter-ueberschwemmung-nrw-rlp-situation-fs07.jpg/imagegroup/original__880x587__desktop__scale_2)

What's the deal with all the plastic bottles?  Did a recycling center or bottling plant get hit?

My condolences Germany.  Looks bad.

woops, wrong picture  :Embarrass:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 17, 2021, 12:54:41 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on July 17, 2021, 06:46:09 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 16, 2021, 05:36:29 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2021, 04:39:51 AM
Asked about an earlier exit from coal generated power, Laschet said, "You don't just change policy because of a day like this."

What kind of day does one need to have?

Fukushima disaster day-style, since it was enough to alter German energy policy.  :smarty:
Yeah - and if ever there's an incentive to vote Green (I understand there's been some issues with their candidate - including the standard German academic plagiarism scandal). It's likely they'll be in government and I think you probably want them to be in as strong a position as possible.

Also - surely these floods are in NRW are there any implications for Laschet in that?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 17, 2021, 05:28:53 PM
Heavy rainfall and flooding near Salzburg now.

https://m.bild.de/news/2021/news/unwetter-und-hochwasser-in-oesterreich-flut-schock-in-der-region-salzburg-77115716.bildMobile.html
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 18, 2021, 01:59:22 AM
Southern Bavaria and Saxony were hit tonight, big floods there and some areas cut off. Not yet clear how bad it is.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 20, 2021, 11:50:41 AM
Awful pictures of flooding in China - Henan province at least but I think other provinces too. Particularly grim ones of a subway being flooded so everyone has to stand up to keep their heads above water.

I won't link because the thread I saw also included images (with black boxes) of people who'd clearly died :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 20, 2021, 11:59:47 AM
:(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on July 20, 2021, 07:07:06 PM
 :(

I do appreciate your thoughtfulness, Sheilbh.  Anyone who wants to see those pictures can find them on their own.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 21, 2021, 12:29:59 AM
A very bad set of fires in the Yakutsk region of Eastern Siberia :

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/20/everything-is-on-fire-siberia-hit-by-unprecedented-burning

The changes are coming thick and fast now  :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 21, 2021, 01:30:27 AM
https://blog.datawrapper.de/how-much-hotter-will-it-get-in-your-lifetime/

QuoteThis is Hans, a software engineer at Datawrapper. For this week's edition of the Weekly Chart, I tried to find a personal approach to global temperature increase.

When looking at charts about the increase in global temperature, I sometimes find myself asking: What exactly does that mean for people living now — especially younger generations? These charts often have all the data laid out, but the direct personal relevance is sometimes hard to grasp. Here is my approach:

Methodology
Using the average life expectancy for German citizens in 2017/2019, I calculated the average remaining life expectancy for each age group. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a similar data source for the whole world. The statistical projection for future warming is based on this Guardian article from 2017, which in turn is based on a paper by Raftery et al. from 2017. I chose to use the average of projections, which depicts the most likely scenario.

This chart is heavily inspired by our CTO Gregor's Weekly Chart from two years ago, and uses the same data. Head there if you want to read up on what global temperature increase is and how it affects our future.

Chart choices
The chart above looks like a bar chart — but to create it, I used a Datawrapper scatter plot. It offers the greatest flexibility of all Datawrapper chart types. I mostly used features from the Annotate tab, such as annotation, highlight ranges, and custom lines. To calculate the horizontal "bars," I wrote a tiny script that you can run in the console of your browser. I then pasted the results in the textfield of our "custom lines and areas" feature.


(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6lmnrSWUAMZUMA.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on July 21, 2021, 05:57:52 AM
Woah, it that dam goes...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/20/army-issues-dam-warning-deadly-storm-hits-china

QuoteCentral China: 16 dead in flooded Zhengzhou metro, landslides
President Xi Jinping says situation "extremely severe" after city of Zhengzhou saw a year's worth of rain in just three days

At least 16 people were killed as torrential rain lashed China's central province of Henan, causing landslides and flooding that partially submerged the underground rail system of Zhengzhou.

About 200,000 residents were evacuated as of Wednesday as soldiers led rescue efforts in Zhengzhou – a city of more than 10 million people – where days of rain have inundated the streets and subway, local government officials said.

Images shared on social media on Tuesday showed passengers up to their necks in water and clinging to the handrails inside a carriage on Zhengzhou's subway. Other passengers filmed videos of the water rising in the tunnels outside the carriage windows.

The provincial capital had "experienced a series of rare and heavy rainstorms, causing water to accumulate in Zhengzhou metro", city officials said in a Weibo post on Wednesday.

Twelve people were killed in the Metro, five more were injured and hundreds were rescued, officials said.

"The water reached my chest," a survivor wrote on social media. "I was really scared, but the most terrifying thing was not the water, but the increasingly diminishing air supply in the carriage."

At least four more people were killed in Gongyi city where houses and walls collapsed, the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that rainfall had caused multiple landslides.

Storms have battered Henan province since the weekend in an unusually active rainy season that has caused rivers to burst their banks, flooding the streets of a dozen cities and upending the daily lives of millions of people.

Weather authorities in Zhengzhou, nearly 700km (431 miles) southeast of Beijing, say the rainfall was the highest since record-keeping began 60 years ago with the city seeing the kind of rain it usually gets in a year in just three days.

Some 617.1 millimetres (24.3 inches) of rain fell on Zhengzhou in that time, compared with the city's annual average of 640.8 mm (25.2 inches).

The amount of rainfall was seen only "once in a thousand years", local media cited meteorologists as saying.

"People are shocked, trying to register what is happening," said Al Jazeera's Katrina Yu, who is in Beijing. "This is the most rain that many people have seen in their lifetimes. Many have described the situation as 'terrifying'."

Overnight, authorities warned the deluge had created a 20-metre (66-foot) breach in the Yihetan dam in Luoyang – a city of approximately seven million people – with the risk that it "may collapse at any time".

Soldiers were sent to carry out an emergency response including blasting and flood diversion.

As rain continued to fall on Wednesday, thousands of firefighters and troops were deployed to the region to help with search and rescue, and President Xi Jinping went on state television to demand authorities at all levels give priority to ensuring people's safety, and implement flood prevention and disaster relief measures.

"Some reservoirs had their dams burst ... causing serious injury, loss of life and property damage," the president said on Wednesday. "The flood control situation is extremely severe."

Henan province, home to the Shaolin Temple and many other cultural sites, is one of China's most populous and a major base for both industry and agriculture.

Floods are common during China's rainy season, but the threat has worsened across the decades, due in part to widespread construction of dams and levees.

'Never seen such heavy rainstorm'
Some residents spent the night in their workplaces or hotels.

Wang Guirong, a 56-year-old restaurant manager, said she planned to sleep on the sofa in her restaurant after being told there was no power in her neighbourhood.

"I have lived in Zhengzhou all my life and have never seen such a heavy rainstorm as today," Wang said.

The State Grid Zhengzhou Power Supply Co said it was forced to shutdown a city substation because of the rain.

The flooded subway system was closed, train services suspended and hundreds of flights cancelled.

Schools and hospitals had been cut off by the waters with some children reportedly trapped in their kindergartens since Tuesday.

The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou, which has more than 7,000 beds, lost all power, and even backup supplies were down, the People's Daily reported.

The hospital was racing to find transfer about 600 critically ill patients to alternative facilities.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 21, 2021, 06:27:38 AM
Anyone knows of a reliable prediction of how the climate of different regions and countries are likely to change, so I can decide if we should stay on this island, or choose either Poland or Hungary instead? :P I want the kind of climate change where I get to grow oranges, not the kind where I use a boat to get out of my front door.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 21, 2021, 06:30:53 AM
My default assumption is being near the sea/ocean will have more moderate changes than being inland - until the jet stream stops :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 21, 2021, 06:37:18 AM
Yes....the question is should I be heading north or south.... Where will have British weather in the future? Preferably with a bit more snow.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 21, 2021, 06:54:19 AM
Quote from: Tyr on July 21, 2021, 06:37:18 AM
Yes....the question is should I be heading north or south.... Where will have British weather in the future? Preferably with a bit more snow.

Elon Musk's terraformed Mars.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on July 21, 2021, 07:12:46 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 21, 2021, 06:30:53 AM
My default assumption is being near the sea/ocean will have more moderate changes than being inland - until the jet stream stops :ph34r:
Just make sure you're at least 10m above sea level.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 21, 2021, 07:14:59 AM
Just checked - 33m above sea level :goodboy:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on July 21, 2021, 07:36:02 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 21, 2021, 07:12:46 AM

Just make sure you're at least 10m above sea level.

What is this above sea level you speak of?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 21, 2021, 07:40:50 AM
Quote from: Maladict on July 21, 2021, 07:36:02 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 21, 2021, 07:12:46 AM

Just make sure you're at least 10m above sea level.

What is this above sea level you speak of?

:lol:

edit:
It's the bit of land where in future you'll be hit by tornadoes, storm surges and regular extreme heatwaves.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on July 21, 2021, 08:10:25 AM
has the lunar wobble been brought up yet?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 21, 2021, 08:17:39 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 21, 2021, 06:27:38 AM
Anyone knows of a reliable prediction of how the climate of different regions and countries are likely to change, so I can decide if we should stay on this island, or choose either Poland or Hungary instead? :P I want the kind of climate change where I get to grow oranges, not the kind where I use a boat to get out of my front door.
The way it's going now, the Scottish highlands would be a safe bet for staying above water level :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 21, 2021, 08:27:20 AM
I wouldn't worry about sea level rise on a grand scale too much in most of the UK.
The problem lies more on short term flooding, droughts, etc...
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/8/-1.2541/53.6028/?theme=sea_level_rise&map_type=year&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&forecast_year=2100&pathway=rcp45&percentile=p50&return_level=return_level_1&slr_model=kopp_2014

Bright side of global warming- Middlesbrough is underwater.
And Boston.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 21, 2021, 08:32:36 AM
Quote from: Tyr on July 21, 2021, 08:27:20 AM
I wouldn't worry about sea level rise on a grand scale too much in most of the UK.
The problem lies more on short term flooding, droughts, etc...
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/8/-1.2541/53.6028/?theme=sea_level_rise&map_type=year&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&forecast_year=2100&pathway=rcp45&percentile=p50&return_level=return_level_1&slr_model=kopp_2014

Bright side of global warming- Middlesbrough is underwater.
And Boston.
Oh no - on that map I am underwater.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 21, 2021, 08:33:44 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 21, 2021, 08:32:36 AM
Quote from: Tyr on July 21, 2021, 08:27:20 AM
I wouldn't worry about sea level rise on a grand scale too much in most of the UK.
The problem lies more on short term flooding, droughts, etc...
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/8/-1.2541/53.6028/?theme=sea_level_rise&map_type=year&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&forecast_year=2100&pathway=rcp45&percentile=p50&return_level=return_level_1&slr_model=kopp_2014

Bright side of global warming- Middlesbrough is underwater.
And Boston.
Oh no - on that map I am underwater.

While my lovely area survives :showoff:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 21, 2021, 08:45:05 AM
I'm at 12.31m AOD*, so I assume I'm sandbar material. :bowler:




* and add another 1 metre from the surface of the river to the level of the flooring.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 21, 2021, 12:23:32 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 20, 2021, 07:07:06 PM
:(

I do appreciate your thoughtfulness, Sheilbh.  Anyone who wants to see those pictures can find them on their own.

ditto, thank you Sheilbh.  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 21, 2021, 02:43:10 PM
Quote from: Tyr on July 21, 2021, 08:27:20 AM
I wouldn't worry about sea level rise on a grand scale too much in most of the UK.
The problem lies more on short term flooding, droughts, etc...
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/8/-1.2541/53.6028/?theme=sea_level_rise&map_type=year&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&forecast_year=2100&pathway=rcp45&percentile=p50&return_level=return_level_1&slr_model=kopp_2014

Bright side of global warming- Middlesbrough is underwater.
And Boston.


I'm safe.  But I'll need to pick up scuba diving once more if I a want a McD burger. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on July 21, 2021, 02:48:54 PM
I'd have a nice view of the channel looking across to Lincolnshire Island.  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 21, 2021, 03:03:34 PM
That flood in China looks really bad
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 25, 2021, 04:16:50 PM
Quite a big fan of this provocation:
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/is-norway-the-new-east-india-company
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 25, 2021, 04:46:51 PM
Good read.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 26, 2021, 03:50:11 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 25, 2021, 04:16:50 PM
Quite a big fan of this provocation:
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/is-norway-the-new-east-india-company

This article really doesn't get its history right at all.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on July 26, 2021, 04:14:52 AM
Norway is Norway.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 26, 2021, 01:08:34 PM
You make excellent points Squeeze.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 26, 2021, 01:31:57 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 25, 2021, 04:16:50 PM
Quite a big fan of this provocation:
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/is-norway-the-new-east-india-company

Let's put aside the obvious fact that Norway isn't fighting wars to force unwilling buyers to purchase its oil and gas.  Au contraire.

Next question is would it have any impact if Norway ceased all production?

The simple answer is no - purchasers would buy from someone else.
The somewhat more complicated answer is maybe - because if you take away some supply price goes up, which pushes demand down depending on price elasticity.
And the somewhat more complicated answer than that  is no again because there is a lot of slack on supply side that would allow other sources supply to expand reasonably quickly so that market impact would be ephemeral.

And yeah - that's where I end up.  No.

It's fun to point out hypocrisy, especially if we can tarnish the annoyingly preachy Scandiweenian balls of light - so go right ahead and point, but analytically, I don't think the criticism holds up. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 26, 2021, 01:38:57 PM
It changes Joan if you take a very long term view.

Oil is a finite resource.  If Norway never pumps the oil lying in its territory that is that much less oil that will ever be burned.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 26, 2021, 01:49:39 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 26, 2021, 01:31:57 PM
Let's put aside the obvious fact that Norway isn't fighting wars to force unwilling buyers to purchase its oil and gas.  Au contraire.

Next question is would it have any impact if Norway ceased all production?

The simple answer is no - purchasers would buy from someone else.
The somewhat more complicated answer is maybe - because if you take away some supply price goes up, which pushes demand down depending on price elasticity.
And the somewhat more complicated answer than that  is no again because there is a lot of slack on supply side that would allow other sources supply to expand reasonably quickly so that market impact would be ephemeral.

And yeah - that's where I end up.  No.

It's fun to point out hypocrisy, especially if we can tarnish the annoyingly preachy Scandiweenian balls of light - so go right ahead and point, but analytically, I don't think the criticism holds up.
I don't think the point is the hypocrisy - I think that side of the piece is the provocation.

The point and problem isn't hypocrisy. It's that at this point we still don't have feasible policies with popular support to combat climate change and to make the energy transition even in a country as rich and successful as Norway. You could add Australia (though it's less attractive as a target than Norway): a country at the front-line of climate change and a major carbon (x3 times the UK) because of its industries.

It's not lololol look at the Norwegians - but if energy transition politics is struggling there how much more challenging is this going to be in, say, Mexico or India? Of course one possible alternative may be an authoritarian transition in China?

Edit: E.g. - just this afternoon:
https://www.offshore-mag.com/regional-reports/north-sea-europe/article/14207486/norway-preparing-for-upsurge-in-offshore-field-developments

Edit: And the challenge thrown down by this (and I think the gilets jaunes) isn't some counsel of despair about this - but how do we get a policy mix that addresses inequality, unemployment, higher costs etc in a way that's sufficient enough to get feasible, popularly-supported polices on climate? Nationally and then globally.

Edit: And I'd add - Norway also has a $1.5 trillion wealth fund that could help fund the energy transition or a move away from oil and gas. Again - if it's not possible here then how?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 26, 2021, 01:50:33 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 26, 2021, 01:38:57 PM
It changes Joan if you take a very long term view.

Oil is a finite resource.  If Norway never pumps the oil lying in its territory that is that much less oil that will ever be burned.

We run out of time long before we burn the last ounce of oil.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 26, 2021, 01:53:00 PM
Oil is not a finite resource in an economic sense.  It will become (and already is becoming) obsolete long before physical quantities, which remain quite abundant, will be depleted.  When the day comes that we stop burning oil and gas, there will still be plenty left over - and it matters little whether it is in Norway, the Burgess Shale or the Arabian desert, or elsewhere.

How much oil and gas are burned before that happens will be a function of how quickly governments use mandates and taxes to suppress demand, and how quickly effective alternatives are taken up and deployed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 02, 2021, 05:55:11 AM
There's an Economist article around the London floods, and in it I found this:

QuoteA particular issue is the Thames barrier, which stops tidal floods from washing back up into the city. It was closed just ten times in the decade after construction finished in 1981. But since 2010 it has closed 80 times. The study predicted that "once-a-century sea level events are expected to become annual".

Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but that sounds extraordinary. To me this means the risk of tidal floods washing into London have increased nearly tenfold since the 1980s. Things are not looking good are they. 


https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/07/31/londons-flooding-is-sure-to-worsen
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 02, 2021, 06:17:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 02, 2021, 05:55:11 AM
There's an Economist article around the London floods, and in it I found this:

QuoteA particular issue is the Thames barrier, which stops tidal floods from washing back up into the city. It was closed just ten times in the decade after construction finished in 1981. But since 2010 it has closed 80 times. The study predicted that "once-a-century sea level events are expected to become annual".

Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but that sounds extraordinary. To me this means the risk of tidal floods washing into London have increased nearly tenfold since the 1980s. Things are not looking good are they. 


https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/07/31/londons-flooding-is-sure-to-worsen

Yep, but I suspect the large majority of people will only realise things are serious when the water is lapping around their ankles or coming through the sills of their cars.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on August 02, 2021, 06:19:11 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 02, 2021, 05:55:11 AM
There's an Economist article around the London floods, and in it I found this:

QuoteA particular issue is the Thames barrier, which stops tidal floods from washing back up into the city. It was closed just ten times in the decade after construction finished in 1981. But since 2010 it has closed 80 times. The study predicted that "once-a-century sea level events are expected to become annual".

Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but that sounds extraordinary. To me this means the risk of tidal floods washing into London have increased nearly tenfold since the 1980s. Things are not looking good are they. 


https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/07/31/londons-flooding-is-sure-to-worsen

Hundredfold, if my mind is not too foggy right now. The risk went from once in a century to once per year.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 02, 2021, 06:29:05 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 02, 2021, 05:55:11 AM
There's an Economist article around the London floods, and in it I found this:

QuoteA particular issue is the Thames barrier, which stops tidal floods from washing back up into the city. It was closed just ten times in the decade after construction finished in 1981. But since 2010 it has closed 80 times. The study predicted that "once-a-century sea level events are expected to become annual".

Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but that sounds extraordinary. To me this means the risk of tidal floods washing into London have increased nearly tenfold since the 1980s. Things are not looking good are they. 


https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/07/31/londons-flooding-is-sure-to-worsen
It's a litttle misleading. The barrier does two things - it stops tidal surges during high tide, but it also is used to control the risk of river floods so large amounts of water running into the Thames, it does this by basically creating a reservoir - so at low tide it stops the sea and creates space for water running into the Thames to fill which can then be slowly released. About two thirds of when the barrier is raised is because of the fluvial risk rather than a tidal surge.

The real shift isn't the tidal surges (though that is changing but the increased river flooding/flash storms). So in the first decade it was raised 6 times for tidal surge and 4 times for fluvial surge; in in the 90s it was raised about 40 times for tidal surges and 17 times for fluvial surge; then in the 00s it was raised about 30 times for tidal surge and 19 times for fluvial surge; in the 10s it was raised 30 times for tidal surges but 50 times for fluvial surge.

What's also worth noting is that it basically has big outlier now. So it used to be fairly regular and was used 2-3 times a year. Now that's still the case but you have more extreme years - so generally it goes up about 5 times a year in the 2010s (and that's been the average since the turn of the century), but it was used 50 times in 2013-14 (9 for tidal surge, 41 for fluvial) which I think reflects swings from big drought/heatwave years to more stormy floody years.

What has changed is more and more fluvial risk of Thames flooding and especially flash flooding (like 2013-14), not tidal surge (which has not really fluctuated that much since the 90s) and more and more outlier years. So I think it's a little different than just the risk of tidal flooding has increased that much and in fact the sea levels haven't risen as much as the designer built in to the Thames Barrier - but as I say the real issue that it's dealing with is far more flooding of the Thames.

Also key is that it was only designed to be at its best until 2030 - from 2030 onwards it will start to decline in effectiveness and there is more risk of an extreme weather event basically breaching the barrier. But the current Environment Agency plans are not to replace it until 2070 because it was designed with the expectation of sea levels rising (up to 2030 which is its useful life) and it hasn't yet hit those levelse. So instead there's plans to basically maintain it until 2050 and then slightly build it up before replacing it in 2070 - which strikes me as risky but it is the cheaper option (at only £3-4 billion) - possibly also using some of the estuary marsh lands as tidal reservoirs. There have been proposals to move the barrier further down the estuary and make it bigger and able to deal with the worst possible predictions from the Met Office for tidal surges in the next century. But Environment Agency (at least as of, I think, 2015 when they announced their plans) has decided that's too expensive - at about £7-10 billion.

Edit: And that swing in weather is really demonstrated in the "from 2010" stat because for 2011 and 2012 the barrier wasn't raised at all and in 2014 and 2015 it was only raised once. I could be wrong but I imagine those were heatwave/drought years. That used to be an outlier but now it sits alongide 2013-14 when it was raised 50 times. So we're seeing more extreme years causing either below average use or wildly above average use.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 02, 2021, 10:11:20 AM
Southern Turkey continues to burn, fires are also widespread Greece, Northern Lebanon, parts of Syria and and now in Sardinia/Italy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 02, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
Read that Greece had temperatures in the mid-40s, with nighttime lows around 30 in urban areas :bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 02, 2021, 03:33:02 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 02, 2021, 10:11:20 AM
Southern Turkey continues to burn, fires are also widespread Greece, Northern Lebanon, parts of Syria and and now in Sardinia/Italy.
From the European Forest Fire Information Service:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7yf0K1WUAIi2Dg?format=jpg&name=small)
Apparently Greece is experiencing a lot of forest fires but the emergency servies have, so far, been very successful in their response. And the worst months are normally September/October.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 04, 2021, 08:39:33 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 02, 2021, 03:33:02 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 02, 2021, 10:11:20 AM
Southern Turkey continues to burn, fires are also widespread Greece, Northern Lebanon, parts of Syria and and now in Sardinia/Italy.
....
Apparently Greece is experiencing a lot of forest fires but the emergency servies have, so far, been very successful in their response. And the worst months are normally September/October.

Shelf, ever the optimist I see.  :D

Desperate scenes in Southern Turkey, some villages have been devastated, several losing more than half of their houses, along with the deaths of locals.

Saw and Al Jazeera item from the village of Matavgav (?), 60 of the 100 plus houses gone and some locals couldn't contact their german and turkish neighbours, eventually they found them burnt to death by the side of their destroyed house.  :(

Several people have said these fires are so ferocious, unlike those of the pasts; what do you do in that situation, stay to try to protect the family home or run for your life, taking nothing with you?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 04, 2021, 09:52:50 AM
Quote from: mongers on August 04, 2021, 08:39:33 AMShelf, ever the optimist I see.  :D
I think it's pretty pessimistic - September/October is likely to be worse :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 06, 2021, 05:23:24 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse

QuoteClimate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet's main potential tipping points.

The research found "an almost complete loss of stability over the last century" of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.

"The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn't have expected and that I find scary," said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. "It's something you just can't [allow to] happen."

It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. "So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere".

Scientists are increasingly concerned about tipping points – large, fast and irreversible changes to the climate. Boers and his colleagues reported in May that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink, threatening a big rise in global sea level. Others have shown recently that the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs, and that the 2020 Siberian heatwave led to worrying releases of methane.

The world may already have crossed a series of tipping points, according to a 2019 analysis, resulting in "an existential threat to civilisation". A major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due on Monday, is expected to set out the worsening state of the climate crisis.

Boer's research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is titled "Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the AMOC". Ice-core and other data from the last 100,000 years show the AMOC has two states: a fast, strong one, as seen over recent millennia, and a slow, weak one. The data shows rising temperatures can make the AMOC switch abruptly between states over one to five decades.

The AMOC is driven by dense, salty seawater sinking into the Arctic ocean, but the melting of freshwater from Greenland's ice sheet is slowing the process down earlier than climate models suggested.

Boers used the analogy of a chair to explain how changes in ocean temperature and salinity can reveal the AMOC's instability. Pushing a chair alters its position, but does not affect its stability if all four legs remain on the floor. Tilting the chair changes both its position and stability.

Eight independently measured datasets of temperature and salinity going back as far as 150 years enabled Boers to show that global heating is indeed increasing the instability of the currents, not just changing their flow pattern.

The analysis concluded: "This decline [of the AMOC in recent decades] may be associated with an almost complete loss of stability over the course of the last century, and the AMOC could be close to a critical transition to its weak circulation mode."

Levke Caesar, at Maynooth University in Ireland, who was not involved in the research, said: "The study method cannot give us an exact timing of a possible collapse, but the analysis presents evidence that the AMOC has already lost stability, which I take as a warning that we might be closer to an AMOC tipping than we think."

David Thornalley, at University College London in the UK, whose work showed the AMOC is at its weakest point in 1,600 years, said: "These signs of decreasing stability are concerning. But we still don't know if a collapse will occur, or how close we might be to it."


Original article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01097-4.epdf
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 05:24:39 AM
If that happens we're truly fucked.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 06, 2021, 05:33:30 AM
QuoteOthers have shown recently that the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs

And people still want to save it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 06, 2021, 07:54:02 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/un-climate-report-likely-deliver-stark-warnings-global-warming-2021-08-05/

QuoteU.N. climate report likely to deliver stark warnings on global warming

LONDON, Aug 5(Reuters) - Eight years after its last update on climate science, the United Nations is set to publish a report Monday that will likely deliver even starker warnings about how quickly the planet is warming – and how damaging the impacts might get.

Since the last report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013, both greenhouse gas emissions and the average global temperature have only continued to climb.

The new report will forecast how much more emissions can be pumped into the atmosphere before the average global temperature rises more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. That revised carbon budget may serve as a guide to governments as they map out their own emissions-cutting plans before a major U.N. climate conference in November.

Scientists say the world must halve global emissions by 2030 and cut them to net-zero by 2050 in order to prevent global warming above 1.5C, which could trigger catastrophic impacts across the globe.

But climate change already is fuelling deadly and disastrous weather across the globe. Nearly all of the world's glaciers are melting faster. Hurricanes are stronger. Just this year, unprecedented rains unleashed floods across parts of central China and Europe, while wildfires are tearing across Siberia, the U.S. West and the Mediterranean.

"The report will cover not only the fact that we are smashing record after record in terms of climate change impacts, but show that the world today is in unchartered territory in terms of sea level rise and ice cover," said Kelly Levin, chief of science, data and systems change at the Bezos Earth Fund philanthropy.


Overall, the report "will underscore the urgency for governments to ramp up climate action," she said.

And while the 2013 report said it was "extremely likely" that human industry was causing climate change – which suggests scientists were at least 95% confident in that statement – this year's report will likely use even stronger language.

"Obviously, it is going to be stronger than what we had in the past because of the growing warming of the planet," said Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia who has contributed to previous IPCC assessments.

"That's going to be one of the main points. It will be discussed very, very carefully, and scrutinised," Le Quéré told reporters.

WHAT IS THE IPCC?

Since its establishment in 1988, the IPCC has released five so-called Assessment Reports updating the established science on climate change, its impacts, future risks and ways to tackle the problems.

But the IPCC itself is not made up of scientists. The panel includes government representatives from 195 countries who commission assessments from experts and academics across the world.

In drafting those assessments, scientists consider thousands of individual studies published since the last IPCC report. To finalize their latest assessments for the upcoming report, scientists have been meeting virtually with policymakers since July 26, scrutinizing the details and language used in the draft.

Governments can suggest changes to the text, but those must be agreed by consensus. The scientists then must ensure the changes are consistent with the scientific evidence.

Monday's report is actually just part of what will go into the final Sixth Assessment Report, or AR6, when it is released in 2022.

The AR6 synthesis report will also include two other major chapters coming out next year – one on climate change impacts on communities, societies and economies and how they might adapt to cope, and another on ways of curbing emissions and reining in climate change. And it will include findings from three special reports published since 2013, on the 1.5C threshold, on the world's oceans and frozen regions, and on land use and degradation.

But Monday's chapter is one of the most highly anticipated, particularly after being delayed for months because of the COVID pandemic. Unlike the previous assessments, the chapter will use five possible emissions trajectories the world could follow rather than the previous four scenarios.

"Emissions scenarios are not intended to say: 'This is the future: pick one'," said Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC. "Policies are being implemented all the time, and the science is changing all the time, so it is just not fair to say we are on a certain trajectory."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 06, 2021, 08:03:47 AM
Quote from: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 05:24:39 AM
If that happens we're truly fucked.

Aside from the truly catastrophic mega eruptions that happen here once every millennia this one always scared me as a what-if when I first heard about it 30 years ago. The Gulf Stream stopping and triggering a new Ice Age, resulting in Iceland becoming completely covered with glaciers.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 08:16:06 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 06, 2021, 08:03:47 AM
Quote from: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 05:24:39 AM
If that happens we're truly fucked.

Aside from the truly catastrophic mega eruptions that happen here once every millennia this one always scared me as a what-if when I first heard about it 30 years ago. The Gulf Stream stopping and triggering a new Ice Age, resulting in Iceland becoming completely covered with glaciers.

Yeah, it's the one thing that has the potential to fuck several times over more people of all the possible consequences of climate change.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 06, 2021, 08:17:11 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 06, 2021, 08:03:47 AM
Quote from: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 05:24:39 AM
If that happens we're truly fucked.

Aside from the truly catastrophic mega eruptions that happen here once every millennia this one always scared me as a what-if when I first heard about it 30 years ago. The Gulf Stream stopping and triggering a new Ice Age, resulting in Iceland becoming completely covered with glaciers.
Yeah - it's huge :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 06, 2021, 08:23:49 AM
On the UN conference to chase entirely outlandish (and even then just half-enough) targets - like Berkut said, while trying to do what we can do reduce emissions, it seems also high time to start preparing for the inevitable - changes in agriculture patterns, mass dislocation of people etc.

The problem of course that it is politically impossible to prepare for such things - who can sell their voters they are working on taking in hundreds of thousands of unwashed refugees in about 10-20 years? So it will be an every country/tribe for themselves extravaganza when the real trouble begins.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 06, 2021, 08:26:21 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 06, 2021, 08:23:49 AM
The problem of course that it is politically impossible to prepare for such things - who can sell their voters they are working on taking in hundreds of thousands of unwashed refugees in about 10-20 years? So it will be an every country/tribe for themselves extravaganza when the real trouble begins.
One of my darker theories/conspiracies is that the radical right/hard-core anti-immigration parties/politicians accept the inevitability of climate change and are thinking in exactly these terms.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 08:27:42 AM
Adaptation to climate change and mitigation of its harshest consequences is already part of the long term planning for most countries, as it is taken for granted that it will be impossible to fully stop climate change and we'll have to live with a certain degree of it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 06, 2021, 01:22:20 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 06, 2021, 07:35:01 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 06, 2021, 08:03:47 AMresulting in Iceland becoming completely covered with glaciers.
as opposed to... ?   :huh:
:lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 06, 2021, 07:38:10 PM
Quote from: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 08:16:06 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on August 06, 2021, 08:03:47 AM
Quote from: The Larch on August 06, 2021, 05:24:39 AM
If that happens we're truly fucked.

Aside from the truly catastrophic mega eruptions that happen here once every millennia this one always scared me as a what-if when I first heard about it 30 years ago. The Gulf Stream stopping and triggering a new Ice Age, resulting in Iceland becoming completely covered with glaciers.

Yeah, it's the one thing that has the potential to fuck several times over more people of all the possible consequences of climate change.

I'd swear I read a publication earlier this week suggesting scientists were wrong about the Gulf Stream current chilling our hemisphere due to global warming.  can't seem to find it right now...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 09, 2021, 05:20:32 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/once-in-50-year-heat-waves-now-happening-every-decade-un-climate-report-2021-08-09/

QuoteOnce-in-50-year heat waves now happening every decade -U.N. climate report

Aug 9 (Reuters) - Extreme heat waves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a UN climate science report said on Monday.

The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heat waves, droughts and torrential rains are only set to become more frequent and extreme as the earth warms further.

It is the first time that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quantified the likelihood of these extreme events in a wide variety of scenarios.

The report found that once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are now 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years up to 1900 when major human-driven warming started to occur.

Previously once-in-a-decade droughts could happen every five or six years.

Scientists emphasized that these effects of climate change are already here, with events like the heat wave in the U.S. Pacific Northwest killing hundreds in June and Brazil currently experiencing its worst drought in 91 years.

"The heat wave in Canada, fires in California, floods in Germany, floods in China, droughts in central Brazil make it very, very clear that climate extremes are having a very heavy toll," said Paulo Artaxo, a lead author of the report and an environmental physicist and the University of Sao Paulo. (Graphic on warming planet)

The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events.

Heat waves show stronger increases in frequency with warming than all other extreme events. Twice in a century heat waves could happen roughly every six years with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, a level which the report says could be surpassed within two decades.

Should the world become 4 degrees Celsius hotter, as could happen in a high-emissions scenario, those heat waves would happen every one to two years.

Carolina Vera, another report author and a physical climate scientist at University of Buenos Aires and Argentina's main agency for science research (CONICET), said there is also an increasing likelihood that multiple extreme weather events could happen at the same time.

For example, extreme heat, drought and high winds - conditions that could feed wildfires - are more likely to happen at the same time.

The IPCC has a medium or high-level confidence that many important agricultural regions around the world will see more droughts or extreme rain. That includes parts of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil that are major growers of soybeans and other global commodities.

"It is scary, sure, with the risk that fires, heat waves, droughts will affect humans in the form of weather and food insecurity, energy insecurity, water quality and health - mainly in poor regions," said Jose Marengo, a climatologist at the Brazilian Science Ministry's disaster monitoring center.

Marengo was not involved in the IPCC report.

For example, regions that are already prone to drought are likely to experience them more frequently, including in the Mediterranean, southern Australia, and western North America, said Friederike Otto, IPCC author and climatologist at University of Oxford.

Increased frequency of drought and heavy rain also are not mutually exclusive and are predicted in places like Southern Africa, she said.

The projections on extreme weather events laid out in the report reinforce the importance of curbing climate change to the levels laid out in the Paris Agreement, scientists said.

"If we stabilize at 1.5 degrees, we can stop them from getting much worse," Otto said.



https://www.axios.com/un-climate-report-global-warming-faster-ipcc-003e9e0b-ae85-4298-ad0c-09fe163b74f4.html

QuoteUN report: Effects of climate change even more severe than we thought

Global warming is happening so fast that scientists now say we'll cross a crucial temperature threshold as early as 2030 — up to a decade sooner than previously thought — according to a sweeping new UN-sponsored review of climate science published Monday.

The big picture: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher in 2019 than at any time in at least 2 million years, and the past 50 years saw the fastest temperature increases in at least 2,000 years, according to the new assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

What they're saying: The report says that the connection between human emissions of greenhouse gases and global warming is "unequivocal."

It's the "strongest statement the IPCC has ever made," Ko Barrett, the panel's vice chair and senior advisor on climate to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters.

Why it matters: Warming is affecting every area of the globe, making the world a more volatile place, and the report connects the dots between extreme events and long-term human causes.

Weather and climate events are becoming more common and severe, it says, and rising sea levels are flooding coastal areas with regularity.

It shows we're running out of time to meet the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Details: The IPCC looked at how long it will take the world to reach a temperature warming target of 1.5°C (2.7°F) compared to preindustrial levels and determined that could happen between 2030 and 2035.

The 20-year period from now through 2040 will be the first to meet or beat that target, the panel found.

Even under the lowest pathway of future greenhouse gas emissions, the 1.5-degree threshold would be exceeded for a period of time.

Only rapid, steep and sustained greenhouse gas emissions cuts, down to net zero and eventually net negative values, could avoid exceeding 1.5 or 2°C (3.6°F) of warming over the longer-term, the report states. The world has already warmed by 1.1°C (2°F) relative to the 1850-1900 average.

The report also notes that many of the effects of climate change through 2050 are already locked in by the emissions to date, but there is still time to greatly reduce climate impacts later this century.

Yes, but: The world is nowhere near making the emissions cuts in line with the Paris Agreement targets, instead tracking toward at least 3°C (5.4°F) of warming, based on the latest emissions reduction pledges.

Between the lines: The peer-reviewed report, conducted by 234 authors from 66 countries who examined more than 14,000 studies, arrives at a hinge point in the global fight against climate change.

Leaders in the U.S. and European Union are seeking to enact strict new measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep the 1.5-degree goal alive, with a pivotal summit slated for November in Glasgow. But consensus on emissions cuts among all of the wealthiest nations remains elusive.

It also comes amid an outbreak of extreme weather events that have killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest in a scorching heat wave, with devastating wildfires striking the U.S., Canada, Russia and the Mediterranean region this summer.

The report touches on tipping points in the climate system, such as the shutdown of the Gulf Stream and collapse of part of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, categorizing them as low-risk but high-impact events.

Flashback: Compared with its first report in 1990, the IPCC's new climate assessment reflects global warming's transition from a far-off, future issue to a present-day crisis.

"The internationally agreed threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius is perilously close," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "We must act decisively now to keep 1.5 alive." He called for the report to "sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet."

"The actions we take over the coming years is what will determine if we can get on the right path," Jane Lubchenco, the top climate official in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told Axios. "So every action matters, every year matters, every fraction of a degree matters."

By the numbers: The report projects that global warming at the end of the century will range between about 1.3 to 5.7°C (2.34 to 10.26°F), relative to 1850-1900 levels, depending on emissions.

The "most likely" range of additional warming by 2100 spans from 1.4°C to 4.4.°C (2.5 to 7.9°F).

Regional temperature changes, however, will far exceed global averages, especially in the Arctic.

Sea levels are projected to increase under the intermediate to high emissions pathways by between at least a foot and a half to more than three and a half feet by the end of the century.

A rise of 7 feet by the year 2100, or even 16 feet by 2150, "cannot be ruled out," due to uncertainties about potential tipping points involving Antarctic ice melt.

The report warns of the occurrence of "compound events," in which various extremes, such as heat waves and drought, overlap and affect society in unprecedented ways.

It also makes clear how starkly different the current climate already is from that in which modern human civilization first thrived.

What we're watching: The report will heavily influence diplomatic efforts to secure new emissions reduction commitments from major emitters at Glasgow. It's also likely to further galvanize climate activists. A 2018 IPCC report helped spark the global youth-led climate movement.


Full report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 09, 2021, 08:17:21 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 09, 2021, 05:20:32 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/once-in-50-year-heat-waves-now-happening-every-decade-un-climate-report-2021-08-09/

QuoteOnce-in-50-year heat waves now happening every decade -U.N. climate report

Aug 9 (Reuters) - Extreme heat waves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a UN climate science report said on Monday.

The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heat waves, droughts and torrential rains are only set to become more frequent and extreme as the earth warms further.

It is the first time that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quantified the likelihood of these extreme events in a wide variety of scenarios.

The report found that once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are now 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years up to 1900 when major human-driven warming started to occur.

Previously once-in-a-decade droughts could happen every five or six years.

Scientists emphasized that these effects of climate change are already here, with events like the heat wave in the U.S. Pacific Northwest killing hundreds in June and Brazil currently experiencing its worst drought in 91 years.

"The heat wave in Canada, fires in California, floods in Germany, floods in China, droughts in central Brazil make it very, very clear that climate extremes are having a very heavy toll," said Paulo Artaxo, a lead author of the report and an environmental physicist and the University of Sao Paulo. (Graphic on warming planet)

The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events.


Full report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Syt, big boring news that most people will ignore.  :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 09, 2021, 08:53:38 AM
I read the next big UN report is next year, detailing the likely impact of the changes. I am looking forward to that one to figure out where to live.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 09, 2021, 09:02:56 AM
Just got done listening to a 3 hour podcast about the dangers of synthetic biology, and how to protect ourselves from the next pandemic, man made or natural.

One thing that was interesting....the costs of doing stuff to protect ourselves is rather trivial compared to the cost of the problem when it inevitably happens. They are not trivial in absolute terms, but compared to the cost of the problem, it is nothing.

Example: COming up with a system to categorize, evaluate, and test a large number of existing vaccines against the couple dozen know viral families would be incredible useful. There are vaccines (like the TB vaccine) that seem to actually have good effect on surprising, other viral families. The estimate the guy had for getting all these vaccines we know about, and running studies to test them against other viral families, and then collating all that data was something on the order of a couple billion dollars. This would be incredibly useful from the standpoint of understanding a lot more about the relationships between viral families of pathogens, and vaccine effect across those families and within them.

A couple billion dollars. Pfizer isn't going to do this - there isn't any immediate market for the information. But there aren't any funds to do it either. The TB vaccine was thought that it might have some use against corona viruses - some guy at Harvard wanted to run a study that would have cost something like $10 million. Could not find any funds for it.

We spend how many hundreds of billions of today's dollars on NORAD, defending against a possible nuclear attack. Trillions have been spent on defense, and we can get political agreement for that, no problem.

But someone wants to spend the cost of a B-2 on climate change? Or to defend against the NEXT pandemic? FUCK THAT!

Humans really are doomed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 09, 2021, 10:07:40 AM
What's synthetic biology?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 09, 2021, 10:18:30 AM
Met with a Italian friend in Switzerland whilst I was over there. This topic came up a little- his girlfriend is Norwegian and his hope is to move over there, with escaping the scorching climate being a bonus he has actually thought about.
It is a wonder with the Gulf Stream business whether people in Europe should be running north or south.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 09, 2021, 10:49:06 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 09, 2021, 10:07:40 AM
What's synthetic biology?

Using technology to modify biology. More specifically, modern processes for DNA gene replication and editing.

Incredibly powerful tools, that could be used for very, very bad things.

Example: Someone thought that it would be a good idea to do some testing on H5N1, to see if it is likely that it could be a lot more contagious then it is - it's R-0 factor, the average number of humans and infected human will transmit the virus to, is tought to be about 0.05. Very low - which is why there have only been something like a couple thousand cases. However, H5N1 is incredibly deadly - something like 60% fatality rate.

So anyway, this doctor at a lab using all the modern viral DNA tweaking, managed to up the R0 factor to something like 2 - basically about what Covid has. Of course, he was testing on ferrets, so its hard to know exactly what it would be with humans, but I am pretty sure we don't want to find out.

The technology that let him do that is going to be more and more readily available, like all technology is. What it takes a dedicated lab of top scientists to do today will be done by grad students in 5 years and by non-scientists in 10.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 09, 2021, 11:00:23 AM
Quote from: Tyr on August 09, 2021, 10:18:30 AM
Met with a Italian friend in Switzerland whilst I was over there. This topic came up a little- his girlfriend is Norwegian and his hope is to move over there, with escaping the scorching climate being a bonus he has actually thought about.
It is a wonder with the Gulf Stream business whether people in Europe should be running north or south.
Also who knows.

I read an article on the impact to the UK which was based on letting models run to 2080 with the Gulf Stream still going or with it being shut down/with "freshwater hosing". Basically with simple warming the UK warms pretty evenly because we're quite small. Everywhere warms by about 1.9 degrees, there's slightly more rain in the Highlands and slightly less in the south and significantly more land is viable for agriculture (I imagine in the Highlands) especially with irrigation.

With no Gulf Stream temperatures would fall about 3.4 degrees but it is less even, so they'd fall more in the Highlands while in the south it would basically be a wash (the fall of 1.9 degrees would off-set the rise of 1.9 degrees). But rain would fall very significantly (by about 120mm during growing seasons) and would reduce the amoung of viable agricultural land to about a third of what it is at the minute.

It was unexpected, I thought the bigger impact would be in temperature but it, apparently, might be that a colder ocean would produce less rainfall so the UK would be a bit colder but significantly drier/more arid. I don't know how much that would also apply for the rest of Europe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on August 09, 2021, 12:00:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 09, 2021, 08:17:21 AM
Syt, big boring news that most people will ignore.  :(

Turns out the "skpetics" had a point in emphasizing the uncertainties in climate modeling.

They just forgot uncertainty goes both ways.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 10, 2021, 01:36:33 PM
Yesterday: 17C.
Today, same time: 30C and climbing.

Damn, I'm cooking.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 10, 2021, 02:04:21 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 09, 2021, 12:00:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 09, 2021, 08:17:21 AM
Syt, big boring news that most people will ignore.  :(

Turns out the "skpetics" had a point in emphasizing the uncertainties in climate modeling.

They just forgot uncertainty goes both ways.

Yeah, turns out we have even less time until we hit 1.5C.   
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: celedhring on August 11, 2021, 05:49:03 AM
Right now the biggest green controversy around here is the proposed expansion to the Barcelona airport. The areas surrounding it are protected areas, and would need to be removed (the current proposal calls for protecting other areas to compensate). There's also your usual debate about not promoting air travel during a climate emergency, Barcelona's chronic air pollution problems, a healthy dose of NIMBYism, etc...

One MP from JxC (which are in favor) has said the expansion will be amortized before the entire area is flooded because of climate change, so it should go ahead. Now that's not quite the kind of bar I was expecting for public works  :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 11, 2021, 06:33:02 AM
Quote from: celedhring on August 11, 2021, 05:49:03 AM

One MP from JxC (which are in favor) has said the expansion will be amortized before the entire area is flooded because of climate change, so it should go ahead. Now that's not quite the kind of bar I was expecting for public works  :hmm:

:lol: Now that's some hyper-practical approach right there.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 11, 2021, 02:13:51 PM
48.8 degrees in Sicily, hottest day on record in Europe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 11, 2021, 06:11:46 PM
Quote from: Maladict on August 11, 2021, 02:13:51 PM
48.8 degrees in Sicily, hottest day on record in Europe.

Yeah that's astonishing.

And I'll wager 50C will be broken before the decade is out.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on August 12, 2021, 08:14:57 AM
Quote from: Maladict on August 11, 2021, 02:13:51 PM
48.8 degrees in Sicily, hottest day on record in Europe.
Brutally  hot
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 12, 2021, 09:29:29 AM
That's a bit chilly though... /usa
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 12, 2021, 09:52:36 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 12, 2021, 09:29:29 AM
That's a bit chilly though... /usa

119.8 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty hot, I think.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 10:03:02 AM
Quote from: Maladict on August 11, 2021, 02:13:51 PM
48.8 degrees in Sicily, hottest day on record in Europe.

And just think, a degree cooler than Lytton BC, the day before it burned to the ground last month.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 12, 2021, 03:03:28 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 12, 2021, 09:52:36 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 12, 2021, 09:29:29 AM
That's a bit chilly though... /usa

119.8 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty hot, I think.

Whoosh?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 12, 2021, 06:14:49 PM
Apparently the last three nuclear groups who'd been applying have had their applications to attend COP26 denied. Feels a little bit of a problem that the world's second largest source of non-carbon emitting energy (after hydro) is basically shut out of a big conference on reducing carbon emissions and energy transition :mellow:

It's not the entire solution, but I feel like it has to be a part of it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 12, 2021, 06:20:30 PM
What's COP26?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 12, 2021, 06:24:06 PM
Quote from: The Brain on August 12, 2021, 06:20:30 PM
What's COP26?

It is a UN thing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 06:52:33 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 12, 2021, 06:14:49 PM
Apparently the last three nuclear groups who'd been applying have had their applications to attend COP26 denied. Feels a little bit of a problem that the world's second largest source of non-carbon emitting energy (after hydro) is basically shut out of a big conference on reducing carbon emissions and energy transition :mellow:

It's not the entire solution, but I feel like it has to be a part of it.

I am not sure it is part of the solution though.  The time lines we are facing are too short for the time it takes to get production of those energy sources up and running.  COP26 is all about what can be done in the short time we have left to avert disaster.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 12, 2021, 06:58:44 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 06:52:33 PM
I am not sure it is part of the solution though.  The time lines we are facing are too short for the time it takes to get production of those energy sources up and running.  COP26 is all about what can be done in the short time we have left to avert disaster.
That might be right - I think it definitely is here. There's a few nuclear plants that will come online (allegedly) in the next 5-6 years in the UK - but that's particularly necessary because others are being decommissioned in the same time frame :ph34r:

But I think it's quite important for China and India especially - who are building lots of nuclear. I could be wrong (and their plans project a rise in emissions until 2030 - which is "allowed" as developing countries) but I suspect that moving from coal to nuclear is a big part of their plans.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 07:03:22 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 12, 2021, 06:58:44 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 06:52:33 PM
I am not sure it is part of the solution though.  The time lines we are facing are too short for the time it takes to get production of those energy sources up and running.  COP26 is all about what can be done in the short time we have left to avert disaster.
That might be right - I think it definitely is here. There's a few nuclear plants that will come online (allegedly) in the next 5-6 years in the UK - but that's particularly necessary because others are being decommissioned in the same time frame :ph34r:

But I think it's quite important for China and India especially - who are building lots of nuclear. I could be wrong (and their plans project a rise in emissions until 2030 - which is "allowed" as developing countries) but I suspect that moving from coal to nuclear is a big part of their plans.

Right, I was not thinking about China and India - with that in mind, it makes no sense to keep nuclear out of the conference.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 12, 2021, 07:19:50 PM
43C with humidex factor today. Way too hot for me.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 12, 2021, 09:47:51 PM
It is so weird because we have had an unusually cool summer here in Texas while Canada seems to be frying.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 01:48:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 07:03:22 PM

Right, I was not thinking about China and India

Funnily enough I think that describes a lot of people's views on fighting climate change, especially when it comes judging how possible it is to keep the world to those super-ambitious goals.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 13, 2021, 05:12:59 PM
Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 01:48:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 07:03:22 PM

Right, I was not thinking about China and India

Funnily enough I think that describes a lot of people's views on fighting climate change, especially when it comes judging how possible it is to keep the world to those super-ambitious goals.

I was not thinking about the nuclear projects already underway there.  I don't think it is accurate that China and India are not being considered for the very modest goals now being considered.  Quite the opposite, China is showing the way regarding moving toward greener energy sources.

The real problem is the people who think the goals are super ambitious.  Those people need to realize time is running out.  If they think the changes we need to make now are dramatic, they will be in for a real shock for how dramatic their life is going to change after we pass 1.5C
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 05:57:10 PM
People are like the archetypical frog in the pot of heating water.  Lacking a moment of crisis, it is hard to get them to understand that change for the worse is steadily occurring.  When the crisis comes, it will be extremely costly to recover from, but I don't see decisive action short of a crisis.  I wish I did.  Be ready to look back in regret a whole lot.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 13, 2021, 06:37:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 13, 2021, 05:12:59 PM
Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 01:48:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 07:03:22 PM

Right, I was not thinking about China and India

Funnily enough I think that describes a lot of people's views on fighting climate change, especially when it comes judging how possible it is to keep the world to those super-ambitious goals.

I was not thinking about the nuclear projects already underway there.  I don't think it is accurate that China and India are not being considered for the very modest goals now being considered.  Quite the opposite, China is showing the way regarding moving toward greener energy sources.

The real problem is the people who think the goals are super ambitious.  Those people need to realize time is running out.  If they think the changes we need to make now are dramatic, they will be in for a real shock for how dramatic their life is going to change after we pass 1.5C
We can't seem to convince people to get themself a vaccine and protect others.  How can we hope to tackle such a huge issue with a so distant benefit that none of us would see it in our own lives?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 08:14:38 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 13, 2021, 06:37:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 13, 2021, 05:12:59 PM
Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 01:48:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 12, 2021, 07:03:22 PM

Right, I was not thinking about China and India

Funnily enough I think that describes a lot of people's views on fighting climate change, especially when it comes judging how possible it is to keep the world to those super-ambitious goals.

I was not thinking about the nuclear projects already underway there.  I don't think it is accurate that China and India are not being considered for the very modest goals now being considered.  Quite the opposite, China is showing the way regarding moving toward greener energy sources.

The real problem is the people who think the goals are super ambitious.  Those people need to realize time is running out.  If they think the changes we need to make now are dramatic, they will be in for a real shock for how dramatic their life is going to change after we pass 1.5C
We can't seem to convince people to get themself a vaccine and protect others.  How can we hope to tackle such a huge issue with a so distant benefit that none of us would see it in our own lives?

I think I tried to make that point somewhere.

The entire response to COVID makes me completely in despair about climate change. It is hopeless.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 13, 2021, 10:56:24 PM
https://www.noaa.gov/news/its-official-july-2021-was-earths-hottest-month-on-record

July 2021 is the hottest month on record. Previous hottest months were July 2016, 2019 and 2020 in a three way tie.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 13, 2021, 11:48:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 08:14:38 PM
The entire response to COVID makes me completely in despair about climate change. It is hopeless.
Individual behavior is not as relevant to beating climate change as it is to beating Covid. Greenhouse gas emissions can be overwhelmingly attributed to some large industries which can be regulated much easier than individuals. That said with their current lobbyism, it does not look likely.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 14, 2021, 01:25:42 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 13, 2021, 11:48:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2021, 08:14:38 PM
The entire response to COVID makes me completely in despair about climate change. It is hopeless.
Individual behavior is not as relevant to beating climate change as it is to beating Covid. Greenhouse gas emissions can be overwhelmingly attributed to some large industries which can be regulated much easier than individuals. That said with their current lobbyism, it does not look likely.

you need popular support, and a willingness to make sacrifices on the individual front:
- pay more for your houses so they are better insulated
- renounce air conditionning as it contributes to global warming
- pay more for your car
- pay more for fuel
- pay more for heating

Since we are so late in acting, the sacrifices will be much harder to make.  And the resistance will be tenfold.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 14, 2021, 01:55:00 PM
Hence the need for political leadership - which is actually the thing that is lacking.  The polls show the majority want politicians to act, but the political class is old, conservative and timid.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 14, 2021, 02:58:39 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 13, 2021, 11:48:32 PM
Individual behavior is not as relevant to beating climate change as it is to beating Covid. Greenhouse gas emissions can be overwhelmingly attributed to some large industries which can be regulated much easier than individuals. That said with their current lobbyism, it does not look likely.
Yeah I often think about the fact that "carbon footprint" became a common, popular term following ad and PR campaigns by BP (designed by Ogilvy) in the early 2000s. They were explicitly inspired by tobacco companies and the way to try to distract from regulation or state intervention towards individual responsibility. And I think we're still trapped in that understanding.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 03:00:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 14, 2021, 01:25:42 PM
- renounce air conditionning as it contributes to global warming

I'll renounce AC if you renounce heating.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: celedhring on August 15, 2021, 09:49:22 AM
47.2C yesterday in southern Spain. Highest recorded temperature ever in the country.

Also, Barcelona is running for the winter Olympics and the Catalan government has felt it had to put out a statement saying they are sure there's still going to be snow in the Pyrinees by 2030.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 11:03:53 AM
I wonder if there was a study on much artificial snow did Russia/Sochi ended up having to use...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 11:05:58 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 15, 2021, 11:03:53 AM
I wonder if there was a study on much artificial snow did Russia/Sochi ended up having to use...

Apparently at the 2018 Games, 98% of the snow was man-made, and Beijing is counting on 100%.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 16, 2021, 09:19:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 14, 2021, 01:55:00 PM
Hence the need for political leadership - which is actually the thing that is lacking.  The polls show the majority want politicians to act, but the political class is old, conservative and timid.
Because the polls never ask the right questions.  "Do you want the govt to act on climate change?" is overwhelmingly yes everywhere where oil&gaz&coal are not a major part of the economy.  If yoy ask: "Do you want the government to act on climate change, knowing it will lead you to a drop in comfort and more taxes in the future?" the "yes" vote drastically drops.
Political leadership is needed to do the right thing despite popular opposition.  You don't need political leadership is a majority agrees with you.  You don't need political leadership to reduce taxes, you know.  Or spend more money at random. But to tackle important issues...  I hate to say it, but Trudeau the elder demonstrated leadership when he declared the State had business in the sleeping room.  Ask this question today in a poll, if the State should regulate same-sex relationships, we'd get a 90% NO, I guess.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 16, 2021, 09:21:51 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 03:00:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 14, 2021, 01:25:42 PM
- renounce air conditionning as it contributes to global warming

I'll renounce AC if you renounce heating.
that's a problem: we kinda need it more&more everywehere, but we increase CO2 by using it so we increase global warming requiring us to cool ourselves even more...
But I suppose we could tax data centers a little more, or charge them more for electricity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 09:34:32 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 14, 2021, 03:00:51 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 14, 2021, 01:25:42 PM
- renounce air conditionning as it contributes to global warming

I'll renounce AC if you renounce heating.

The problem is not going to be solved by reducing the consumption of energy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2021, 09:39:32 PM
My house generates more power with its solar power than it consumes, but I thought Viper was saying that AC units somehow were bad in addition to their power consumption.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 16, 2021, 09:46:43 PM
Freon bad, but newer types are less bad. Then again I'd assume industrial units are more of an issue the residential.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
I feel changing the energy industry to renewables and nuclear or the car/ industry to electric and hydrogen or steel and chemicals to hydrogen can all be achieved by political regulation as that might cost money, but these are not really emotional issues.
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 17, 2021, 06:41:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2021, 09:39:32 PM
My house generates more power with its solar power than it consumes, but I thought Viper was saying that AC units somehow were bad in addition to their power consumption.
well, most people don't have solar powered home.

I thought the Tesla shingles might take off, but it doesn't seem that great for northern climates.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
The stuff we have now in terms of vegan alternatives - Beyond Meat etc is pretty incredible.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on August 17, 2021, 10:23:08 PM
I do like Beyond Burgers. I'll fry them up and eat them without a bun.
But no one else in the family likes them, so I don't buy them often. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on August 18, 2021, 07:04:45 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on August 17, 2021, 10:23:08 PM
I do like Beyond Burgers. I'll fry them up and eat them without a bun.
But no one else in the family likes them, so I don't buy them often. :(

I think Impossible burgers are better than Beyond Burgers; you should give them a shot and maybe let the family taste.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on August 18, 2021, 07:45:07 AM
I'll give them a shot, thanks for the recommendation :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 18, 2021, 08:06:44 AM
In the local paper an amazing story- "These local beaches could be under water if sea levels rise".
...
...
...
erm.....
If sea levels rise....surely more note worthy will be any beaches that avoid being under water?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 18, 2021, 08:20:49 AM
There's probably some artificial beach in Westminster that will be unaffected.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 18, 2021, 07:34:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
The stuff we have now in terms of vegan alternatives - Beyond Meat etc is pretty incredible.
while producing less CO2 and methane, it's also detrimental to the environment, and your health too.  Not a viable alternative, sorry.

If you want to go vegan to tackle climate change, then you should avoid anything that countains soy if you also care about the rest of the environment.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on August 18, 2021, 07:57:43 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 18, 2021, 07:34:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
The stuff we have now in terms of vegan alternatives - Beyond Meat etc is pretty incredible.
while producing less CO2 and methane, it's also detrimental to the environment, and your health too.  Not a viable alternative, sorry.

If you want to go vegan to tackle climate change, then you should avoid anything that countains soy if you also care about the rest of the environment.
It could be a question of degree.  All human activities are detrimental to the environment.  The question is, are these products am overall improvement in our attempts to manage the environmental effects of our lifestyles? 

Don't let perfection become the enemy of improvement. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 18, 2021, 08:30:47 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 18, 2021, 07:57:43 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 18, 2021, 07:34:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
The stuff we have now in terms of vegan alternatives - Beyond Meat etc is pretty incredible.
while producing less CO2 and methane, it's also detrimental to the environment, and your health too.  Not a viable alternative, sorry.

If you want to go vegan to tackle climate change, then you should avoid anything that countains soy if you also care about the rest of the environment.
It could be a question of degree.  All human activities are detrimental to the environment.  The question is, are these products am overall improvement in our attempts to manage the environmental effects of our lifestyles? 

Don't let perfection become the enemy of improvement.

Soybeans are, in fact, one of the least-detrimental crops, since soy plants need little in the way of fertilizers or pesticides, and add nitrogen back into the soil so are excellent in rotation with other crops.  The growth in production of soy has had a detrimental impact on the environment in Brazil, but that's because of poor land planning and the demand for soy as animal feed.  Humans consume only 12% of the soybeans grown, animals consume 75% (the rest is used in biodiesel and soy oils).

So, if you want to go vegan to tackle climate change, then you should prefer anything that contains soy if you also care about the rest of the environment.  You should also encourage genetic modifications to soybean plants to increase yield to meet demand, since the plants are generally unresponsive to fertilizers and the only current way to increase production is to increase land devoted to it.  Reducing demand for beef would also help reduce demand for soy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 01:40:01 AM
Quote from: Neil on August 18, 2021, 07:57:43 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 18, 2021, 07:34:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 16, 2021, 09:48:29 PM
Reducing the amount of cattle grown for consumption will be hardder unless we make major progress on lab grown meat.
The stuff we have now in terms of vegan alternatives - Beyond Meat etc is pretty incredible.
while producing less CO2 and methane, it's also detrimental to the environment, and your health too.  Not a viable alternative, sorry.

If you want to go vegan to tackle climate change, then you should avoid anything that countains soy if you also care about the rest of the environment.
It could be a question of degree.  All human activities are detrimental to the environment.  The question is, are these products am overall improvement in our attempts to manage the environmental effects of our lifestyles? 

Don't let perfection become the enemy of improvement. 
Monocultures and soil impoverishment are a huge issue with soy.  As is water consumption, it requires more water than other type of cultures.  Granted, right now, most of the soy we produce (85%) is for animal consumption.  But if we massively start shifting toward this, we will simply replace the one for animal consumption with human consumption with the same results.

Beans and grains are good.  Soy tastes like shit, so Beyond meat&all add a fuckton of salt in their products, which makes them just as bad for your health as a regular burger.

Anyway.  I don't fret too much over my own meat consumption.  I'll certainly not replace it with Beyond meat stuff, but I'm doing a huge effort to integrate more non animal proteins in my diet.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 19, 2021, 03:11:35 AM
I think lab grown meat will become viable within the next years and will be a game changer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:37:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 01:40:01 AM
Monocultures and soil impoverishment are a huge issue with soy.  As is water consumption, it requires more water than other type of cultures.  Granted, right now, most of the soy we produce (85%) is for animal consumption.  But if we massively start shifting toward this, we will simply replace the one for animal consumption with human consumption with the same results.
Sure, but those issues can be managed.  Ultimately, people have to eat something, so which is less harmful? 
QuoteBeans and grains are good.  Soy tastes like shit, so Beyond meat&all add a fuckton of salt in their products, which makes them just as bad for your health as a regular burger.
Just like all heavily-processed foods.  Honestly, I don't think that the health nuts who are super conscious of what they eat are the market for that product. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:41:58 AM
Quote from: Zanza on August 19, 2021, 03:11:35 AM
I think lab grown meat will become viable within the next years and will be a game changer.
Maybe.  They've been saying 'next few years' for quite a while now.  I'm starting to think that there costs that will hold it back.  Not to mention the problems it'll have with acceptance.  'Bill Gates put a microchip in your steak!' or maybe some anti-GMO screed, only with meat. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 19, 2021, 07:58:28 AM
AFAIK artificial meat still requires more resources to make than plant-based food.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 08:03:45 AM
Quote from: The Brain on August 19, 2021, 07:58:28 AM
AFAIK artificial meat still requires more resources to make than plant-based food.

Isn't artificial meat plant based food? :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 19, 2021, 08:10:31 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 08:03:45 AM
Quote from: The Brain on August 19, 2021, 07:58:28 AM
AFAIK artificial meat still requires more resources to make than plant-based food.

Isn't artificial meat plant based food? :unsure:

Elaborate.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 19, 2021, 08:13:30 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 08:03:45 AM
Quote from: The Brain on August 19, 2021, 07:58:28 AM
AFAIK artificial meat still requires more resources to make than plant-based food.

Isn't artificial meat plant based food? :unsure:

He did not mean the mushrooms processed to look like meat so vegans don't have to deny themselves the chance to make Instagram posts of their food orders.

He meant actual lab-grown meat.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 19, 2021, 11:09:13 AM
Ah I thought he was talking about the current slate of beyond meat type stuff.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 19, 2021, 01:30:36 PM
i think beyond the price aspect is that the lab meat has a weird texture, never having actually been used as muscle.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 03:56:38 PM
Quote from: Neil on August 19, 2021, 07:37:56 AM
Sure, but those issues can be managed.  Ultimately, people have to eat something, so which is less harmful? 
It's not an "or" question.

You need red meat for B12 vitamin, or you need supplement, prepared from animal meat.  Or some weird vegan processed shit that we don't know exactly what goes in it.

We need omega 3 from fish. Salmon and trout are a good source, but I guess other big fishes are good too.  Well, not sharks.  Well, I mean, they could be good, but due to the Chinese love for shark soup, they're getting slaughtered to the point of extinction out there, and we have yet to grow them like cows or pigs.

That we collectively eat too much meat, especially red meat is a fact.  Way too many burgers&fried chicken.  Which is different from eating a decent piece of steak on Saturdays.  Or a chicken kebab on Sunday.  This still does not mean we should all become vegan to save the planet.  We'll produce less CO2, but we will create other problems for the environment.  Grumbler alluded to soy being "good" because it does not require fertilizers as much as other cultures, but that's only partly true.  You don't need much fertilizer for the first year, but the needs will increase dramatically after the first year as the nutrients of the soil are absorbed by the culture.  Since we're all eating vegetal stuff now, we'll then have to rely on chemical fertilizers instead of animal dejections.  Which creates other problems...

In itself, soy is just as bad for the overall environment as meat production is.  They are just different kind of impacts. Deforesting to grow cattle or deforesting to grow soy is the same thing, ultimately.

The ideal diet (environmentally speaking) is, IIRC, 2/3-3/4 vegetarian (meaning, you can eat some eggs&fish, unlike vegan), might also be a tad more, I don't really have the flame to go look it out precisely.


Quote
Just like all heavily-processed foods.  Honestly, I don't think that the health nuts who are super conscious of what they eat are the market for that product. 
I don't know who the target is for that product.  I kinda think it's not their usual customers though, and they are trying to broaden their range/avoid losing younger customers, maybe.  I doubt die hard meat burger fans will suddenly switch to Beyond Meat Burger King, or some fake grilled "vegetal chicken" when KFC comes up with it.  It's more for for the young & environmentally naive who truly think they are saving the planet by inducing themselves with a heart attack, instead of destroying it by inducing themselves a heart attack. ;)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 19, 2021, 04:56:07 PM
When did chicken become red meat?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Malthus on August 19, 2021, 05:23:20 PM
Quote from: HVC on August 19, 2021, 01:30:36 PM
i think beyond the price aspect is that the lab meat has a weird texture, never having actually been used as muscle.

I guess science will have to come up with a mindless organism that just runs on a treadmill all day, without respite.

Problem is that I worry science already has come up with such a creature, and it is me. 😄
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 19, 2021, 05:34:13 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 19, 2021, 04:56:07 PM
When did chicken become red meat?

Don't interrupt him; he's on a roll.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 06:25:27 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on August 19, 2021, 04:56:07 PM
When did chicken become red meat?
Did I say it was?  My bad if I did, I didn't want to imply it.  I just said that some vegan alternative to fried chicken might exist in the future, the way Beyondmeat&co immitate the taste of beef.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 06:35:35 PM
I mean it does - the vegan alternatives to meaty dishes are out there and they're really very good - chicken, beef, doner (the three genders).

I go vegan for lent every year and, every year, I tell myself I'll get really into creatively cooking veg and then, instead, just veg out with vegan takeaways and meat substitutes (which is weird because I never cook normal burgers at home) - and they're great. Ten years ago if you wanted something indulgent you had to go to a specialist restaurant or just eat a lot of falafel, so it's a good thing.

And some things like milk and mayo I've moved fully vegan all the time because I prefer it.

The problem I have with the lab grown meat stuff is, so far, they are good at basically the processed meat/fast food world. They've not managed to do fish which I cook a lot of, or the sort of shitty cheap cuts that make a great curry or stew (where is my lab-grown shin!) :ph34r: :blush:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 07:49:01 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 06:35:35 PM
I mean it does - the vegan alternatives to meaty dishes are out there and they're really very good - chicken, beef, doner (the three genders).
As you can see, I am quite detached from this world :P
I did not know there were vegan alternatives for chicken.
But more importantly: is there a vegan alternative for Kentucky Fried Chicken?  :P

Quote
Ten years ago if you wanted something indulgent you had to go to a specialist restaurant or just eat a lot of falafel, so it's a good thing.
that's true.  Dating a vegan girl might actually be doable for me now. :P

Quote
And some things like milk and mayo I've moved fully vegan all the time because I prefer it.
I don't eat mayo, but there's no way I'll ditch milk, real milk.  Anyway, real milk is better for the environment and for your health than any of the vegan alternative.  But it's a personal choice, really.  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 07:51:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 19, 2021, 07:49:01 PM
But more importantly: is there a vegan alternative for Kentucky Fried Chicken?  :P
Yes - the only types of vegan chicken I've seen have been fast food focused. I think they spotted the gap in the vegan market was for indulgence :lol:

Quote
I don't eat mayo, but there's no way I'll ditch milk, real milk.  Anyway, real milk is better for the environment and for your health than any of the vegan alternative.  But it's a personal choice, really.  :)
I only use milk for tea or ordering coffee and always get oat milk (which is better for the environment than dairy, I don't know about healthwise) but it is very tasty.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 19, 2021, 08:23:31 PM
I was never a milk person, but had some once in a while. I think I'm becoming lactose intolerant, if late onset lactose intolerance is a thing. I can still eat cheese though, so that's good. Tried lactose free milk, but I'm allergic to it. Get a itchy mouth and throat (similar to my reaction with cashews and pistachios). Don't like nut milk too sweet, and soy milk tastes odd.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 08:28:30 PM
Oat milk :contract:

I think I converted someone here already :blush:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 19, 2021, 08:29:42 PM
I'll try it. Like I said not a huge milk drinker, but I did like it once in a while
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 08:36:10 PM
Inevitably in a decade or so we'll, no doubt, find out it's flamboyantly carcinogenic and I'll have been a low-rent Marlboro Man pushing it on all my friends and family :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on August 20, 2021, 01:12:29 AM
Oat milk :x
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 20, 2021, 12:43:06 PM
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-methane-hunters-climate-change/

Article about efforts to hunt/plug methane spills from fracking operations in Texas.

QuoteA few days later he had an answer. Beneath the splotch, Zhang discovered, 2.9 million metric tons of methane were pouring into the sky each year. By one measure, that cloud of gas is contributing as much to global warming as Florida—every power plant, motorboat, and minivan in the state.

QuoteRelease a ton of methane today, and over the next two decades it will warm the planet as much as about 80 tons of carbon.

QuoteLyon found his biggest spill last September. An airplane working for EDF picked up a large concentration of methane near a gas compression station south of Midland and circled back for a look. It found a huge cloud of gas jetting from a tank. EDF later calculated the size of the release at 12 tons of methane per hour. That's about the same climate impact you would create if you started up every car in the state of Maine and left them all idling.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on August 20, 2021, 01:06:22 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 08:28:30 PM
Oat milk :contract:

I think I converted someone here already :blush:

:mad:

Indeed you have.  Oat milk with coffee is irreplaceable.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on August 20, 2021, 02:21:36 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 19, 2021, 06:35:35 PM
I mean it does - the vegan alternatives to meaty dishes are out there and they're really very good - chicken, beef, doner (the three genders).

Looking at the ingredients list they're tasty and have the right mouthfeel because they're this Frankensteinian sludge of plant protein, rancid industrial oils and applied food chemistry. The amino acid profile is like nothing we or our ancestors would have evolved with naturally and is severely lacking, neither is the o3/o6 ratio and the salt ratio between NA and K is not anything like it is found in nature.  :hmm:

Just my personal observation on vegans, they do their lifestyle by imitation, they overwhelmingly run into insurmountable problems involving mental health, sexual function and general well-being and quit. Female hair loss, iodine deficiency and very irregular periods among the young are just some of the long-term symptoms among them.  The only long-term vegans I know turned themselves into walking-breathing nutritional encyclopedias with the exact same localized outlook as the paleo folks.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on August 20, 2021, 02:27:22 PM
Sometimes I take drugs that are not like anything found in nature.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 20, 2021, 02:53:04 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 20, 2021, 01:06:22 PM

:mad:

Indeed you have.  Oat milk with coffee is irreplaceable.

Unless you replace it with more coffee.  Win-win!  :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 25, 2021, 12:38:54 PM
The necessary GHG emissions reduction to keep 1.5 degree target when the first IPCC report was created versus now.

(https://i.redd.it/8lsbycslpgj71.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 25, 2021, 12:51:24 PM
Yeah that's not encouraging.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 26, 2021, 12:18:40 AM
https://link.newyorker.com/view/5dfabd433f92a458a452c434esq1y.16ow/3d30478b

QuoteSlow-Walking the Climate Crisis

Travellers arriving in an unfamiliar city used to worry that they'd climb in a taxi and be driven to their destination by the most circuitous route possible, racking up an enormous bill. That's pretty much what Big Oil and its allies in government and the financial world are doing with the climate crisis—in fact, at this point, it's the heart of the problem.

Yes, there are a few bitter-enders who refuse to acknowledge that change must come. Earlier in the summer, the Saudi Minister of Energy, Abdulaziz bin Salman, reportedly told a Bank of America gathering that "every molecule of hydrocarbon" will be drained from his country's oil fields. But most fossil-fuel profiteers have learned to talk the talk. Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, for instance, has lent more money to the fossil-fuel industry than anyone else—but he was wise enough to say, in April, that "climate change and inequality are two of the critical issues of our time." The bank has pledged that, by 2030, it will invest a trillion dollars in "green initiatives that boost renewable energy and clean technologies." Does that mean one of America's largest financial institutions is moving away from fossil fuels? Of course not. Last year, Chase once again topped the charts as Big Oil's biggest financial lifeline. Indeed, earlier this month, DeSmogBlog released transcripts from an "energy capital conference" held earlier in the year. There, Chase's managing director, Greg Determann, was asked by one expert if the company was "still going to be lending to oil and gas companies." "For a long time," Determann said, without hesitation. "Mr. Dimon is quite focussed on the industry. It's a huge business for us and that's going to be the case for decades to come."

The same logic that governs companies often governs countries, too. As the veteran energy analyst Ketan Joshi pointed out, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has set the de-rigeur target of "net zero by 2050," but, in April, indicated that "the trajectory to any net-zero outcome is not linear, and anyone who thinks it is I think doesn't get it." Morrison traced a curve in the air with his hand after he spoke, Joshi noted, "suggesting emissions reductions occur very late in the 30 years between now and 2050." "What we are seeing here is a mumbled acknowledgement of the macro problem, but an aggressive refusal to consider the micro components that comprise it," Joshi wrote. "It is the core engine of climate inaction."

This is absolutely correct. We call it "greenwashing," but that's too technical a term. We should call it what it is: people with a vested interest are learning how to slow-walk this crisis. They've done it with a thousand other crises, too, of course—one thinks of how, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregationists managed to delay action for a decade or more, focussing on a single phrase in the decision: "with all deliberate speed." But here they're doing it in the face of an absolute deadline imposed by science. As the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear, we must cut emissions in half by 2030 or our chances of meeting the targets that we set in Paris just six years ago fall by the wayside. Slow-walking is sabotage—smiling, and deadly.

And, in the course of that slow-walking, Big Oil is figuring out how to game the system in every way possible: as Inside Climate News recently reported, energy companies and their lobbyists are filling the infrastructure bill with billions of dollars for carbon-sequestration projects—essentially, getting taxpayers to fund equipment to capture the climate-destroying gases that Big Oil's products emit. That's absurd: it would be much cheaper to simply shut down those power plants and build out solar and wind power instead. But, for the fossil-fuel industry, preservation of the business model is paramount—they want to burn the stuff they own, no matter the consequences. The Biden Administration is caught in a very hard place: the White House is sincerely trying to accelerate climate action, but to do so it has to get past industry allies in the Democratic Party (Joe Manchin, for instance, who fears that we're "going to the EV" too fast), not to mention a business-friendly judiciary, which has, for instance, blocked Biden's plans to stop new drilling leases on federal lands. That's why, one guesses, you get leaders who know better, like the domestic-climate czar, Gina McCarthy, repeating old bromides about "all of the above" energy supply, or ignoring the increasingly bitter protests over follies like the Line 3 tar-sands pipeline, which runs through Minnesota.

The eventual outcome is not in doubt: eventually, the planet will run on renewable energy. But how long that transition takes will determine what kind of shape we leave the planet in. At the moment, the bankers and politicians in the driver's seat are taking us for a very long, very dangerous, and very expensive ride. We didn't ask for Hell when we climbed in the cab, but that may well be where we end up, unless we figure out how to grab the wheel.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 01, 2021, 01:33:12 PM
Wasn't sure whether to post this here or the covid thread - but went with here because I think it's a more future-looking piece than just a retrospective of covid (though this is from his new book out on the politics/economics of that, which sounds interesting). This piece is very interesting and I love that Keynes' line which I think should apply to climate as much as anything else. The fact it originated in WW2 is what I mean by we need to mobilise the state for this challenge as we would only otherwise for a war. I've mentioned before but that's also why I like the rhetoric of the "Green New Deal" because I think we have exhausted war as legitimising rhetoric/analogy (war on poverty/cancer/crime/drugs/terror) but need some way of understanding what we mean which is: "if we can actually do it, we can afford it":
QuoteWhat if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?
Sept. 1, 2021
(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/01/opinion/sunday/01Tooze/01Tooze-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp)
Credit...Matt Chase

By Adam Tooze

Mr. Tooze is an economic historian and the author of the forthcoming "Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy," from which this essay is adapted.

Almost two years since the novel coronavirus began to circulate through the human population, what lessons have we learned? And what do those lessons portend for future crises?

The most obvious is the hardest to digest: The world's decision makers have given us a staggering demonstration of their collective inability to grasp what it would actually mean to govern the deeply globalized and interconnected world they have created. There is only one limited realm in which something like a concerted response has been managed: money and finance. But governments' and central banks' success in holding the world's financial system together is contributing in the long run to inequality and social polarization. If 2020 was a trial run, we should be worried.

How did we get here? In a way, the failure was predictable. As instruments of coordination and cooperation, global institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization had proved fragile and toothless long before the pandemic. The explanation for this failure used to be geopolitical antagonism: Power blocs couldn't come together when they had competing priorities and agendas. It was thus tempting to imagine that some common threat — perhaps an alien invasion — might make a reality of the United Nations.


The coronavirus, one might think, was precisely such an invasion. And yet faced with this common threat, cooperation failed. Rather than a concerted shutdown of global aviation, frontiers were closed on the fly; supplies of personal protective equipment were grabbed at airports; haphazard travel bans continue to this day.

With America in the lead, the world was more divided than ever. America's failure to coordinate a response was no mere sideshow. Like it or not, this continental nation-state, with the world's largest economy, facing Europe, South America and the Pacific, is constitutive of globalism as we know it. It was a horrible irony that Donald Trump, the first American president to repudiate this, was in the White House when a truly global crisis hit. That encouraged talk of Covid as the first "post-American" crisis. But America will have to diminish a lot more before we can count it out. What 2020 showed, in fact, was that America's dysfunctions are the world's problem.

Vaccines are a case in point. The development of Covid vaccines was a collective triumph of researchers, governments and businesses around the world. Mr. Trump's Operation Warp Speed was the most successful of all. But that program was defined by the needs of the United States — not the world. Scandalously, the United States under Mr. Trump did not even join the United Nations' Covax initiative. Even after vaccine rollout began in earnest in 2021, the United States continued to hoard doses.

The failure to develop a global vaccination program is not just dismaying. It ought also to be profoundly puzzling: It defies the self-interests of the richest countries in the world. Booster shots aside, the greater the volume of infection, the greater the risk of variants even more dangerous than Delta.


And the greater the economic damage, too. In July, the I.M.F. estimated that an investment of $50 billion in a comprehensive campaign for vaccination and other virus control efforts would generate some $9 trillion in additional global output by 2025 — a ratio of 180 to 1. What investment could hope to yield a higher rate of return? And yet none of the members of the Group of 20 have stepped up, not Europe, not the United States, not even China. Billions of people will be forced to wait until 2023 to receive even their first shot.

This failure is all the more glaring for another lesson that the pandemic revealed: Budget constraints don't seem to exist; money is a mere technicality. The hard limits of financial sustainability, policed, we used to think, by ferocious bond markets, were blurred by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, they were erased.

Governments around the world issued debt as not seen since World War II, and yet interest rates plunged. As the private sector shut down, the public sector expanded. As government deficits grew, the monetary system responded elastically. Government spending made up for the loss of private incomes and spending.

This balancing of public and private spending works best if all countries are doing it simultaneously. This was one area where there was an alignment of national policies. In Europe, there was even a dramatic new phase of cooperation, with the launching of a 750 billion-euro recovery program funded, for the first time, by borrowing by Brussels rather than the European Union's member states. Providing a supportive frame for this global expansion was Mr. Trump's United States with its own gigantic fiscal and monetary expansion.

This was a surprise. Before 2020 there were conversations in the halls of the I.M.F. about whether a nationalist president and the flat-earthers in Congress would permit the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to play a leading role in a global financial crisis. Hank Paulson, George W. Bush's Treasury secretary in 2008, refused to endorse Mr. Trump for just this reason. But when it came to it, Mr. Trump's instincts all pushed in the right direction, at least on economic policy. If ever there was a president who took naturally to the idea of "fiat money," it was Donald Trump. So long as his name was on the checks, more was better.

It helped that the response was led by professional central bankers. Global finance is a world with a clear hierarchy, with the Fed at the top, followed by the European Central Bank, the People's Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England. But it is also a close-knit community with a shared mental map. Central bankers trade in electronic money that can be created at the tap of a keyboard. Creating it does not "cost" anything and does not require approval from elected legislatures. After 2008, tools like quantitative easing — the large-scale purchase of assets — were well oiled.

The world discovered that John Maynard Keynes was right when he declared during World War II that "anything we can actually do, we can afford." The sheer scale of the action was intoxicating. Among the left wing of the Democratic Party, it generated excitement: If money was a mere technicality, what else could be done? Action on social justice, climate change, the Green New Deal, all seemed within reach.


But there were three interrelated problems.

First, the sense that government action had been liberated from the tyranny of finance was illusory. The interventions triggered in March 2020 were not free acts of creative political will. The central bankers were not buying government debt to help finance lockdown life-support checks. They were acting to rescue financial markets from melting down. "Too big to fail" has become a systemic imperative.

That meant, second, that the interventions were double-edged. Propping up the Treasury market enabled government spending on furlough schemes and paycheck protection plans to be funded in the normal way, by borrowing. But government IOUs are fuel for private speculation. When liquidity is flushed indiscriminately into the financial system, it inflates bubbles, generating new risks and outsize gains for those with substantial portfolios. Nowhere was this polarizing effect more pronounced than in the United States. While tens of millions of struggled through the crisis, trillions of dollars piled up in the balance sheets of the wealthy.

Finally, the digital money creation was the easy bit. Keynes's bon mot has a sting in its tail: We can afford anything we can actually do. The problem is agreeing on what to do and how to do it. In giving us a glimpse of financial freedom, 2020 also robbed us of pretenses and excuses. If we are not doing a global vaccine plan, it is not for lack of funds. It is because indifference, or selfish calculation — vaccinate America first — or real technical obstacles prevent us from "actually" doing it.

It turns out that budget constraints, in all their artificiality, had spared us from facing the all-too-limited willingness and capacity for collective action. Now if you hear someone arguing that we cannot afford to bring billions of people out of poverty or we cannot afford to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, we know how to respond: Either you are invoking technological obstacles, in which case we need a suitably scaled, Warp Speed-style program to overcome them, or it is simply a matter of priorities. There are other things you would rather do.

The challenges won't go away, and they won't get smaller. The coronavirus was a shock, but a pandemic was long predicted. There is every reason to think that this one will not be a one-off. Whether the disease originated in zoonotic mutation or in a lab, there is more and worse where it came from. And it is not just viruses that we have to worry about, but also the mounting destabilization of the climate, collapsing biodiversity, large-scale desertification and pollution across the globe.


Looking back before 2020, it seemed that 2008 was the beginning of a new era of successive and interconnected disruptions, such as the global financial crisis, Mr. Trump's election, and the trade and tech war with China. It all had a familiar ring to it. Great-power competition, nationalism and banking crises all harked back to the 19th and 20th centuries. Then came 2020. It has given us a glimpse of something radically new: the old tensions of politics, finance and geopolitics intersecting with a natural shock on a global scale.

The Biden administration declares that "America is back." But to what is it returning? As recent events in Afghanistan demonstrate, President Biden is determined to clear the decks, brutally if necessary. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, at the top of the agenda is great-power competition with China — a 19th century writ large. But what of the interconnected global crises of the 21st century that cannot be attributed to a national antagonist? For those, the one model that we have is central bank financial market intervention — a form of crisis-fighting based on technical networks, rooted in existing hierarchies of power and backed by powerful self-interest. It is conservative, ad hoc and lacking in explicit political legitimacy. It tends to reinforce existing hierarchy and privilege.

The challenge for a progressive globalism fit for the next decades is both to multiply those crisis-fighting networks — into the fields of medical research and vaccine development, renewable energy and so on — and to make them more democratic, transparent and egalitarian.

Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) is an economic historian at Columbia and the author of the forthcoming "Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy," from which this essay is adapted. He writes the Chartbook newsletter.

Incidentally I love the line that if there's ever a President who took to fiat money it's Trump :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 02, 2021, 06:27:24 AM
There can't now be any doubt about reality of climate change, can there?


I wonder what happened to those wankers like 'Lord' Lawson who pedalled the anti-scientific propaganda?
Perhaps they're still enjoying the adulation from their vocal supporters on social media or maybe one or two of them might one day come forward to admit they were wrong?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 07, 2021, 01:24:20 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/europe-miss-2030-climate-goal-by-21-years-current-pace-study-2021-09-04/

QuoteEurope to miss 2030 climate goal by 21 years at current pace - study

CERNOBBIO, Italy, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Europe will miss a key climate target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 years unless it picks up the pace on energy transition measures and improves governance, a study involving Europe's biggest utility Enel (ENEI.MI) said.

At the current pace, Europe will only reach its 2030 target for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases in 2051, a study by Enel Foundation and the European House-Ambrosetti said.

In July, Brussels unveiled a raft of ambitious measures in its 'Fit for 55' package aimed at putting the European Union on track to meet the 2030 goal of reducing emissions by 55% from 1990 levels.

The study, presented on Saturday, said investments of around 3.6 trillion euros ($4.3 trillion) were needed across the bloc to reach 2030 goals, with a potential cumulative impact on the EU's economic growth of more than 8 trillion euros.

But it warned the EU needed to step up its efforts if this potential was to be realised.

"It is necessary to accelerate and equip ourselves with a governance system which is adequate to the extent of the challenge and capable of translating intentions into concrete action," Enel Chief Executive Francesco Starace said.

He said at the current pace Europe would only reach its 2030 target of raising the share of renewable energy to 40% of final consumption in 2043. "(That) would be too late".

To speed up the process, the study called for closer cooperation between member states on energy transition, adopting a regional approach to help boost market integration.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 07, 2021, 01:41:10 AM
QuoteCERNOBBIO, Italy

Mamma mia! You-a didn't see-a the graphite-a! It's not there-a!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 07, 2021, 02:27:36 AM
Quote from: mongers on September 02, 2021, 06:27:24 AM
There can't now be any doubt about reality of climate change, can there?


I wonder what happened to those wankers like 'Lord' Lawson who pedalled the anti-scientific propaganda?
Perhaps they're still enjoying the adulation from their vocal supporters on social media or maybe one or two of them might one day come forward to admit they were wrong?

I still see plenty of denial about.
Usually takes the tone of "they've been talking about this from 30 years and the beach is still there!".
There's one quote from a UN guy in 1990 saying action needs to be taken by 2000 or we will be doomed that they particularly seem to love... Not getting that action wasn't taken and so....

Saw a video the other day from a YouTube guy I follow.. Replying to a prager u video called "the war on cars" :bleeding:
They continue to go from stupid to stupider.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 07, 2021, 02:29:45 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/license-to-krill-the-destructive-demand-for-a-better-fish-oil

QuoteLicence to krill: the destructive demand for a 'better' fish oil

It's a costly expedition, through some of the roughest seas in the world, to reach the Antarctic peninsula. A journey through Drake Passage to Subarea 48.1 faces treacherous weather, where waves can reach 12 metres (40ft) high.

And yet it is a risk that 14 vessels considered worth taking last year alone, as countries increasingly venture into the Antarctic to catch a species with great value to the billion-dollar health supplement industry: krill.

Each roughly the size of a paperclip, Antarctic krill is the most abundant species on Earth. There are an estimated 400m tonnes of krill in the Antarctic alone. It is a key link in the food chain: krill contributes iron and other nutrients that fertilise the ocean, and is a vital food source for wildlife including whales, penguins and seals.

It also plays an integral part in the carbon cycle. The Southern Ocean is one of the largest carbon sinks in the world, and krill are so numerous they can influence atmospheric carbon levels. One study found that krill can remove up to 12bn tonnes of carbon from the Earth's atmosphere.

While krill have long been used in aquaculture to fatten farmed fish, krill oil has become a gold rush for the dietary supplements industry in the past decade. Marketed as a superior and sustainable alternative to fish oil pills, Antarctic krill products are touted as more effective in delivering omega-3 fatty acids to the bloodstream than fish oil, which has been linked to improved heart and brain health – among many other benefits. And there is no fishy aftertaste.

With growing concerns about overfishing and the quality of fish oil, producers also promote krill products as a premium and more environmentally friendly substitute. One bottle sold on Amazon promises krill "sustainably harvested from pristine waters ... to ensure maximum nutrient quality".

But for all the claims of sustainability, the rise in demand has seen quotas reached with alarming speed. A recent cross-border investigation into the global fishing industry by the Environmental Reporting Collective found that in the past year, catch limits for Antarctic krill in Subarea 48.1 were reached in 69 days, as opposed to an average of 130 days over the previous five years.

"It's pretty worrisome when you've got fisheries exploring these 'unexploited' areas or discovering large stocks of fish," says Teale Phelps Bondaroff, director of research at OceansAsia. "This really should raise eyebrows because what's really driving that expansion? Krill oil is obviously one factor."

The international organisation that manages the Antarctic krill fishery, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), insists their practices do not disrupt the marine ecosystem.

Krill vessels monitor their own locations, it says, and diligently report their catch to CCAMLR, which sets strict catch limits around the Antarctic.

But it is clear that in some areas – the most vulnerable ones, according to conservationists including Bondaroff – those limits are being disrupted as countries rush to join the race.

China is building the world's largest Antarctic krill trawler, scheduled to be completed in 2023, and the country more than doubled its catch of Antarctic krill from 50,423 tonnes in 2019 to 118,353 tonnes in 2020. Russia, too, is investing $640m (£460m) in krill fishing, and South Korea is also registering more ships.

The retail krill oil industry is projected to grow by more than 13% by 2023, though most of the krill catch still goes to feeding fish, pets and livestock. Aquaculture is the fastest-growing animal food industry, and Antarctic krill offer more nutrients and fewer pollutants, making it particularly attractive for farmed salmon.

"It's growing, and I think it's a question of 'can the fishery be effectively managed before it expands further?'" says Nicole Bransome, of Pew's Protecting Antarctica's Southern Ocean project.

Last year, more than half of the krill was caught by one company: Aker BioMarine. The largest industry player since the 1990s, it is part of the Aker empire controlled by the Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke. The company, which spans oil and gas, construction, marine biotechnology and energy, acknowledges that the catch has been going up in recent years, but insists: "We want to harvest, of course, but we want to secure our harvesting potential for 10 or a hundred years ... we need to be in a place where our activity is accepted by a wide range of stakeholders."

Although there are only about a dozen krill fishing vessels in the Antarctic, their number belies their impact. The ships are floating factories, some the size of football pitches, capable of vacuuming up more than 1,000 tonnes of krill a day.

"It's not like you could just take a small boat and go and start to harvest krill," says Ekaterina Uryupova, visiting fellow at Washington's Arctic Institute.

"You have to prepare yourself and be ready for all kinds of weather, for all kinds of situations. Then you have to find the best location to catch krill, and then once your fridges are full, you have to cover the same distance back."

Conservationists fear fishing is concentrated in areas crucial to species that depend on krill as a food source.

Rodolfo Werner, of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, says: "The fishery was fishing over and over in certain areas close to the coast where on one side are colonies of penguins and on the other side are areas popular for foraging whales."

Most vessels operate in Area 48, an immensely biodiverse region that is home to more than 62m tonnes of krill.

In 2010, CCAMLR set a catch limit of 620,000 tonnes across four areas to prevent concentrated fishing. In theory, once the limit is reached, all krill fishing must stop until the next year.

Krill fishing is within the limit but last year's catch in Area 48 was almost 450,000 tonnes, up by 15% from the year before.

Subarea 48.1 has the smallest limit, 155,000 tonnes, due to its significant ecological importance. Colonies of penguins and seals live close to the shore, and in the summer whales feed on krill. Conservationists are concerned that the catch limit has been reached eight times in the past decade.

"If you're really pushing up to the last number of krill that you can pull out of the water, that doesn't give any buffer for challenges like climate change," says Bondaroff.

Even within Subarea 48.1, fishing is concentrated in a tiny pocket. Between 2010 and 2018, 74% of the total catch there came around the Bransfield strait, which represents only 8% of the area. In another region, Subarea 48.3, it was even more concentrated: 95% of the catch came from just 5.6% of the area.

"So they're not overfishing in the entire Antarctic, but if you look at these very small areas, they are. And that's what actually matters to the wildlife there," says Bransome, who fears the quotas are so low and cover such a wide area that they fail to prevent such concentrated fishing.

In October, in a pivotal moment for krill, CCAMLR's 26 members, 25 countries and the EU, will decide at its annual meeting whether to revise catch limits for Area 48, or eliminate them altogether – which would happen if no agreement is reached.

"And that would allow the fishery to really concentrate their catch. If that happens, that could be quite destructive to the ecosystem," says Phil Trathan, a conservation biologist at the British Antarctic Survey.

CCAMLR argues that catches of krill in the Southern Ocean are at precautionary levels. It notes that less than 1% of krill in the Antarctic is fished annually.

"This is one of the few resources that is still underexploited in a very big way in the global oceans," says David Agnew, of the CCAMLR.

But with a higher interest in krill, scientists are concerned about the effect on the food chain.

"You cannot have an infinitely contracting and concentrating fishery with an increasing number of actors being involved and no change in that structure. Something has to change," says Andy Lowther, a quantitative ecologist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. "Either the quota needs to go up or the area needs to expand or fewer actors need to be involved in the fishery."

Research from last year suggests that concentrated krill fishing is reducing locally available amounts of krill, which has badly affected penguins, including population declines for certain species.

"When you're fishing for krill, what you're doing will affect the whole ecosystem, because every species in Antarctica feeds on krill or on another species that feeds on krill," says Werner.

Changes to krill populations are proving to be critical, too. A study published in June said krill populations are projected to fall by 30% by 2100, due to the climate crisis. The Antarctic peninsula is among the fastest-changing regions, warming almost 3C over the last 50 years.

In particular, krill are shifting south towards the pole as the ocean warms. If krill continue moving south, less food would be available for predators in sub-Antarctic islands, such as seals and penguins.

"We're not dealing with a static system. It's changing because of the warming planet," says Trathan. "I would say we're heading towards one of the most challenging years."

A 2019 study revealed that krill are already facing increasing difficulty in replenishing their population at Southern Ocean's northern edge, close to Area 48.

Says Bransome: "It really speaks to what we're doing to our oceans in general: that we fished so much that we now have to go down to this place that's at the bottom of the world."


(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxdThWBWsAMFSMU.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 13, 2021, 11:44:13 AM
Found this kind of cool - UK only I'm afraid - the carbon emissions of your town/city:
https://www.centreforcities.org/data/net-zero-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-my-city/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 15, 2021, 01:25:17 AM
A new UK study finds that the perceived generational divide on climate change (in the UK at least) is a myth :

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/15/generational-conflict-over-climate-crisis-is-a-myth-uk-study-finds

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 03:17:21 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 15, 2021, 01:25:17 AM
A new UK study finds that the perceived generational divide on climate change (in the UK at least) is a myth :

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/15/generational-conflict-over-climate-crisis-is-a-myth-uk-study-finds

This is hopeful news

Quote"Far from being an obsession of a young, activist few, support for measures that put our lives on a more sustainable footing as we look to building back from the Covid-19 pandemic command broad support across generations," he added. "They could be a route to increased engagement among groups increasingly disillusioned with politics."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 15, 2021, 03:47:49 PM
Ehh... Hopeful and worrying at the same time.
If it was just the oldies dismissing global warming we could just watch them die then save the world.
But that idiocy afflicts so many young too....

I've certainly seen it getting tied into conservative culture war business. Which means an awful lot of people actively working to encourage climate change..
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 03:51:50 PM
Quote from: Tyr on September 15, 2021, 03:47:49 PM
Ehh... Hopeful and worrying at the same time.
If it was just the oldies dismissing global warming we could just watch them die then save the world.
But that idiocy afflicts so many young too....

I've certainly seen it getting tied into conservative culture war business. Which means an awful lot of people actively working to encourage climate change..

If I am reading the article correctly it is not climate denial that is infecting the youth, but fatalism.  If they can be shown that something can be done then that may galvanize that whole demographic (well except for the few youth who are irretrievably conservative).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 15, 2021, 03:54:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 03:51:50 PM
If I am reading the article correctly it is not climate denial that is infecting the youth, but fatalism.  If they can be shown that something can be done then that may galvanize that whole demographic (well except for the few youth who are irretrievably conservative).
Yeah I think there is a strong fatalism/nihilism around this topic in younger people - and it isn't helped by politicians who want action.

It's a challenge of climate politics of how you simultaneously communicate the severity of the issue without making it seem so big or so insurmountable or inevitable that it actually starts sort of de-mobilising people. I'm not sure many have got the balance right (and the media have a role to play here too).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:01:54 PM
Sheilbh, it is the same shit with covid. Why does the identification of a major problem in any way imply that there is a decent solution?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 04:27:44 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:01:54 PM
Sheilbh, it is the same shit with covid. Why does the identification of a major problem in any way imply that there is a decent solution?

I don't understand, with COVID there is an obvious and easy answer - vaccination.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:29:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 04:27:44 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:01:54 PM
Sheilbh, it is the same shit with covid. Why does the identification of a major problem in any way imply that there is a decent solution?

I don't understand, with COVID there is an obvious and easy answer - vaccination.

I more had in mind the situation in March 2020--I agree vaccination is a current obvious and easy answer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 04:31:40 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:29:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 04:27:44 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 15, 2021, 04:01:54 PM
Sheilbh, it is the same shit with covid. Why does the identification of a major problem in any way imply that there is a decent solution?

I don't understand, with COVID there is an obvious and easy answer - vaccination.

I more had in mind the situation in March 2020--I agree vaccination is a current obvious and easy answer.

Ah, got it.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:24:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 15, 2021, 03:54:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 15, 2021, 03:51:50 PM
If I am reading the article correctly it is not climate denial that is infecting the youth, but fatalism.  If they can be shown that something can be done then that may galvanize that whole demographic (well except for the few youth who are irretrievably conservative).
Yeah I think there is a strong fatalism/nihilism around this topic in younger people - and it isn't helped by politicians who want action.

It's a challenge of climate politics of how you simultaneously communicate the severity of the issue without making it seem so big or so insurmountable or inevitable that it actually starts sort of de-mobilising people. I'm not sure many have got the balance right (and the media have a role to play here too).
That is the trick, isn't it?  The idea that we can do this, but at the same time doing this is going to be incredibly punishing and that so many things that you took for granted will have to be taken away from you is an incredibly hard line to walk.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 16, 2021, 12:37:20 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:24:51 PM
That is the trick, isn't it?  The idea that we can do this, but at the same time doing this is going to be incredibly punishing and that so many things that you took for granted will have to be taken away from you is an incredibly hard line to walk.
Yeah that's the other bit that's tough - and I actually think with good policies (backed by public money) it won't be that transformative on the lives of individuals in the developed world (because we can afford to make good policy decisions).

I've said before but I actually think the most important event in the democratic world in recent years was the Australian election - outweighing Trump or Brexit. Not necessarily because of the direct impact, though they're bad as Australia's a big emitter/fossil fuel state, but because of what it told us about climate and democratic politics. I think Australia's a really key case as a country that is disproportionately affected by climate crisis and as a major fossil fuel producer and exporter. Labour went all in on climate as their big issue and had that challenging line of this is an enormous issue, this may require fundamental shifts to your lives (especially in a country that produces a lot of raw materials like coal) but the future will be great and have good green jobs and be a better country. They lost.

I've said it before but it's why I like the rhetorical device of Green New Deal or, in the UK, Green Industrial Revolution because it taps into historic examples of transformative change that helps frame the issue for people. I still think the natural rhetoric is of war - total mobilisation of the state to fight a serious, existential challenge (same for covid) - but I think that rhetorical seam has been fully tapped after the wars on drugs, poverty, cancer, crime and terror :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.

Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on September 16, 2021, 02:13:20 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.
Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.
I wonder.  There are certainly things that would be huge changes, like the inability to travel in the winter. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 02:23:10 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 02:13:20 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.
Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.
I wonder.  There are certainly things that would be huge changes, like the inability to travel in the winter.

We're trying to reduce carbon output by 30-50%.  Which don't get me wrong will be hard!  But it's not impossible.

Here's the break-down of Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions.  https://www.alberta.ca/climate-change-alberta.aspx  Residential use is only 6%.  Oil sands produce 26%, electricity 18% and oil and gas mining 17%.

As we move to decrease oil and gas demand around the world our production will taper down as well, so we can potentially see big decreases in those numbers.  Then we really have to tackle electricity generation.  Again a combination of more renewables like wind and solar here in Alberta, and invest in increased production of hydro in BC and Manitoba should help a lot.

With more green electricity that then opens up lots of room for electric vehicles to reduce transportation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 16, 2021, 03:52:15 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 02:23:10 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 02:13:20 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.
Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.
I wonder.  There are certainly things that would be huge changes, like the inability to travel in the winter.

We're trying to reduce carbon output by 30-50%.  Which don't get me wrong will be hard!  But it's not impossible.

Here's the break-down of Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions.  https://www.alberta.ca/climate-change-alberta.aspx  Residential use is only 6%.  Oil sands produce 26%, electricity 18% and oil and gas mining 17%.

As we move to decrease oil and gas demand around the world our production will taper down as well, so we can potentially see big decreases in those numbers.  Then we really have to tackle electricity generation.  Again a combination of more renewables like wind and solar here in Alberta, and invest in increased production of hydro in BC and Manitoba should help a lot.

With more green electricity that then opens up lots of room for electric vehicles to reduce transportation.

Yeah, once site C comes on line that will help out Alberta quite a bit.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Neil on September 16, 2021, 05:33:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 02:23:10 PM
With more green electricity that then opens up lots of room for electric vehicles to reduce transportation.
I think the problem is that until they solve the cabin-heating problem, the transportation issue will be a problem.  I'm more hopeful for using wind, solar and the like to replace electrical generation sources, and perhaps even increase electrical heating for homes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 16, 2021, 06:21:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.

Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.

This is just a symptom of the "there is a solution to problems that makes everyone happy" type of thinking that sounds great but is bullshit.

Canada is cold as fuck. Cold as fuck places generally require massive amounts of energy for enjoyable human life. Canada is an enlightened land and tries its best on climate stuff unlike the retrograde US that has a party convinced it is all a hoax. So Canada tries hard, but it can't overcome nature and the per capita carbon emissions in Canada exceed those in the US and are among the worst in the world.

Canada could acknowledge this and implement severely restrictive immigration policies and possibly even encourage out migration. Of course that isn't a policy in line with economic growth and in many cases social justice. But the trade offs are never acknowledged and we pretend that there is some goldilocks solution that is going to make everything okay.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2021, 06:54:05 PM
Well, what are the alternatives? Fatalistic acceptance, pretending it doesn't exist, or moaning hopelessly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 16, 2021, 07:16:20 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 16, 2021, 06:21:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.

Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.

This is just a symptom of the "there is a solution to problems that makes everyone happy" type of thinking that sounds great but is bullshit.

Canada is cold as fuck. Cold as fuck places generally require massive amounts of energy for enjoyable human life. Canada is an enlightened land and tries its best on climate stuff unlike the retrograde US that has a party convinced it is all a hoax. So Canada tries hard, but it can't overcome nature and the per capita carbon emissions in Canada exceed those in the US and are among the worst in the world.

Canada could acknowledge this and implement severely restrictive immigration policies and possibly even encourage out migration. Of course that isn't a policy in line with economic growth and in many cases social justice. But the trade offs are never acknowledged and we pretend that there is some goldilocks solution that is going to make everything okay.

Current numbers has Canada emitting 15.5 tons per capita compared to the US' 15.2. If everyone in Canada moved to the US, it wouldn't really move the needle much either.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 16, 2021, 07:17:18 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 16, 2021, 06:21:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.

Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.

This is just a symptom of the "there is a solution to problems that makes everyone happy" type of thinking that sounds great but is bullshit.

Canada is cold as fuck. Cold as fuck places generally require massive amounts of energy for enjoyable human life. Canada is an enlightened land and tries its best on climate stuff unlike the retrograde US that has a party convinced it is all a hoax. So Canada tries hard, but it can't overcome nature and the per capita carbon emissions in Canada exceed those in the US and are among the worst in the world.

Canada could acknowledge this and implement severely restrictive immigration policies and possibly even encourage out migration. Of course that isn't a policy in line with economic growth and in many cases social justice. But the trade offs are never acknowledged and we pretend that there is some goldilocks solution that is going to make everything okay.

Fun fact. BC and Quebec are entirely energy self sufficient and green - Hydro.

Another fun fact, when BC's newest hydro project comes online it will be able to supply all of Alberta's electrical needs.

Another fun fact, if the energy grid and sufficient battery storage is developed, those two provinces could supply the whole country with its electrical needs.

And next time it gets "cold as fuck" in a US city - check out the temperature in Vancouver or Victoria.   :P


What we really need to do is bring in far more immigrants because really - we are the hope for the world.   ;)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 10:07:57 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 16, 2021, 06:21:21 PM
This is just a symptom of the "there is a solution to problems that makes everyone happy" type of thinking that sounds great but is bullshit.

Canada is cold as fuck. Cold as fuck places generally require massive amounts of energy for enjoyable human life. Canada is an enlightened land and tries its best on climate stuff unlike the retrograde US that has a party convinced it is all a hoax. So Canada tries hard, but it can't overcome nature and the per capita carbon emissions in Canada exceed those in the US and are among the worst in the world.

Canada could acknowledge this and implement severely restrictive immigration policies and possibly even encourage out migration. Of course that isn't a policy in line with economic growth and in many cases social justice. But the trade offs are never acknowledged and we pretend that there is some goldilocks solution that is going to make everything okay.

There is not some goldilocks solution that makes everyone happy.

Maybe you missed the point where if declining world oil demand will in turn help Alberta reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from oil production (which are massive).  That will have the unhappy effect of throwing hundreds of thousands of Albertans out of excellent high-paying jobs.

It's going to happen eventually - I'm just opposed to some pollyanna-ish bullshit of "keep it in the ground and the world will magically not turn to alternative sources of oil".  Reduce demand, not supply.

Canada has not really tried very hard at all.  We've talked a good game and done little to nothing or 30 years.

Home heating is really a tiny part of our overall greenhouse gas emissions.  We can do better but that's not where our problem lies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 17, 2021, 03:52:41 AM
Not promising for Tyr and Sheilbh's plans of banning cars. :P

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/16/pollution-on-some-new-uk-trains-13-times-one-of-londons-busiest-roads

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 17, 2021, 03:59:13 AM
That's only an argument to electrify those rail stretches that currently are not. Or run the train on hydrogen.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 05:29:56 AM
Quote from: Jacob on September 16, 2021, 07:16:20 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 16, 2021, 06:21:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 16, 2021, 12:59:21 PM
I think there will be a lot of things that people will notice.  Getting rid of international travel and consumer plastic items would be gigantic.  Of course, my experience would be significantly different from your own.  I'm not even sure that life in my area is practically possible in a low-carbon world.

Low carbon is not zero carbon.  There are options for Alberta.

This is just a symptom of the "there is a solution to problems that makes everyone happy" type of thinking that sounds great but is bullshit.

Canada is cold as fuck. Cold as fuck places generally require massive amounts of energy for enjoyable human life. Canada is an enlightened land and tries its best on climate stuff unlike the retrograde US that has a party convinced it is all a hoax. So Canada tries hard, but it can't overcome nature and the per capita carbon emissions in Canada exceed those in the US and are among the worst in the world.

Canada could acknowledge this and implement severely restrictive immigration policies and possibly even encourage out migration. Of course that isn't a policy in line with economic growth and in many cases social justice. But the trade offs are never acknowledged and we pretend that there is some goldilocks solution that is going to make everything okay.

Current numbers has Canada emitting 15.5 tons per capita compared to the US' 15.2. If everyone in Canada moved to the US, it wouldn't really move the needle much either.

You are comparing Canada to one of the worst emitters? The world is under 5 and Europe is about 7.5.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 11:11:10 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 16, 2021, 06:54:05 PM
Well, what are the alternatives? Fatalistic acceptance, pretending it doesn't exist, or moaning hopelessly.

those are the approaches we take to much more serious problems: death, the inevitable demise of the planet, and ultimately demise of the universe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 11:19:51 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 05:29:56 AM
You are comparing Canada to one of the worst emitters? The world is under 5 and Europe is about 7.5.

Are you proposing that everyone should leave the US as well, then?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 11:39:52 AM
Quote from: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 11:19:51 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 05:29:56 AM
You are comparing Canada to one of the worst emitters? The world is under 5 and Europe is about 7.5.

Are you proposing that everyone should leave the US as well, then?

I'm not. I'm also not proposing that everyone leave Canada, or Canada curtail immigration.

I'm pointing out that the standard political approach is going to be ineffective: identifying a series of problems, and in isolation coming up with pithy strategies to deal with each that will appeal to middle brow dilettantes such as ourselves. Though maybe self satisfying and electorally successful.

There are so many downstream effects to any number of policies when it comes to climate change that if you actually want to prioritize it, it needs to be in every policy decision. And Canada alone is just a smart of a global topic.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on September 17, 2021, 11:43:02 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 16, 2021, 07:17:18 PM

Fun fact. BC and Quebec are entirely energy self sufficient and green - Hydro.


I know there are a lot of pluses of hydroelectric power over fossil fuel extraction, but to call building a gigantic hydroelectric dam on a major (or any size, really) river system "entirely green" is quite a stretch.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 17, 2021, 12:06:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 16, 2021, 10:07:57 PM
Maybe you missed the point where if declining world oil demand will in turn help Alberta reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from oil production (which are massive).  That will have the unhappy effect of throwing hundreds of thousands of Albertans out of excellent high-paying jobs.

Like with every technological change.  Lots of people had high paying job (for the time) in tobacco plant.  Not so many nowadays.  Yet, we ain't all unemployed.

Transition takes time.  The longer Alberta tries to hide its hand in the sand, the harder the shock will be.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 12:17:01 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 11:39:52 AM
I'm not. I'm also not proposing that everyone leave Canada, or Canada curtail immigration.

I'm pointing out that the standard political approach is going to be ineffective: identifying a series of problems, and in isolation coming up with pithy strategies to deal with each that will appeal to middle brow dilettantes such as ourselves. Though maybe self satisfying and electorally successful.

There are so many downstream effects to any number of policies when it comes to climate change that if you actually want to prioritize it, it needs to be in every policy decision. And Canada alone is just a smart of a global topic.

A fair criticism.

What do your propose instead?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 17, 2021, 02:08:18 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on September 17, 2021, 11:43:02 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 16, 2021, 07:17:18 PM

Fun fact. BC and Quebec are entirely energy self sufficient and green - Hydro.


I know there are a lot of pluses of hydroelectric power over fossil fuel extraction, but to call building a gigantic hydroelectric dam on a major (or any size, really) river system "entirely green" is quite a stretch.

Is there any entirely green generation of electricity which is constructed in a way that is green?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 02:30:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 17, 2021, 02:08:18 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on September 17, 2021, 11:43:02 AM
I know there are a lot of pluses of hydroelectric power over fossil fuel extraction, but to call building a gigantic hydroelectric dam on a major (or any size, really) river system "entirely green" is quite a stretch.

Is there any entirely green generation of electricity which is constructed in a way that is green?

"The perfect is impossible, so we might as well not bother" is something we're going to be hearing a lot of in the next long while I expect.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 17, 2021, 02:31:21 PM
Yeah
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 18, 2021, 12:30:36 PM
:huh: Can't remember the game but Sky just advertising for what they're aiming - in partnership with the Premier League and for COP26 - to be the Premier League's first net zero game.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 18, 2021, 12:32:24 PM
Surprise surprise, another scoreless soccer game.


:P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on September 18, 2021, 12:38:33 PM
Quote from: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 02:30:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 17, 2021, 02:08:18 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on September 17, 2021, 11:43:02 AM
I know there are a lot of pluses of hydroelectric power over fossil fuel extraction, but to call building a gigantic hydroelectric dam on a major (or any size, really) river system "entirely green" is quite a stretch.

Is there any entirely green generation of electricity which is constructed in a way that is green?

"The perfect is impossible, so we might as well not bother" is something we're going to be hearing a lot of in the next long while I expect.

What we will hear equally is lies about how some solutions are "entirely green" when they are not.

People would rather emote than think, unfortunately.  Rational analysis of costs and benefits will sink under the weight of the chest-pounding about how one's tiny locality is greener than another tiny locality, when that fact is utterly meaningless in the face of the problem.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 18, 2021, 01:04:27 PM
We can always count on Grumbles.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 21, 2021, 04:24:30 PM
Seems like COP26 announcements are starting to heat up and this one is particularly striking as I understand China finances about 70% of international coal plant building:
QuoteKarl Mathiesen
@KarlMathiesen
BREAK: Xi Jinping says China will stop building coal plants overseas. This almost completely ends the international finance of coal in a single sentence.

Also Biden is doubling the US commitment to support developing countries' energy transition.

Edit: For wider context - South Korea and Japan are also ending funding this year:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_1UNtRUcAgDTp-?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 22, 2021, 03:27:48 PM
A minor bit of positive news

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/reflective-white-streets-urban-heat-island-effect/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

How is it better?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:23:59 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

Agreed, but our oil sands extraction projects are worse that the methods used by Norway in terms of generation of emissions so that largely explains the difference.  If that extraction activity was reduced or they could figure out a better way to extract the resource, our number would go down - considerably.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:24:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

How is it better?

Oil
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:36:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:24:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

How is it better?

Oil

My rough google-based calculation puts oil production per capita in Norway at three times oil production per capita in Canada. Ie Canada's oil production per capita is closer to Sweden's than to Norway's.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:53:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:36:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:24:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

How is it better?

Oil

My rough google-based calculation puts oil production per capita in Norway at three times oil production per capita in Canada. Ie Canada's oil production per capita is closer to Sweden's than to Norway's.

Right you are.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 12:58:56 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:36:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 12:24:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 23, 2021, 12:14:34 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 17, 2021, 05:34:36 AM
Sweden has around 4 depending on who you ask, and has a roughly similar climate to Canada.

Norway is a better comp.  They are at 9.

How is it better?

Oil

My rough google-based calculation puts oil production per capita in Norway at three times oil production per capita in Canada. Ie Canada's oil production per capita is closer to Sweden's than to Norway's.

What the fuck are you smoking?

Sweden's oil production per day - 12,000

Canada's oil production per day - 5,000,000

Norway's oil production per day - 2,000,000



Sweden's population - 10,000,000

Canada's population - 37,000,000

Norway's population - 5 million

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 23, 2021, 01:15:54 PM
Sweden: 12,000 / 10,000,000 = 0.0012
Canada: 5,000,000 / 37,000,000 = 0.13
Norway: 2,000,000 / 5,000,000 = 0.4
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 01:20:26 PM
I mean any comparison of carbon dioxide between countries is gonna be pretty rough, because there are all kinds of differences between them. Norway for instance gets pretty much all its power from hydro, which is hard for most major countries to achieve.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:21:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.

I'm just going to quote this here for posterity's sake... :whistle:


To be fair to Brain, when I first looked up the figures I thought he was right - but then I realized that the graph I was looking at (which listed about 5,100 barrels of oil) was denominated in the number of thousands of barrels of oil.  I confirmed it with the text accompanying it.

Decimal places can be tricky sometimes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 01:24:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:21:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.

I'm just going to quote this here for posterity's sake... :whistle:


To be fair to Brain, when I first looked up the figures I thought he was right - but then I realized that the graph I was looking at (which listed about 5,100 barrels of oil) was denominated in the number of thousands of barrels of oil.  I confirmed it with the text accompanying it.

Decimal places can be tricky sometimes.

I'm not sure I follow.

FWIW Wiki (I know) agrees with me and CC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 23, 2021, 01:33:35 PM
Using BB's number 0.13 (Canada) is closer to 0.0012 (Sweden), with a delta of  0.1288, than it is to 0.4 (Norway) with a delta of 0.27.

Using wikipedia's numbers 100,000 (Canada) is closer to 0 (Sweden), with a delta of 100,000, than it is to 300,000 (Norway) with a delta of 200,000.

(this is per capita, in absolute numbers Canada is closer to Norway than Sweden as it produces more)

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:34:24 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 01:24:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:21:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.

I'm just going to quote this here for posterity's sake... :whistle:


To be fair to Brain, when I first looked up the figures I thought he was right - but then I realized that the graph I was looking at (which listed about 5,100 barrels of oil) was denominated in the number of thousands of barrels of oil.  I confirmed it with the text accompanying it.

Decimal places can be tricky sometimes.

I'm not sure I follow.

FWIW Wiki (I know) agrees with me and CC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production

Your list doesn't even include Sweden. :wacko:

Norway produces about 4x as much oil per capita as Canada.

Canada produces about 100x as much oil as Sweden per capita.

Which country is the better comparison for Canada?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 01:39:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:34:24 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 01:24:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:21:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.

I'm just going to quote this here for posterity's sake... :whistle:


To be fair to Brain, when I first looked up the figures I thought he was right - but then I realized that the graph I was looking at (which listed about 5,100 barrels of oil) was denominated in the number of thousands of barrels of oil.  I confirmed it with the text accompanying it.

Decimal places can be tricky sometimes.

I'm not sure I follow.

FWIW Wiki (I know) agrees with me and CC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production

Your list doesn't even include Sweden. :wacko:

Norway produces about 4x as much oil per capita as Canada.

Canada produces about 100x as much oil as Sweden per capita.

Which country is the better comparison for Canada?

In my calculation I put Sweden's production at 0.

I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning regarding which makes the best comparison.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:58:55 PM
Quote from: Jacob on September 23, 2021, 01:33:35 PM
Using BB's number 0.13 (Canada) is closer to 0.0012 (Sweden), with a delta of  0.1288, than it is to 0.4 (Norway) with a delta of 0.27.

Using wikipedia's numbers 100,000 (Canada) is closer to 0 (Sweden), with a delta of 100,000, than it is to 300,000 (Norway) with a delta of 200,000.

(this is per capita, in absolute numbers Canada is closer to Norway than Sweden as it produces more)

Just to be clear - this is like arguing that Donald Trump (net worth around $2 billion) has more in common with a homeless person (net worth zero), than he does with Jeff Bezos (net worth $195 billion), because a $2 billion difference is less than a $193 billion difference.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 23, 2021, 01:59:04 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 21, 2021, 04:24:30 PM
Seems like COP26 announcements are starting to heat up and this one is particularly striking as I understand China finances about 70% of international coal plant building:
QuoteKarl Mathiesen
@KarlMathiesen
BREAK: Xi Jinping says China will stop building coal plants overseas. This almost completely ends the international finance of coal in a single sentence.

Also Biden is doubling the US commitment to support developing countries' energy transition.

Edit: For wider context - South Korea and Japan are also ending funding this year:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_1UNtRUcAgDTp-?format=png&name=small)

What is it about UK restarting their own coal plants?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 23, 2021, 02:15:14 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 23, 2021, 01:59:04 PM
What is it about UK restarting their own coal plants?
It could be one of two things I think.

One is Drax power plant. It's now largely biomass but started life as a coal-fired plant, different units have been shut down and then converted to biomass. I think the last few coal units are supposed to be shut down this year (then converted) but given the current energy crisis they have said if requested they can delay shutting them down.

The other is a proposed new coal mine in Cumbria. Generally these are being shut down and there are very few left operating. I'm torn on this. My basic view is that we shouldn't open new coal mines. But the proposal is for a mine that would basically only produce coke for steel manufacturing. The last UK steel producers almost went bust in the 2010s or so and I strongly supported the idea of nationalising them because I think it is important to have some domestic steel manufacturing capacity. There is no UK coke production so it's largely imported mainly from Australia, Russia and Colombia. So I sort of feel like if I wanted that industry to survive and I think it should exist domestically then I should accept the UK taking the hit on exctracting the fossil fuels for it and it sort of living on our carbon budget. But I don't know :hmm:

Coal-fired power plants in general are still shutting down and will be unlawful from 2025.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 23, 2021, 02:18:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:58:55 PM
Quote from: Jacob on September 23, 2021, 01:33:35 PM
Using BB's number 0.13 (Canada) is closer to 0.0012 (Sweden), with a delta of  0.1288, than it is to 0.4 (Norway) with a delta of 0.27.

Using wikipedia's numbers 100,000 (Canada) is closer to 0 (Sweden), with a delta of 100,000, than it is to 300,000 (Norway) with a delta of 200,000.

(this is per capita, in absolute numbers Canada is closer to Norway than Sweden as it produces more)

Just to be clear - this is like arguing that Donald Trump (net worth around $2 billion) has more in common with a homeless person (net worth zero), than he does with Jeff Bezos (net worth $195 billion), because a $2 billion difference is less than a $193 billion difference.

I don't see it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 02:58:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 23, 2021, 01:21:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 23, 2021, 01:11:15 PM
Now do the math BB.  Brain is roughly correct.

the real problem with Brain's per capita calculation is that it does not account for the emissions per barrel of oil.  That is Canada's problem.

I'm just going to quote this here for posterity's sake... :whistle:


To be fair to Brain, when I first looked up the figures I thought he was right - but then I realized that the graph I was looking at (which listed about 5,100 barrels of oil) was denominated in the number of thousands of barrels of oil.  I confirmed it with the text accompanying it.

Decimal places can be tricky sometimes.

I think that is what got me, when I checked his math.  I did not think he could possibly be right but when I checked I think I made the same mistake he did - I just assumed the figures I had used were the ones you posted.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maximus on September 23, 2021, 05:11:58 PM
Oil per capita is a ratio. A factor of 100 is clearly a greater difference than a factor of 3.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 03, 2021, 08:23:17 AM
So Austria does a small reform of income taxes, and as part of that there'll be a Carbon tax. The tax will rise over the next years from 35/ton CO2 in 2022, to 55/ton CO2 in 2025. In turn, households will receive a climate rebate of 100 EUR per adult and 50 per child. The idea, obviously, to incentivize people to try and save on the tax to retain more of the benefit.

So far so good, but it wouldn't be Austria if there weren't exceptions. "Places with bad public transport connection" will receive special benefits to not punish them unduly for relying on cars.

This has raised some questions whether that's really fair - e.g. a manager living in a nice house in the countryside with his family might get an additional rebate, while a single mom who lives in a rental apartment in Vienna and heats with an old, inefficient gas boiler that her landlord refuses to replace might end up paying more.

Austria will incentivize people to switch away from oil heating (I don't think that's common in Vienna, but might be in the countryside). The Greens were pushing for adjusting the tax for diesel fuel (currently the tax on diesel is over 25% lower than on other car fuel), but couldn't get it through.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 04, 2021, 12:22:34 AM
Well the whole point of a carbon tax is to motivate people not to pay it...by using less carbon. Giving them loopholes provides motivations alright just not the right ones.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 04, 2021, 11:56:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 04, 2021, 12:22:34 AM
Well the whole point of a carbon tax is to motivate people not to pay it...by using less carbon. Giving them loopholes provides motivations alright just not the right ones.

Yeah, incentivize electric cars, not carbon-spewing ones.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 04, 2021, 10:33:13 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 03, 2021, 08:23:17 AM
This has raised some questions whether that's really fair - e.g. a manager living in a nice house in the countryside with his family might get an additional rebate, while a single mom who lives in a rental apartment in Vienna and heats with an old, inefficient gas boiler that her landlord refuses to replace might end up paying more.

True, but it would be unfair to pay a tax when you have no alternatrive.

The single mom in a rental apartment will pay more for her rent, but she will have the option of moving elsewhere where a landlord might adopt another type of heating.

I could be tempted to be in favor of some increases for existing social aids, or maybe even some new, to people in this situation, but then that would diminish the pressure on the landlord to change its heating system since his tenants would be subsidized for his bad choices...  Not a very practical solution.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:16:53 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 04, 2021, 10:33:13 PM
The single mom in a rental apartment will pay more for her rent, but she will have the option of moving elsewhere where a landlord might adopt another type of heating.

I could be tempted to be in favor of some increases for existing social aids, or maybe even some new, to people in this situation, but then that would diminish the pressure on the landlord to change its heating system since his tenants would be subsidized for his bad choices...  Not a very practical solution.

That's the thing, there's no incentive for landlords to change anything because all running costs and maintenance are covered by the tenant. My previous apartment's gas boiler was from the 70s. My current is "only" from ca. mid-90s. As long as they're running, they're rarely replaced (unless there's a full renovation). About half of Vienna households are heating and have hot water like this.

New apartments usually have central heating for the whole building (though not always) or remote heating, but they're more expensive.

I agree that softening the blow of the new regulations (at least for a while) makes sense, but the way it's implemented it only asks "do you possibly need a car" instead of looking at a broader approach. Even so, other big cities in Austria will still get a higher subsidy than Vienna despite having similarly good public transport, which leads some to see it as another example of the ÖVP dunking on Vienna. Meanwhile they keep pushing for more roads and highways while public transport in rural areas is cut back.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 05, 2021, 05:01:53 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:16:53 AM
I agree that softening the blow of the new regulations (at least for a while) makes sense, but the way it's implemented it only asks "do you possibly need a car" instead of looking at a broader approach. Even so, other big cities in Austria will still get a higher subsidy than Vienna despite having similarly good public transport, which leads some to see it as another example of the ÖVP dunking on Vienna. Meanwhile they keep pushing for more roads and highways while public transport in rural areas is cut back.
I think it's the domestic bit of the wider climate justice piece. There will be new costs and I think it is essential to make sure those are distributed in a progressive because I think otherwise you wil end up with resistance to measures necessary for the energy transition.

That sort of happened with the gilets jaunes and I think too many people have learned the wrong lesson - which is that environmental measures are risky, rather than environmental measures that don't also have support for the poorest (particularly if the rest of the economy is not great for them at that time).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 05, 2021, 07:17:00 AM
It is the big problem with this stuff.
We want to incentivise people to do away with their cats. Though obviously if you live in a rural area it's unavoidable that you need a car to live.
The trouble is if we set up taxes in a way to allow for this then may it not just encourage rich people to move to rural areas... Which isn't what we want.
This is becoming pretty relative now with the back to the office vs work from home forever movement. There's talk of extra payments for going into the office....which is really just encouraging people to live in an inconvenient place.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 05, 2021, 07:29:13 AM
Last month was the 2nd warmest September ever recorded in the UK.   :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 07:37:26 AM
Quote from: mongers on October 05, 2021, 07:29:13 AM
Last month was the 2nd warmest September ever recorded in the UK.   :hmm:

Was the warmest last year?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 07:40:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 04, 2021, 10:33:13 PM

True, but it would be unfair to pay a tax when you have no alternatrive.

Do electric cars not exist? They are not even particularly expensive at this point.

Now maybe they need to be more specifically designed for rural use, but the whole point is to incentivize private actors to solve the problem out of self-interest. The whole point is to unlock human ingenuity to find alternatives.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 05, 2021, 09:41:19 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:16:53 AM
That's the thing, there's no incentive for landlords to change anything because all running costs and maintenance are covered by the tenant. My previous apartment's gas boiler was from the 70s. My current is "only" from ca. mid-90s. As long as they're running, they're rarely replaced (unless there's a full renovation). About half of Vienna households are heating and have hot water like this.
If, as a landlord, my cost increase and I shift the rent to my tenants, there comes a point where other buildings will be much cheaper than mine.  People will move and I'll have a higher vacancy rate than my competitors.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 05, 2021, 11:02:02 AM
Viper - interesting you assume renters have a free choice of where to live.
Vienna I understand has quite a housing supply problem

Quote from: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 07:40:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 04, 2021, 10:33:13 PM

True, but it would be unfair to pay a tax when you have no alternatrive.

Do electric cars not exist? They are not even particularly expensive at this point.

Now maybe they need to be more specifically designed for rural use, but the whole point is to incentivize private actors to solve the problem out of self-interest. The whole point is to unlock human ingenuity to find alternatives.
They do.
But the idea we can just sub our petrol cars one to one with electric cars and keep society exactly as it is is misplaced.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 05, 2021, 11:57:19 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 07:40:56 AM
Do electric cars not exist? They are not even particularly expensive at this point.

Now maybe they need to be more specifically designed for rural use, but the whole point is to incentivize private actors to solve the problem out of self-interest. The whole point is to unlock human ingenuity to find alternatives.
they exist in limited quantities and not in enough model variations, as we speak, to satisfy market needs.

To get the equivalent comfort of my car, currently, on a 100k$ Tesla would satisfy me.  That's way to high for my tastes and modest means. 

But give it a few more years and it's going to change.  Much more models are announced for the near future.  It's just that right now, alternatives are limited.  And since cities are proposing that their citizens adopt urban transport, it ain't fair to tax people with no such service, or a very defficient one.  Electric cars eliminate CO2 pollution, but not traffic jams or road degradation. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:22:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 05, 2021, 09:41:19 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:16:53 AM
That's the thing, there's no incentive for landlords to change anything because all running costs and maintenance are covered by the tenant. My previous apartment's gas boiler was from the 70s. My current is "only" from ca. mid-90s. As long as they're running, they're rarely replaced (unless there's a full renovation). About half of Vienna households are heating and have hot water like this.
If, as a landlord, my cost increase and I shift the rent to my tenants, there comes a point where other buildings will be much cheaper than mine.  People will move and I'll have a higher vacancy rate than my competitors.

Your costs as landlord don't increase, though. The tenant has all the utilities contracts. I learned this year that replacing the rubber lining in my shower cabin to prevent leakage is maintenance that I, as tenant, have to cover. Same with maintenance and fuel of the gas boiler (though the landlord has to replace anything that properly breaks, provided you maintained it properly which you better create a paper trail for).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 01:28:57 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 05, 2021, 11:02:02 AM
Viper - interesting you assume renters have a free choice of where to live.
Vienna I understand has quite a housing supply problem

Quote from: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 07:40:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on October 04, 2021, 10:33:13 PM

True, but it would be unfair to pay a tax when you have no alternatrive.

Do electric cars not exist? They are not even particularly expensive at this point.

Now maybe they need to be more specifically designed for rural use, but the whole point is to incentivize private actors to solve the problem out of self-interest. The whole point is to unlock human ingenuity to find alternatives.
They do.
But the idea we can just sub our petrol cars one to one with electric cars and keep society exactly as it is is misplaced.

Well different parts of the world have different needs Tyr. You can't build public transit in rural areas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 05, 2021, 01:47:29 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 05, 2021, 12:22:57 PM
Your costs as landlord don't increase, though. The tenant has all the utilities contracts. I learned this year that replacing the rubber lining in my shower cabin to prevent leakage is maintenance that I, as tenant, have to cover. Same with maintenance and fuel of the gas boiler (though the landlord has to replace anything that properly breaks, provided you maintained it properly which you better create a paper trail for).

Weird.  I've been out of the rental market for a while, but around here, the utilities cost where at the charge of the tenant only if there was no central heating.  So you'd use electricity in your apartment to heat yourself, but if there was central heating, that would be paid by the landlord and included in your rent.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 05, 2021, 02:52:50 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 05, 2021, 01:47:29 PM
Weird.  I've been out of the rental market for a while, but around here, the utilities cost where at the charge of the tenant only if there was no central heating.  So you'd use electricity in your apartment to heat yourself, but if there was central heating, that would be paid by the landlord and included in your rent.

Many buildings in Vienna don't have central heating, just a gas boiler in each apartment for hot water and heating. It's becoming more common. But even apartments with central heating that I've lived in (Germany and Austria) had meters to calculate how much you were using in your apartment, and you were charged accordingly. The only thing that I can think of that's split evenly (or per m², rather) is cold water (and stuff like garbage collection, snow removal in winter etc. if you want to be pedantic).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 05, 2021, 05:41:58 PM
In Switzerland central heating is bizzare.
It's charged as part of your rent... But they do adjustments a year or two later to see if you owe or are owed anything extra. I got a few francs from them 2 years after I stopped living there

Quote from: Valmy on October 05, 2021, 01:28:57 PM
[
Well different parts of the world have different needs Tyr. You can't build public transit in rural areas.

You'd be surprised. It can work quite well in rural areas done right.
Theres also other alternatives being experimented with in some rural areas such as transport on demand.

Also a key part of what needs to change is for people as much as possible to shift away from hyper sparse density living unless they have a very good reason (Eg farmers)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 05, 2021, 08:07:22 PM
Less sparse density? So your answer to making rural transit more feasible is to make people less rural. :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 05, 2021, 08:10:52 PM
No, he's right. The countryside needs to be kept pristine for the wealthy to enjoy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 05, 2021, 08:12:46 PM
The typical Labour voters in their £1 million cottages must not be inconvenienced.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 06, 2021, 04:39:24 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 05, 2021, 08:07:22 PM
Less sparse density? So your answer to making rural transit more feasible is to make people less rural. :lol:
That's not the one answer but its definitely something that would/has historically helped.
Building new housing on fields in the middle of nowhere needs to stop.
Also people should be helped and incentivised to live within reach of decent public transport rather than forced to live in disconnected places because its all they can afford, meaning they then have to play taxi every time they want to go anywhere.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 05:37:17 AM
Quote from: Jacob on September 17, 2021, 12:17:01 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 17, 2021, 11:39:52 AM
I'm not. I'm also not proposing that everyone leave Canada, or Canada curtail immigration.

I'm pointing out that the standard political approach is going to be ineffective: identifying a series of problems, and in isolation coming up with pithy strategies to deal with each that will appeal to middle brow dilettantes such as ourselves. Though maybe self satisfying and electorally successful.

There are so many downstream effects to any number of policies when it comes to climate change that if you actually want to prioritize it, it needs to be in every policy decision. And Canada alone is just a smart of a global topic.

A fair criticism.

What do your propose instead?

I don't propose anything. I don't have a comprehensive program to successfully address the world's problems.

On a lot of topics, there are initiatives to address problems and people advocating them feel smug that they are improving the situation, and I'm like, "okay hopefully that works." So maybe I get to share in that smugness by supporting the initiatives. On this topic, I'm convinced the current viable proposals aren't going to work, so I'll get my smug feeling from pointing out to smug people supporting them that they are pissing into the wind.

Side note: rereading the post above i meant to write "small part" and somehow wrote that as "smart". Spell check certainly can't fix all my typos!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
Jacob, but to answer the question that I said I had no answer to because that is accurate as I'm an accountant with a biology degree that rock climbs on weekends and has no climate expertise (I can't resist throwing in bullshit two cents whereever I can):

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

-It is more complicated and involves lots of economics, but I generally think if you want to reduce emissions the best way is a full court press on production rather than consumption. The reason being that production is easily monitored and stationary. If you don't allow the offshore oil rig to operate the oil field under it will never be exploited. Consumption is very easy to move. The reason greenhouse gases are an issue is that fossil fuels are cheaper than other sources in many circumstances, and that means even if one country doesn't import that fuel another is interested in doing so.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 07:18:33 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 06, 2021, 04:39:24 AM
That's not the one answer but its definitely something that would/has historically helped.
Building new housing on fields in the middle of nowhere needs to stop.
Also people should be helped and incentivised to live within reach of decent public transport rather than forced to live in disconnected places because its all they can afford, meaning they then have to play taxi every time they want to go anywhere.
Yeah small villages is kind of the historical norm in rural life - except for farmers and the big houses of the rich, no?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 06, 2021, 08:22:55 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 06, 2021, 04:39:24 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 05, 2021, 08:07:22 PM
Less sparse density? So your answer to making rural transit more feasible is to make people less rural. :lol:
That's not the one answer but its definitely something that would/has historically helped.
Building new housing on fields in the middle of nowhere needs to stop.
Also people should be helped and incentivised to live within reach of decent public transport rather than forced to live in disconnected places because its all they can afford, meaning they then have to play taxi every time they want to go anywhere.

So you're saying that people should be incentivized to move into large population centers where resources can be better used and allocated? like, oh, i don't know, London?


:P

This might be a UK thing, i don't know what rural looks like there. Here in the great white north for the most part rural is rural, large tracks of a farm land with houses few and far between. yes we have towns and the like, but that dwarfed by the size of farm land.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 08:27:54 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 06, 2021, 08:22:55 AM
So you're saying that people should be incentivized to move into large population centers where resources can be better used and allocated? like, oh, i don't know, London?
:ph34r:...........no?

I mean I'd aspire to Hong Kong or Singapore. London is very low-rise suburban.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 06, 2021, 08:43:58 AM
that was mainly a little dig at Tyr. you can move to... Manchester? can't think of any other big brit cities lol
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 06, 2021, 11:00:11 AM
The solution to your bath water being boiling hot isn't to turn it into a block of ice :p

The solution lies in the middle. Not even so far as everyone moving to decent sized cities.
Small towns these days tend to be pretty horribly planned. Very scattered and stretching over a much bigger area than they need to. Look back at maps from pre-war and its amazing how cities and towns of pretty similar population levels to today fit into a significantly smaller area, then post war with the explosion in car ownership...things just become a mess with housing estates popping up willy nilly all over the place.
Housing should be built with public transport considered a central priority in where to place it and the laying of railway lines massively re-prioritised to victorian levels. New road building should be a massively complex and for extreme situations only affair.

And I know what real rural areas look like. I've been all over in Japan. Nobody thinks cars should be banned all over the world and some guy living 50km from his closest neighbour in the Yukon be forced to take the non-existant bus. This is a all too common strawman tapping into the Nirvana fallacy.
However over half of the world's population does live in urban areas and this is growing. By organising these better we can make huge gains even if it'll never work for everyone.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 12:49:33 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
Jacob, but to answer the question that I said I had no answer to because that is accurate as I'm an accountant with a biology degree that rock climbs on weekends and has no climate expertise (I can't resist throwing in bullshit two cents whereever I can):

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

-It is more complicated and involves lots of economics, but I generally think if you want to reduce emissions the best way is a full court press on production rather than consumption. The reason being that production is easily monitored and stationary. If you don't allow the offshore oil rig to operate the oil field under it will never be exploited. Consumption is very easy to move. The reason greenhouse gases are an issue is that fossil fuels are cheaper than other sources in many circumstances, and that means even if one country doesn't import that fuel another is interested in doing so.

I pretty much agree with AR here almost completely.

I think efforts targeted at consumption are at best a waste of effort*, and at worst a way to make people think something is being done so that the real problem can be effectively ignored.

*-actually, they are not all a waste of effort, just most or many of them. I think we should be moving away from ICE for example, but that should be attacked at both ends - more and better non-ICE vehicles, and cutting back on the production of fossil fuels, which will in turn making the consumer end more attractive as well.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 12:52:01 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 06, 2021, 11:00:11 AM
And I know what real rural areas look like. I've been all over in Japan. Nobody thinks cars should be banned all over the world and some guy living 50km from his closest neighbour in the Yukon be forced to take the non-existant bus. This is a all too common strawman tapping into the Nirvana fallacy.
However over half of the world's population does live in urban areas and this is growing. By organising these better we can make huge gains even if it'll never work for everyone.

Indeed.

We need to stop trying to come up with "perfect" solutions, and rather just start implementing better policies. Be politically flexible, and willing to try stuff and then throw it out if the inevitably unforeseen consequences are not what we expect or want, and try something else.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 01:07:01 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 12:49:33 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
Jacob, but to answer the question that I said I had no answer to because that is accurate as I'm an accountant with a biology degree that rock climbs on weekends and has no climate expertise (I can't resist throwing in bullshit two cents whereever I can):

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

-It is more complicated and involves lots of economics, but I generally think if you want to reduce emissions the best way is a full court press on production rather than consumption. The reason being that production is easily monitored and stationary. If you don't allow the offshore oil rig to operate the oil field under it will never be exploited. Consumption is very easy to move. The reason greenhouse gases are an issue is that fossil fuels are cheaper than other sources in many circumstances, and that means even if one country doesn't import that fuel another is interested in doing so.

I pretty much agree with AR here almost completely.

I think efforts targeted at consumption are at best a waste of effort*, and at worst a way to make people think something is being done so that the real problem can be effectively ignored.

*-actually, they are not all a waste of effort, just most or many of them. I think we should be moving away from ICE for example, but that should be attacked at both ends - more and better non-ICE vehicles, and cutting back on the production of fossil fuels, which will in turn making the consumer end more attractive as well.

I disagree.  I started writing a response to AR, decided against it, but I'll try again.

The reason why going after supply is doomed to fail is because hydrocarbons are a fungible commodity.  Your car doesn't care if the gas it burns came from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia or Iran.
If you completely shut down the production of hydrocarbons in the US all it would accomplish would be a massive transfer of wealth from the US/West to other countries that continue to produce unabated.

But can't you just get all the oil producing countries of the world to agree to cut back at the same time and by the same amount?  Well it's been tried before - by OPEC.  And the problem for OPEC has always been that the financial incentive to cheat and produce more than you are allowed is so strong that they've never had good compliance with their production quotas.

That's why you have to go after the demand side.  Whether it be by carbon taxes, banning ICE vehicles, mandating solar panels or whatever policies you implement - force a reduction in the demand for hydrocarbons, and the supply will follow.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 06, 2021, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
Jacob, but to answer the question that I said I had no answer to because that is accurate as I'm an accountant with a biology degree that rock climbs on weekends and has no climate expertise (I can't resist throwing in bullshit two cents whereever I can):

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

-It is more complicated and involves lots of economics, but I generally think if you want to reduce emissions the best way is a full court press on production rather than consumption. The reason being that production is easily monitored and stationary. If you don't allow the offshore oil rig to operate the oil field under it will never be exploited. Consumption is very easy to move. The reason greenhouse gases are an issue is that fossil fuels are cheaper than other sources in many circumstances, and that means even if one country doesn't import that fuel another is interested in doing so.

That's pretty reasonable, thank you for that.

I guess the next question becomes how to affect the necessary political change to implement appropriate policies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:18:32 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 01:07:01 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 12:49:33 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
Jacob, but to answer the question that I said I had no answer to because that is accurate as I'm an accountant with a biology degree that rock climbs on weekends and has no climate expertise (I can't resist throwing in bullshit two cents whereever I can):

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

-It is more complicated and involves lots of economics, but I generally think if you want to reduce emissions the best way is a full court press on production rather than consumption. The reason being that production is easily monitored and stationary. If you don't allow the offshore oil rig to operate the oil field under it will never be exploited. Consumption is very easy to move. The reason greenhouse gases are an issue is that fossil fuels are cheaper than other sources in many circumstances, and that means even if one country doesn't import that fuel another is interested in doing so.

I pretty much agree with AR here almost completely.

I think efforts targeted at consumption are at best a waste of effort*, and at worst a way to make people think something is being done so that the real problem can be effectively ignored.

*-actually, they are not all a waste of effort, just most or many of them. I think we should be moving away from ICE for example, but that should be attacked at both ends - more and better non-ICE vehicles, and cutting back on the production of fossil fuels, which will in turn making the consumer end more attractive as well.

I disagree.  I started writing a response to AR, decided against it, but I'll try again.

The reason why going after supply is doomed to fail is because hydrocarbons are a fungible commodity.  Your car doesn't care if the gas it burns came from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia or Iran.
If you completely shut down the production of hydrocarbons in the US all it would accomplish would be a massive transfer of wealth from the US/West to other countries that continue to produce unabated.

But can't you just get all the oil producing countries of the world to agree to cut back at the same time and by the same amount?  Well it's been tried before - by OPEC.  And the problem for OPEC has always been that the financial incentive to cheat and produce more than you are allowed is so strong that they've never had good compliance with their production quotas.

That's why you have to go after the demand side.  Whether it be by carbon taxes, banning ICE vehicles, mandating solar panels or whatever policies you implement - force a reduction in the demand for hydrocarbons, and the supply will follow.

I disagree. I mean, of course the answer is actually both.

But the reality is that fossil fuels are just too damn efficient to ever hope that the insatiable demand for energy by consumers will be somehow suppressed.

Carbon taxes are a supply side effort, btw - not consumer. Unless you consider gas taxes a carbon tax already?

I am no advocating for shutting down production at all, btw. That simply won't work. I am advocating for aggressively changing the incentives around fossil fuel production.

And I think history has show that this can work, and that your idea simply does not. We aren't reducing coal use by talking consumers into not using coal furnaces anymore, we are doing it by making the producers of coal driven energy absorb the external costs of doing so.

The reality is that the REAL cost of fossil fuel energy production ought to be incredible high since it does incredible damage to our environment. Even possibly existential damage. The way to cut it down, WAY DOWN, is to make sure those costs are actually paid throughout the production stream.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 02:28:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:18:32 PM
I disagree. I mean, of course the answer is actually both.

But the reality is that fossil fuels are just too damn efficient to ever hope that the insatiable demand for energy by consumers will be somehow suppressed.

Carbon taxes are a supply side effort, btw - not consumer. Unless you consider gas taxes a carbon tax already?

I am no advocating for shutting down production at all, btw. That simply won't work. I am advocating for aggressively changing the incentives around fossil fuel production.

And I think history has show that this can work, and that your idea simply does not. We aren't reducing coal use by talking consumers into not using coal furnaces anymore, we are doing it by making the producers of coal driven energy absorb the external costs of doing so.

The reality is that the REAL cost of fossil fuel energy production ought to be incredible high since it does incredible damage to our environment. Even possibly existential damage. The way to cut it down, WAY DOWN, is to make sure those costs are actually paid throughout the production stream.

Carbon taxes are a demand-side tax - hydrocarbons are taxed by the end user, not the producer.

Coal is not a real good example.  The reason nobody uses coal to heat their home is that coal is a really dirty and inefficient way of heating your home.  People switched to natural gas because it is much cleaner and more efficient.

And what about my principle argument - that hydrocarbon production will just shift to overseas if we aggressively penalize domestic production?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:41:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 02:28:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:18:32 PM
I disagree. I mean, of course the answer is actually both.

But the reality is that fossil fuels are just too damn efficient to ever hope that the insatiable demand for energy by consumers will be somehow suppressed.

Carbon taxes are a supply side effort, btw - not consumer. Unless you consider gas taxes a carbon tax already?

I am no advocating for shutting down production at all, btw. That simply won't work. I am advocating for aggressively changing the incentives around fossil fuel production.

And I think history has show that this can work, and that your idea simply does not. We aren't reducing coal use by talking consumers into not using coal furnaces anymore, we are doing it by making the producers of coal driven energy absorb the external costs of doing so.

The reality is that the REAL cost of fossil fuel energy production ought to be incredible high since it does incredible damage to our environment. Even possibly existential damage. The way to cut it down, WAY DOWN, is to make sure those costs are actually paid throughout the production stream.

Carbon taxes are a demand-side tax - hydrocarbons are taxed by the end user, not the producer.

Coal is not a real good example.  The reason nobody uses coal to heat their home is that coal is a really dirty and inefficient way of heating your home.  People switched to natural gas because it is much cleaner and more efficient.

And what about my principle argument - that hydrocarbon production will just shift to overseas if we aggressively penalize domestic production?

My argument has very little to do with domestic versus non-domestic production.

I consider carbon taxes to be supply side - they are taxing the consumption of carbon based fuels to create energy. They are not attempting to reduce demand for energy, just make it more expensive to produce energy using fossil fuels.

And coal is an excellent example, in fact. We have reduced the consumption of coal by the consumers of coal - power stations that produce energy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 02:51:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:41:46 PM
My argument has very little to do with domestic versus non-domestic production.

I consider carbon taxes to be supply side - they are taxing the consumption of carbon based fuels to create energy. They are not attempting to reduce demand for energy, just make it more expensive to produce energy using fossil fuels.

And coal is an excellent example, in fact. We have reduced the consumption of coal by the consumers of coal - power stations that produce energy.

I'm pretty sure that making something more expensive moves it down the demand curve, but whatever.  As long as we agree that carbon taxes are good, and just randomly shutting down domestic oil wells by fiat is bad, then we're in complete agreement and you can call it whatever you like.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 02:51:49 PM
Although that example just highlights the problem of this issue because globally we haven't reduced consumption of coal by power plants or industry such as steel. Use of coal has only ever increased since 1950 and its rate of increase has slowed dramatically and we may turn a corner to falling consumption (through closing power plants etc) out paces new growth. But we're not there yet.

Edit: And another issue is BBoy in the other thread talking about $3.5 trillion as a crazy amount of money - because it is a fraction of the costs we'll need to incur for energy transition.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:56:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 02:51:49 PM
Although that example just highlights the problem of this issue because globally we haven't reduced consumption of coal by power plants or industry such as steel. Use of coal has only ever increased since 1950 and its rate of increase has slowed dramatically and we may turn a corner to falling consumption (through closing power plants etc) out paces new growth. But we're not there yet.

But what else are we going to do?

Progress is better then no progress. There will always be some excuse or reason to not do something.

Global use has not reduced. THat is better then it increasing. The observation you are making is the argument that people make when they want (and did want) to not address domestic use of coal in power plants, or even resisted legislation to not restrict its production, but to just demand scrubbers and better production with less waste and pollution. "If you make US coal plants cleaner, it won't stop the Chinese from making their plants continue to be dirty and we won't be able to compete in widget production!!!!"

Bullshit. We cannot fix everything all at once. We have to just make it better where we can, and as aggressively as we can, and personally I am not going to give much of any weight to arguments of the form of "If WE stop doing something fucking terrible, some other people somewhere else might just do it instead!" If that is the case, then we can deal with THAT problem when it happens.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 03:04:15 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 02:51:49 PM
Although that example just highlights the problem of this issue because globally we haven't reduced consumption of coal by power plants or industry such as steel. Use of coal has only ever increased since 1950 and its rate of increase has slowed dramatically and we may turn a corner to falling consumption (through closing power plants etc) out paces new growth. But we're not there yet.

Edit: And another issue is BBoy in the other thread talking about $3.5 trillion as a crazy amount of money - because it is a fraction of the costs we'll need to incur for energy transition.

The $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" only addresses climate change as one of many different priorities.  It also includes a child tax credit, paid family and medical leave, universal preschool, free community college, health insurance subsidies, and so on.

A lot of the costs of the energy transition are not going to come directly from the government.  You're not going to have a new electric car because the government buys you a new car, for example.  With the right pushes and pulls the economy will transition itself because it makes more economic sense to do so.  Not that the government won't be spending a lot of money in those pushes and pulls of course.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2021, 03:23:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:56:55 PM
But what else are we going to do?
Sure I think it's a caution that ultimately the age when the West could devise a solution to this is over - we are a sideshow compared to China and so is the extent that we need de-carbonise our economy. So any solution is going to at least significantly involve if not be led by China. And this is a huge issue for China too - they're a resource poor country without much extra farmland who are very exposed to climate change which I think does at least partly explain Xi's commitments in this area.

That's not an argument that we shouldn't do anything but that we can't assume great victories at home reducing reliance on fossil fuels is significant.

I also think we need to re-frame our understanding to the global. Reducing the number of coal-fired plants in the US is easy relatively, we also need to look at the global picture. For example, there's a massive coal plant being built in Kenya - and US and Western banks and suppliers are very heavily involved in funding that. So I think we need to look at how we reduce and then stop funding new coal power plants around the world (while shutting them at home) and also offer an alternative in terms of cheap reliable energy because Kenya (as an example) is still going to need that.

QuoteA lot of the costs of the energy transition are not going to come directly from the government.  You're not going to have a new electric car because the government buys you a new car, for example.  With the right pushes and pulls the economy will transition itself because it makes more economic sense to do so.  Not that the government won't be spending a lot of money in those pushes and pulls of course.
I think that underestimates the amount of infrastructure we need to build and the state of technology now. The private sector is important but in a lot of areas - investment in developing carbon-free coal, battery tech and infrastructure, cleaner transport infrastructure - they'll rely on the state spending or need to be basically de-risked (as they were for vaccine research).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 06, 2021, 07:05:31 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 06, 2021, 02:18:32 PM
Carbon taxes are a supply side effort, btw - not consumer. Unless you consider gas taxes a carbon tax already?

it's both.  The demand is inelastic.  People using an oil furnace won't change it until it cost a lot more than now in fuel.  They went for gaz or heating oil because it costs less than electricity, because it can provide permanent heating compared to wood (no need to stuff the furnace every 4-8hrs) or simply because there is no other choice where they are. 

Either way, it's mostly a consumer tax.  It's a 100% consumer tax when it comes to heating choice.  Sure, you can replace your furnace for something else, like electricity.  At hight costs for the change, especially if your house relies only on central heating and has no eletric heating in individual rooms (it would be mostly the case for appartment buildings and commercial environment).  Then, you have to devote an higher part of your budget to heating cost because electricity will cost you more.

Natural gaz isn't available everywhere.  In fact, it seems to be mostly nowhere outside of large cities, no pipelines and links to your house, no deliveries by truck either.

When it comes to transportation, there's a lack of alternatives, currently, for many vehicle types, but I admit it is changing rapidly.  Still, right now, there's no plans to replace pick-up size diesel engines with electric ones, or with any kind of hydrogen (or other technology) batteries.  So any one in need of large pick-up trucks, like say, the construction industry, the forest industry, farmers, etc, there is no alternatives.  There is no alternatives for fishermen either.  So they will raise their prices, because fuel will cost more and they have no alternative to change to.  In the end, it's the consumer paying the carbon tax.  Looking at GM&Ford trucks, there's been a 0,001% improvement in fuel consumption for their diesel engines over the last decade.  This combustion technology is perfectly mature and the only way companies can improve consumption, even for fuel engines, is with gimmicks, like stopping the engine when  you press the brakes, or shutting down cylinders (for fuel engines, doesn't work on diesel) when you drive on the highway with no load.  And the real life advantages of that are pretty limited.  Sure, it's nice to have.  It does same some fuel.  Not enough to justify a replacement of the vehicle only for that, though.

As for cars, currently, electric or hybrid cars lack in diversity and even accounting for the goverrnmental aid (where available), they are still priced much higher than a comparative fuel engined vehicle.  Here, it's about 30% consumer, 70% manufacturer.  If a manufacturer isn't already investing in the r&d of future hybrid/electric engines, it has totally missed the boat, and consumers will leave that brand behind as they switch for another one.  It's not there yet, but it's coming very soon.  And there are companies working on hydrogen vehicles, also, with promising leads.  We'll have to see if there's a way to recharge/recycle these batteries in a near future.

Transportation wise, I believe some manufacturers are working on the replacement of large diesel engines (vans and 10/12-wheelers) with electric ones, so that's a good news.  On the slightly worst news, there's no plans to have any kind of non-co2 releasing aircraft anytime soon.  I don't think the technology exists yet to make a plane fly from New York to Paris with something else than the fuels we use now. Well, I think there's a mix of bio-fuel (recycled cooking oil) that can be used, but it's of limited effect and requires significant investment for the aircraft, so not totally practical as of yet.  And no plans for the immediate future to change this as I know of (I could be wrong).

As far as shipping goes, I have seem some projects using sails to reduce diesel fuel consumption by combining them with a regular engine.  It's promising, but there does not seem to be a generalized plan by shipping companies worldwide to switch to this technology.  The costs will again be shifted 100% to consumers.  Ok, maybe 99.1% of it.

When it comes to recreative drive, be it sports&fishing boats, or recreative vehicles, it's again a 100% consumer tax. There is simply no alternative for the consumer, aside not practicing these activites.

So there we have it.  It's simply false to describe a carbon tax as being strictly a tax on the supply side.  It's a tax on the consumer side, and for many, there is simply no alternatives.

I don't disagree that we need it, but we'll have to think of a way to help the population cope with the increase in costs of living.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 07, 2021, 10:47:21 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

QuoteFossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

Trillions of dollars a year are 'adding fuel to the fire' of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

Setting fossil fuel prices that reflect their true cost would cut global CO2 emissions by over a third, the IMF analysts said. This would be a big step towards meeting the internationally agreed 1.5C target. Keeping this target within reach is a key goal of the UN Cop26 climate summit in November.

Agreeing rules for carbon markets, which enable the proper pricing of pollution, is another Cop26 goal. "Fossil fuel price reform could not be timelier," the IMF researchers said. The ending of fossil fuel subsidies would also prevent nearly a million deaths a year from dirty air and raise trillions of dollars for governments, they said.

"There would be enormous benefits from reform, so there's an enormous amount at stake," said Ian Parry, the lead author of the IMF report. "Some countries are reluctant to raise energy prices because they think it will harm the poor. But holding down fossil fuel prices is a highly inefficient way to help the poor, because most of the benefits accrue to wealthier households. It would be better to target resources towards helping poor and vulnerable people directly."

With 50 countries committed to net zero emissions by mid-century and more than 60 carbon pricing schemes around the world, there are some encouraging signs, Parry said: "But we're still just scratching the surface really, and there's an awful long way to go."

The G20 agreed in 2009 to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies and in 2016, the G7 set a deadline of 2025, but little progress has been made. In July, a report showed that the G20 countries had subsidised fossil fuels by trillions of dollars since 2015, the year the Paris climate deal was reached.

"To stabilise global temperatures we must urgently move away from fossil fuels instead of adding fuel to the fire," said Mike Coffin, senior analyst at the thinktank Carbon Tracker. "It's critical that governments stop propping up an industry that is in decline, and look to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition, and our future, instead.

"As host of Cop26, the UK government could play an important global leadership role by ending all subsidies for fossil fuels, as well as halting new North Sea licensing rounds," he said. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in May that the development of new oil and gas fields must stop this year to meet climate goals.

The comprehensive IMF report found that prices were at least 50% below their true costs for 99% of coal, 52% of diesel and 47% of natural gas in 2020. Five countries were responsible for two-thirds of the subsidies: China, the US, Russia, India and Japan. Without action, subsidies will rise to $6.4tn in 2025, the IMF said.

Proper pricing for fossil fuels would cut emissions by, for example, encouraging electricity generators to switch from coal to renewable energy and making electric cars an even cheaper option for motorists. International cooperation is important, Parry said, to allay fears that countries could lose competitiveness if their fossil fuel prices were higher.

"The IMF report is a sobering reading, pointing to one of the major defects of the global economy," said Maria Pastukhova, at the thinktank e3g. "The IEA's net-zero roadmap projects that $5tn is necessary by 2030 to put the world on the pathway to a climate-safe world. It is maddening to realise the much-needed change could start happening now, if not for governments' entanglement with the fossil fuels industry in so many major economies."

"Fossil fuel subsidies have been a major stumbling block in the G20 process for years," she said. "Now all eyes are on the G20 leaders' summit in late October."

Ipek Gençsü, at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "[Subsidy reform] requires support for vulnerable consumers who will be impacted by rising costs, as well for workers in industries which simply have to shut down. It also requires information campaigns, showing how the savings will be redistributed to society in the form of healthcare, education and other social services. Many people oppose subsidy reform because they see it solely as governments taking something away, and not giving back."

The G20 countries emit almost 80% of global greenhouse gases. More than 600 global companies in the We Mean Business coalition, including Unilever, Ikea, Aviva, Siemens and Volvo Cars, recently urged G20 leaders to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:00:27 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 07, 2021, 10:47:21 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

QuoteFossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

Trillions of dollars a year are 'adding fuel to the fire' of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 07, 2021, 11:01:34 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:00:27 AMStudies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

It's costs covered by the community, i.e. tax payers.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 07, 2021, 11:04:17 AM
QuoteExplicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

They should pay for the right to kill people? Er... how about not releasing stuff that kills people?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:06:11 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 07, 2021, 11:01:34 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:00:27 AMStudies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

It's costs covered by the community, i.e. tax payers.

They're externalities, sure.

But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 07, 2021, 11:42:53 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:06:11 AM
But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.
That doesn't mean it's wrong to do so, it just means that you're not falling victim to status quo bias.  An externality not being internalized is a subsidy in all the important ways that a more narrowly defined subsidy is. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 07, 2021, 11:51:13 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 06, 2021, 03:04:15 PM
A lot of the costs of the energy transition are not going to come directly from the government.  You're not going to have a new electric car because the government buys you a new car, for example.  With the right pushes and pulls the economy will transition itself because it makes more economic sense to do so.  Not that the government won't be spending a lot of money in those pushes and pulls of course.

Well energy is already a centrally planned government managed sector in about 99% of the world, so it kind of has to at least in that sector.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 11:59:10 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

You kinda hit on Matt Yglesias's latest article, which boils down to "we need practically unlimited green energy and then we can not only zero out new greenhouse gas production but remove current production above historical averages": https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:00:31 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 07, 2021, 11:42:53 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:06:11 AM
But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.
That doesn't mean it's wrong to do so, it just means that you're not falling victim to status quo bias.  An externality not being internalized is a subsidy in all the important ways that a more narrowly defined subsidy is. 

No, actually it is not. Words have actual meaning and definitions. The definition of a subsidy is:

Quotea sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.
"a farm subsidy"

There are good reasons to be very concerned with negative externalities. They are not subsidies. Calling them subsidies so you can have some breathtaking story about how the US spend more subsidizing fossil fuel companies then it spends on education is stupid bullshit that is misleading and suggests something to most people that is absolutely not true, and when people figure out that it is not true, just erodes their trust on the media organizations that make such silly claims.

...and then we wonder why people don't trust the IPCC consensus...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 07, 2021, 12:00:40 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2021, 11:00:27 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 07, 2021, 10:47:21 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

QuoteFossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

Trillions of dollars a year are 'adding fuel to the fire' of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.


It is a subsidy.  And it prevents other technologies from breaking through because they cost more than fuel.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 12:02:07 PM
I wonder how they do the accounting for the amount of the subsidy.

Take a non climate example.  A factory has unsafe equipment which injures 10 employees per period of time and they can no longer work.

The cost of installing safer equipment which would drop that number to 0 costs 1M.  But they don't because there is no incentive (in this hypothetical)

The injuries and life long disability income is paid through some third party - here it would be the province's workers compensation scheme - to the tune of say 5M

Are they using the 1M or 5M?

To BB's point.  The conduct in this hypothetical is of course heavily regulated so that the employer is not subsidized by either figure.  If they did not pay the 1M themselves to install the safe equipment they would pay much more than the 1M in fines, damages and penalties.  Which is the point of the IMF study.


Quote from: viper37 on October 07, 2021, 12:00:40 PM
It is a subsidy.  And it prevents other technologies from breaking through because they cost more than fuel.

The difficulty is that some people here have a more narrow understanding of what that word means.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 12:02:53 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:00:31 PM
...and then we wonder why people don't trust the IPCC consensus...

It is pretty clear the reason is ignorance.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:02:54 PM
Quote from: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 11:59:10 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 06, 2021, 06:03:59 AM
-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

You kinda hit on Matt Yglesias's latest article, which boils down to "we need practically unlimited green energy and then we can not only zero out new greenhouse gas production but remove current production above historical averages": https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance

Exactly.

I don't think there is ANY chance that the crisis has any possible solution based on reducing human energy consumption, or even significantly slowing its growth. Pretty much all of human history has been a never ending story of "how to we figure out to produce and use more energy?"

At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 12:04:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:02:54 PM
At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 01:24:23 PM
Quote from: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 12:04:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:02:54 PM
At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

Depends where you are.  With better battery storage tech hydro, solar and wind can be built more quickly and inexpensively and provide complete coverage.  Keep in mind BC hydro supplies all the power needs of BC, and exports power - and this province is about the size of France and Germany combined.   For areas where that is not possible, they likely have to go nuclear.  But with transmission of energy also becoming more efficient, proximity to the source may not be an issue. necessary.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 01:41:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 01:24:23 PM
Quote from: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 12:04:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:02:54 PM
At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

Depends where you are.  With better battery storage tech hydro, solar and wind can be built more quickly and inexpensively and provide complete coverage.  Keep in mind BC hydro supplies all the power needs of BC, and exports power - and this province is about the size of France and Germany combined.   For areas where that is not possible, they likely have to go nuclear.  But with transmission of energy also becoming more efficient, proximity to the source may not be an issue. necessary.

ulmont is pointing out that solar energy is actually nuclear energy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 01:49:36 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 01:41:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 01:24:23 PM
Quote from: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 12:04:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 07, 2021, 12:02:54 PM
At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

Depends where you are.  With better battery storage tech hydro, solar and wind can be built more quickly and inexpensively and provide complete coverage.  Keep in mind BC hydro supplies all the power needs of BC, and exports power - and this province is about the size of France and Germany combined.   For areas where that is not possible, they likely have to go nuclear.  But with transmission of energy also becoming more efficient, proximity to the source may not be an issue. necessary.

ulmont is pointing out that solar energy is actually nuclear energy.

Yes, and as pointed out, an oversimplification. 

If you want to be pedantic, hydro and wind are also driven by the sun, but not particularly useful to understand the solutions at hand.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 07, 2021, 01:50:40 PM
I like the idea of how in the Transmetropolitan comics they solved the energy problem by covering Mercury in solar panels and beam the energy back to Earth (though they're not explaining how that is even remotely supposed to work :lol: ).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 07, 2021, 02:05:02 PM
Agree with Beeb about misuse of subsidy.  Not like the IMF to publish clickbait and I can only hope it's the Guardian garbling the message.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 06:05:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck link=topic=13519.msg1335499#msg1335499
If you want to be pedantic, hydro and wind are also driven by the sun, but not particularly useful to understand the solutions at hand.

You don't actually read what other people post on languish, do you?  Or what did you think the "most other energy production more attenuated from that" was referring to?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 06:09:09 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 07, 2021, 01:50:40 PM
I like the idea of how in the Transmetropolitan comics they solved the energy problem by covering Mercury in solar panels and beam the energy back to Earth (though they're not explaining how that is even remotely supposed to work :lol: ).

Most similar suggestions here want to just transform the solar energy in earth orbit rather than at Mercury...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/03/29/space-lasers-the-truth/
https://www.space.com/space-based-solar-power-air-force-sspidr-project

...I think the idea is that radio or microwave beams would get through the atmosphere better.

The details of aiming at a specific point on Earth from Mercury are filled with devils, though.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 07, 2021, 06:43:11 PM
Quote from: ulmont on October 07, 2021, 06:05:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck link=topic=13519.msg1335499#msg1335499
If you want to be pedantic, hydro and wind are also driven by the sun, but not particularly useful to understand the solutions at hand.

You don't actually read what other people post on languish, do you?  Or what did you think the "most other energy production more attenuated from that" was referring to?

Sorry, I forget what Languish is.  Lets ignore my substantive post and engage in a pedantic shit fight.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 12, 2021, 02:10:18 PM
This doesn't sound positive. Li Keqiang has asked for more in-depth studies about emissions peak for China in linght of current energy shortages. Current plans were for China to peak before 2030.

Coal mines are being allowed to go over the annual quota - but I read that production's been hit by flooding in Shaanxi so that may not be a solution.

I think mismatch and swings will happen a lot more with energy transition so this may just be the start.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on October 18, 2021, 07:24:54 AM
QuoteCop26 corporate sponsors condemn climate summit as 'mismanaged'
Exclusive: NatWest, Microsoft and GSK among firms to raise complaint over poor planning

Companies that stumped up millions of pounds to sponsor the Cop26 climate summit have condemned it as "mismanaged" and "very last minute" in a volley of complaints as next month's event in Glasgow draws near.

The sponsors, which include some of Britain's biggest companies, have raised formal complaints blaming "very inexperienced" civil servants for delayed decisions, poor communication and a breakdown in relations between the organisers and firms in the run-up to the landmark talks.

The Guardian understands that a letter to the organisers, written by broadcaster Sky and co-signed by senior leaders from other Cop26 sponsors, has raised concerns with them over these and other problems, and followed another co-signed letter in July.

The UK is running its Cop26 presidency from within the Cabinet Office, under the leadership of the former business secretary Alok Sharma, who is the Cop26 president, and the businessman Nigel Topping who was appointed the government's high-level climate action champion last year. Sponsorship is expected to help defray a policing bill estimated to reach up to £250m.

Alongside Sky, the summit has 10 other major sponsors, including energy giants Hitachi, National Grid, Scottish Power and SSE, US tech titan Microsoft, and FTSE companies GSK, NatWest, Reckitt, Sainsbury's and Unilever. Unilever has denied signing the letter penned by Sky. Other lower tier "partners" include the car maker Jaguar Land Rover and the furniture retailer Ikea.

One source, employed by a Cop26 sponsor, said that "the biggest frustration" was the lack of information about how the event will run, and the role for its key backers, because important questions have gone unanswered and planning decisions have been delayed.

"They had an extra year to prepare for Cop due to Covid, but it doesn't feel like this time was used to make better progress. Everything feels very last minute," the source said.

The upcoming climate talks, considered the last chance to put the world on track to meet its climate ambitions, are due to take place in early November after the event was postponed by a year because of the outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020.

They have already been thrown into turmoil by suggestions that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will skip the event, threatening the chances of a global pact with the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter.

Organisers of Cop26 promised sponsors an "outstanding opportunity" and "unique benefits" in exchange for their support, including a chance to promote their brands at the conference "green zone" exhibition space and the participation of government ministers at their events.

But in multiple emails and official letters the companies have complained to organisers about unmet expectations, and deepening concerns over delays to the green zone plans. They have also raised complaints that ministers have not always been available for their events in the run-up to Cop26, as agreed as part of the sponsor deals.

Other sources have described the "shifting goal posts" and "inertia" plaguing the Cop26 planning as "deeply frustrating".

Many of the event's corporate backers regularly take part in high-profile sponsorship deals for big events, and have been left bewildered by the slow progress of the Cop26 events, another source explained.

The source blamed the "very young, very inexperienced" civil servants tasked with planning the event for taking a "top-down public sector approach" that has raised hackles among sponsors.

"It's clear that many of them have very little experience managing relationships in the private sector, or even experience attending a Cop event," the source said.

The energy company sponsors – Hitachi, National Grid, Scottish Power and SSE – are understood to be particularly frustrated because they were under the impression that no other energy brands would feature at Cop26. However, the "blue zone", which is organised by the UN, will include rival brands.

Ministers had been due to release three key documents on Monday on the government's plans to achieve its net zero target by 2035, but publication has been delayed owing to the murder of the MP Sir David Amess.

The documents reveal a stark split within the cabinet, understood to be between on one side Boris Johnson, the prime minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, and Michael Gove, responsible for improving the UK's homes, all seeing benefits to strong climate action; and on the other, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, a free-market hawk instinctively opposed to government intervention.

All three papers are now expected to come later in the week, with the government seeking to preserve a show of unity over the publications.

The row over the government's handling of Cop26 planning has emerged amid public order concerns, with up to 150,000 protesters expected to take to Glasgow's streets in early November alongside the crucial climate talks, which will require one of the largest policing operations ever undertaken in Britain.

Countries and organisations planning to host events have also said they fear that increased costs will cause problems for developing nations.

Multiple participants told the Guardian earlier this month that the cost of renting Cop26 pavilions – event spaces for hosting workshops, panel discussions and keynote speeches during the conference – is considerably higher than it was at Cop25 in Madrid, with some saying it had increased by as much as 30%.

A Cop26 spokesperson said the organisers were "working closely" with sponsors which would increase the value-for-money for taxpayers, and reduce the overall financial cost of Cop26.

A Whitehall veteran of Cop summits said: "It feels like some of these sponsors have forgotten the actual reason we're in Glasgow. Cop isn't about branding, it's about tackling climate change. Keeping 1.5C in reach is the best thing you can do for your bottom line: they would do well to remember this."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 19, 2021, 12:06:38 PM
Incompetent government is also incompetent at having major event organised. Film at 11.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 19, 2021, 12:20:02 PM
In other UK news they announce 5000 quid funding for getting a heat pump.
All sorts of catches and probably still not economical but I'm intruiged.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 19, 2021, 01:03:49 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 19, 2021, 12:06:38 PM
Incompetent government is also incompetent at having major event organised. Film at 11.
There's a bin strike, therre's a rail strike, there's going to be hundreds of thousands of protesters and it's the first big city global conference since the pandemic - there is a lot that might go wrong/be handled badly. I'm not entirely sold on an article about corporate sponsors not getting the level of access they were promised :lol:

Quote from: Tyr on October 19, 2021, 12:20:02 PM
In other UK news they announce 5000 quid funding for getting a heat pump.
All sorts of catches and probably still not economical but I'm intruiged.
Yeah we'll see. Whole thing seems interesting - and, at the very least, it's a start that can be built on:
QuoteNet zero strategy: Government plans will 'support up to 440,000 jobs', minister says - as plans to end sale of new petrol and diesel cars revealed
The government's new plan set out on Tuesday is aiming to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach the net zero target by 2050.
Sophie Morris
Political reporter @itssophiemorris
Tuesday 19 October 2021 18:49, UK

The government's net zero strategy will "support up to 440,000 jobs" by 2030, a business minister has said - as he announced a move towards the end of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The new plan, published on Tuesday, has the intention of dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reach the government's aim of net zero by 2050.

It comes less than two weeks before world leaders will meet at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to discuss how to reduce the effects of climate change.

Making a statement on the government's aims in the Commons, Greg Hands told MPs the strategy "is not just an environmental transition, it represents an important economic change too".

But Greenpeace UK's head of politics, Rebecca Newsom, described the government's strategy as "more like a pick and mix than the substantial meal that we need to reach net zero".


Announcements in the strategy include:
• An aim to fully decarbonise the power system by 2035
• Path towards all heating appliances in homes and workplaces from 2035 being low carbon
• An "ambition" that by 2035 no new gas boilers will be sold
• £450m three-year Boiler Upgrade Scheme to offer households grants for low-carbon heating systems
• £60m Heat Pump Ready programme
• To secure a decision on a large-scale nuclear plant by 2024
• 40GW of offshore wind by 2030
• To deliver 5GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030 while halving oil and gas emissions
• To end sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 with £620m for zero emission vehicle grants
• £2bn investment to help half of journeys in towns and cities to be cycled or walked by 2030
• An extra £625m for tree-planting
• £120m to develop small modular nuclear reactors


A review published by the Treasury says "the costs of global inaction significantly outweigh the costs of action" to tackle climate change.

The document, released alongside the government's net zero strategy, says it is not possible to forecast how individual household finances will be hit over the course of a 30-year transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Hands told the Commons the strategy will see the UK government fully embracing the "green industrial revolution" and will help the UK "to level up" and "get to the front of the global race to go green".

"We need to capitalise on this to ensure British industries and workers benefit," he said.

"I can therefore announce that the strategy will support up to 440,000 jobs across sectors and across all parts of the UK in 2030."

Mr Hands continued: "This strategy will harness the power of the private sector, giving businesses and industry the certainty they need to invest and grow in the UK to make the UK home to new ambitious projects.

"The policies and spending brought forward in the strategy along with regulations will leverage up to £90 billion of private investment by 2030 levelling up our former industrial heartlands."

The business minister, who is in charge of the energy brief, told MPs that switching to cleaner sources of energy will reduce Britain's reliance on fossil fuels and will "bring down costs down the line".

Mr Hands added that the government "will also introduce a zero emission vehicle mandate that will deliver our 2030 commitment to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars".

In strategy documents released on Tuesday, the government says it will invest £620m in grants for electric vehicles and street charging points.


Ministers are also promising an additional £350m to help the automotive supply chain transition to electric.

Vehicle manufacturers will also be made to sell a proportion of clean cars every year, the plans also reveal.

And the government is also planning to consult on whether it is appropriate to prevent new-build homes from connecting to the gas grid in England from 2025.


In the foreword to the strategy, Prime Minister Boris Johnson insists the government's targets can be achieved without giving up flying abroad or driving cars.

"In 2050, we will still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric gliding silently around our cities, our planes will be zero emission allowing us to fly guilt-free, and our homes will be heated by cheap reliable power drawn from the winds of the North Sea," he writes.

Mr Johnson's official spokesman later revealed that Downing Street was planning to install heat pumps in line with the net zero strategy.

"The estate is heated by energy-efficient boilers and we are looking to introduce heat pumps to go even further as part of our net zero ambitions," the spokesman said.

But referring to the government's strategy as "half-hearted policies", Greenpeace UK's Ms Newsom said: "With just eight years left to halve global emissions, the government can't just keep dining out on its 'ambitious targets'.

"Until the policy and funding gaps are closed, Boris Johnson's plea to other countries to deliver on their promises at the global climate conference next month will be easy to ignore."


Shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband said the plan "falls short on delivery" and that "there is nothing like the commitment we believe is required".

He added: "The chancellor's fingerprints are all over these documents and not in a good way. So we've waited months for the heat and buildings strategy - it is a massive let down."


The Commons Environmental Audit Committee suggests the strategy is "yet to meet the ambition" on heat pumps.

"As yet, there is little acknowledgment that effective use of heat pumps requires buildings to be properly insulated. Our Committee's evidence highlighted that insulation costs can double the current cost of a heat pump for many of the19 million homes that are older and have an EPC rating of less than C," the committee's Conservative chairman Philip Dunne said.


Shaun Spiers, executive director at Green Alliance, said "mandating car manufacturers to sell more clean vehicles, supporting the switch to heat pumps and cleaning up our energy grid are essential steps to cutting emissions over the coming decade".

He added: "But we need a more ambitious response from the chancellor at the spending review to turn these promises into jobs, growth and benefits to consumers - and if the government truly wants to level up the country, we'll need much more investment once the dust has settled on the COP26 Glasgow climate summit."


David Wright, chief engineer at National Grid, said the government needs to set out what tackling climate change "means in practice".

"We're at a critical stage in the journey where net zero is possible with the technologies and opportunities we have today and, in order to deliver on this, we have to accelerate and ramp up efforts to deploy long-term solutions at scale," he said.

Meanwhile, Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said "it remains to be seen whether the scale and ambition of the strategy is sufficient to attract the private investments necessary to realise a credible pathway to net zero by 2050".

One interesting point picked up by someone - maybe Faisal Islam - is that it looks like they're preparing the ground to transition to a "road use tax" to plug the huge gap that will be left from fuel duty (apparently worth about £37 billion a year to the revenue). I think that makes sense. It's going to be politically contentious :ph34r:

As I say I think most of the low-hanging fruit has been got in the UK, so it's now going to be decisions with costs and consequences that need to be carefully managed and mitigated. Which is this government's forte :ph34r: :bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 19, 2021, 01:06:09 PM
Oh. And Johnson needs a huge slap for his jokey dog whistles about sandled police kicking down the door and murdering you with a carrot.

I'm all for a road use tax.
Not sure if I ever did post it here but an idea I've been musing is a tax on driving your car more than a certain distance from home.
For day to day life car use is unavoidable. Using it to go across the country is not.

The key challenge in any of this sort of thing is of course to make sure urban dwellers are suitably dissuaded from the luxury of a car whilst rural people aren't punished for being poor by being made even poorer. Whilst at the same time we don't want to incentivise people to move to the country.
What a tangled knot it is.

Who would have thought one of blairs biggest failures would turn out to be the massed tram building plans. Its insane how much more expensive doing anything like that is now vs 20 years ago.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 19, 2021, 01:18:12 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 19, 2021, 01:06:09 PM
The key challenge in any of this sort of thing is of course to make sure urban dwellers are suitably dissuaded from the luxury of a car whilst rural people aren't punished for being poor by being made even poorer. Whilst at the same time we don't want to incentivise people to move to the country.
What a tangled knot it is.
Just move to the city then - they're not being punished for being poor but for living in the wrong place :contract: :P

But also who owns or lives in older draughty housing stock with gas heating and cookers. It's not going to be cheap or easy fixing that and it needs to be fair. As I say its difficult.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on October 19, 2021, 01:24:05 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 19, 2021, 12:20:02 PM
In other UK news they announce 5000 quid funding for getting a heat pump.
All sorts of catches and probably still not economical but I'm intruiged.

How cold does it get in your neck of the woods? IIRC They have a 1:3 up to 5 ratio.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 19, 2021, 04:38:36 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 19, 2021, 01:18:12 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 19, 2021, 01:06:09 PM
The key challenge in any of this sort of thing is of course to make sure urban dwellers are suitably dissuaded from the luxury of a car whilst rural people aren't punished for being poor by being made even poorer. Whilst at the same time we don't want to incentivise people to move to the country.
What a tangled knot it is.
Just move to the city then - they're not being punished for being poor but for living in the wrong place :contract: :P

But also who owns or lives in older draughty housing stock with gas heating and cookers. It's not going to be cheap or easy fixing that and it needs to be fair. As I say its difficult.
Housing in the city is more expensive.
Remote towns with crap public transport are all many can afford.
It's really note worthy how much property prices differ between connected towns and unconnected ones.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 03:38:14 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 19, 2021, 12:20:02 PM
In other UK news they announce 5000 quid funding for getting a heat pump.
All sorts of catches and probably still not economical but I'm intruiged.

Just in August the Guardian interviewed a few folks who have it in their detached homes. Seems like very hit and miss. One guy in particular ended up with a cold house and a giant electricity bill for his troubles, another had neighbours complain of the noise etc. I am trying to to reign my skepticism in on account of being ignorant on heat pumps, but a big fan heating up air before pushing it inside does not seem like a great alternative to burning gas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 20, 2021, 04:22:38 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 03:38:14 AM
Just in August the Guardian interviewed a few folks who have it in their detached homes. Seems like very hit and miss. One guy in particular ended up with a cold house and a giant electricity bill for his troubles, another had neighbours complain of the noise etc. I am trying to to reign my skepticism in on account of being ignorant on heat pumps, but a big fan heating up air before pushing it inside does not seem like a great alternative to burning gas.
Isn't it basically the same as EV v internal combustion? One relies on the electricity which can be decarbonised and is increasingly renewable based, the other is individuals burning fossil fuels. But it does need insulation.

And this is slightly linked to something I mentioned before that there are loads of taxes on electricity and relatively few on gas. That reflects environmental policy from 15-20 years ago when there was a lot of coal-powered electricity, so it was generally dirtier than gas. Now the opposite is true. Last I read the government were thinking about increasing levies on gas so it stops being cheaper than electricity.

But insulation/energy efficiency in housing is key - it's one reason I think the most important point may be the levy on mortgages for energy inefficient housing as I can imagine improving insulation etc will be something sellers might end up getting a loan for to fix as a condition for sale. Especially given the implied threat that mortgages for those houses may be banned, which will shift the banks.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 20, 2021, 04:34:03 AM
Quote...there are loads of taxes on electricity and relatively few on gas. ... Last I read the government were thinking about increasing levies on gas so it stops being cheaper than electricity.

:hmm: If only there was another way.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 20, 2021, 04:45:45 AM
I signed up for a scheme where the council  were doing free heat pumps as part of a study. A guy came round and inspected my house and said it seemed like I had a good chance and I'd hear from them in 4 weeks.

I never heard from them. At all. I finally got a copy and paste standard rejection when I mailed them to ask about it.
I guess my file fell between the cracks somewhere as they just weren't willing to give details why my house wasn't suitable. Sucked enormously.
A guy I know was accepted for it too and sounds like it's going well for him.

I am due for a boiler replacement within the next year so... It's all very questionable what my best course is. There's some pettiness of not wanting to buy a heat pump when they fucked me with it.

In terms of running costs they are better-your electric bill goes up by more than the gas bill goes down but if you cut off your gas completely then that's a huge saving.
The setup however is more than the pump. Lots of stuff about bigger radiators needing to be installed and all sorts of fuss. Plus a lot harder to get a friendly plumber to do it off the books as it's all so new.
I probably will just get a regular boiler.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 20, 2021, 06:30:58 AM
A new study estimates that during 3 months of the devastating 2019-2020 Australian fires, double the amount of CO2 was released into the atmosphere, some .....

715 billion tonnes of CO2.  :bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 20, 2021, 07:40:11 AM
We are living through the Great Filter right now. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 08:07:07 AM
Highly doubtful.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 20, 2021, 08:15:08 AM
What I'm doing can hardly be called living.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 08:17:27 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 20, 2021, 07:40:11 AM
We are living through the Great Filter right now. :(

I am very skeptical. There could be several solar-systems spanning civilisations in our galaxy alone without any being aware of any of the others.

Not to mention that "we are living the end times" is the most cliche prediction made in all ages of humanity.

I think what we are looking at instead is the next couple of generations having a REALLY shitty time until the survivors of the various calamities coming will rebuild their existence around new realities.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 08:24:37 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 20, 2021, 08:15:08 AM
What I'm doing can hardly be called living.

Dyin' aint much of a living.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 20, 2021, 08:38:20 AM
Quote from: mongers on October 20, 2021, 06:30:58 AM
A new study estimates that during 3 months of the devastating 2019-2020 Australian fires, double the amount of CO2 was released into the atmosphere, some .....

715 billion tonnes of CO2.  :bleeding:

Million not billion https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02509-3

About a year's worth of UK emissions  :(

(or two years worth if you don't include embedded emissions in imports)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 20, 2021, 08:47:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 08:17:27 AMNot to mention that "we are living the end times" is the most cliche prediction made in all ages of humanity.

I think what we are looking at instead is the next couple of generations having a REALLY shitty time until the survivors of the various calamities coming will rebuild their existence around new realities.
Maybe. I think lots of prediction in the ages of humanity is not these are the end times, but that history and existence is cyclical and goes through end times and rebirth. I think some of the language and understanding around climate in Western countries especially is a little shaped by our millenarial Christian heritage.

I think it's also politically problematic - it is difficult to mobilise people and change in the context of an almost inevitable, imminent and catastrophic doom, if that's the only way you frame it. You also need to capture hope and the message which the scientists are still saying that it is not too late to fix and to change course. I think that is necessary to mobilise people politically than an (inaccurate) message that we are doomed and it's too late.

I'm broadly optimistic still. A lot of what we need to do we can do, so it's a question of mobilising our societies to do it - and the comparisons I'd use are total war and also the response to covid in 2020. The bits we can't currently do I think we will find a solution to over the next decade or two and we can add them to the mix as they become possible.

The perceived insurmountabiliy of this is part of the problem. According to the UK's independent Climate Change Committee which advises on this the cost of us getting to net zero is basically capex of about £50 billion a year for the next 10-20 years (or about 2% of GDP), after 20 years they project the opex savings to the economy will be larger than the capex. So the costs savings from about 2040 will outweigh the inivestments required. The UK is developed so it's likely to be higher than lots of countries, but we're also not a massive manufacturer etc so lower than others and we need to help share the costs. Because we need to help the rest of the world, because we are a minnow with about 1% of the world's carbon emissions.

But even globally estimates are we need to be spending abotu 1.5% of global GDP for the next 20-30 years (or about $1.5-2 trillion a year). That is far less than we've spent on wars in the past or globally on economic support measures during covid. We need to work out a way to do it - but that is intensely achievable, and in a fair way. We just need to be able to mobilise those resources. And it's probably an overestimate. Since 2000 or even 2010 renewables have advanced hugely technologically and costs have plummeted, there's no reason to expect that wouldn't happen (exceptionally) for new green tech that's cutting edge or being developed now (and the rich countries should be trying to take advantage of that now to help subsidise the development/falling costs).

We need to focus far less on the doom as a motivation for doing because I think it also encourages a nihilistic acceptance of the inevitable, irreversible situation we're in and focus far more on the message from scientists that it's not too late and the message from economists and analysts who've put a price on it. And I think a lot about that Keynes line from 1942 (via Adam Tooze) that anything we can actually do we can afford - a lot of this, already, we can actually do.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 08:55:51 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 08:07:07 AM
Highly doubtful.

Why?  "Doubtful" is an understandable default position, but "highly doubtful" implies that you have knowledge of the odds that it is true.  What knowledge is that?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 09:04:49 AM
No, it refers to the amount of doubt I have, which is high.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 10:51:22 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 09:04:49 AM
No, it refers to the amount of doubt I have, which is high.

Then maybe you should make sure that you preface your statements of unsupported opinion as statements of unsupported opinion.  Otherwise, you invite us to interpret everything you say as merely unsupported personal opinion.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 20, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.


Imagine civilization collapses tomorrow- do you really think theres enough easily accessible resources, primarily coal and oil come to mind though others too, about to start again from scratch in the future?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 12:55:55 PM
If you are environmentally conscious, you are just a better class of people genetically, says repulsive study jumping to silly conclusions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/20/your-green-credentials-may-be-linked-to-your-genes-scientists-say
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 20, 2021, 12:58:05 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 12:55:55 PM
If you are environmentally conscious, you are just a better class of people genetically, says repulsive study jumping to silly conclusions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/20/your-green-credentials-may-be-linked-to-your-genes-scientists-say
What exactly is so repulsive about it? :unsure: I don't get the vitriol.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 12:59:33 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 12:55:55 PM
If you are environmentally conscious, you are just a better class of people genetically, says repulsive study jumping to silly conclusions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/20/your-green-credentials-may-be-linked-to-your-genes-scientists-say

"Dubiously rigorous study may indicate that people like you and me are genetically superior and are at peak of evolutionary outcomes."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 01:02:16 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 20, 2021, 12:58:05 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 12:55:55 PM
If you are environmentally conscious, you are just a better class of people genetically, says repulsive study jumping to silly conclusions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/20/your-green-credentials-may-be-linked-to-your-genes-scientists-say
What exactly is so repulsive about it? :unsure: I don't get the vitriol.

what Jacob said.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 20, 2021, 01:09:36 PM
I still don't get it.  Which part of the article could lead to that kind of derogatory paraphrasing? :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 01:12:05 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 10:51:22 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 09:04:49 AM
No, it refers to the amount of doubt I have, which is high.

Then maybe you should make sure that you preface your statements of unsupported opinion as statements of unsupported opinion.  Otherwise, you invite us to interpret everything you say as merely unsupported personal opinion.

Just like everyone else in the thread. But sure, go find some crackpot saying mankind's extinction is imminent.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 01:57:59 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.


Imagine civilization collapses tomorrow- do you really think theres enough easily accessible resources, primarily coal and oil come to mind though others too, about to start again from scratch in the future?

What are you talking about?  Why would I imagine that civilization collapses tomorrow?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 20, 2021, 02:08:14 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.


Imagine civilization collapses tomorrow- do you really think theres enough easily accessible resources, primarily coal and oil come to mind though others too, about to start again from scratch in the future?

if things go bad enough they we drop to a pre-industrial age we have more to worry about then finding oil to restart
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 03:03:17 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 01:57:59 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.


Imagine civilization collapses tomorrow- do you really think theres enough easily accessible resources, primarily coal and oil come to mind though others too, about to start again from scratch in the future?

What are you talking about?  Why would I imagine that civilization collapses tomorrow?

Because Berkut is worried humanity, or at least our ability to have a society that can into space, is on the chopping block.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 03:10:04 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 03:03:17 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 01:57:59 PM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 11:53:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 11:43:20 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 20, 2021, 08:41:54 AM
I wouldn't say we are at the apocalypse but we are certainly past the point of no return.
We either become a space faring civilization and soon or the chance is blown and we are forever trapped on earth.

Certainly means there is no doubt. You may have good reason to be pessimistic but we are a long way from certainly being past the point of no return.


Imagine civilization collapses tomorrow- do you really think theres enough easily accessible resources, primarily coal and oil come to mind though others too, about to start again from scratch in the future?

What are you talking about?  Why would I imagine that civilization collapses tomorrow?

Because Berkut is worried humanity, or at least our ability to have a society that can into space, is on the chopping block.


Then the same response goes to Berkut, there are definitely reasons to be pessimistic, but we are certainly not there yet.

The discussion about whether it is beneficial to devote resources to send humans to live off of the Earth is a whole other discussion.  My view is that thinking distracts people from the brutal truth that we have only one habitatable place to live and we need to protect it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 20, 2021, 04:05:07 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 09:04:49 AM
No, it refers to the amount of doubt I have, which is high.

I'm generally pro-legalization but would recommend against mixing your doubt with THC.

FWIW we entered the Great Filter around 1945, been living on borrowed time ever since.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 04:06:30 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 20, 2021, 04:05:07 PM
I'm generally pro-legalization but would recommend against mixing your doubt with THC.

FWIW we entered the Great Filter around 1945, been living on borrowed time ever since.

I don't think most people use filters of any size with THC products.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 20, 2021, 04:08:25 PM
Is the Great Filter like the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Should it be the Great Colander?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 20, 2021, 04:12:28 PM
As for the climate change the last warming period with a temp change of a magnitude of that we are facing (the PETM) resulted in the extinction of almost all the then existing mammalian species.  On the optimistic side the pre-change baseline temperature was considerably warmer during that episode so maybe it won't be that bad.  On the pessimistic side the PETM warming took about 20,000 - 50,000 years which we are compressing into about 100 . . .

I wouldn't expect complete extinction but there are a lot of very, VERY bad outcomes short of that.  And the level of resources we are dedicating is ludicrously small given the probability weighted future outcomes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 04:14:18 PM
Sure, if we continue to elect governments that take no action were are, to borrow Tyr's phrase, certainly doomed.  But we still have some time, as little as it is.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 04:58:40 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 03:38:14 AM
Just in August the Guardian interviewed a few folks who have it in their detached homes. Seems like very hit and miss. One guy in particular ended up with a cold house and a giant electricity bill for his troubles, another had neighbours complain of the noise etc. I am trying to to reign my skepticism in on account of being ignorant on heat pumps, but a big fan heating up air before pushing it inside does not seem like a great alternative to burning gas.
air is compressed, then heated or chilled for some models.  It's energy efficient because of the compression, there is much less volume to heat, then it is "decompressed" as it is sent through your home/building.
It has limits in cold climate, but for most of the UK, it would be allright.
It requires electricity to function, but much less than an alternative electrical heating unit like a baseboard heater.
As for burning gas, well, it all depends on how you produce your electricity.  If you need to burn coal or natural gas to produce it, it won't save much.  If you can produce it with a mix of hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, than it's good.
I think gas heating would be a sensible solution for a nation like Quebec, where we could export our electricity surplus to our American neighbours.  I'd export it to Canada too, but they don't want anything to do with Quebec, they prefer to burn coal instead. ;)

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 06:04:40 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 04:58:40 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 03:38:14 AM
Just in August the Guardian interviewed a few folks who have it in their detached homes. Seems like very hit and miss. One guy in particular ended up with a cold house and a giant electricity bill for his troubles, another had neighbours complain of the noise etc. I am trying to to reign my skepticism in on account of being ignorant on heat pumps, but a big fan heating up air before pushing it inside does not seem like a great alternative to burning gas.
air is compressed, then heated or chilled for some models.  It's energy efficient because of the compression, there is much less volume to heat, then it is "decompressed" as it is sent through your home/building.
It has limits in cold climate, but for most of the UK, it would be allright.
It requires electricity to function, but much less than an alternative electrical heating unit like a baseboard heater.
As for burning gas, well, it all depends on how you produce your electricity.  If you need to burn coal or natural gas to produce it, it won't save much.  If you can produce it with a mix of hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, than it's good.
I think gas heating would be a sensible solution for a nation like Quebec, where we could export our electricity surplus to our American neighbours.  I'd export it to Canada too, but they don't want anything to do with Quebec, they prefer to burn coal instead. ;)

Thanks.

I guess "alright" would be relative. It seems like a lot of Brits are perfectly content with keeping their homes around 18-20C. I need 22 as the bare minimum when I am not asleep.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 20, 2021, 06:09:48 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 06:04:40 PM
I guess "alright" would be relative. It seems like a lot of Brits are perfectly content with keeping their homes around 18-20C. I need 22 as the bare minimum when I am not asleep.
Are you made of money!? :o

That's too warm. Heating hasn't been on yet. We're still in the put a jumper on and get in a blanket stage of the year.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 06:16:06 PM
22C is way too hot.  I would be thinking of turning on the AC at that point  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 06:32:58 PM
22 C is pretty normal around here.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 06:40:57 PM
When I've been sitting still and my circulation isn't going and/ or when I'm worried I might be a bit under the weather I'll pump the heat all the way up to 21 C to get warm and toasty.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 20, 2021, 06:45:28 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 06:40:57 PM
When I've been sitting still and my circulation isn't going and/ or when I'm worried I might be a bit under the weather I'll pump the heat all the way up to 21 C to get warm and toasty.

:hmm:

Have you considered wearing more clothes?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 06:50:10 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 20, 2021, 06:45:28 PM
:hmm:

Have you considered wearing more clothes?

I often wear clothes, and I have a nice selection of sweaters that I often wear. But sometimes I'll revel in the power of on-demand heating to make me feel decadently warm.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 07:04:03 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2021, 06:04:40 PM
Thanks.

I guess "alright" would be relative. It seems like a lot of Brits are perfectly content with keeping their homes around 18-20C. I need 22 as the bare minimum when I am not asleep.

well, it depends on outdoor temperature.  Most models are sold to be good up to -10C or -15 C (5-14F).  Some have cold temperature units (like mine) and are technically rated up to -25C, although the installer told me I couldn't rely on it alone to warm me at these kind of temperatures.

That's what I meant by "allright".  It depends on the outdoor temps and I have no idea what they are in Great Britain.

As with anything, it's never a universal truth, and it still requires good insulation, and if the winter temperature is frequently below -15C, you may need a supplemental unit.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 07:04:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 06:16:06 PM
22C is way too hot.  I would be thinking of turning on the AC at that point  :P
I keep indoor temp at about this, 21.5-22C during winter.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 07:04:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 06:16:06 PM
22C is way too hot.  I would be thinking of turning on the AC at that point  :P
I keep indoor temp at about this, 21.5-22C during winter.

You need to get better at virtue signaling.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 09:26:46 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
You need to get better at virtue signaling.

... but no matter how hard we try, none of us will get to your exalted level :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 20, 2021, 09:29:53 PM
I switch back and forth between heat to 22C and then AC to 10C.  I think it's too unfriendly to the environment to just keep it at 22C all the time.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:52:36 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 09:26:46 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
You need to get better at virtue signaling.

... but no matter how hard we try, none of us will get to your exalted level :(

Well, at least you try your hardest.  In all modesty, I don't try at all.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 10:18:16 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:52:36 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 20, 2021, 09:26:46 PM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
You need to get better at virtue signaling.

... but no matter how hard we try, none of us will get to your exalted level :(

Well, at least you try your hardest.  In all modesty, I don't try at all.

It's awe-inspiring to be in the presence of such incredible natural talent like yours.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 20, 2021, 11:32:20 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 20, 2021, 09:29:53 PM
I switch back and forth between heat to 22C and then AC to 10C.  I think it's too unfriendly to the environment to just keep it at 22C all the time.

Jeebus. That's too cold.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 21, 2021, 12:43:44 AM
I still have a fan on to sleep as my apt likes to stay between 23-25c until later in the year. :weep:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 21, 2021, 12:44:55 AM
Older people, especially those with high blood pressure, need to be careful about not heating their living space sufficiently. There is a risk of the blood thickening and causing clotting; it is one reason why there are excess winter deaths, few of them die of hypothermia but there are more heart attcks and strokes.

https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2019/01/16/how-your-body-copes-with-cold-weather/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 21, 2021, 03:33:45 AM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 07:04:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 06:16:06 PM
22C is way too hot.  I would be thinking of turning on the AC at that point  :P
I keep indoor temp at about this, 21.5-22C during winter.

You need to get better at virtue signaling.

I have to defend these Northern freaks of nature - people here do genuinly think it's normal they keep their homes at around 18C during the day. :P

EDIT: I had an immigrant ex-colleague who had the theory that this is due to British parents exposing their babies to the cold so their heat receptors get all messed up.  :lol: I wouldn't go that far.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 21, 2021, 03:41:46 AM
I hope you low-temp guys never travel to Russia in winter. Indoor temps would fucking kill you.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 21, 2021, 04:44:49 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 20, 2021, 02:08:14 PM

if things go bad enough they we drop to a pre-industrial age we have more to worry about then finding oil to restart

Sure. But I'm talking on a geological time scale rather than a human one here.
Less Fallout and more clean slate and many hundreds of thousands of years from now man ( or octopus)  has to start again.
We've burned through all our easily accessible resources to get us to an industrial level of civilization. That just doesn't seem possible to happen again on earth given the expected life cycle of the sun and how long this stuff takes to form. We have passed the point of no return and must now either be the space sperm we were born to be or wait until our civilization collapses.

As an aside point this I believe is a brilliant never used Sci fi plot point. Less aliens that develop nukes then kill themselves or whatever and more aliens on a resource poor planet that just don't have the capacity to ever get to an industrial level.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 21, 2021, 07:51:38 AM
What really depresses me about all this is that my pessimism is not at all based on any doubt about our ability to handle this crisis, as large as it is.

I am very sure that we could absolutely deal with this. I don't even think it would be that hard in theory. Super easy, barely an inconvenience!

Nope. My pessimism is completely based on what appears to be our collective decision that we simply don't want to.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 21, 2021, 08:03:13 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 21, 2021, 03:41:46 AM
I hope you low-temp guys never travel to Russia in winter. Indoor temps would fucking kill you.

No problem then, just stay outdoors.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 21, 2021, 08:18:49 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 21, 2021, 04:44:49 AM
We've burned through all our easily accessible resources to get us to an industrial level of civilization.

That's not only incorrect, its almost the opposite of the problem.  There are still very considerable amounts of readily accessible fossil fuel resources given current technology.  It's burning them that is creating the problem.  The problem is not scarcity of burnable (and carbon generating) resources but their pesky abundance and our reluctance to quit them.  Our challenge is not running out of resources but generating the political will to leave them in the ground.

The sun is constantly delivering 174 quadrillion watts to the Earth.  Even after reflection and efficiency losses, there is plenty of available energy to harvest without burning a thing, and without having to do fancy things like transmit energy from collectors in orbit. Nuclear generation is 70 year old technology that can supply large amounts of constant power on demand without emission.  It is simply a question of making the enormous investments in infrastructure that are required to speed up what would normally be a leisurely transition of energy regime.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 21, 2021, 08:44:55 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 21, 2021, 08:18:49 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 21, 2021, 04:44:49 AM
We've burned through all our easily accessible resources to get us to an industrial level of civilization.

That's not only incorrect, its almost the opposite of the problem.  There are still very considerable amounts of readily accessible fossil fuel resources given current technology. 


Kind of snookered yourself there.

Current technology is far ahead of 18th century technology.
The problem you outline is that our ability to extract harder to get resources keeps increasing which keeps prices affordable.
Knock everything back to square one and we're no longer running ahead of accessible resources.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Agelastus on October 21, 2021, 08:46:46 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 21, 2021, 08:18:49 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 21, 2021, 04:44:49 AM
We've burned through all our easily accessible resources to get us to an industrial level of civilization.

That's not only incorrect, its almost the opposite of the problem.  There are still very considerable amounts of readily accessible fossil fuel resources given current technology.

I thought Tyr was talking about the outcome if global warming led to a civilizational collapse; that we had exploited the easily accessable resources that were usable with a lower level of tech and thus would not be able to bootstrap our way back up.

That the current society was the only chance we had to develop and maintain a high tech society for our species because of the depletion of resources that can be accessed at a lower level of tech than the current one.

I first saw this idea expressed in a novelisation of the Robotech series (Harmony Gold's butchered Macross version) from the 1980s. Not a particularly scientific source but the argument seems reasonable on the surface.
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on October 21, 2021, 05:15:35 PM
Quote from: Tamas on October 21, 2021, 03:33:45 AM
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2021, 09:07:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on October 20, 2021, 07:04:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 20, 2021, 06:16:06 PM
22C is way too hot.  I would be thinking of turning on the AC at that point  :P
I keep indoor temp at about this, 21.5-22C during winter.

You need to get better at virtue signaling.

I have to defend these Northern freaks of nature - people here do genuinly think it's normal they keep their homes at around 18C during the day. :P

EDIT: I had an immigrant ex-colleague who had the theory that this is due to British parents exposing their babies to the cold so their heat receptors get all messed up.  :lol: I wouldn't go that far.

I had a bit of a shock earlier, the heating came on for the first time in several weeks, I think the thermostat was set to about 15.5C* and it's been a noticably colder day today.  :bowler:


* I think it's heat sensor is significantly off, the downstairs temperature was probably 2C warmer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 25, 2021, 11:34:18 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/un-warns-world-way-off-track-greenhouse-gases-soar-2021-10-25/

QuoteUN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

BRUSSELS/GENEVA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Global governments' plans to cut emissions in the years ahead are not enough to avert catastrophic climate change which would lead to "endless suffering", a U.N. report said on Monday.

With less than a week until the United Nations COP26 conference begins, the report laid bare the gap between the actions governments are taking today, and what would be needed to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement target to try to limit human-caused global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"Overshooting the temperature goals will lead to a destabilised world and endless suffering, especially among those who have contributed the least to the (greenhouse gas) emissions in the atmosphere," said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Under countries' current pledges, global emissions would be 16% higher in 2030 than they were in 2010, according to an analysis by the UNFCCC.

That is far off the 45% reduction by 2030 that scientists say is needed to cap warming at 1.5 degrees and avoid its most devastating impacts like the deadly heat waves and destructive storms already battering countries around the world
.

"We are nowhere near where science says we should be," Espinosa said.

Without more ambitious commitments, global temperatures could hit 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, the UNFCCC said.

The warning came as a separate World Meteorological Organization report showed that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surged to 413.2 parts per million in 2020, rising more than the average rate over the last decade despite a temporary dip in new emissions during COVID-19 lockdowns.

"We are way off track," said Secretary-General Petteri Taalas on prospects for meeting the Paris cap. "We need to revisit our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life," he added, calling for a "dramatic increase" in commitments at COP26 which runs from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12. read more

INCOMING PLEDGES

The reports on Monday emphasised the high stakes for the COP26 conferences, where world leaders and thousands of delegates will attempt to secure pledges from countries and enough action from polluters to keep the Paris goals alive.

Scientists say capping global warming to 1.5 degrees would require global net emissions of CO2 - the main greenhouse gas - to fall to zero by 2050.

The UNFCCC said it had received a flurry of new climate pledges in the last month, and that as of Oct. 12 some 143 of the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris agreement had submitted new pledges.

Most of the pledges received in recent weeks were from small countries responsible for a tiny share of global emissions, however, while submissions from bigger polluters like Saudi Arabia had not moved the needle for emissions over the next decade. read more

The European Union and United States - the world's second and third-biggest emitters after China - also set new targets this year to reduce emissions this decade. China and India are among those facing pressure to commit to cut emissions faster.

The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to rise for as long as countries keep putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than they can remove.

Emissions, which fluctuate depending on the current level of fossil-fuel burning, are distinct from the carbon dioxide concentrations accumulated over centuries.

The WMO report confirmed that last year's temporary dip in emissions "did not have any discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates." Concentrations of other gases methane and nitrous oxide also rose in 2020 and beat the last decade's average, it showed.

It also flagged concerns about the ability of the ocean and trees to soak up roughly half of carbon dioxide levels, thus protecting us against potentially more dramatic temperature hikes.

"It's not automatic that the strength of sinks will continue at the same rate," said Taalas, describing "alarming" new data showing that a portion of the Amazon rainforest was now emitting carbon rather than absorbing it due to deforestation and fires.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
That seems alarming.

Of course, is there a source for this information that isn't the mainstream media though? They are all biased, so cannot be trusted. And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
That seems alarming.

Of course, is there a source for this information that isn't the mainstream media though? They are all biased, so cannot be trusted. And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying that, right?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 12:15:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
That seems alarming.

Of course, is there a source for this information that isn't the mainstream media though? They are all biased, so cannot be trusted. And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying that, right?

languish is not the target audience for the "MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS ALL LIBERAL BIAS!!!!!" screed.

The people who are the target are definitely hearing it loud and clear though.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:17:25 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 12:15:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
That seems alarming.

Of course, is there a source for this information that isn't the mainstream media though? They are all biased, so cannot be trusted. And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying that, right?

languish is not the target audience for the "MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS ALL LIBERAL BIAS!!!!!" screed.

The people who are the target are definitely hearing it loud and clear though.

So, umm, you didn't actually answer the question.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying this stuff, right?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 12:27:27 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:17:25 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 12:15:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
That seems alarming.

Of course, is there a source for this information that isn't the mainstream media though? They are all biased, so cannot be trusted. And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying that, right?

languish is not the target audience for the "MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS ALL LIBERAL BIAS!!!!!" screed.

The people who are the target are definitely hearing it loud and clear though.

So, umm, you didn't actually answer the question.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying this stuff, right?

The question isn't interesting. The fact that YOU don't believe the narrative isn't the point, since you aren't the target audience.

Your target audience does in fact believe it - they actually believe you when you and the right wing media tell them the media is all biased and cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

And you know this perfectly well. WHen you say "The MSM has a liberal bias" they don't hear "the MSM, being composed of human beings doing human work, of course have some kind of innate bias just like everyone else does, and if you were to absolutely quantify that bias, it could be sort of called liberal, but largely because the right has so far divorced itself from reality that actual reality itself appears to be biased against them!".

Nope, what they hear, and what the crafters of that narrative counts on them hearing, is that the MSM is a bunch of left wing propaganda tools lying to them constantly, and hence should be ignored.

So yeah, I really don't care how many people on languish believe that, because it is irrelevant to the problem the right wing media has created, and you and other supposed "reasonable" conservatives continue to exacerbate by chanting about MSM liberal bias.

"There are good people on both sides!"

You can pretend to hide behind some idea that really, that doesn't mean exactly what the propaganda is intended to mean, but it doesn't excuse your complicity in the outcome one bit.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:44:26 PM
Who exactly is my "target audience"?

I'm posting on a small fringe message board with maybe 30 regular posters.  I would think my one and only target audience for things I post on languish would be the people who read languish.

How saying 'the mainstream media has a left-of-centre bias' makes me complicit in... something (you're not very clear on what I'm supposed to be complicit with) entirely escapes me.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 25, 2021, 12:55:51 PM
Don't we already have a Covid thread to discuss media bias?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:00:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:44:26 PM
Who exactly is my "target audience"?

I'm posting on a small fringe message board with maybe 30 regular posters.  I would think my one and only target audience for things I post on languish would be the people who read languish.

How saying 'the mainstream media has a left-of-centre bias' makes me complicit in... something (you're not very clear on what I'm supposed to be complicit with) entirely escapes me.

Yes, I am sure you have never used the term anywhere else ever.

But again, you are not the point, you are entirely tangential.

This narrative, this lie, is what has brought us to where we are now. Or at least has some significant role to play in it.

If YOU don't think your repeating it ad naseum has anything to do with its acceptance broadly, then why are you so defensive about it? It must be others out there in the world spreading that lie, so you are fine.

Me talking about it as being something important that rational people should be concerned with because it has had a huge part in bringing us to where we are today is not meant for you - you are fine, since you only ever repeat the lie among people who know that it's broader message is just right wing propaganda.

I think we talk on Languish quite a bit about problems that are not evidenced ON languish itself though, right?

Rest easy Beebs, this isn't about you. Right? You've never once used the "MSM is liberal biased" outside of completely academic discussions where everyone involved knows that it means so little as to be basically irrelevant and meaningless.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:00:52 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 25, 2021, 12:55:51 PM
Don't we already have a Covid thread to discuss media bias?

That's the beauty of the propaganda - you get to use it everywhere! Climate change, covid, stolen elections, it's the narrative that pays off over and over and over again.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 01:05:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:00:05 PM
If YOU don't think your repeating it ad naseum has anything to do with its acceptance broadly, then why are you so defensive about it? It must be others out there in the world spreading that lie, so you are fine.

Man this argument is absolutely Trumpian.  I get relentlessly attacked by Berkut, I object, and then my being "defensive" is used as an argument about why Berkut must be right after all! :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on October 25, 2021, 01:21:08 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 25, 2021, 12:55:51 PM
Don't we already have a Covid thread to discuss media bias?

:lmfao:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:33:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 01:05:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:00:05 PM
If YOU don't think your repeating it ad naseum has anything to do with its acceptance broadly, then why are you so defensive about it? It must be others out there in the world spreading that lie, so you are fine.

Man this argument is absolutely Trumpian.  I get relentlessly attacked by Berkut, I object, and then my being "defensive" is used as an argument about why Berkut must be right after all! :lol:

The irony of you invoking Trump while you tell us all about media bias is delicious.

And I did not attack you at all in this thread anyway. I attacked the problem of people not trusting the media because they've been fed a lie for last couple of decades about how the media cannot be trusted.

Why you decided that had to be targeted at you I am sure I have no idea....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 01:41:29 PM
 :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 01:58:49 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 01:41:29 PM
:lol:

I know! This is all so hilarious!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 25, 2021, 03:34:50 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:17:25 PM
So, umm, you didn't actually answer the question.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying this stuff, right?
To be absolutely clear I would 100% say the mainstream media has a liberal bias :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 04:11:19 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 25, 2021, 03:34:50 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2021, 12:17:25 PM
So, umm, you didn't actually answer the question.

You realize that precisely zero people on languish are saying this stuff, right?
To be absolutely clear I would 100% say the mainstream media has a liberal bias :P

Shocking.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 25, 2021, 05:42:37 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 25, 2021, 11:43:38 AM
And reuters is definitely the mainstream media, so this is likely some kind of fake news.

Reuters was caugth "enhancing" pictures, though...  It ain't a stretch from fake news ;)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 26, 2021, 12:53:31 AM
https://www.voanews.com/a/amazon-rain-forest-turning-into-carbon-source-un-agency-warns/6284858.html

QuoteAmazon Rain Forest Turning into Carbon Source, UN Agency Warns

GENEVA —
The battle to stem climate change may be lost as new information indicates the Amazon rain forest is turning from a carbon sink – or area that absorbs CO2 – into a source of carbon dioxide, the World Meteorological Organization warns.

The latest edition of the WMO's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide once again broke all records last year.

The U.N. agency's report warns the concentrations of these greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere are driving climate change. It says carbon dioxide, the single most important greenhouse gas, accounts for approximately 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate.

The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, says about half of CO2 emissions remains in the atmosphere for centuries. He says the other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems.

He says it is not clear for how much longer forested areas, often referred to as the lungs of the Earth, will continue to act as effective carbon sinks.

"We have already seen some alarming indications that, for example, Amazonian rain forest ecosystem, which used to be a major sink of carbon, has become now a source of carbon, which is alarming," Taalas said. "And this is related to deforestation in the area and also changes in local climate because of this deforestation."

Oksana Tarasova, who heads the WMO's Atmospheric and Environment Research Division, says the WMO only now is revealing this new finding because it has taken nine years of observation to gather the measurement data set needed to understand the changes taking place. She says not all of the Amazon forest is turning from a carbon sink to a net producer of carbon.

"So, the Western part of the Amazonia still continues to work as a carbon sink at this point. But we do not know for how long that will continue this way," Tarasova said. "We are making the measurements there and keeping our track on what is happening there. ... I would take the whole Amazonia as a whole that is seen that it is a sink, but its capacity is substantially reduced."

Meteorologists say climate change negotiators at an upcoming conference in Scotland must take concrete action and make concrete pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

They say setting carbon neutral targets will not work in stemming climate change. They also warn the world is heading toward a temperature rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. This, they say, is far more than the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 26, 2021, 03:48:27 AM
We have the tools to deal with this new menace.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 26, 2021, 04:05:07 AM
Can we bomb Brazil already
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 26, 2021, 04:31:47 AM
The so called mainstream media will increasingly have a so called liberal bias as the so called moderate right continues to be silenced and dominated by increasingly unhinged far right lunacy. When you intend to have at least some indirect relationship to facts in your reporting, you are bound to go straight against the current non-liberal forces of today's politics.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 26, 2021, 07:18:21 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 26, 2021, 04:05:07 AM
Can we bomb Brazil already

Because they're not emitting enough currently?

We need an invasion force to stop deforestation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 26, 2021, 11:36:35 AM
That's a wonderfully vague article on the Amazon. Is there any indicatin WHY this is happening? Is this just a rephrasing of "deforestation releases carbon" + "and deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate"? If so, it might have been worth mentioning.

Or is this a statement that untouched rainforest is emitting more carbon than it's absorbing? And we have no clue as to why that is happening?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 26, 2021, 11:41:37 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 26, 2021, 11:36:35 AM
That's a wonderfully vague article on the Amazon. Is there any indicatin WHY this is happening? Is this just a rephrasing of "deforestation releases carbon" + "and deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate"? If so, it might have been worth mentioning.

Or is this a statement that untouched rainforest is emitting more carbon than it's absorbing? And we have no clue as to why that is happening?
I think it's been reported before - the Guardian article has a little more details:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs

Basically fires largely set for deforestation for beef and soy. Plus climate change and the effects of deforestation mean there's less rain and temperatures are higher, meaning other bits of the forest are not sucking in carbon as they should/did.

And deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate under Bolsonaro - both deforestation in general and deforestation at 12-15 year highs.

It's very bad.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 26, 2021, 11:43:49 AM
Not to mention that several activists against the deforestation have been killed in recent years.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 26, 2021, 11:47:28 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 26, 2021, 11:43:49 AM
Not to mention that several activists against the deforestation have been killed in recent years.
Yeah - and it links profoundly to human rights and the rights of indigenous communities.

Only a year until the election and Lula should win, but Bolsonaro's already been running (sparsely attended) rehearsals of his 6 January moment.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 26, 2021, 12:13:35 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 26, 2021, 11:41:37 AM
I think it's been reported before - the Guardian article has a little more details:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs

Basically fires largely set for deforestation for beef and soy. Plus climate change and the effects of deforestation mean there's less rain and temperatures are higher, meaning other bits of the forest are not sucking in carbon as they should/did.

And deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate under Bolsonaro - both deforestation in general and deforestation at 12-15 year highs.

It's very bad.

Thank! So the story is "Brazil is deforesting the Amazon at a massive rate, fuelling global warming."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 26, 2021, 02:05:44 PM
Add to all that the tipping point problem.  The Amazon creates its own rain forest climate zone.  But it is reaching the point where it does not now cover enough area to do that.  When it stops creating its own self perpetuating rain, the who thing is going to turn into savannah.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 26, 2021, 11:57:04 PM
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbd9m/vice-guardian-poll-americans-climate-change-man-made-climate-crimes

Quote45% of Americans Don't Believe Humans Cause Climate Change, VICE News/Guardian Poll Shows

VICE News partnered with the Guardian and pollster YouGov to find out how people living in the US think and feel about climate change.

Nearly half of Americans still don't think climate change is caused by human activities, but Democrats were far less likely than Republicans to hold those views, a new VICE News and Guardian poll has found.

This year was marked by several unprecedented natural disasters, including a "heat dome" marked by sweltering temperatures of up to 113 F that plagued the Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds, and record-breaking wildfire seasons that razed entire towns and displaced thousands. Experts linked the string of natural disasters to the climate crisis, and yet, many Americans are still struggling to understand whether and why the generation-defining crisis is happening.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on behalf of VICE News, the Guardian, and Covering Climate Now, by YouGov, comes less than a week before leaders and delegates from around the world meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations' climate change conference. The data shows that climate change is a top voter issue in the U.S., behind health care and social programs. For college grads and Democrats, climate change jumped to top spot (for Democrats it was tied with health care).

But while 69.5 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, they were divided on what's causing it. Forty-five percent don't think humans are mostly to blame for global warming, opting instead to blame "natural changes in the environment" or "other," and 8.3 percent denied global warming is happening altogether.

(https://i.postimg.cc/wvMHfGcN/45-of-Americans-Don-t-Believe-Humans-Cause-Climate-Change-VICE-News-Guardian-Poll-Shows-2021-10.png)

That's mostly due to Republicans (55.4 percent) and independents (33 percent) though, who were far more likely than Democrats (17.2 percent) to believe "natural causes" have led to global warming. Young people and educated folks too were significantly more likely to believe humans are to blame for climate change.

A significant group of people also believe scientists don't see eye to eye. Many respondents (30.5 percent) think there's a raging scientific debate over the cause of climate change when there really isn't. Globally, there is consensus among scientists—97 percent or more—that global warming is happening because of human activities, according to NASA and international science societies.

But again, this number is split by political affiliation. Exactly half of Republicans said they believe there is discord between scientists, compared to only about 14.9 percent of Democrats.

How guilty is Big Oil?

The poll suggests most people think oil and gas companies are to blame for climate change, as opposed to the government, the meat industry, retail, and individuals. But Democrats (83.4 percent) were far more likely than Republicans (27.8 percent) to place most of the blame on the oil industry, as were Black and Latinx folks over white people and other races.

(https://i.postimg.cc/4xvJmtxY/45-of-Americans-Don-t-Believe-Humans-Cause-Climate-Change-VICE-News-Guardian-Poll-Shows-2021-10.png)

The good news is that after reading a passage about how oil and gas behemoth Exxon already knew of climate change in the 70s but pretended it wasn't real, 67.2 percent of respondents—up from 60.3—said oil and gas companies are mostly or completely to blame.

(https://i.postimg.cc/LsN2VpfR/45-of-Americans-Don-t-Believe-Humans-Cause-Climate-Change-VICE-News-Guardian-Poll-Shows-2021-10.png)

Majority believes climate change has harmed US

Most respondents (59.4 percent, and 83.8 percent of Democrats) agree that climate change has already harmed people in the U.S., and nearly half believe it's happening in their own community. People of colour were more likely to say that climate change has already harmed people: 69.2 percent of Black and 67.7 percent of Latinx respondents said global warming-related harm has happened in the US.

As such, Black and Latinx people are also more likely to take proactive steps to combat climate change. According to the poll, 57.8 percent of respondents believe they can make change—but that figure skyrockets among Black people (78.1 percent) and Latinx (72.2 percent). (Black and brown people are often on the front lines of the climate crisis in the U.S. disproportionately affected by climate change in the US when compared to white people. VICE World News has previously reported how climate justice activism often excludes people of color despite the fact that they're the ones on the front lines of the crisis.)

The good news is that a majority of Americans say they're already flying and driving less, using less electricity at home, and recycling. About half are also either already eating less meat or willing to do so, and nearly two-thirds support purchasing products from eco-friendly businesses.

But people are less likely to take their efforts to the streets: 78.9 percent of respondents said they wouldn't protest, while 69.2 percent said they wouldn't donate to an activist group or cause. A majority (59.7 percent) also said they won't track their carbon footprint.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 27, 2021, 01:11:54 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 26, 2021, 02:05:44 PM
Add to all that the tipping point problem.  The Amazon creates its own rain forest climate zone.  But it is reaching the point where it does not now cover enough area to do that.  When it stops creating its own self perpetuating rain, the who thing is going to turn into savannah.

Yes, a very important point. Some pessimists think we have already gone past that tipping point; I have also seen articles that suggest that the loss of just 7% of the remaining forest cover will doom the forest.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 27, 2021, 01:16:33 AM
Whether or not we're beyond tipping point, it appears things will get worse during our lifetimes before they get better.

I'm wary of promises of carbon capture technologies. Yes, I think they can and will play an important role in the fight against climate change. However, I also feel there's voices who seem to argue that they will be the magic bullet so that we can otherwise (mostly) keep going as is, and I hope the reliance on that factor doesn't lead to excessive complacency.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 27, 2021, 04:21:49 AM
Have to say I don't like those questions.
If global warming is happening is it caused mostly by humans....
Ehh....even if you 100% agree climate change is a big problem and humans are the ones making it an issue you can still disagree there.
The problem is less that humans are behind all the warming and more that we are fucking up the natural cycle.
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on October 27, 2021, 05:59:46 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 27, 2021, 04:21:49 AM
Have to say I don't like those questions.
If global warming is happening is it caused mostly by humans....
Ehh....even if you 100% agree climate change is a big problem and humans are the ones making it an issue you can still disagree there.
The problem is less that humans are behind all the warming and more that we are fucking up the natural cycle.

:hmm:

And on the bold, 10, 100, 100,000 or maybe 100 million years?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on October 27, 2021, 09:43:09 AM
Or that the oil companies are mostly responsible. Sure, they're a large part, but every sector of industry and private individuals contribute.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 27, 2021, 11:38:18 AM
The good news about that data is that even people who identify as Republicans change their view when they read non Fox (ie accurate) information.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 27, 2021, 03:45:55 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 27, 2021, 05:59:46 AM
Quote from: Tyr on October 27, 2021, 04:21:49 AM
Have to say I don't like those questions.
If global warming is happening is it caused mostly by humans....
Ehh....even if you 100% agree climate change is a big problem and humans are the ones making it an issue you can still disagree there.
The problem is less that humans are behind all the warming and more that we are fucking up the natural cycle.

:hmm:

And on the bold, 10, 100, 100,000 or maybe 100 million years?

All of the above.
Its a finely tuned multiple gears of wildly varying sizes machine.
That we've poured marmite into.


QuoteOr that the oil companies are mostly responsible. Sure, they're a large part, but every sector of industry and private individuals contribute.
True.
Who let the coal companies off the hook?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 27, 2021, 08:03:43 PM
45% of Americans think climate change is not caused by humans but only 7% think climate change doesn't exist? :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 27, 2021, 10:20:52 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 27, 2021, 08:03:43 PM
45% of Americans think climate change is not caused by humans but only 7% think climate change doesn't exist? :unsure:

"Climate change is real but it's a natural phenomenon that we can't do anything about!"
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 27, 2021, 10:23:08 PM
Once you convince people that there isn't any truth, the rest is easy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 27, 2021, 11:18:32 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2021, 10:20:52 PM
"Climate change is real but it's a natural phenomenon that we can't do anything about!"

Glass half full then.
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on October 28, 2021, 06:41:49 AM
Not impressed by climate change (XR) protesters breaking into Fawley oil refinery here to try and disrupt it's production.
Don't they know an oil refinery is quite a dangerous place?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 28, 2021, 07:36:58 AM
They might know given they had to cut through electrified fences to get into the facility.
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on October 28, 2021, 07:41:29 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 28, 2021, 07:36:58 AM
They might know given they had to cut through electrified fences to get into the facility.

So they were being reckless for some greater good?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 28, 2021, 08:05:11 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2021, 10:20:52 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 27, 2021, 08:03:43 PM
45% of Americans think climate change is not caused by humans but only 7% think climate change doesn't exist? :unsure:

"Climate change is real but it's a natural phenomenon that we can't do anything about!"

Don't be silly this is America were talking about.

""Climate change is real but it's all part of God's plan.  The godless heathen atheist Democrats want to stop God's plan because they worship Satan."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on October 28, 2021, 08:25:53 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 28, 2021, 08:05:11 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2021, 10:20:52 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 27, 2021, 08:03:43 PM
45% of Americans think climate change is not caused by humans but only 7% think climate change doesn't exist? :unsure:

"Climate change is real but it's a natural phenomenon that we can't do anything about!"

Don't be silly this is America were talking about.

""Climate change is real but it's all part of God's plan.  The godless heathen atheist Democrats want to stop God's plan because they worship Satan."

I know you are being a bit sarcastic, but there is some real logic there. If you start with the premise that the Earth was designed by an intelligent entity as a system for the maintenance of human life that has a particular purpose, it isn't illogical to assume that those systems are reasonably impervious to the machinations of its subjects - or at least impervious enough that it doesn't really matter given the time the humans are intended to be inhabiting said planet.

It's not the only conclusion to arrive at when you start with "Goddidit", but it isn't an entirely irrational one.

And it becomes even easier to accept once you have already internalized the idea that science is pretty sketchy in general, and you can't trust the media because it is all liberal bias and fake news.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 30, 2021, 11:21:01 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2021, 01:16:33 AM
Whether or not we're beyond tipping point, it appears things will get worse during our lifetimes before they get better.

I'm wary of promises of carbon capture technologies. Yes, I think they can and will play an important role in the fight against climate change. However, I also feel there's voices who seem to argue that they will be the magic bullet so that we can otherwise (mostly) keep going as is, and I hope the reliance on that factor doesn't lead to excessive complacency.

Speaking of carbon capture, here's a recent article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/in-iceland-can-a-revolutionary-new-process-actually-help-stop-global-warming-1.6227198
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 30, 2021, 12:07:12 PM
Didn't I posted this, like 3 weeks ago? :P
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on October 30, 2021, 12:07:34 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 30, 2021, 11:21:01 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2021, 01:16:33 AM
Whether or not we're beyond tipping point, it appears things will get worse during our lifetimes before they get better.

I'm wary of promises of carbon capture technologies. Yes, I think they can and will play an important role in the fight against climate change. However, I also feel there's voices who seem to argue that they will be the magic bullet so that we can otherwise (mostly) keep going as is, and I hope the reliance on that factor doesn't lead to excessive complacency.

Speaking of carbon capture, here's a recent article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/in-iceland-can-a-revolutionary-new-process-actually-help-stop-global-warming-1.6227198

The UK Climate change committee has said we should be planning to actively manage our climate with those sorts of new technology.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2021, 03:24:02 AM
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/g20-leaders-face-tough-climate-talks-second-day-summit-2021-10-30/

QuoteG20 offers little new on climate, leaving uphill task for COP26

ROME, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of 20 major economies agreed on a final statement on Sunday that urged "meaningful and effective" action to limit global warming, but angering climate activists by offering few concrete commitments.

The result of days of tough negotiation among diplomats leaves huge work to be done at the broader United Nations COP26 climate summit in Scotland, which starts this week.

U.S. President Joe Biden said he was disappointed that more could not have been done and blamed China and Russia for not bringing proposals to the table.

"The disappointment relates to the fact that Russia and ... China basically didn't show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change," Biden told reporters.

Although the G20 pledged to stop financing coal power overseas, they set no timetable for phasing it out at home, and watered down the wording on a promise to reduce emissions of methane - another potent greenhouse gas.

However, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who chaired the Rome gathering, hailed the final accord, saying that for the first time all G20 states had agreed on the importance of capping global warming at the 1.5 degrees Celsius level that scientists say is vital to avoid disaster.

"We made sure that our dreams are not only alive but they are progressing," Draghi told a closing news conference, brushing off criticism from environmentalists that the G20 had not gone nearly far enough to resolve the crisis.

The G20, which includes Brazil, China, India, Germany and the United States, accounts for 60% of the world's population and an estimated 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The 1.5C threshold is what UN experts say must be met to avoid a dramatic acceleration of extreme climate events like droughts, storms and floods, and to reach it they recommend net zero emissions should be achieved by 2050.

The stakes are huge - among them the very survival of low-lying countries, the impact on economic livelihoods the world over and the stability of the global financial system.

"This was a moment for the G20 to act with the responsibility they have as the biggest emitters, yet we only see half-measures rather than concrete urgent action," said Friederike Roder, vice president of sustainable development advocacy group Global Citizen.

The final summit document said current national plans on how to curb emissions will have to be strengthened "if necessary" and makes no specific reference to 2050 as a date to achieve net zero carbon emissions.

"We recognise that the impacts of climate change at 1.5°C are much lower than at 2°C. Keeping 1.5°C within reach will require meaningful and effective actions and commitment by all countries
," the communique said.

CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION

The leaders only recognised "the key relevance" of halting net emissions "by or around mid-century". This removed the 2050 date seen in previous versions of the final statement so as to make the target less specific.

China, the world's biggest CO2 emitter, has set a target date of 2060, and other large polluters such as India and Russia have also not committed to the 2050 target date.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the agreement was a good signal for COP26, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled he would have liked to see more ambition.

"There's no question that Canada, along with a number of other countries, would have liked stronger language and stronger commitments on the fight against climate change than others," he told reporters.

U.N. experts say that even if current national plans are fully implemented, the world is headed for global warming of 2.7C, with catastrophic consequences.

Draghi predicted that nations would keep on improving their plans to lower carbon emissions in the years ahead, adding that he was surprised by how far countries like China and Russia had shifted their stance in recent days.

"It is easy to suggest difficult things. It is very, very difficult to actually execute them," he said.

The final G20 statement includes a pledge to halt financing of overseas coal-fired power generation by the end of this year, but set no date for phasing out coal power, promising only to do so "as soon as possible".

This replaced a goal set in a previous draft of the final statement to achieve this by the end of the 2030s, showing the strong resistance from some coal-dependent countries

The G20 also set no date for phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, saying they will aim to do so "over the medium term".

METHANE REDUCTION

On methane, which has a more potent but less lasting impact than carbon dioxide on global warming, they diluted their wording from a previous draft that pledged to "strive to reduce our collective methane emissions significantly".

The final statement just recognises that reducing methane emissions is "one of the quickest, most feasible and most cost-effective ways to limit climate change".

G20 sources said negotiations were tough over so-called "climate financing", which refers to a 2009 pledge by rich nations to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries tackle climate change.

They have failed to meet the pledge, generating mistrust and a reluctance among some developing nations to accelerate their emissions reductions.


However, Draghi said the funding gap had narrowed to less than $20 billion and predicted it could be closed further, with wealthy nations considering using financing from the International Monetary Fund to make up the shortfall.

World leaders will kick start COP26 on Monday with two days of speeches that could include some new emissions-cutting pledges, before technical negotiators lock horns over the rules of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The United Nations said last week greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record in 2020 and the world was "way off track" in capping rising temperatures.
Title: Save electrons to cut global warming
Post by: mongers on November 01, 2021, 07:01:27 AM
Dont worry Boris will pull it off.  :bowler:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2021, 02:37:17 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/10/30/flood-vienna-danube-climate-change/

QuoteIn Vienna, a visionary example of dealing with urban floods

(https://external-preview.redd.it/M1YgQN_d14mGtGRoZnTX95k3Wn7LVTFaCpGh8asB2Ps.jpg?auto=webp&s=f63865f9700a77f63d0c36075bb17c763e44207d)
An inlet structure on the Danube that regulates the river's flow between the New Danube and the river's main course during high-water periods, like this one in 2013.

As climate change amplifies extreme weather events around the world, the Viennese defense system built in the 1970s and '80s can protect the city from even a 10,000-year flood

As fatal floods washed away homes in parts of Germany and Belgium this summer, the team that manages Vienna's flood defense knew they had about two days before the deluge reached the city.

The section of the Danube River that runs through the Austrian capital swelled to dangerously high levels. Within three hours on July 17, Austria's meteorological service recorded more rainfall in Vienna than ever before.

And yet the flood defense unit wasn't worried. They lifted the sluice gates of the New Danube and channeled some of the floodwater into this man-made side channel, allowing the river's excess water, debris and tree branches to rush in. Swimming, boating and kayaking were temporarily banned. With the lower banks of Danube Island inundated, the restaurants and bars there remained closed. Everything had gone as planned.

"I think it's fair to say that Vienna has the best flood protection in the world," said Wilfried Fellinger, the engineer who leads the flood defense team.

Across Europe, the catastrophic and deadly July flooding left river communities worried whether their defense systems will suffice as climate change causes more-extreme weather events. Already, the global population at risk of flooding has risen by as much as a quarter, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of Arizona. By the end of this decade, millions of people who believe their homes are safe will find that they no longer are.

But the Viennese won't be among them, Fellinger said. Statistically speaking, the flood defense he helped build in the 1980s would protect the city even from a 10,000-year flood. "It's unique," he said. Experts say it's also a bold and visionary example that emphasizes the sweeping approaches many cities will have to take to protect themselves from increasingly common flooding.

(https://static.republika.co.id/uploads/images/inpicture_slide/sudut-kota-wina-dan-sungai-danube-di-austria-sabtu_200330200215-881.jpg)
A view of the New Danube channel and the Danube River in Vienna in March 2020.

In Vienna, planners used soil excavated from the river channel — essentially a waste product — to raise an island about 13 miles long, roughly the length of Manhattan, and 800 feet wide, with bike and hiking trails zigzagging through meadows and forests and past ponds and a couple of nudist beaches. Moored along its bank is a "school ship," attended by nearly 1,000 students in grades 5 to 12.

"When Vienna takes the top spots in 'most livable city' rankings, then Danube Island as a leisure and recreational area is a big part of that," said Andreas Voigt, a professor of urban planning at Vienna's University of Technology.

The project, Voigt said, also allowed communities on the left bank of the Danube, commonly referred to as "Transdanubia," to sprawl and develop into Vienna's two largest districts. Where cows once grazed in flood zones, one-fifth of the city's 2 million residents have now settled around the city's tallest high-rises, including one of the United Nations' four international headquarters.

What's striking, too — and perhaps a lesson for today's decision-makers — is that politicking took a back seat, said 91-year-old Reinhard Breit, who led urban planning in Vienna when the new flood defense projects were discussed.

"It was an open-ended process where the best ideas won, and not based on partisanship," Breit said.

The first time Vienna tried to tame the Danube and mitigate flooding was in the 1870s. At a cost of $400 million in today's money, the team that had just completed the Suez Canal channeled the river's branches into a single course and fortified it with dikes as tall as a seven-story building. It was a mammoth undertaking — and yet it wasn't bold enough.

The dikes burst not long after World War II, while American, French, British and Russian troops were still stationed in the city. Vienna flooded. For weeks, residents lived in emergency encampments while major roads and buildings were inundated with floodwater.

"It became clear to us that very tough measures would be necessary to really protect Vienna from flooding," Breit said.

(https://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/ve_viennastpetersburg_3_5_oenbflood1830gurk.jpg)
Franz Karl, Archduke of Austria, takes part in a rescue operation in the Jägerzeile neighborhood of Vienna in 1830, portrayed in a color engraving by Eduard Gurk.

Looking into historical records, experts and officials found that the city's worst flooding occurred in 1501. Based on that and other facts, the city government determined that a discharge channel would need to absorb up to 14,000 cubic meters of water per second from the river — roughly enough to fill 22,000 Olympic-size swimming pools each hour.

Even for a river the size of the Danube, "that's huge," said Hayley Fowler, a professor of Climate Change Impacts at the Newcastle University School of Engineering in England. When bursting dams and flash floods forced thousands of Central Europeans to flee their homes in 2013 in the worst flooding in centuries, Vienna remained unscathed. The discharge channel still had a quarter of its capacity to go.

Initially, the material that had to be excavated for the channel was to be "deposited somewhere behind the Iron Curtain," Voigt said. Then planners floated the idea of using it to raise an artificial island. "Many wanted to build parking lots or apartment buildings on it, to refinance the construction costs," said Breit, who supported keeping it as a green space.

Either way, the "spaghetti island" was ridiculed by tabloids as well as Vienna's conservative party, which torpedoed the project. The socialist party, however, pushed on, and ended a coalition with the conservatives in 1973, partly because of the island. Construction began around that time, and lasted until 1988.

"Almost instantly, Danube Island became part of the Viennese," said Breit, who went on to teach urban planning at Berlin's Institute of Technology. With striped beach umbrellas, the Viennese staked their claim to the recreational area even before grass had grown on the embankments.

On sunny days, tens of thousands of people now flock to the area, according to city data.

"You really feel like you're in nature, even though you're pretty much in the middle of the city," said Lena Köppler, a 22-year-old theater student who spent a recent Saturday swimming past swans, kayaks and stand-up paddlers. As for most Viennese, she said, the recent flooding was a brief reminder that the channel and island aren't just leisure and entertainment venues; they are their guardians, too.

When delegations from countries such as Sweden, Russia, South Korea, China, Serbia and Slovenia come to learn from Vienna's example, they are impressed, Fellinger said, but most raise the prohibitive costs of compensating property owners to make room for similar projects.

Another issue, Fowler said, "is knowing how big these [flooding] events can get, and what we are planning for." Flood defense projects are generally based on the most recent catastrophe, or evaluations for flooding that, statistically, occurs once a century, she said.

Climate change, however, has made "hundred-year floods" much more common. "Now, you might have two in one decade," said Igor Liska, an expert at the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, formed by the 14 countries that make the river basin the most international in the world.

Although Vienna might be an exception, Liska and Fowler said that river communities will simply have to live with flooding.

"In the past decades we thought we could protect people 100 percent by building high-enough dikes," Liska said. "But now there is a new concept of living with the floods."

The main goal is to create much larger areas where rainwater can be retained, and to give rivers more space to meander whenever possible.

(https://i0.wp.com/www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/gewaesser/hochwasserschutz/images/hochwasser1-gr.jpg)
A flooded walkway over the New Danube in 2013.

From time to time, however, the weather extremes brought by climate change will still prove too much to handle, even for the largest retention areas. With torrential rains like those that caused the Rhine River to flood this summer, Liska said, "it is almost impossible to do anything. So then you have to try to minimize adverse impact."

Raising public awareness — urging people to move out of flood zones or keep their ground floors clear of valuables — can mitigate the impact, he said.

Just like the bold flood defense Vienna conceived in the 1960s, today's solutions could create opportunities for greener cities and more livable spaces.

One option is to turn urban areas into "sponge cities," where sealed surfaces like sidewalks or rooftops are covered with greenery that helps absorb rainwater, said Lamia Messari-Becker, a civil engineering professor at the University of Siegen in Germany and adviser to the German government.

"Even if big channels can retain river flooding, if it rains too much, you still have the issue of the sewers being overcome," Messari-Becker said, "so what we really have to do is make sure that rainwater can seep into the ground as quickly as possible."

Fellinger said climate change is making the 10,000-year flood the city planned for more and more likely.

"It'll come sooner," he said, standing between the computers controlling the sluice gates and an old cathode ray tube TV set. Even then, he said, Danube Island wouldn't be submerged.

For the Danube's flood control, Fellinger said, "there's nothing to improve. We just need to retain what we have."


View of the Donauinsel probably around the time of the Donauinselfest, a free to attend open air festival that (outside of pandemics) takes place on the last weekend in June.

(https://thumbs.vienna.at/?url=https://www.vienna.at/2013/08/ABD0051-20130622-e1376918141790.jpg&w=1256&h=942&crop=1)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 01, 2021, 02:39:18 PM
Does the Wien ever flood?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2021, 02:43:47 PM
This is about as bad as it can get:

(https://media.diepresse.com/images/uploads_820/9/3/8/489784/P1019735a20090624115532.jpg)

Usually it looks more like this:

(https://www.vienna.at/2017/02/wienfluss.jpg)

To prevent catastrophic flooding there's also other measures, like emergency reservoirs etc that could be flooded if need be.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 01, 2021, 03:04:48 PM
Truly one of the great rivers of the world.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 01, 2021, 03:06:46 PM
Ridiculous waste of money. Surely the free market could handle this if they just would let it operate freely!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 01, 2021, 05:18:04 PM
QuoteIn Vienna, planners used soil excavated from the river channel — essentially a waste product — to raise an island about 13 miles long, roughly the length of Manhattan, and 800 feet wide, with bike and hiking trails zigzagging through meadows and forests and past ponds and a couple of nudist beaches. Moored along its bank is a "school ship," attended by nearly 1,000 students in grades 5 to 12.

Seems ingenious :P  Not something we would see around here, for sure.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 02, 2021, 07:51:54 PM
Another new england state is about to fuck things up by turning down a cleaner energy corridor. :rolleyes:

https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Question_1,_Electric_Transmission_Line_Restrictions_and_Legislative_Approval_Initiative_(2021)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 03, 2021, 03:23:07 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 01, 2021, 02:43:47 PM
This is about as bad as it can get:

(https://media.diepresse.com/images/uploads_820/9/3/8/489784/P%3Cbr/%3E1019735a20090624115532.jpg)

Usually it looks more like this:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fhttps%3A%2Fww.vienna.at%2F2017%2F02%2Fwienfluss.jpg&hash=0ef690c6ba7f45f95db80c2b8efb87ba878cc7ca)

To prevent catastrophic flooding there's also other measures, like emergency reservoirs etc that could be flooded if need be.

That second photo is depressing.

Besides the point of climate change but I do hope to see more smashing of concrete rivers in the future.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 03, 2021, 03:51:04 AM
It's actually a 19th century project to prevent parts of the inner city from flooding. Some of it is running underground, and the section near center has a nice promenade.

(https://www.wien.info/resource/image/309998/19x10/1200/630/9b9a18add1425c4d7e438e611a22a50c/rE/stadtpark-wienfluss-park-gaerten-gruen-erholung-natur-bruecke-510x340.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 03, 2021, 08:06:27 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 02, 2021, 07:51:54 PM
Another new england state is about to fuck things up by turning down a cleaner energy corridor. :rolleyes:

https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Question_1,_Electric_Transmission_Line_Restrictions_and_Legislative_Approval_Initiative_(2021)
Just like Quebec fucked things up for Alberta by refusing its energy corridor.

Works both ways.

Maine is afraid of the deforestation for the line, but the work is already 75% complete.  Kinda weird that the opposition is now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 09:53:07 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.

This has nothing to do with wanting to burn coal.

It is Maine saying "Hey, you want to do what exactly? Cut down a shitload of trees in Maine so Quebec can sell electricity to Massachusetts? Say what?"
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:07:23 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 09:53:07 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.

This has nothing to do with wanting to burn coal.

It is Maine saying "Hey, you want to do what exactly? Cut down a shitload of trees in Maine so Quebec can sell electricity to Massachusetts? Say what?"

And by saying no, you keep on burning coal.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:11:05 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:07:23 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 09:53:07 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.

This has nothing to do with wanting to burn coal.

It is Maine saying "Hey, you want to do what exactly? Cut down a shitload of trees in Maine so Quebec can sell electricity to Massachusetts? Say what?"

And by saying no, you keep on burning coal.

No, by saying no some other people somewhere else keep on burning coal. YOU don't.

I have no position on the issue, since I don't know enough about it. But just because we all want to burn less coal doesn't mean that any proposed solution is the right idea in the particulars of some situation.

I am confident there is likely some possible way for Boston to get electricity other then sending it from Quebec.

Maybe that is the BEST possible way, I don't know. But I am sure there are more then

1. Burn coal
2. Send electricity from Canada across Maine
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:22:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:11:05 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:07:23 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 09:53:07 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.

This has nothing to do with wanting to burn coal.

It is Maine saying "Hey, you want to do what exactly? Cut down a shitload of trees in Maine so Quebec can sell electricity to Massachusetts? Say what?"

And by saying no, you keep on burning coal.

No, by saying no some other people somewhere else keep on burning coal. YOU don't.

I have no position on the issue, since I don't know enough about it. But just because we all want to burn less coal doesn't mean that any proposed solution is the right idea in the particulars of some situation.

I am confident there is likely some possible way for Boston to get electricity other then sending it from Quebec.

Maybe that is the BEST possible way, I don't know. But I am sure there are more then

1. Burn coal
2. Send electricity from Canada across Maine

Sure. Massachusetts could be building Wind mill farms or solar array farms but that requires lands they aren't willing to use for that or have at all. Same thing with New York state.
Electrification of the transport requires a lot of energy. Energy the New England + New York states don't currently have the capacity to produce. We do. And it's already pretty green.

Massachusetts & New York have been trying to buy it from us for a decade now but Maine, NH & Vermont keep sabotaging the efforts. Lately, the New York state government finally decided (thanks new governor) that it had enough & will be building an underground transport line along the Hudson, lake George & lake Champlain to feed NYC.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 03, 2021, 10:32:33 AM
Seems like India's commitment (driven by huge up-take and availability of cheap solar - which is why it's on us in the rich bits of the world to throw money at experiemental tech) genuinely moves the trajectory, if they and everyone else meet them:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/cop26-emission-pledges-could-limit-global-heating-to-below-2c-india

Also striking that 90% of global GDP is now subject to net zero commitments (if not plans), up from 30% a year ago. The key is moving to the actual plan stage. But looking at the huge shift in renewables over the last 10 years I think both sub-2 degrees and sub-1.5 is achievable. And as the investment in renewables lowers the cost meaning India can make commitments, we need the same with other tech like electric vehicles, batteries etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:52:26 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:22:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:11:05 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 10:07:23 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 09:53:07 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2021, 09:50:14 AM
I guess so.

Everything will be going thru New York it seems. Vermont, NH & Maine are all idiots that prefer to continue burning coal.

This has nothing to do with wanting to burn coal.

It is Maine saying "Hey, you want to do what exactly? Cut down a shitload of trees in Maine so Quebec can sell electricity to Massachusetts? Say what?"

And by saying no, you keep on burning coal.

No, by saying no some other people somewhere else keep on burning coal. YOU don't.

I have no position on the issue, since I don't know enough about it. But just because we all want to burn less coal doesn't mean that any proposed solution is the right idea in the particulars of some situation.

I am confident there is likely some possible way for Boston to get electricity other then sending it from Quebec.

Maybe that is the BEST possible way, I don't know. But I am sure there are more then

1. Burn coal
2. Send electricity from Canada across Maine

Sure. Massachusetts could be building Wind mill farms or solar array farms but that requires lands they aren't willing to use for that or have at all. Same thing with New York state.
Electrification of the transport requires a lot of energy. Energy the New England + New York states don't currently have the capacity to produce. We do. And it's already pretty green.

Massachusetts & New York have been trying to buy it from us for a decade now but Maine, NH & Vermont keep sabotaging the efforts.

Like I said, I don't have an opinion on the particulars of this - given history though, I suspect it is purely local politics NIMBYISM bullshit.

I just object to the claim that this is some kind of rejection of green energy in favor of coal.

QuoteLately, the New York state government finally decided (thanks new governor) that it had enough & will be building an underground transport line along the Hudson, lake George & lake Champlain to feed NYC.

They should have done that to begin with, probably.

I was wondering though - how much more expensive is underground energy transmission versus cutting down treest to make a path for lines? Gotta be radically more, I would guess?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on November 03, 2021, 11:38:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:52:26 AM
I was wondering though - how much more expensive is underground energy transmission versus cutting down treest to make a path for lines? Gotta be radically more, I would guess?

When they built a new line through my county the difference was supposedly a factor of ten.  That's why they re-routed the line to go through the poorer parts of the county (I'm looking out my window at it now  :lol:) rather than the much shorter, but buried option (because the rich wouldn't tolerate the towers polluting their skyline). 

Horsey people.  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 03, 2021, 11:41:46 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:11:05 AM
No, by saying no some other people somewhere else keep on burning coal. YOU don't.

The end effect is coal is still being burnt in your country.  It's the net consequence of an opposition to the project, if it translates into a formal interdiction, of course (Hydro-Québec already has all the required permits for the line).

It's like saying you favor nuclear power instead of coal burning, but you absolutely oppose that nuclear waste should be stored or transit in your State.  Like the opposition in Quebec to having nuclear waste transit through the St-Lawrence.  The net effect is that Ontario would have had to burn oil&coal, if that opposition had been successful.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 03, 2021, 11:43:13 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:52:26 AM
Like I said, I don't have an opinion on the particulars of this - given history though, I suspect it is purely local politics NIMBYISM bullshit.
It's what it is, but the end result is a rejection of green power in favor of coal burning.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 11:49:41 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 03, 2021, 11:43:13 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 10:52:26 AM
Like I said, I don't have an opinion on the particulars of this - given history though, I suspect it is purely local politics NIMBYISM bullshit.
It's what it is, but the end result is a rejection of green power in favor of coal burning.

No, see that I do not agree with. There are other alternatives then coal burning.

We aren't going to succeed if we couch every debate in these terms. There are a lot of alternatives to fossil fuels, not just one.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 03, 2021, 03:01:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 11:49:41 AM
No, see that I do not agree with. There are other alternatives then coal burning.

We aren't going to succeed if we couch every debate in these terms. There are a lot of alternatives to fossil fuels, not just one.

It's the one on the table right now, it's the one New York and Massachussets have decided to go to.

If Maine or NH rejects the power line that should feed the energy demands of these States, than it means they are satisfied with the status quo.  Because that is what is happening if the transport line isn't being built, they'll burn gaz or coal, as it's cheaper than developing their own nuclear plants, or wind/solar farm (which are complementary product, not exactly reliable as a base line).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 03, 2021, 03:25:37 PM
ok
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 06, 2021, 04:17:00 PM
So end of week one at Cop26 and this seems fair - some progress (I think India, Nigeria and the stuff on methane are potentially huge). I think it might even be enough if all of these commitments are met, that would reduce the trend of temperature from rising by 2.7 degrees to rising by 1.8 degrees which is a significant shift though not keeping 1.5 alive as everyone wanted (at least until the next COP). But I doubt they will be, so those who can need to do more:
QuoteCop26 week one: the impression of progress – but not nearly enough
Analysis: the 'significant outcomes' came thick and fast but there are question marks about credibility
Jonathan Watts
@jonathanwatts
Sat 6 Nov 2021 07.00 GMT

Long before delegates gathered in Glasgow, the scene for Cop26 was set by the starkest warning yet from the world's scientists that human activity was unequivocally disrupting the climate, extreme weather was growing more intense, and urgent action was needed to prevent still worse chaos in the future.

"Code red," declared the UN secretary general, António Guterres, as evidence mounted this summer of ever fiercer heatwaves and increasingly deadly storms and floods. No pressure, then, on the climate diplomats who were told they represented the "last best chance" of holding global heating to 1.5C.

Monday: the US is back (but where's China?)

In Cops past, world leaders would wait until the final few days before showing up and then roll up their sleeves, hypercaffeinate and thrash out a deal through the night and into the early morning. This was great for macho posturing, but not so good when things broke down and there was no time to fix them. Today's statesmen and women are less hands on. They show up during the early phase of the Cop, which is all about handshakes, photo ops and mood-making rhetoric.

Enter the host nation's prime minister, Boris Johnson, who opened the event with references to James Bond and being 5-1 down at half-time in a football game, before finally getting to the point: "It's one minute to midnight on that Doomsday Clock and we need to act now."


The good news at Glasgow was that the United States had emerged from its Trumpian sulk to claim centre stage. "Let this be the moment that we answer history's call here in Glasgow," proclaimed Joe Biden. This is important because nothing of substance can be done without the world's greatest historical emitter, biggest economy and most powerful military, but the projection of potency was somewhat undermined by the squeeze that Joe Manchin, a fossil-fuel-loving senator from Biden's own party, had on the president's bold climate plans.

Even with a stronger US presence, the global roll call remained incomplete. If this were a school register, the teacher would note that some the naughtiest kids in the climate class were all absent: Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, president of the world's biggest deforesting nation; Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of the world's second biggest oil pumper; and Russia's Vladimir Putin, president of the world's second biggest gas producer. China's Xi Jinping, president of the biggest coal consumer and carbon emitter, was also missing, though at least he had a sicknote owing to the Covid crisis.

India provided the biggest fillip of the high-level segment when its prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced that the country would get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and go net zero by 2070. That is three generations away, but still a big advance compared with previous plans. Along with the unveiling of Nigeria's first carbon-neutral plan this week, countries representing more than 70% of the world's emissions have now signed up to long-term goals.

If Cops have any value, it is in forcing those who have profited from the climate crisis to look into the eyes of the victims. But are the leaders of the US, EU and China and the CEOs of Exxon, Shell and BP still able to see? This was the question posed by Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, in an opening-day speech that brought goosebumps to many of those watching.

"Are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?" she said, castigating those who had failed to act sooner and still hesitated to finance a transition to clean energy. She said the cost was now being measured in lives and livelihoods in small island nations. "This is immoral, and it is unjust," she said.


Tuesday: the world's forests will be saved ... again

Whatever its other failings (chaotic entry delays, restricted access, etc), nobody could accuse this Cop of lacking a clear narrative arc. The rollout of announcements has been cunningly scripted to give the impression of progress – or as Johnson put it, pulling back goals to reduce the half-time deficit. The first was a declaration on ending deforestation by 2030. At first sight this sounded an awful lot like the 2014 New York declaration on forests to, er, end deforestation by 2030, which has so far failed to halve tree clearance, currently at a rate of 30 football pitches a minute, according to Zac Goldsmith.

But there are some important differences. This time there is some serious money behind the plan – $19.2bn from governments and the private sector, most of the major forest nations are signed up, and there is an extra package of more than $1bn for indigenous communities, who are the most effective forest guardians. There are also long overdue steps towards the creation of sustainable supply chains and deforestation-free international trade, though a lot more detail and buy-in is needed in this area.


There are bigger question marks about credibility. India has stayed away. Indonesia has already wobbled over its commitment. And can anyone trust Brazil under Bolsonaro, after he has spent the past three years smoking the Amazon?

Wednesday: methane slashed

By midweek the momentum-building "significant outcomes" were coming thick and fast. The highlight on Wednesday was an alliance of more than 90 nations, covering two-thirds of the global economy, committing to reduce methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade.

This buys the world a little time because methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, though it should really have been done earlier. That it wasn't probably has something to do with the powerful vested interests linked to the main sources – gas and oil wells, pipelines, livestock burps and farts, and municipal landfill sites.


The US will lead the way by obliging companies to plug leaks in more than 3m miles of pipelines. China, India and Russia decided to sit out the methane pledge on the grounds that wealthier nations should be leading the way. Brazil, though, is in, seemingly now signing up to everything.

It was not just the mood that was lifted by this and other announcements: several climate models projected that the extra ambition unveiled in the first few days of Glasgow had the potential to restrain global heating to less than 2C for the first time. Hurrah! But before getting too excited, bear in mind that the calculation is based on the heroic assumption that every government in the world will keep their promises.


Thursday: even Poland promises an end to coal

Another day, another outcome. More than 40 countries agreed to phase out coal-fired power. Canada, South Korea, Ukraine, Indonesia and Vietnam said they would quit this dirtiest form of fossil fuels between 2030 and 2040. Even Poland signed up, which is remarkable given its devotion to coal was so great as recently as 2018 that it staged the Cop of that year in the colliery city of Katowice and treated climate delegates to an exhibition on the beauty and importance of this fuel.

Other nations promised to halve financing of coal plants overseas. Killing off Old King Coal is essential for 1.5C, but Glasgow will not be the site of assassination. The US, China, Australia and India keep coal alive outside this agreement, but the alliance will try to wear them down.

Meanwhile, progress was being made, according to the IEA, which announced that the extra commitments made so far could take warming down to 1.8C. One UN special adviser was having none of this: the world remained on "a 2.7 degree pathway, a catastrophic pathway", he said.

Friday: step it up, activists demand

Thousand of young protesters marched through Glasgow to demand urgent climate action. Civil society organisations have been largely kept away from the main conference centre all week. Many of their activities are staged on the other side of the Clyde.

But Saturday is expected to see tens of thousands arrive in the city for the biggest demonstration yet. Frustrations at the lack of action are evident. Greta Thunberg has accused Cop attenders of "greenwashing".

Inside the main conference centre, the mood is cautious. The UK organisers are relieved that major slip-ups have been avoided. The African group of nations is optimistic that progress has been made. Everyone is aware that there is still a big credibility gap between the more ambitious long-term promises and short-term actions.

What next?

The second week will be crucial in closing that gap as Cop switches from show-and-tell mode to technical and political negotiations over detail. The big battles lie ahead – on the climate rulebook, on carbon credit trading systems, on questions of loss and damage, and most of all on climate finance – whether the rich nations largely responsible for the climate crisis will provide sufficient funds for poor, vulnerable and developing nations to switch to renewable energy and cope with the rising storm to come.

There has been progress this week, but not nearly enough. The success or failure of this Cop will decided by emissions cuts, not outcomes. More pressure needed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 08, 2021, 04:53:15 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/t2hjlgodbcy71.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7795dd1c685ed078e5e2e4ae05265768aa40c06c)

:lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2021, 04:54:45 AM
It was good up to the capture and storage part. :thumbsdown:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 08, 2021, 07:27:13 AM
The world governments' response to Coronavirus is likely to be a good predictor of how the world will deal with the worsening climate crisis.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 09, 2021, 03:34:11 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/cop26-sets-course-for-disastrous-heating-of-more-than-24c-says-key-report?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

QuoteCop26: world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report

Research from world's top climate analysis coalition contrasts sharply with last week's optimism

The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN Cop26 summit.

Temperature rises will top 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out, according to research published in Glasgow on Tuesday.

That would far exceed the 2C upper limit the Paris accord said the world needed to stay "well below", and the much safer 1.5C limit aimed for at the Cop26 talks.

At that level, widespread extreme weather – sea-level rises, drought, floods, heatwaves and fiercer storms – would cause devastation across the globe.

The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend.

Those estimates were based on long-term goals set out by countries including India, the world's third-biggest emitter, which is aiming for net zero emissions by 2070.

By contrast, the sobering assessment of a rise of 2.4C from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the world's most respected climate analysis coalition, was based on countries' short-term goals for the next decade.

Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, one of the organisations behind CAT, told the Guardian: "We are concerned that some countries are trying to portray [Cop26] as if the 1.5C limit is nearly in the bag. But it's not, it's very far from it, and they are downplaying the need to get short-term targets for 2030 in line with 1.5C."

Emissions will be twice as high in 2030 as they need to be to stay within 1.5C, based on promises made in Glasgow, CAT found. Scientists have warned that beyond 1.5C, some of the damage to the Earth's climate will become irreversible.

The analysts also found a chasm between what countries have said they will do on greenhouse gas emissions and their plans in reality. If current policies and measures are taken into account, rather than just goals, heating would rise to 2.7C, based on the CAT analysis.

The findings should serve as a "reality check" to the talks, said Niklas Höhne, one of the authors. "Countries' long-term intentions are good, but their short-term implementation is inadequate," he told the Guardian.

The 197 parties to the 2015 Paris agreement were asked to come to Glasgow with two aims: a long-term goal of reaching global net zero emissions around mid-century; and shorter-term national plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), pegging emissions reductions to 2030. Scientists say greenhouse gas emissions must fall by about 45% this decade for global temperatures to stay within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels.

Countries responsible for about 90% of global emissions have signed up to net zero goals, mostly by around 2050 for developed countries, rising to 2060 for China and 2070 for India, but the NDCs for actions in the next decade do not match up. The climate responds to the cumulative carbon in the atmosphere, so if emissions are high enough in the next two decades the world could surpass the 1.5C limit even if carbon reaches net zero later.

"It's great that countries have long-term net zero targets, but they need to close the gap with short-term measures," said Hare.

The first week of the Cop26 talks was dominated by a rush of announcements, including commitments on preserving forests, private sector finance for clean energy, and countries phasing out coal. Some of these quickly started to unravel as countries appeared to renege or clarify some of their commitments.

At the start of the second week of the fortnight-long talks, sharp rifts are appearing between countries that want tougher action, specifically to force countries to revise their NDCs annually if they are not in line with 1.5C, and others wanting to stick to the Paris timetable of five-yearly revisions. There are also disputes about how countries should monitor emissions, and over climate finance for poor countries.

Hare noted there was no contradiction among the varying assessments, published last week by Melbourne University and the International Energy Agency, as they came to similar conclusions based on long-term goals. CAT also found in its "optimistic scenario" that if all targets countries had promised were fully met, temperatures would rise by 1.8C.

The UN environment programme updated its analysis of the "emissions gap" between the cuts needed to stay within 1.5C and those offered by governments. Unep found that with the recently announced pledges by China, Saudi Arabia and others, temperatures were likely to rise by between 1.9C and 2.1C, but like the IEA and Melbourne estimates, that depended on long-term pledges being fully implemented.

Hare said many of the long-term goals countries had set out lacked credibility. He pointed to Brazil, Australia and Russia. "We are concerned that there is not a seriousness of purpose at Cop26. It's very hypothetical, getting to net zero in 2050," he said.

Höhne said countries must agree to revise their NDCs every year if they were found insufficient, adding: "If we came back every five years that would be a very bad choice. If countries agree to come back every year, they would have a chance of closing the gap."

Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International, said: "This new calculation is like a telescope trained on an asteroid heading for Earth. It's a devastating report. We have until the weekend to turn this thing around. That means countries agreeing how they're going come back next year and every year after that until the gap to 1.5C is closed. The ministers shouldn't leave this city until they've nailed that."

A Cop26 spokesperson said: "We know that the window to keep 1.5C alive is closing but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that it is still achievable. As today's reports make clear, we've seen genuine progress in the first week of Cop26, but we have a lot more to do."

Labour's Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, said: "The test of Cop26 has always been what concrete commitments it would deliver by 2030, the decisive decade to keep 1.5C alive. This report is an important reality check on the government's attempt to greenwash Glasgow."

Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said: "Today was the day the sugar coating fell off the Cop26 talks to reveal the bitter pill that world leaders are going to force us to swallow if they don't take much stronger action. This report shows that action in the next 10 years is vital. Long term targets, promises and non-existent technofixes, with no actual policies to get us there, are worth nothing. It shows that most global leaders have been asleep at the wheel. This is their wake-up call."


(https://i.postimg.cc/1Rj6G9vg/image.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 09, 2021, 04:25:31 PM
In the year, twenty one hun-de-red, if man is not yet dead..

Seriously, I question the value of such a long term projection in terms of changing people's attitudes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 09, 2021, 04:47:28 PM
Pretty good at letting people know we are already in deep shit and it is just getting deeper with every year of delay.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on November 09, 2021, 05:24:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 09, 2021, 04:25:31 PM
In the year, twenty one hun-de-red, if man is not yet dead..

Seriously, I question the value of such a long term projection in terms of changing people's attitudes.

Then perhaps the purpose of the long term projection is not to change people's attitude, but to lay out the facts to the best of our ability to those who are interested in the facts.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 10, 2021, 10:24:01 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2021, 04:54:45 AM
It was good up to the capture and storage part. :thumbsdown:

I agree terrible analogy.

Beer fridges are an effective, well established commercial technology that is mass produced at scale reasonable cost

Where carbon capture and storage technology is none of those things.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 12, 2021, 08:48:15 AM
Seriously flooding in Sri Lanka, 17 of 25 provinces affect, many killed, some places reported rainfall approaching a years worth in short time.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 12, 2021, 09:13:47 AM
COP is technically ending today but normally runs into the weekend with negotiations.

From what I can see on the Guardian (and comments from the High Ambition Group representing particularly exposed developing countries and the e3g think tank) it looks like the UK as host is pushing for a (comparatively) high ambition agreement - albeit in weird UNese. Obviously that might fail and end with no agreement, but I think it probably is the right approach.

In particular I think it's absolutely essential and worth dying on a hill for this agreement to be the first COP agreement that specifically calls out fossil fuels and commits to phasing out coal - apparently no previous COP agreement has ever actually named fossil fuels which I find slightly mind-blowing. Apparently the stuff on climate finance for the developed world is also a lot stronger than the first draft which is good.

I'm not sure if it's in the latest draft but one thing I saw in the first draft which I thought was quite good was that basically NDCs would be discussed at every annual COP with countries expected to increase their ambition instead of only doing this every five years (even though there wouldn't be a full agreement every year). It seems like a good idea.

But overall it seems like negotiators still think something is possible - and the US-China announcement was very positive. Hopefully there is an agreement because so far it does feel like it's been broadly positive - and it would be nice to set a precedent of successful focused COPs after Paris (following the disappointment of Copenhagen and previous failures).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 13, 2021, 01:04:19 PM
Looks like there'll be an agreement this evening - now is time for countries to make statements and so far everyone is saying they're unhappy with the text but won't re-open it in "the spirit of collaboration", which is a positive sign, and that it keeps 1.5 ambition alive which was a key objective.

It looks like the commitment to phase out coal and fossil fuels has survived (though China, India and Vvenezuela have objected), as well as the end to "inefficient" subsidies (apparently the reference to inefficient subsidies is to protect subsidies to individuals which are common in the developing world and may even include things like the winter fuel allowance for pensioners in the UK). It will also have the ratchet mechanism where countries have to submit new NDCs that should be more ambitious every year until we get on to a sub-1.5 degree path. In the run-up to this COP far more countries than before have now submitted NDCs so they'll al be getting reviewed/updated annually.

The loss and damage section is still too weak for many developing countries but is a step in the right direction. It looks like the developed world are still not willing to think about any form of compensation, just "technical assistance".

All over though if this is agreed I think the really important thing may be the precedent of a successful big COP in Paris being followed by another one, after the relative inaction in COPs between Kyoto and Paris, I think that's a big positive step (of course if Trump wins in 2024 then...).

Edit: And last minute drama - and it is dramatic because this is happening on the plenary floor not in private - but India proposed a change to the text from a "phase-out" of unabated coal to a "phase-down" of unabated coal. Developing and particularly exposed countries were very angry as they'd been told that they couldn't re-open the text - but have registered their grievances. But to preserve the deal everyone went along with it.

Sharma in the Presidency literally on the edge of tears when he apologiesd for the breakdown in process and urged countries to "protect the package" so support the last minute change to not lose the other bits that had been agreed (and got a strong round of applause). But the change was agreed to not lose the rest of it. Still working through the text though it seems the main things now are countries recording their objections and grievances around specific bits in the record but not seeking to change it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 13, 2021, 03:12:33 PM
Unless there's concrete timelines in the agreement with annual review of progress, I feel this is just lip service from many of the participants.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 13, 2021, 03:36:19 PM
Quote from: Syt on November 13, 2021, 03:12:33 PM
Unless there's concrete timelines in the agreement with annual review of progress, I feel this is just lip service from many of the participants.
I think that is now in place in terms of countries needing to submit NDCs every year which will increase ambition until there's a path to 1.5.

But ultimately I can't see any other way for climate diplomacy to work. Each country is the one that needs to make the changes even if there is collaboration and there's no green super-power who can enforce or monitor, so because it's trust based it's got to be agreements like this rather than decisions from above and because it's the UN it's in fairly torturous language :lol: And as it's based on climate diplomacy which needs consensus (there's no qualified majority voting just "consensus of the COP") it's always going to be compromise and disappointing.

I think keeping that process alive and moving forward is important, I think the ratchet mechanism is good and the first ever mention in a COP document (in 26 years) of fossil fuels and particularly the commitment to "phase-down" coal is important. That Glasgow appears to have worked is a sign that Paris is working and there's now an agree climate rule-book and in this last year we've gone from 30% of the global economy having NDCs to net zero, to over 90% of the global economy having one. Plus the commitments outside COP on things like methane (for the first time), deforestation etc.

That's progress which is, I think, on its own worth supporting. As I say I think the mere demonstration that climate diplomacy can work from session to session is good - especially the US-China statement despite tensions - and that this one seems to have had a cooperative atmosphere throughout between all parties which has not been the norm in the past.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 17, 2021, 05:41:47 AM
Not really climate change, just your normal pollution. :)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59258910

QuoteDelhi smog: Schools and colleges shut as pollution worsens

Authorities in the Indian capital, Delhi, have shut all schools and colleges indefinitely amid the worsening levels of air pollution.

Construction work has also been banned until 21 November but an exception has been made for transport and defence-related projects.

Only five of the 11 coal-based power plants in the city have been allowed to operate.

A toxic haze has smothered Delhi since the festival of Diwali.

The levels of PM2.5 - tiny particles that can clog people's lungs - in Delhi are far higher than the World Health Organization's (WHO) safety guidelines. Several parts of the city recorded figures close to or higher than 400 on Tuesday, which is categorised as "severe".

A figure between zero and 50 is considered "good", and between 51 and 100 is "satisfactory", according to the the air quality index or AQI
.

Some schools had already shut last week because of pollution and the Delhi government said it was mulling over a lockdown to improve air quality as dense clouds of smog engulfed the city.

A mix of factors like vehicular and industrial emissions, dust and weather patterns make Delhi the world's most polluted capital. The air turns especially toxic in winter months as farmers in neighbouring states burn crop stubble. And fireworks during the festival of Diwali, which happens at the same time, only worsen the air quality. Low wind speed also plays a part as it traps the pollutants in the lower atmosphere.

Every year as winter approaches, there's a sense of déjà vu for us living in Delhi. The morning skies take on an ominous grey colour, we complain of stuffy nose and itchy eyes, and hospitals start to fill up with people complaining of wheezing and breathing difficulties. Those of us who can afford it, rush to buy expensive air purifiers. The mere act of breathing in Delhi becomes hazardous.

The city routinely tops the list of "world's most polluted capitals" and we obsessively start checking apps that provide a reading of the air quality index. We look at the levels of PM2.5, the lung-damaging tiny particles in the air that can exacerbate a host of health issues, including cancer and cardiac problems, and PM10 - slightly larger particles, but still pretty damaging.

Levels of PM2.5 below 50 are considered "good" and under 100 "satisfactory". Right now, it's 363 in Delhi - in some areas, it's almost 400. In the suburb of Noida, it's nearly 500.

Every year, as the air turns murky, the Indian Supreme Court hauls the state and federal governments into court, asking them what they intend to do to clean up the air. On Tuesday, after a prodding from the court, the authorities took some action.

But these measures are like putting a bandage on a bullet hole - they have been tried in the past and have made little difference to the city's air in the long term. Experts say cleaning up the air requires drastic measures that are not a priority for the country's leaders. They warn that at the onset of winter next year, we'll be back where we are now.

This year, the pollution has become so dire that it prompted a stern warning from India's Supreme Court, which directed state and federal governments to take "imminent and emergency" measures to tackle the problem.

Following the hearing, a meeting was called by Delhi's Commission for Air Quality Management and emergency measures were announced.

Other measures announced by the panel include a ban on the entry of trucks in Delhi and the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan until 21 November, except those carrying essential commodities.

The panel also directed Delhi and other states to "encourage'' private offices to allow 50% of their employees to work from home during the period to cut down vehicle emissions and dust levels.

India's pollution problem is not just limited to Delhi.

Indian cities routinely dominate global pollution rankings and bad air kills more than a million people every year, a report by US research group, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), said. It added that north India breathes "pollution levels that are 10 times worse than those found anywhere else in the world" and, over time, these high levels have expanded to cover other parts of the country as well.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on November 17, 2021, 05:46:58 AM
I remember when I landed in Delhi. Air was fucking nasty.

Edit: Shut up katmai.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 17, 2021, 07:58:26 AM
What did he say?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 17, 2021, 11:05:21 PM
BC has had a significant climate disaster.  A atmospheric river hit us a couple of days ago, the equivalent of the rainfall we would get in the whole month of November fell in one day.  The resulting flooding washed out large sections of vital rail and road transportation links between Vancouver and, well, everyone else in Canada.

The reason the rain had such a devastating effect - the fires we had during the summer.  The forests would normally have mitigated the effects of all that water - but they were burned.  And so the water streamed over ground that could not absorb it.  I always thought the big one to really hit us would be an earthquake - but it was fire and water.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2021, 11:52:41 PM
I don't think this is the big one.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 18, 2021, 12:11:38 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 17, 2021, 11:52:41 PM
I don't thinkthis is the there will be a bigger one.

FYP?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2021, 03:42:33 PM
Yeah, he is right that this is just the tip of the ice berg - using that while it still has meaning.

But if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 18, 2021, 07:46:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 18, 2021, 03:42:33 PM
But if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.

I'm guessing most buildings built since the 80s have had strict rules enforced about earthquakes, so the damage would be mitigated in Vancouver.  Outside the cities, earthquakes, unless it is an earth-shattering ones like in movies where the ground splits open in multiple place, it wouldn't have that big of an impact.  Even if a few buildings fall on themselves, they don't bring down all the neighbourhood like dominoes.

Fire and water however...  You just can't realistically protect against this in the countryside.  Not for something of the magnitude that happened in BC :(

with global warming and deforestation, the trees left standing are dryer, the forest does not have as much humidity retained so the fire will spread faster and further, even if it's an human-caused accident.  And like we've seen in that small community, when it's so damn hot there's flash fires, the people can't evacuate in time.  In a city, worst case scenario, the asphalt melts.  In forested area, people burn. :(

Water problems can be alleviated, but it's costly.  You have to restrict building in floodable areas, even 100 years flood areas aren't safe now.  Cities will have to keep marshes intac, villages will need more forested area - and then be subject to more danger from fires, damns will need to be higher and stronger and will need to be constantly maintained.

If Quebec is any indication, the lessons from the 2019 floods seems to have been already forgotten by most afflicted cities.

And I understand their stupidity: there is little incentive to prepare for disaster. Sure, you lose everything.  But then the provincial government bails out the city.  And the Federal government bails out the city.  If push comes to shove, the world governments will even bail out the insurance and reinsurance companies.  But they'll stop covering floods and fire long before that (most insurance companies already refuse to cover "acts of God" and don't cover your house if you are in flooded plains, even when the city authorized building there, even when your water damage has nothing to do with outside events, like a broken pipe).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2021, 11:52:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 18, 2021, 03:42:33 PM
Yeah, he is right that this is just the tip of the ice berg - using that while it still has meaning.

I think there's worse coming.

QuoteBut if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.

I think a major natural disaster that hits Vancouver proper will have more a more devastating effects in terms of lives lost, immediate economic damage, and long term economic impact.

This is not to downplay the individual human and community impact, nor the economic devastation of the current floods. But I think this is the first "one of many" that we need to prepare for that on a societal level (indeed, the wildfires were another "one of many" and may have from what I've read contributed to the severity of the current disaster).

To me "the big one" is most likely a major earthquake that hits Vancouver proper, resulting in massive loss of life from the collapse of bridges and buildings, land-slides on the North Shore, and major infrastructure damage (electricity, sewage, water) that may render the city close to uninhabitable until remedied.

Alternately, an earthquake that triggers a major tsunami that catches sizeable coastal communities close to unawares.

While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well. But I think by its nature it has to be something that's unlikely to happen again in a while, and I think it includes major loss of life. The current floods have neither of those qualities. On the negative side, there's a pretty high risk that this will happen semi-regularly. On the positive side, while sadly there has been loss of life it can't reasonably be described as "major" IMO.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: ulmont on November 19, 2021, 12:10:08 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2021, 11:52:11 PM
While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well.

Those of us in hurricane country (ate a cat 4.9 [150mph winds, 157mph needed to be a 5) hurricane this year that knocked out power for 11 days in 95 degree weather) appreciate the inclusion.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on November 19, 2021, 12:48:46 AM
Quote from: ulmont on November 19, 2021, 12:10:08 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2021, 11:52:11 PM
While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well.

Those of us in hurricane country (ate a cat 4.9 [150mph winds, 157mph needed to be a 5) hurricane this year that knocked out power for 11 days in 95 degree weather) appreciate the inclusion.

I'm glad you I can make you feel included :hug:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 22, 2021, 10:30:29 AM
Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement.  <_<
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on December 22, 2021, 11:14:07 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 22, 2021, 10:30:29 AM
Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement.  <_<
No comment on the Filipino news. But it's a not a celebrity UAE divorce settlement.

It's a (huge) divorce settlement against the ruler of Dubai. The reason it is so high is to help protect his ex-wife and their children from the threat he poses to them. The court found that he had orchestrated to abduction of his two other children (including one being snatched on the streets of Cambridge), he'd subjected his ex-wife to an intimidation campaign. That he used Pegasus spyware to hack into her phone and those of her friends (and two of her divorce lawyers) and that at least once she had moved house and he would have agents buy the surrounding properties.

It's a divorce involving the leader of an ally using the full resources of a state against his ex-wife and children (who are resident in the UK).

I think it's a very legitimate news story.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 22, 2021, 01:14:24 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 22, 2021, 11:14:07 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 22, 2021, 10:30:29 AM
Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement.  <_<
No comment on the Filipino news. But it's a not a celebrity UAE divorce settlement.

It's a (huge) divorce settlement against the ruler of Dubai. The reason it is so high is to help protect his ex-wife and their children from the threat he poses to them. The court found that he had orchestrated to abduction of his two other children (including one being snatched on the streets of Cambridge), he'd subjected his ex-wife to an intimidation campaign. That he used Pegasus spyware to hack into her phone and those of her friends (and two of her divorce lawyers) and that at least once she had moved house and he would have agents buy the surrounding properties.

It's a divorce involving the leader of an ally using the full resources of a state against his ex-wife and children (who are resident in the UK).

I think it's a very legitimate news story.

:blink:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on December 26, 2021, 04:42:20 PM
This is a thoroughly worthwhile project often carried out by former oil industry employees:

https://welldonefoundation.org/ (https://welldonefoundation.org/)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 12, 2022, 08:26:58 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/11/oceans-hottest-temperatures-research-climate-crisis

QuoteHottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

The world's oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere's temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

"The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise.

Oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, causing them to acidify. This degrades coral reefs, home to a quarter of the world's marine life and the provider of food for more than 500m people, and can prove harmful to individual species of fish.

As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other activities, the oceans have taken the brunt of the extra heat. More than 90% of the heat generated over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, temporarily helping spare humanity, and other land-based species, from temperatures that would already be catastrophic.

The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world's entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule.

Long-term ocean warming is strongest in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, the new research states, although the north Pacific has had a "dramatic" increase in heat since 1990 and the Mediterranean Sea posted a clear high temperature record last year.

The heating trend is so pronounced it's clear to ascertain the fingerprint of human influence in just four years of records, according to John Abraham, another of the study's co-authors. "Ocean heat content is one of the best indicators of climate change," added Abraham, an expert in thermal sciences at University of St Thomas.

"Until we reach net zero emissions, that heating will continue, and we'll continue to break ocean heat content records, as we did this year," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and another of the 23 researchers who worked on the paper. "Better awareness and understanding of the oceans are a basis for the actions to combat climate change."

(https://i.postimg.cc/N09mS2XB/image.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 13, 2022, 09:51:25 AM
This Telegraph article made me curious about the white bears and their habits. Interesting that they would they migrate from Alaska to Siberia across the ice and sea, following the temperature changes in Alaska:

https://twitter.com/telegraphworld/status/1477653423143145472?s=21

Never seen so many white bears in one pic :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on January 15, 2022, 06:37:42 AM
https://apnews.com/article/climate-global-temperatures-heat-earth-d7b4eda880b1dafd255a93591cfe4759

QuoteThe heat stays on: Earth hits 6th warmest year on record

Earth simmered to the sixth hottest year on record in 2021, according to several newly released temperature measurements.

And scientists say the exceptionally hot year is part of a long-term warming trend that shows hints of accelerating.

Two U.S. science agencies — NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — and a private measuring group released their calculations for last year's global temperature on Thursday, and all said it wasn't far behind ultra-hot 2016 and 2020.

Six different calculations found 2021 was between the fifth and seventh hottest year since the late 1800s. NASA said 2021 tied with 2018 for sixth warmest, while NOAA puts last year in sixth place by itself.

Scientists say a La Nina — natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns globally and brings chilly deep ocean water to the surface — dampened global temperatures just as its flip side, El Nino, boosted them in 2016.

Still, they said 2021 was the hottest La Nina year on record and that the year did not represent a cooling off of human-caused climate change but provided more of the same heat
.

"So it's not quite as headline-dominating as being the warmest on record, but give it another few years and we'll see another one of those" records, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Berkeley Earth monitoring group that also ranked 2021 the sixth hottest. "It's the long-term trend, and it's an indomitable march upward."

Gavin Schmidt, the climate scientist who heads NASA's temperature team, said "the long-term trend is very, very clear. And it's because of us. And it's not going to go away until we stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record, NASA and NOAA data agree. Global temperatures, averaged over a 10-year period to take out natural variability, are nearly 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer than 140 years ago, their data shows.

The other 2021 measurements came from the Japanese Meteorological Agency and satellite measurements by Copernicus Climate Change Service i n Europe and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

There was such a distinctive jump in temperatures about eight to 10 years ago that scientists have started looking at whether the rise in temperatures is speeding up. Both Schmidt and Hausfather said early signs point to that but it's hard to know for sure.

"If you just look at the last the last 10 years, how many of them are way above the trend line from the previous 10 years? Almost all of them," Schmidt said in an interview.

There's a 99% chance that 2022 will be among the 10 warmest years on record and a 10% chance it will be the hottest on record, said NOAA climate analysis chief Russell Vose in a Thursday press conference.

Vose said chances are 50-50 that at least one year in the 2020s will hit 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming since pre-industrial times — the level of warming nations agreed to try to avoid in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

While that threshold is important, extreme weather from climate change is hurting people now in their daily lives with about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming, Vose and Schmidt said.

The global average temperature last year was 58.5 degrees (14.7 Celsius), according to NOAA. In 1988, NASA's then-chief climate scientist James Hansen grabbed headlines when he testified to Congress about global warming in a year that was the hottest on record at the time. Now, the 57.7 degrees (14.3 Celsius) of 1988 ranks as the 28th hottest year on record.

Last year, 1.8 billion people in 25 Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations had their hottest years on record, including China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Iran, Myanmar and South Korea, according to Berkeley Earth.

The deep ocean, where most heat is stored in the seas, also set a record for warmth in 2021, according to a separate new study.

"Ocean warming, aside from causing coral bleaching and threatening sea life and fish populations, ... is destabilizing Antarctic ice shelves and threatens massive ... sea level rise if we don't act," said study co-author Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist.

The last time Earth had a cooler than normal year by NOAA or NASA calculations was 1976. That means 69% of the people on the planet — more than 5 billion people under age 45 — have never experienced such a year, based on United Nations data.

North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, 39, who wasn't part of the new reports but said they make sense, said, "I've only lived in a warming world and I wish that the younger generations did not have to say the same. It didn't have to be this way."


(https://i.postimg.cc/NMJmkcm9/image.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 16, 2022, 10:14:59 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0uZ9mfOUI
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on January 16, 2022, 10:41:21 PM
Man, Toby really is The Worst.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 08:50:38 AM
Quote from: Syt on January 15, 2022, 06:37:42 AM

(https://i.postimg.cc/NMJmkcm9/image.png)

One place I personally felt this most is Japan. It was always hot in Tokyo in August of course, but never like this.

Literally you feel it's getting hotter every summer. Took a picture the year before — 39 Celsius before 8 am in the morning...

(https://imgshare.io/images/2022/01/17/DC77B938-A1A5-40F4-B30C-3AF1BC9A0DB2.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on January 17, 2022, 08:57:54 AM
In Kofu :lol:

Yeah. That place got ungodly hot. Its a natural heat sink filled with a man made heat sink of sprawl.
No wonder I rarely went outside in daylight hours
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:01:59 AM
Quote from: Tyr on January 17, 2022, 08:57:54 AM
In Kofu :lol:

Yeah. That place got ungodly hot. Its a natural heat sink filled with a man made heat sink of sprawl.
No wonder I rarely went outside in daylight hours

In Tokyo it was 38 Celsius that morning :)

With their energy issues, they also don't cool public buildings that much anymore. So you no longer get that feeling of relief when you enter a shopping mall or a train station...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:06:27 AM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 08:50:38 AM
Quote from: Syt on January 15, 2022, 06:37:42 AM

(https://i.postimg.cc/NMJmkcm9/image.png)

One place I personally felt this most is Japan. It was always hot in Tokyo in August of course, but never like this.

Literally you feel it's getting hotter every summer. Took a picture the year before — 39 Celsius before 8 am in the morning...


The data you are citing is almost certainly all lies and propaganda though, so you can safely ignore it. The source is printed right on the graph, the "US something something or other" and you already said all western information is bullshit.

What does Russia Times say about global warming?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:16:11 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:06:27 AM

The data you are citing is almost certainly all lies and propaganda though, so you can safely ignore it. The source is printed right on the graph, the "US something something or other" and you already said all western information is bullshit.

What does Russia Times say about global warming?

I searched for Russia Times but it doesn't seem to exist. There's Moscow Times though, where Michele A. Berdy is the Cultural Editor. Why don't you ask her?

@MicheleBerdy
[email protected]
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:20:54 AM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:16:11 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:06:27 AM

The data you are citing is almost certainly all lies and propaganda though, so you can safely ignore it. The source is printed right on the graph, the "US something something or other" and you already said all western information is bullshit.

What does Russia Times say about global warming?

I searched for Russia Times but it doesn't seem to exist. There's Moscow Times though, where Michele A. Berdy is the Cultural Editor. Why don't you ask her?

@MicheleBerdy
[email protected]


Why would I do that? I think the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a perfectly fine source.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:22:29 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:20:54 AM


Why would I do that? I think the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a perfectly fine source.

I'm very happy for you.

Are you saying that either I or the Russian government deny the global warming? Just trying to understand your postings.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 12:12:37 PM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:22:29 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:20:54 AM


Why would I do that? I think the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a perfectly fine source.

I'm very happy for you.

Are you saying that either I or the Russian government deny the global warming? Just trying to understand your postings.

You stated that you don't trust western information and media.

You can't pick and choose, and that is in fact the very problem with climate denial. If you attack the idea that there is objective sources of information so you can justify X, then the destruction of credibility applies to Y as well.

There is a reason an appreciable portion of the world thinks climate change is a bunch of bullshit invented for some nefarious reason to screw them over, and that we should just go on burning fossil fuels because global warming is all lies, and even if it is happening, why, humans have nothing to do with it anyway. The attack on the credibility of information and the idea that there isn't any real truth, so you might as well just believe whatever it is you *want* to believe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on January 17, 2022, 12:31:41 PM
Berkut, get a room, or at least keep your fight to the thread where it originated.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 12:35:43 PM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 12:12:37 PM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:22:29 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:20:54 AM


Why would I do that? I think the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a perfectly fine source.

I'm very happy for you.

Are you saying that either I or the Russian government deny the global warming? Just trying to understand your postings.

You stated that you don't trust western information and media.

You can't pick and choose, and that is in fact the very problem with climate denial. If you attack the idea that there is objective sources of information so you can justify X, then the destruction of credibility applies to Y as well.

There is a reason an appreciable portion of the world thinks climate change is a bunch of bullshit invented for some nefarious reason to screw them over, and that we should just go on burning fossil fuels because global warming is all lies, and even if it is happening, why, humans have nothing to do with it anyway. The attack on the credibility of information and the idea that there isn't any real truth, so you might as well just believe whatever it is you *want* to believe.

I don't trust any mass media, not just western. I tend to look at many different sources, without blindly trusting any of them.

On the climate change specifically, I said I've been personally observing how the Japanese summers have gradually become hotter. So far, I've experienced exactly 22 Japanese summers, and for me personally this trend is undeniable.

Incidentally, this observation is also confirmed by other observations, for example published here:

https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/japan/climate-data-historical

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 12:43:50 PM
Congratulations on not "blindly trusting" the "mass media".

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on January 18, 2022, 11:53:52 AM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:16:11 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:06:27 AM

The data you are citing is almost certainly all lies and propaganda though, so you can safely ignore it. The source is printed right on the graph, the "US something something or other" and you already said all western information is bullshit.

What does Russia Times say about global warming?

I searched for Russia Times but it doesn't seem to exist. There's Moscow Times though, where Michele A. Berdy is the Cultural Editor. Why don't you ask her?

@MicheleBerdy
[email protected]

Russia Times has relabeled itself RT (for "Russia Times").  It's an amusingly good imitation of a news source.  Check it out.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on January 18, 2022, 03:41:09 PM
I think RT stood for Russia Today, but they did rebrand themselves as RT.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on January 18, 2022, 04:13:34 PM
Quote from: DGuller on January 18, 2022, 03:41:09 PM
I think RT stood for Russia Today, but they did rebrand themselves as RT.

You are correct.  Mea culpa.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Gaijin de Moscu on January 18, 2022, 04:18:20 PM
Quote from: grumbler on January 18, 2022, 11:53:52 AM
Quote from: Gaijin de Moscu on January 17, 2022, 09:16:11 AM
Quote from: Berkut on January 17, 2022, 09:06:27 AM

The data you are citing is almost certainly all lies and propaganda though, so you can safely ignore it. The source is printed right on the graph, the "US something something or other" and you already said all western information is bullshit.

What does Russia Times say about global warming?

I searched for Russia Times but it doesn't seem to exist. There's Moscow Times though, where Michele A. Berdy is the Cultural Editor. Why don't you ask her?

@MicheleBerdy
[email protected]

Russia Times has relabeled itself RT (for "Russia Times").  It's an amusingly good imitation of a news source.  Check it out.

I don't watch them... and I have no desire whatsoever to check them out.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 08, 2022, 03:49:55 AM
https://www.voanews.com/a/world-must-work-together-to-tackle-plastic-ocean-threat-wwf-/6432062.html

QuoteWorld Must Work Together to Tackle Plastic Ocean Threat: WWF

Paris — Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found "in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale" wildlife group WWF said on Tuesday, calling for urgent efforts to create an international treaty on plastics.

Tiny fragments of plastic have reached even the most remote and seemingly pristine regions of the planet: it peppers Arctic sea ice and has been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, the Mariana Trench.

There is no international agreement in place to address the problem, although delegates meeting in Nairobi for a United Nations environment meeting this month are expected to launch talks on a worldwide plastics treaty.

WWF sought to bolster the case for action in its latest report, which synthesizes more than 2,000 separate scientific studies on the impacts of plastic pollution on the oceans, biodiversity and marine ecosystems.

The report acknowledged that there is currently insufficient evidence to estimate the potential repercussions on humans.

But it found that the fossil-fuel derived substance "has reached every part of the ocean, from the sea surface to the deep ocean floor, from the poles to coastlines of the most remote islands and is detectable in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale."

According to some estimates, between 19 and 23 million tons of plastic waste is washed into the world's waterways every year, the WWF report said.

This is largely from single-use plastics, which still constitute more than 60% of marine pollution, although more and more countries are acting to ban their use.

"In many places (we are) reaching some kind of saturation point for marine ecosystems, where we're approaching levels that pose a significant threat," said Eirik Lindebjerg, Global Plastics Policy Manager at WWF.

In some places there is a risk of "ecosystem collapse," he said.

Many people have seen images of seabirds choking on plastic straws or turtles wrapped in discarded fishing nets, but he said the danger is across the entire marine food web.

It "will affect not only the whale and the seal and the turtle, but huge fish stocks and the animals that depend on those," he added.

In one 2021 study, 386 fish species were found to have ingested plastic, out of 555 tested.

Separate research, looking at the major commercially fished species, found up to 30% of cod in a sample caught in the North Sea had microplastics in their stomach.

Once in the water, the plastic begins to degrade, becoming smaller and smaller until it is a "nano plastic," invisible to the naked eye.

So even if all plastic pollution stopped completely, the volume of microplastics in the oceans could still double by 2050.

But plastic production continues to rise, potentially doubling by 2040, according to projections cited by WWF, with ocean plastic pollution expected to triple during the same period.

Lindebjerg compares the situation to the climate crisis — and the concept of a "carbon budget," that caps the maximum amount of CO2 that can be released into the atmosphere before a global warming cap is exceeded.

"There is actually a limit to how much plastic pollution our marine ecosystems can absorb," he said.

Those limits have already been reached for microplastics in several parts of the world, according to WWF, particularly in the Mediterranean, the Yellow and East China Seas (between China, Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula) and in the Arctic sea ice.

"We need to treat it as a fixed system that doesn't absorb plastic, and that's why we need to go towards zero emissions, zero pollution as fast as possible," said Lindebjerg.

WWF is calling for talks aimed at drawing up an international agreement on plastics at the U.N. environment meeting, from February 28 to March 2 in Nairobi.

It wants any treaty to lead to global standards of production and real "recyclability."

Trying to clean up the oceans is "extremely difficult and extremely expensive," Lindebjerg said, adding that it was better on all metrics not to pollute in the first place.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on February 08, 2022, 03:55:30 AM
In Sweden we made plastic grocery bags expensive. :)

Meanwhile in India more than a billion people, many living close to the coast or a river, toss their plastic garbage on the street.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on February 28, 2022, 04:38:42 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/ipcc-issues-bleakest-warning-yet-impacts-climate-breakdown

QuoteIPCC issues 'bleakest warning yet' on impacts of climate breakdown

Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said.

Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unliveable, according to the landmark report published on Monday.

"The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet," said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a co-chair of working group 2 of the IPCC. "Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future."

Droughts, floods, heatwaves
In what some scientists termed "the bleakest warning yet", the summary report from the global authority on climate science says droughts, floods, heatwaves and other extreme weather are accelerating and wreaking increasing damage.

Allowing global temperatures to increase by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as looks likely on current trends in greenhouse gas emissions, would result in some "irreversible" impacts. These include the melting of ice caps and glaciers, and a cascading effect whereby wildfires, the die-off of trees, the drying of peatlands and the thawing of permafrost release additional carbon emissions, amplifying the warming further.

'Atlas of human suffering'
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: "I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership."

John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said the report "paints a dire picture of the impacts already occurring because of a warmer world and the terrible risks to our planet if we continue to ignore science. We have seen the increase in climate-fuelled extreme events, and the damage that is left behind – lives lost and livelihoods ruined. The question at this point is not whether we can altogether avoid the crisis – it is whether we can avoid the worst consequences."

The report says:

* Everywhere is affected, with no inhabited region escaping dire impacts from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.
* About half the global population – between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people – live in areas "highly vulnerable" to climate change.
* Millions of people face food and water shortages owing to climate change, even at current levels of heating.
* Mass die-offs of species, from trees to corals, are already under way.
* 1.5C above pre-industrial levels constitutes a "critical level" beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis accelerate strongly and some become irreversible.
Coastal areas around the globe, and small, low-lying islands, face inundation at temperature rises of more than 1.5C.
* Key ecosystems are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, turning them from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
* Some countries have agreed to conserve 30% of the Earth's land, but conserving half may be necessary to restore the ability of natural ecosystems to cope with the damage wreaked on them.


Chance to avoid the worst
This is the second part of the IPCC's latest assessment report, an updated, comprehensive review of global knowledge of the climate, which has been seven years in the making and draws on the peer-reviewed work of thousands of scientists. The assessment report is the sixth since the IPCC was first convened by the UN in 1988, and may be the last to be published while there is still some chance of avoiding the worst.

A first instalment, by the IPCC's working group 1, published last August, on the physical science of climate change, said the climate crisis was "unequivocally" caused by human actions, resulting in changes that were "unprecedented", with some becoming "irreversible".

This second part, by working group 2, deals with the impacts of climate breakdown, sets out areas where the world is most vulnerable, and details how we can try to adapt and protect against some of the impacts. A third section, due in April, will cover ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and the final part, in October, will summarise these lessons for governments meeting in Egypt for the UN Cop27 climate summit.

'Cataclysmic' for small islands
Small islands will be among those worst affected. Walton Webson, an ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda and the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, called the findings "cataclysmic".

He urged the UN to convene a special session to consider action. "We are continuing to head for a precipice – we say our eyes are open to the risks, but when you look at global emissions, if anything we are accelerating towards the cliff edge. We are not seeing the action from the big emitters that is required to get emissions down in this critical decade – this means halving emissions by 2030 at the latest. It is clear that time is slipping away from us."

Governments in other parts of the world could help their people to adapt to some of the impacts of the climate crisis, the report says, by building flood defences, helping farmers to grow different crops, or building more resilient infrastructure. But the authors say the capacity of the world to adapt to the impacts will diminish rapidly the further temperatures rise, quickly reaching "hard" limits beyond which adaptation would be impossible.

'Global dominoes'
The climate crisis also has the power to worsen problems such as hunger, ill-health and poverty, the report makes clear. Dave Reay, the director of Edinburgh Climate Change Institute at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Like taking a wrecking ball to a set of global dominoes, climate change in the 21st century threatens to destroy the foundations of food and water security, smash onwards through the fragile structures of human and ecosystem health, and ultimately shake the very pillars of human civilisation."

The report plays down fears of conflicts arising from the climate crisis, finding that "displacement" and "involuntary migration" of people would ensue but that "non-climatic factors are the dominant drivers of existing intrastate violent conflicts".

But Jeffrey Kargel, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in the US, said: "The current warfare activity in eastern Europe, though not attributable to climate change, is a further caution about how human tensions and international relations and geopolitics could become inflamed as climate change impacts hit nations in ways that they are ill-prepared to handle."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on May 03, 2022, 09:59:29 AM
50º in April...  :wacko:

Quote'We are living in hell': Pakistan and India suffer extreme spring heatwaves
April temperatures at unprecedented levels have led to critical water and electricity shortages

For the past few weeks, Nazeer Ahmed has been living in one of the hottest places on Earth. As a brutal heatwave has swept across India and Pakistan, his home in Turbat, in Pakistan's Balochistan region, has been suffering through weeks of temperatures that have repeatedly hit almost 50C (122F), unprecedented for this time of year. Locals have been driven into their homes, unable to work except during the cooler night hours, and are facing critical shortages of water and power.

Ahmed fears that things are only about to get worse. It was here, in 2021, that the world's highest temperature for May was recorded, a staggering 54C. This year, he said, feels even hotter. "Last week was insanely hot in Turbat. It did not feel like April," he said.

As the heatwave has exacerbated massive energy shortages across India and Pakistan, Turbat, a city of about 200,000 residents, now barely receives any electricity, with up to nine hours of load shedding every day, meaning that air conditioners and refrigerators cannot function. "We are living in hell," said Ahmed.

It has been a similar story across the subcontinent, where the realities of climate change are being felt by more than 1.5 billion people as the scorching summer temperatures have arrived two months early and the relief of the monsoons are months away. North-west and central India experienced the hottest April in 122 years, while Jacobabad, a city in Pakistan's Sindh province, hit 49C on Saturday, one of the highest April temperatures ever recorded in the world.

The heatwave has already had a devastating impact on crops, including wheat and various fruits and vegetables. In India, the yield from wheat crops has dropped by up to 50% in some of the areas worst hit by the extreme temperatures, worsening fears of global shortages following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has already had a devastating impact on supplies.

In Balochistan's Mastung district, known for its apple and peach orchards, the harvests have been decimated. Haji Ghulam Sarwar Shahwani, a farmer, watched in anguish as his apple trees blossomed more than a month early, and then despair as the blossom sizzled and then died in the unseasonal dry heat, almost killing off his entire crop. Farmers in the area also spoke of a "drastic" impact on their wheat crops, while the area has also recently been subjected to 18-hour power cuts.

"This is the first time the weather has wreaked such havoc on our crops in this area," Shahwani said. "We don't know what to do and there is no government help. The cultivation has decreased; now very few fruits grow. Farmers have lost billions because of this weather. We are suffering and we can't afford it."

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's minister for climate, told the Guardian that the country was facing an "existential crisis" as climate emergencies were being felt from the north to south of the country.

Rehman warned that the heatwave was causing the glaciers in the north of the country to melt at an unprecedented rate, and that thousands were at risk of being caught in flood bursts. She also said that the sizzling temperatures were not only impacting crops but water supply as well. "The water reservoirs dry up. Our big dams are at dead level right now, and sources of water are scarce," she said.

Rehman said the heatwave should be a wake-up call to the international community. "Climate and weather events are here to stay and will in fact only accelerate in their scale and intensity if global leaders don't act now," she said.

Experts said the scorching heat being felt across the subcontinent was likely a taste of things to come as global heating continues to accelerate. Abhiyant Tiwari, an assistant professorand programme manager at the Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management, said "the extreme, frequent, and long-lasting spells of heatwaves are no more a future risk. It is already here and is unavoidable."

The World Meteorological Organisation said in a statement that the temperatures in India and Pakistan were "consistent with what we expect in a changing climate. Heatwaves are more frequent and more intense and starting earlier than in the past."

A heatwave is declared when the maximum temperature is over 40C and at least 4.5C above normal.

Over the weekend in India, Bikaner was the hottest place in the country at 47.1C, according to the India Meteorological Department. However, in some parts of north-west India, images captured by satellites showed that surface land temperatures had exceeded 60C – unprecedented for this time of year when usual surface temperatures are between 45 and 55C.

"The hottest temperatures recorded are south-east and south-west of Ahmedabad, with maximum land-surface temperatures of around 65C," the European Space Agency said on its website.

The high temperatures have put massive pressure on power demand in both India and Pakistan, where people have had to endure hours of power cuts amid the crippling heat. On Friday, the peak power demand in India touched an all-time high of 207,111MW, according to the government.

India is facing its worst electricity shortage in six decades. Power cuts lasting upwards of eight hours have been imposed in states including Jharkhand, Haryana, Bihar, Punjab and Maharashtra as domestic coal supplies have fallen to critical levels and the price of imported coal has soared. In a bid to speed up the transport of coal across the country, Indian Railways cancelled more than 600 passenger and postal train journeys to make way for transportation of coal to power plants.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on May 03, 2022, 11:27:27 AM
Considering how a few tens of thousands of migrants freaked the hell out of Europe in 2015, I wonder what will happen when tens of millions will decide that, actually, they don't want to live in a 50C hellhole, and would rather settle where there's milder climate and better prosperity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 03, 2022, 11:46:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 03, 2022, 11:27:27 AMConsidering how a few tens of thousands of migrants freaked the hell out of Europe in 2015, I wonder what will happen when tens of millions will decide that, actually, they don't want to live in a 50C hellhole, and would rather settle where there's milder climate and better prosperity.

Yeah, we're in for an eventful decade or three on the climate disaster front, that's for sure.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 03, 2022, 12:52:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 03, 2022, 11:46:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 03, 2022, 11:27:27 AMConsidering how a few tens of thousands of migrants freaked the hell out of Europe in 2015, I wonder what will happen when tens of millions will decide that, actually, they don't want to live in a 50C hellhole, and would rather settle where there's milder climate and better prosperity.

Yeah, we're in for an eventful decade or three on the climate disaster front, that's for sure.

We have it on good authority here that the GOP does not consider climate change a national security issue.  So there ya go.  Problem solved.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 03, 2022, 05:00:40 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on May 03, 2022, 12:52:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 03, 2022, 11:46:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 03, 2022, 11:27:27 AMConsidering how a few tens of thousands of migrants freaked the hell out of Europe in 2015, I wonder what will happen when tens of millions will decide that, actually, they don't want to live in a 50C hellhole, and would rather settle where there's milder climate and better prosperity.

Last time the European climate went warmer, the Scandinavians emigrated to Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland and used Baffin Islan and Labrador as vacation resort of some sort. ;)

It's Iceland, Greenland and Canada I'm worried about.  So many new wave socialist immigrating en masse toward our pristine nordic climate... :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 03, 2022, 05:03:05 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on May 03, 2022, 12:52:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 03, 2022, 11:46:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 03, 2022, 11:27:27 AMConsidering how a few tens of thousands of migrants freaked the hell out of Europe in 2015, I wonder what will happen when tens of millions will decide that, actually, they don't want to live in a 50C hellhole, and would rather settle where there's milder climate and better prosperity.

Yeah, we're in for an eventful decade or three on the climate disaster front, that's for sure.

We have it on good authority here that the GOP does not consider climate change a national security issue.  So there ya go.  Problem solved.
Florida won't be a problem for much longer, Texas will be so hot that they'll insist to give it back to Mexico and half of Louisiana will be below the sea, not just the sea level this time.
There ya go.  Problem solved.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 05, 2022, 07:40:07 AM
Funny/effective add from our electricity utility contrasting itself from our gas utility

https://twitter.com/bchydro/status/1521866506014904323?s=21&t=Mwzf_Lm68o3h0x09k2geIg

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 07, 2022, 06:11:34 AM
https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-amazon-deforestation-hits-new-high/a-61717387

QuoteBrazil: Amazon deforestation hits new high

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil has seen record logging for the third month this year. Environmentalists blame one person in particular for the catastrophic damage.

The area of land cleared of trees in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in April approached double that in the same month a year ago, with deforestation in the region at a record monthly level for the third time this year, preliminary government data has shown.

The large-scale removal of trees in the rainforest is seen by climate scientists as a major blow to efforts to contain global warming, as the region absorbs vast amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

In light of the records already set this year, experts warn that 2022 could mark Brazil's fourth straight year of decade-high deforestation.

What do the statistics say?

Deforestation in the region totaled 1,012.5 square kilometers (390 square miles) in the first 29 days of April, according to data from the Brazilian national space research agency Inpe.

That is 74% more than the same month in 2021, which was the previous record. Full-month figures for April will be available next week.

It is the first time that deforestation has exceeded 1,000 square kilometers during a month in the rainy season, which runs from December to April.

In January, 430 square kilometers were cleared, more than four times the amount in the same month of 2021; in February, 199 square kilometers were destroyed, up 62% from 2021.

Overall, the first four months of the year saw record deforestation, with 1,954 square kilometers cleared. That represents an increase of 69% compared with the same period in 2021.

Records on deforestation in the Amazon have been kept for the past seven years by Inpe.

Why is deforestation on the increase?

Deforestation in the Amazon has soared since right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

He has weakened environmental protection for the region, arguing that more farming and mining in the Amazon will help reduce poverty in the region.

"The cause of this record has a first and last name: Jair Messias Bolsonaro," said Marcio Astrini, head of Brazilian advocacy group Climate Observatory, in a statement.

The Brazilian Environment and Justice ministries, in their turn, said in a statement that the government was doing much to fight environmental crimes and combat deforestation in five Amazon states.

Among other things, the major road-building projects in the Amazon promoted by Bolsonaro are driving illegal logging by facilitating access, which drives up land value and makes economic activities, such as cattle-raising, easier.

The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest and an enormous carbon sink. Climate scientists fear that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest will not only release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere but also lead to the eventual degradation of the forest into tropical savannah.


Austrian Der Standard had additional numbers. August 2020 - July 2021 saw the burning of 13,000 km² of the Amazon. Estimates are that 17-20% of the Amazon have been destroyed so far, and that at 20-25% a point may be reached where it won't be able to recover. At current rates, 1% disappears every 3-5 years. The burning of the forests releases 1-2 gigatons of CO2 annually (global annual CO2 output is 50 gigatons according to Standard).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 09, 2022, 06:21:13 AM
https://www.undrr.org/news/humanitys-broken-risk-perception-reversing-global-progress-spiral-self-destruction-finds-new

QuoteHumanity's broken risk perception is reversing global progress in a 'spiral of self-destruction', finds new UN report

World could undo social and economic advances and face 1.5 disasters a day by 2030, according to UN's flagship Global Assessment Report.


April 26, 2022, NEW YORK/GENEVA – Human activity and behaviour is contributing to an increasing number of disasters across the world, putting millions of lives and every social and economic gain in danger, warns a new UN report.

The Global Assessment Report (GAR2022), released by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) ahead of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in May, reveals that between 350 and 500 medium- to large-scale disasters took place every year over the past two decades. The number of disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 disasters a day – by 2030.

The GAR2022 blames these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on "optimism, underestimation and invincibility," which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger.

"The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction," said Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, who presented the report at the UN headquarters in New York.

"We must turn our collective complacency to action. Together we can slow the rate of preventable disasters as we work to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals for everyone, everywhere."

The report entitled "Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future," found that the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies, as called for in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, had reduced both the number of people impacted and killed by disasters in the last decade.

However, the scale and intensity of disasters are increasing, with more people killed or affected by disasters in the last five years than in the previous five.

Disasters disproportionately impact developing countries, which lose an average of one percent of GDP a year to disasters, compared to 0.1-0.3 per cent in developed countries. The highest cost is borne by the Asia-Pacific region, which loses an average 1.6 percent of GDP to disasters every year, while the poorest also suffer the most within developing countries.

Adding to the long term impacts of disasters is the lack of insurance to aid in recovery efforts to build back better. Since 1980, just 40 percent of disaster-related losses were insured while insurance coverage rates in developing countries were often below 10 percent, and sometimes close to zero, the report said.

"Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks," said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.

"By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk."

A growing area of risk is around more extreme weather events as a result of climate change.  GAR2022 builds on the calls to accelerate adaptation efforts made at COP26 by showcasing how policymakers can climate-proof development and investments. This includes reforming national budget planning to consider risk and uncertainty, while also reconfiguring legal and financial systems to incentivize risk reduction. It also offers examples that countries can learn from, such as Costa Rica's innovative carbon tax on fuel launched in 1997, which helped to reverse deforestation, a major driver of disaster risks, while benefiting the economy.  In 2018, 98 percent of the electricity in Costa Rica came from renewable energy sources.

GAR2022 was drafted by a group of experts from around the world as a reflection of the various areas of expertise required to understand and reduce complex risks. The findings of the report will feed into the Midterm Review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which includes national consultations and reviews of how countries are performing against the goal, targets and priorities for action of the Sendai Framework.

"As the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework is underway, this report should be a wake-up call that countries need to accelerate action across the Framework's four priorities to stop the spiral of increasing disasters," said Mizutori

"The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity, and especially the most vulnerable among us."



https://www.salon.com/2022/05/08/prognostic-myopia/

QuoteHow a quirk of the brain prevents us from caring about climate change

A very human way of thinking is limiting our ability to stop the climate apocalypse. Some of us can overcome it

By JUSTIN GREGG
PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2022 2:00PM (EDT)

On April 6th, Dr. Peter Kalmus, NASA climate scientist and author, walked up to the JP Morgan Chase bank building in Los Angeles, pulled a pair of handcuffs out of a cloth bag and chained himself to the front door. With tears in his eyes, he spoke about the climate crisis to a group of supporters. 

"We've been trying to warn you guys for so many decades that we're heading towards a f**king catastrophe," he says in a video from the protest which has since gone viral on Twitter. "And we end up being ignored. The scientists of the world are being ignored. And it's got to stop. We're going to lose everything."

Like me, Kalmus is a scientist – passionate about uncovering the nature of reality. A reality being threated by rapidly rising global temperatures. Unlike me, Kalmus is actually doing something about it. He is a member of Scientist Rebellion – a group of academics and scientists fighting to draw attention to "the reality and severity of the  climate  and  ecological  emergency  by  engaging  in  non-violent  civil  disobedience."

Watching Kalmus give his impassioned speech on the steps of the bank, I am both humbled and envious. I wonder why it is that I don't seem to care about the climate crisis as much as he does. The best explanation from my perspective as a cognitive scientist involves a fundamental flaw in my human psychology: the inability to care all that much about what happens in the distant future. But I wondered how Peter Kalmus might explain the public's apparent lack of enthusiasm when it comes to fighting the good fight. So I wrote him to ask.

"I think climate denial in the media plays a huge role here," he wrote back to me. "Bits and pieces of the emergency are reported (and they are scary) but they are not related to the future and how they will impact civilization, i.e., potential collapse of civilization is never mentioned."

There are solid numbers to back up this claim. "Less than a quarter of the public hear about climate change in the media at least once a month," wrote Mark Hertsgaard, editor of Columbia Journalism Review, and one of the co-founders of Covering Climate Now, a media collaboration fighting to get more news coverage of the climate crisis.  And when these stories are reported, they rarely talk about the existential threat posed by the climate crisis, but instead present hopeful (and often delusional) solutions.

"The effectively irreversible nature of most climate impacts is never mentioned either," wrote Kalmus. "Instead, usually tech 'solutions' are highlighted, or a sense that we still have 'budget' for some heating milestone (e.g., 2°C) which is implied to be 'safe.' So there is no urgency in the news media."

The thing is, I do understand the urgency. I have read the findings presented in the third volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published on April 4th. It was a document full of unequivocally dire warnings, and the catalyst for Kalmus' protest. It warns that we are on course for a rise in global temperature well beyond the 1.5 °C goal set by the Paris Agreement (and possibly headed up toward 3°C) by the end of the century with no functional plan in place to stop it from happening. Just to be clear, that could render most of the planet uninhabitable for our species. I know this. And yet, I do almost nothing about it. I spend most of my days reading books, watching Netflix, and planning supper. Like almost everyone on this planet, I am not acting like there is a climate emergency.

It's possible that I, like many others, am behaving in a way common to someone processing the threat of impending cultural trauma. This is a term to refer to a horrendous event that irrevocably changes a society's identity or destroys the social order. A common response to an impending threat of this magnitude is to fight to maintain the status quo. In doing so, a kind of social inertia crops up where people do everything they can to keep living their lives the way they always have, despite the looming implosion of society. Perhaps I, like so many others, am fully aware of the horrific outcomes of climate change, but my mind generates a kind of trauma-avoiding denial that shields me from reality. It helps me tune out the IPCC report and tune in to "Bridgerton" instead.

There is, however, and even older psychological response than denial that could explain why I, like so many others, am not chaining myself to banks in the face of the impending extinction of humanity.

Edward Wasserman is a psychologist studying animal behavior and author of the book "As If By Design" who offered an elegantly simple explanation as to why humans are so bad at dealing with climate change. It boils down to the way all animals — including humans — have been designed by evolution to deal with common everyday problems like finding food, safety, or sex.

"Being the first to spot a ripe berry or a deadly predator might give an organism only a short-lived interval of time in which to engage in adaptive action," Wasserman wrote in his blog for Psychology Today.  "This reality prompts organisms to act impulsively. However, such impulsivity is obviously at odds with appreciating and contending with the slowly rising warning signs for climate change."

The problem is that humans, like all animals, evolved to solve problems in the here and now. This means that our emotions — the primary driver of behavior — are designed to force us to act based on the potential for an immediate reward.

Humans are unique in that, sometime in the past 250 thousand years, we evolved the ability to think about the distant future. We can contemplate what our lives might be like months or even years down the road — something that no other animal species can do (as far as we know). But this recently evolved cognitive skill functions separately from the ancient emotional system that generates everyday animal behavior.

If you, for example, decide to invest in a retirement savings scheme, it's because you appealed to a complex intellectual calculation concerning what your life might be like decades in the future. There is nothing immediately satisfying about saving money right now. Retirement schemes are not impulsive acts that generate dopamine rushes, like drinking a daquiri, solving Wordle, or eating a chocolate chip cookie. Far-future planning is a purely intellectual exercise.

I use the term prognostic myopia to denote this disconnect between the human ability to think about the distant future and our inability to actually feel strongly about that future. Prognostic means one's ability to predict the future; myopia means nearsightedness. It's prognostic myopia that explains the inertia that individuals, societies, and governments have when it comes to solving climate change. The IPCC report was clear that fossil fuel extraction needed to cease as soon as possible, lest we set ourselves on a course for extinction. And yet, on April 11th, less than a week after the IPCC report, the Canadian government approved the Bay du Nord offshore oil project, which will extract 300 million barrels of oil off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. On April 15th, the Biden administration announced that The Bureau of Land Management will resume and thus increase oil and gas leasing on public lands (breaking a campaign promise). In both cases, this is exactly the thing the IPCC report said we have to stop doing immediately if we want to prevent human extinction. This is prognostic myopia in action. It feels more important to address the threat of rising oil prices or the stability of the economy in the here and now even if it hastens our extinction in a few decades. It's both unforgivable and completely understandable within the context of human psychology.

Kalmus, however, is different. He is reacting to future threats as if they are a present danger, seemingly sidestepping the problem of prognostic myopia. His emotional reaction is raw, unyielding, and driving him to act. This is both exceptional as far as the human conditions goes, and admirable. If we heed his warnings and act with the urgency outlined in the IPCC report, there is hope that our species will avoid extinction.

To admit that humans are governed by impulsivity and cowed into nonchalance in the face of cultural trauma by prognostic myopia is not an excuse for inaction. We might not all feel the same way about the future as Peter Kalmus, but we can concede that we should be listening to him. "People should be joining together, putting in significant effort, and taking risks to wake up society," he wrote me. "Civil disobedience is the most effective thing I've found so far for pushing back against the cultural wall of inaction and despair."

It's more than likely that I, like most people, will never feel the emotional connection to the problem of climate change that Kalmus does. But knowing that there is a psychological explanation for our lack of emotional investment, we can instead appeal to our intellect to guide our actions. We can decide to listen to those scientists literally yelling at us to do something. Perhaps it's time that we let those who can feel the future guide us into it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 09, 2022, 06:40:06 AM
The response of the general public to Covid measures has left me rather disillusioned over the fight against climate change, tbh. If a more concrete and direct emergency creates such resistance, then the much larger societal changes scientists and researchers say would be required to combat global warming have no chance.

I try to do the right thing on micro level, but let's be honest. Unless someone comes up with a magic bullet for the problem that makes it go away without inconveniencing people here and now we're screwed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 09, 2022, 08:46:50 AM
Have we considered the possibility future generations might be better off not existing?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 09, 2022, 09:22:00 AM
Quote from: Syt on May 09, 2022, 06:21:13 AMBut knowing that there is a psychological explanation for our lack of emotional investment, we can instead appeal to our intellect to guide our actions.

Thing is, there usually is a psychological explanation when it comes to human behavior;  hell, look at how much fundamental attribution error and other cognitive biases play in so many levels of our political and societal decision-making processes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on May 09, 2022, 09:55:47 AM
I mean, focusing on short term and ignoring what may or may not happen at some unspecified future time, how can that be classified as a "fault"? Like, I get it, but on an evolutionary scale, where brain-workings would have to be evaluated on, the constant struggle for daily survival has been the norm for lifeforms. It still is for a huge number of humans.

 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 09, 2022, 10:17:46 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 09, 2022, 09:55:47 AMI mean, focusing on short term and ignoring what may or may not happen at some unspecified future time, how can that be classified as a "fault"? Like, I get it, but on an evolutionary scale, where brain-workings would have to be evaluated on, the constant struggle for daily survival has been the norm for lifeforms. It still is for a huge number of humans.

I guess the question is then whether we can take the next evolutionary hurdle not just on an individual level, but as a species. :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on May 09, 2022, 10:24:46 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 09, 2022, 08:46:50 AMHave we considered the possibility future generations might be better off not existing?  :hmm:

According to the USSC, the answer is "no."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 09, 2022, 11:29:26 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 09, 2022, 08:46:50 AMHave we considered the possibility future generations might be better off not existing?  :hmm:

Yes, and we have rejected the possibility.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 09, 2022, 11:31:26 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 09, 2022, 09:55:47 AMI mean, focusing on short term and ignoring what may or may not happen at some unspecified future time, how can that be classified as a "fault"? Like, I get it, but on an evolutionary scale, where brain-workings would have to be evaluated on, the constant struggle for daily survival has been the norm for lifeforms. It still is for a huge number of humans.

It's not a "fault" in that it has helped us to get where we are and, in aggregate, it helps is as a species navigate a wide range of complex problems more or less successfully.

However, if that quirk leads us to a species extinction then yeah it's probably fair to call it a "fault".
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 09, 2022, 12:05:34 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 09, 2022, 11:29:26 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 09, 2022, 08:46:50 AMHave we considered the possibility future generations might be better off not existing?  :hmm:

Yes, and we have rejected the possibility.

The developed world is reproducing at below replacement, so it seems like an open question.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on May 09, 2022, 12:13:36 PM
Quote from: Syt on May 09, 2022, 06:40:06 AMThe response of the general public to Covid measures has left me rather disillusioned over the fight against climate change, tbh. If a more concrete and direct emergency creates such resistance, then the much larger societal changes scientists and researchers say would be required to combat global warming have no chance.
I feel the opposite. There's variations across the world - but in most of Europe, for example, a tiny, vocal minority resisted covid measures and received an insane amount of coverage for it (both because people like shaming each other and because it was current). In this context there are semi-regular Kurdish protests in London that I have never seen covered in the media but I looked up because my bus route went througgh Westminster and Trafalgar square so was blocked by them more than once. No lockdown protest I saw came close to even half of the Kurdish protests every couple of months and I think media representation isn't the same as actually popular support.

It varies globally and particularly by wealth but I find the response to covid and the steps people voluntarily took to make others safe have been generally incredible and miles beyond what anyone thought was possible. I still remember looking at footage from China in January 2020 and thinking those silent streets would be impossible in the West, but I was wrong.

The other side is also what we are capable of as a society when the government basically takes on risk for private companies doing research and also just throws cash at a problem. In the space of a year we had all those vaccines - I don't think there's any reason to think that engineers and researchers are any less capable than the guys behind the covid vaccines. In fact we've seen the opposite that the cost of renewable energy has fallen faster than any projections - and it's got better quicker too.

QuoteI try to do the right thing on micro level, but let's be honest. Unless someone comes up with a magic bullet for the problem that makes it go away without inconveniencing people here and now we're screwed.
I don't think the solution is in the billions of micro savings from individuals. There's basically five areas contributors to carbon that are all roughly equal: transport, energy, housing, agriculture and industry. In my view the vast majority of those areas are going to require huge state spending to make any transition. Consumer choices are not going to decarbonise steel or concrete.

For most of them we know what we need to do and can do a lot of it now if we spend the money (especially on energy, housing and transport), there are other bits where there is no answer yet and we need to throw money at it. But the key is a willingness to spend (and to go into debt to do it) - I think the estimate globally is about 3% of GDPR for the next ten years - not the levels of inconvenience individuals have to go through.

I think it's about politics. It's always brought up but it was BP who invented the idea of a "carbon footprint" - and that it's about us as individuals acting in a market, rather than collective action through the state of investment in updating building stock, the grid and energy supplies, funding research in batteries etc. It's a bit like covid itself - I could be wrong - but my guess is if you look around the world at compliance with covid measures the key indicator is more about access to sick pay or furlough schemes etc than individual views.

Separately I also think the war will have an impact - I think the impact in Europe and probably East and South Asia is that it increases the urgency of moving to renewables (because we rely on energy sources from overseas and we're all subject to the market and external shocks). I think in the US - and maybe Australia, Canada and other countries who have loads of fossil fuels - it probably has the opposite effect of increasing the incentive to get more fossil fuels out of the ground (because they can insulate themselves and economically benefit from those shocks).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on May 09, 2022, 12:14:48 PM
I have a hard time seeing environmental problems leading to human extinction.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on May 09, 2022, 02:11:41 PM
Consumer choices do decide who gets into power however.

And recent history has shown there's a lot of opportunity for populist anti logic rhetoric. If the far right latch harder onto climate change it could be very dangerous.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 09, 2022, 03:19:27 PM
Quote from: The Brain on May 09, 2022, 12:14:48 PMI have a hard time seeing environmental problems leading to human extinction.

Yeah, you need to make the bar that low to not take immediate action.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 09, 2022, 03:21:02 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 09, 2022, 02:11:41 PMConsumer choices do decide who gets into power however.

And recent history has shown there's a lot of opportunity for populist anti logic rhetoric. If the far right latch harder onto climate change it could be very dangerous.

Where do they go from denying climate change exists that would make things more dangerous?  Actively trying to increase the production of greenhouse gases I suppose?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 10, 2022, 08:47:08 AM
Interactive map for most towns and cities in Europe, tracking change in annual avg. temperatures since the 60s:

https://climatechange.europeandatajournalism.eu/en/map
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on May 10, 2022, 08:55:34 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 09, 2022, 03:21:02 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 09, 2022, 02:11:41 PMConsumer choices do decide who gets into power however.

And recent history has shown there's a lot of opportunity for populist anti logic rhetoric. If the far right latch harder onto climate change it could be very dangerous.

Where do they go from denying climate change exists that would make things more dangerous?  Actively trying to increase the production of greenhouse gases I suppose?

You do get some of them going this way.... though I think that would be a bit much for a politician trying to be serious.
More "Who cares about tomorrow. What about jobs today. I am entitled to park my car anywhere I want. Kids these days have it too easy.".
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on May 10, 2022, 09:07:58 AM
I mean, the GOP intends to punish companies that move away from using fossil fuels: https://www.rawstory.com/desantis-on-disney/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 10, 2022, 09:22:10 AM
Never underestimate the power of tribal affinity.

Don't listen to those woke Democrat lemmings about how cliffs are bad. Going over cliffs is our lemming heritage.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on May 10, 2022, 09:59:25 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 09, 2022, 03:21:02 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 09, 2022, 02:11:41 PMConsumer choices do decide who gets into power however.

And recent history has shown there's a lot of opportunity for populist anti logic rhetoric. If the far right latch harder onto climate change it could be very dangerous.

Where do they go from denying climate change exists that would make things more dangerous?  Actively trying to increase the production of greenhouse gases I suppose?

QuoteIn oil-rich Texas, GOP lawmakers push bill to punish Wall Street for fossil fuel disinvestments
The bill would direct state investment funds to divest from companies that cut ties with fossil fuel companies, pitting Texas against some increasingly carbon-conscious Wall Street investors.

A bill filed in the Texas Senate Thursday would direct the state's massive investment funds to divest from any companies that "boycott" fossil fuels.

Pressure is increasing on Wall Street for companies and investment funds to reduce their financial support for oil and gas companies. Environmental activists have long called for Wall Street and university endowments to stop investing in fossil fuels, and several universities have complied.

Last year, Larry Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, one of the world's largest investment companies, wrote to shareholders that the firm would make climate change "a defining factor" in its investment strategy, and in January, he further said it would exit investments that present a "sustainability-related" risk.

The Texas bill bites back: If passed, the legislation filed by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, along with four other Republican state senators, would require state entities — including state pension funds and Texas' massive K-12 school endowment — to divest from companies that refuse to invest in or do business with fossil fuel-based energy.

Texas state funds identified in the bill include the $46 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, the largest such K-12 fund in the U.S; the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which manages nearly $165 billion in investments; and the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Municipal Retirement System of Texas, which each manage $31 billion.

Senate Bill 13 — low numbered bills signal a high priority for lawmakers — would also prevent companies, retired beneficiaries and others from suing the state over the divestments. In February, before the winter storm that left millions of people across Texas without power and killed dozens, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said legislation to prohibit the state from doing business with firms that "boycott" oil and gas companies was a priority and will "pass easily," according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The early version of the bill directs the state comptroller to create a list of companies and funds that "boycott" fossil fuel companies and allows the attorney general to take enforcement action against state funds that do not divest from the companies on the list.

If the state fund determines that divesting would cause it to lose value or deviate from its benchmark, it could provide that information in a written report to the comptroller, the Legislature, and the Texas attorney general to request an exemption.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on May 12, 2022, 09:11:09 AM
10 years ago:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FScf0fsX0AEgDOD?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FScf0rzWUAUb3Gx?format=jpg&name=medium)

Today:

QuoteAn unoccupied house on stilts in Rodanthe, North Carolina, collapses into the ocean this afternoon.
Was worth $381,200 according to Zillow.


https://twitter.com/TollyTaylor/status/1524128479394029571 (https://twitter.com/TollyTaylor/status/1524128479394029571)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 12, 2022, 09:11:44 AM
Don't Look Up!!!!!!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on May 12, 2022, 09:26:55 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 12, 2022, 09:11:44 AMDon't Look Up!!!!!!

A rather poor film.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on May 12, 2022, 11:28:53 AM
Quote from: The Larch on May 10, 2022, 09:59:25 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 09, 2022, 03:21:02 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 09, 2022, 02:11:41 PMConsumer choices do decide who gets into power however.

And recent history has shown there's a lot of opportunity for populist anti logic rhetoric. If the far right latch harder onto climate change it could be very dangerous.

Where do they go from denying climate change exists that would make things more dangerous?  Actively trying to increase the production of greenhouse gases I suppose?

QuoteIn oil-rich Texas, GOP lawmakers push bill to punish Wall Street for fossil fuel disinvestments
The bill would direct state investment funds to divest from companies that cut ties with fossil fuel companies, pitting Texas against some increasingly carbon-conscious Wall Street investors.

A bill filed in the Texas Senate Thursday would direct the state's massive investment funds to divest from any companies that "boycott" fossil fuels.

Pressure is increasing on Wall Street for companies and investment funds to reduce their financial support for oil and gas companies. Environmental activists have long called for Wall Street and university endowments to stop investing in fossil fuels, and several universities have complied.

Last year, Larry Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, one of the world's largest investment companies, wrote to shareholders that the firm would make climate change "a defining factor" in its investment strategy, and in January, he further said it would exit investments that present a "sustainability-related" risk.

The Texas bill bites back: If passed, the legislation filed by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, along with four other Republican state senators, would require state entities — including state pension funds and Texas' massive K-12 school endowment — to divest from companies that refuse to invest in or do business with fossil fuel-based energy.

Texas state funds identified in the bill include the $46 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, the largest such K-12 fund in the U.S; the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which manages nearly $165 billion in investments; and the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Municipal Retirement System of Texas, which each manage $31 billion.

Senate Bill 13 — low numbered bills signal a high priority for lawmakers — would also prevent companies, retired beneficiaries and others from suing the state over the divestments. In February, before the winter storm that left millions of people across Texas without power and killed dozens, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said legislation to prohibit the state from doing business with firms that "boycott" oil and gas companies was a priority and will "pass easily," according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The early version of the bill directs the state comptroller to create a list of companies and funds that "boycott" fossil fuel companies and allows the attorney general to take enforcement action against state funds that do not divest from the companies on the list.

If the state fund determines that divesting would cause it to lose value or deviate from its benchmark, it could provide that information in a written report to the comptroller, the Legislature, and the Texas attorney general to request an exemption.
Not investing into the future seems a poor strategy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on May 12, 2022, 12:17:27 PM
I'm not convinced that humanity is a not an evolutionary dead end.  Sure, we've been making an almost vertical leap in technology for the last few centuries, but in the long run that may be a sign of instability rather than fitness.  Sometimes a quick rise is just a sign of recklessness that will eventually multiply your past success by zero.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 12, 2022, 12:28:42 PM
Quote from: DGuller on May 12, 2022, 12:17:27 PMI'm not convinced that humanity is a not an evolutionary dead end.  Sure, we've been making an almost vertical leap in technology for the last few centuries, but in the long run that may be a sign of instability rather than fitness.  Sometimes a quick rise is just a sign of recklessness that will eventually multiply your past success by zero.

I think we'll cling on for a while. We may inflict massive catastrophes on ourselves that result in significant die-offs, but I think humans are tenacious enough that some will survive and eventually repopulate the planet. I think our capacity for completely destroying the possibility of human life is still fairly limited. That said, we can definitely utterly fuck up civilization and our way of life as it exists now. And that will suck. But I expect the species will bounce back eventually.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2022, 12:37:51 PM
Quote from: DGuller on May 12, 2022, 12:17:27 PMI'm not convinced that humanity is a not an evolutionary dead end.  Sure, we've been making an almost vertical leap in technology for the last few centuries, but in the long run that may be a sign of instability rather than fitness.  Sometimes a quick rise is just a sign of recklessness that will eventually multiply your past success by zero.

Considering how, for all practical purposes, we exist and perform completely contrary to other participants of the global ecosystem, I can't necessarily disagree.  Mr. Smith was right with Morpheus.

If we do survive, it'll be through a combination of our intelligence, technology, hubris and dumb fucking luck.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on May 12, 2022, 12:41:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 12, 2022, 12:28:42 PMI think we'll cling on for a while. We may inflict massive catastrophes on ourselves that result in significant die-offs, but I think humans are tenacious enough that some will survive and eventually repopulate the planet. I think our capacity for completely destroying the possibility of human life is still fairly limited. That said, we can definitely utterly fuck up civilization and our way of life as it exists now. And that will suck. But I expect the species will bounce back eventually.
Agree. I've said it before but I think it's the huge challenge of climate politics to convey the scale without inducing so much despair that people just give up and end up passive. And I think it's a political problem so you need people engaged and active.

On the other hand I've always thought if humanity ends it'll be nukes. Which is not exactly much more warm and reassuring and I'm not sure there's a solution because that capability is always in our hands :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2022, 12:45:20 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 12, 2022, 12:41:01 PMOn the other hand I've always thought if humanity ends it'll be nukes. Which is not exactly much more warm and reassuring and I'm not sure there's a solution because that capability is always in our hands :ph34r:

The only thing that you can guarantee when you give a chimpanzee a revolver is that sometime, somewhere, something is going to get shot.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on May 12, 2022, 12:57:23 PM
I have more faith that once the Boomers die off things will turn for the better.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2022, 01:34:32 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 12, 2022, 12:57:23 PMI have more faith that once the Boomers die off things will turn for the better.

It would certainly help in the US re: debt, social safety net, etc., but it's inconsequential when the other side of the planet is bunny humping like it's going out of style. 

Tacking on 85 million humans a year slopping is not helping things, dead Boomers or no.

 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on May 12, 2022, 02:21:03 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2022, 01:34:32 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 12, 2022, 12:57:23 PMI have more faith that once the Boomers die off things will turn for the better.

It would certainly help in the US re: debt, social safety net, etc., but it's inconsequential when the other side of the planet is bunny humping like it's going out of style. 

Tacking on 85 million humans a year slopping is not helping things, dead Boomers or no.

 

Population growth has been slowing for a few decades now, and most do project it's going to level off at some point this century (at what number is hotly debated).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on May 12, 2022, 02:24:20 PM
That population boom in Africa is very vulnerable with climate change. I expect there's a very high risk of famines and increased warfare, which could kill a lot of people :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on May 12, 2022, 02:32:45 PM
The climate outlook isn't so bad if you don't have any kids to worry about.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 12, 2022, 03:15:49 PM
If you want to save the world, veganism isn't the answer (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize)
QuoteVeganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years – from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million – 5% of our population – today. Influential documentaries such as Cowspiracy and What the Health have thrown a spotlight on the intensive meat and dairy industry, exposing the impacts on animal and human health and the wider environment.

QuoteOur soils were almost dead. Now we have 19 types of worm, and 23 species of dung beetle in a single cowpat


But calls for us all to switch entirely to plant-based foods ignore one of the most powerful tools we have to mitigate these ills: grazing and browsing animals.

Rather than being seduced by exhortations to eat more products made from industrially grown soya, maize and grains, we should be encouraging sustainable forms of meat and dairy production based on traditional rotational systems, permanent pasture and conservation grazing. We should, at the very least, question the ethics of driving up demand for crops that require high inputs of fertiliser, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides, while demonising sustainable forms of livestock farming that can restore soils and biodiversity, and sequester carbon.

In 2000, my husband and I turned our 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) farm in West Sussex over to extensive grazing using free-roaming herds of old English longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies and red and fallow deer as part of a rewilding project. For 17 years we had struggled to make our conventional arable and dairy business profitable, but on heavy Low Weald clay, we could never compete with farms on lighter soils. The decision turned our fortunes around. Now eco-tourism, rental of post-agricultural buildings, and 75 tonnes a year of organic, pasture-fed meat contribute to a profitable business. And since the animals live outside all year round, with plenty to eat, they do not require supplementary feeding and rarely need to see the vet.

The animals live in natural herds and wander wherever they please. They wallow in streams and water-meadows. They rest where they like (they disdain the open barns left for them as shelter) and eat what they like. The cattle and deer graze on wildflowers and grasses but they also browse among shrubs and trees. The pigs rootle for rhizomes and even dive for swan mussels in ponds. The way they graze, puddle and trample stimulates vegetation in different ways, which in turn creates opportunities for other species, including small mammals and birds.

[...]
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 12, 2022, 03:16:58 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 12, 2022, 02:32:45 PMThe climate outlook isn't so bad if you don't have any kids to worry about.
Depends on how you like suffocating heat. You're not old enough to not suffer the effects before your death.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on May 12, 2022, 07:37:44 PM
Quote from: Zanza on May 12, 2022, 11:28:53 AMNot investing into the future seems a poor strategy.

The stupid thing is is we are heavily investing in wind, solar, and energy storage. Abbott just says and does insane things often in contradiction to his own policies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 12, 2022, 07:48:49 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 12, 2022, 03:16:58 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 12, 2022, 02:32:45 PMThe climate outlook isn't so bad if you don't have any kids to worry about.
Depends on how you like suffocating heat. You're not old enough to not suffer the effects before your death.

I think he's old enough Alaska will still be colder than Missouri is now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 12, 2022, 08:20:06 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2022, 07:37:44 PM
Quote from: Zanza on May 12, 2022, 11:28:53 AMNot investing into the future seems a poor strategy.

The stupid thing is is we are heavily investing in wind, solar, and energy storage. Abbott just says and does insane things often in contradiction to his own policies.
Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2022, 07:37:44 PM
Quote from: Zanza on May 12, 2022, 11:28:53 AMNot investing into the future seems a poor strategy.

The stupid thing is is we are heavily investing in wind, solar, and energy storage. Abbott just says and does insane things often in contradiction to his own policies.

It's not about policy, it's about vice signaling to his perverse "base"
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on May 13, 2022, 12:41:00 AM
Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2022, 07:37:44 PM
Quote from: Zanza on May 12, 2022, 11:28:53 AMNot investing into the future seems a poor strategy.

The stupid thing is is we are heavily investing in wind, solar, and energy storage. Abbott just says and does insane things often in contradiction to his own policies.
But at least he can fuck the Texas school and retirement funds by locking them out of ever more investment opportunities. But school and pension funding sounds communist anyway. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PM
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 21, 2022, 01:52:36 PM
What's hypocritical about trying to hurt the competition, ensuring more profit for your client?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 21, 2022, 07:07:01 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PMhttps://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.

Vettel's heart is in the right place, he's one of the few F1 pilots who have decided to employ their platform as a way to denounce wrongdoings in the places where the F1 circuit takes them. He has supported anti-homophobia campaigns in Hungary and Turkey, women's rights causes in Saudi Arabia, and so on. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia he was, IIRC, the first F1 driver to call for a boycott of the Russian GP.

On F1 and climate change he has actually criticized the way F1 organizes the races, supporting a reorganization of races so that there's less long distance travelling and thus reducing emissions. In this season, which is when ARAMCO has started to sponsor Aston Martin, this particular climate activism surely gets put into a bad light by comparison, but what can he do about it, shut up? He can't veto ARAMCO as a team sponsor, or refuse to display their logo in his car, suit or helmet. Should he then refrain from any climate related activism? Sure, he won't appear in a good light due to that, but IMO it's better than being silent. It's not as if F1 as a venue for climate activism is not an inherently contradictory/paradoxical/hypocritical situation, this just makes it even more so.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 21, 2022, 07:14:19 PM
Long article on GOP lawfare against the EPA and climate change regulations in the US. Features the Federalist society, shadowy corporate donors, long term Republican movements to deregulate environmental protections, and the concerted efforts of Mitch McConnel and the Trump administration to stuff every federal judge vacancy they could get their hands on with ideologically driven stooges. It was not just Roe v. Wade they were going after...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html)

QuoteRepublican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment
A Supreme Court environmental case being decided this month is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general and conservative allies.

Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government's authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

But it's only a start.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch's ability to tackle global warming.

Coming up through the federal courts are more climate cases, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government's ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases.

"The West Virginia vs. E.P.A. case is unusual, but it's emblematic of the bigger picture. A.G.s are willing to use these unusual strategies more," said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who has studied state attorneys general. "And the strategies are becoming more and more sophisticated."

The plaintiffs want to hem in what they call the administrative state, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies that set rules and regulations that affect the American economy. That should be the role of Congress, which is more accountable to voters, said Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general and one of the leaders of the Republican group bringing the lawsuits.

But Congress has barely addressed the issue of climate change. Instead, for decades it has delegated authority to the agencies because it lacks the expertise possessed by the specialists who write complicated rules and regulations and who can respond quickly to changing science, particularly when Capitol Hill is gridlocked.

West Virginia v. E.P.A., No. 20–1530 on the court docket, is also notable for the tangle of connections between the plaintiffs and the Supreme Court justices who will decide their case. The Republican plaintiffs share many of the same donors behind efforts to nominate and confirm five of the Republicans on the bench — John G. Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

"It's a pincer move," said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and a former senior Justice Department official. "They are teeing up the attorneys to bring the litigation before the same judges that they handpicked."

The pattern is repeated in other climate cases filed by the Republican attorneys general and now advancing through the lower courts: The plaintiffs are supported by the same network of conservative donors who helped former President Donald J. Trump place more than 200 federal judges, many now in position to rule on the climate cases in the coming year.

At least two of the cases feature an unusual approach that demonstrates the aggressive nature of the legal campaign. In those suits, the plaintiffs are challenging regulations or policies that don't yet exist. They want to pre-empt efforts by President Biden to deliver on his promise to pivot the country away from fossil fuels, while at the same time aiming to prevent a future president from trying anything similar.

The Stakes for Climate

Victory for the plaintiffs in these cases would mean the federal government could not dramatically restrict tailpipe emissions because of vehicles' impact on climate, even though transportation is the country's largest source of greenhouse gases.

The government also would not be able to force electric utilities to replace fossil fuel-fired power plants, the second-largest source of planet warming pollution, with wind and solar power.

And the executive branch could not consider the economic costs of climate change when evaluating whether to approve a new oil pipeline or similar project or environmental rule.

Those limitations on climate action in the United States, which has pumped more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, would quite likely doom the world's goal of cutting enough emissions to keep the planet from heating up more than an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial age. That is the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic hurricanes, drought, heat waves and wildfires significantly increases. The Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

"If the Supreme Court uses this as an opportunity to really squash E.P.A.'s ability to regulate on climate change, it will seriously impede U.S. progress toward solving the problem," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

The ultimate goal of the Republican activists, people involved in the effort say, is to overturn the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment, health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.

Known as "Chevron deference," after a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, that doctrine holds that courts must defer to reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes by federal agencies on the theory that agencies have more expertise than judges and are more accountable to voters. "Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government," Associate Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his opinion for a unanimous court.

But many conservatives say the decision violates the separation of powers by allowing executive branch officials rather than judges to say what the law is. In one of his most famous opinions as an appeals court judge, Associate Justice Gorsuch wrote that Chevron allowed "executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power."

The constitutional dispute is not necessarily political, because Chevron deference applies to agency actions in both Republican and Democratic administrations. But conservative hostility to the doctrine may be partly rooted in distrust of entrenched bureaucracies and certain kinds of expertise.

The month after Mr. Trump took office, his chief strategist at the time, Stephen K. Bannon, summed up one of their top objectives as the "deconstruction of the administrative state."

Chevron deference has long been a target of conservatives, according to Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who worked in the Trump White House. "The originalist crew has been steadily moving toward significantly rewriting Chevron for years," he wrote in an email. "They are about to be rewarded with a substantial and material victory."

Filling the Bench

The roots of that victory were planted in 2015, when Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, became the Senate majority leader and led his party in a sustained campaign to deny President Barack Obama the opportunity to appoint federal judges.

He refused to confirm nominees, waiting for a Republican administration to fill the courts with judges who shared his belief in minimal government regulation. He was also motivated by the dying coal industry in Kentucky, which could be wiped out by new E.P.A. rules aimed at slowing pollution from fossil fuels.

"Fighting the E.P.A. is 'Mom and apple pie' in Kentucky," said Neil Chatterjee, Mr. McConnell's former energy policy aide.

Mr. McConnell's effort ensured that Mr. Trump inherited not just an open Supreme Court seat but 107 additional judicial vacancies.

Then in stepped Leonard A. Leo.

At the time, Mr. Leo was executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group that helped secure the appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito to the Supreme Court and that has served as the ideological and tactical engine behind efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Some of the many donors to the Federalist Society include Koch Industries, which has fought climate action; the Sarah Scaife Foundation, created by the heirs to the Mellon oil, aluminum and banking fortune; and Chevron, the oil giant and plaintiff in the case that created Chevron deference.

Mr. Leo worked with Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump's White House counsel and another longtime Federalist Society member, to vet and recommend judicial candidates to the president.

Mr. McGahn was forthright about his criteria. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018, Mr. McGahn was asked about the White House focus on undoing Chevron. "Well, it's not a coincidence," he said. "It's part of a larger, larger plan, I suppose."

"There is a coherent plan here where, actually, the judicial selection and the deregulatory efforts are really the flip side of the same coin," Mr. McGahn added.

Mr. Leo also helped steer the Judicial Crisis Network, a nonprofit advocacy group that ran campaigns to help Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett reach the Supreme Court, and to install dozens of other like-minded judges on lower courts.

In total, Mr. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, 54 appeals court judges, and 174 district court judges. By comparison, Mr. Biden has, to date, appointed 68 federal judges.

Tangled Connections

In 2020, Mr. Leo stepped down as head of the Federalist Society to run CRC Advisors, a right-wing political strategy firm. In that role, he has operated at the center of a constellation of advocacy groups and undisclosed donors that share a similar goal: Use the courts to advance conservative and libertarian causes.

One of CRC Advisors' biggest clients is the Republican Attorneys General Association. Another is the Concord Fund, the advocacy group that is the latest incarnation of the Judicial Crisis Network. The fund is also the largest financial backer, by far, of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Since 2014, the Judicial Crisis Network, now the Concord Fund, has poured more than $17 million into the campaigns of the Republican attorneys general. In the current electoral cycle, the Concord Fund has contributed $3.5 million, several times more than the next biggest donor, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with $800,000.

The identities of the fund's donors are hidden from the public; the fund is not legally required to disclose them.

Relationships between untraceable money, politicians and the judiciary are not unusual. Like its Republican counterpart, the Democratic Attorneys General Association is a political action committee that raises money to help members win elections. The attorneys general in both parties pursue cases that are aligned with the interests of their donors and constituencies. During the Trump administration, Democratic attorneys general repeatedly, and often successfully, fought dozens of Mr. Trump's policies, particularly his weakening of environmental rules.

But legal experts say that the Republican attorneys general and their allies have taken such strategies to a new level, in their funding and their tactics.

"They've created out of whole cloth a new approach to litigating environmental regulations, and they've found sympathetic judges," said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University.

Mr. Leo and Mr. McGahn and did not respond to requests for interviews. Mr. McConnell declined an interview request.

Neomi Rao, 49, is typical of the judges given lifetime appointments by Mr. Trump with support from Mr. Leo and his network. Following discussions with Mr. McGahn, Ms. Rao was nominated in 2018 to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after he was elevated to the Supreme Court.

The D.C. Circuit Court is considered the second-most powerful court in the country because it hears challenges to federal environmental, health, and safety regulations.

Ms. Rao had never served as a judge and had never tried a case. But she had impeccable conservative credentials and a dislike of government regulation.

A member of the Federalist Society since 1996, Ms. Rao had clerked for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and worked in the George W. Bush administration. She taught at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School and founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, which gathers critics of federal regulation. She told Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that she had consulted with Mr. Leo before founding the center and later met with representatives of the Koch Foundation.

In 2017, she was tapped by Mr. Trump to run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an obscure but powerful office through which proposed federal regulations must pass. From that perch, she oversaw an aggressive regulatory rollback, including the weakening or elimination of more than 100 environmental rules.

Ms. Rao's office sometimes pushed the Trump team to go even further. When Mr. Trump's first E.P.A. chief proposed to weaken regulation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells, Ms. Rao's office suggested loosening the rule even further, allowing more pollution into the atmosphere.

At least two climate cases are pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has eight judges appointed by Democratic presidents, nine judges chosen by Republicans, including three Trump appointees, and one vacancy.

Another Trump appointee on that bench is Justin Walker, a former protégé of Mr. McConnell's and a fellow Kentuckian who wrote a 2021 dissenting opinion in the West Virginia v. E.P.A. case in which he argued that the agency lacked the authority to regulate pollution that causes climate change.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has seven judges appointed by Democratic presidents and 19 chosen by Republicans, including six Trump appointees. It's where the Republican attorneys general have filed a challenge to the government's ability to consider the economic cost of climate change when making environmental decisions.

On that bench is Andrew Oldham, a Trump pick who was once deputy attorney general of Texas. In that role, he worked on the West Virginia vs. E.P.A. climate case, and said in a 2016 speech that climate regulation and the E.P.A. itself are "just utterly and fundamentally illegitimate."

To the same panel, Mr. Trump appointed Don Willett, a former fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research organization that has received substantial funding from Charles and David Koch and aims to "explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels" by arguing that they shield the poor from higher energy costs.

Judges Rao, Walker, Oldham and Willett did not respond to requests for interviews.

A New Legal Approach

Of the 27 Republican attorneys general, a core group from fossil fuel states is leading the coordinated legal challenges: Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Todd Rokita of Indiana, Ken Paxton of Texas and Mr. Landry from Louisiana.

They meet regularly among themselves and with the oil, gas and coal industries, Mr. Landry said in an interview. "It would be great if we could see an overturning of Chevron," he said.

The West Virginia case is largely concerned with a line of attack related to Chevron, also rooted in arguments about the separation of powers, which holds that Congress should use plain and direct language if it is to authorize sweeping actions by administrative agencies that could transform the economy.

"What we're looking to do is to make sure that the right people under our constitutional system make the correct decisions," Mr. Morrisey, who argued the West Virginia v. E.P.A. case before the Supreme Court, said during a public appearance in Washington in February. "These agencies, these federal agencies, don't have the ability to act solely on their own without getting a clear statement from Congress. Delegation matters."

Lined up behind the West Virginia power plant suit is another case in the D.C. Circuit Court brought by 15 attorneys general challenging a 2021 federal rule designed to cut auto pollution by compelling automakers to sell more electric vehicles.

Mr. Paxton of Texas calls the auto pollution rule a "war against fossil fuels" that will harm "the livelihoods of hard-working Texans."

Should that challenge succeed, more than a dozen Democratic-governed states are expected to impose tougher state-level auto pollution standards. But the Republican attorneys general have already filed a suit in the D.C. Circuit court seeking to block states' authority to do that.

Another case pending in two different circuit courts challenges the way the federal government calculates the real-life cost of climate change. If the attorneys general succeed in blocking the use of that metric, they could strip the federal government of its legal defense for almost any future climate policy.

That case has been filed by 10 attorneys general in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The same case has been filed by 13 attorneys general in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, North and South Dakota and Minnesota.

"The A.G.s have a big advantage here, where they can forum-shop and choose the most favorable venues for their litigation," Mr. Nolette said. "And they can break up into a multistate coalition, to do more arguments in front of more judges. That increases their odds for success."

While no single case is aimed at overturning Chevron, a string of victories would essentially hollow it out.

Sally Katzen, co-director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic at New York University School of Law, said that a Supreme Court victory this month for the Republican attorneys general and their allies would just be a taste of what's to come.

"The Federalist Society has put a lot of time and energy into this, and a lot of intellectual power," said Ms. Katzen, former head of the White House office of regulatory affairs in the Clinton administration. "All that effort has paid off. But I don't think this is the culmination of their agenda. I think it's just the beginning."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 21, 2022, 07:43:14 PM
NE India and Bangladesh getting battered as the monsson season gets under way with a vengence.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 21, 2022, 09:27:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PMhttps://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.
I don't see the hypocrisy.

He is a F1 driver. He doesn't get to pick who sponsors his team, nor does he get to pick what those sponsors get to slap all over his uniform or car.

He is a professional athlete, and he is choosing to give his voice to something he thinks is important. That voice, apparently, includes a small spot on his helmet.

Which is better - slapping another logo on there, or using that voice to speak out about climate change?

There is no hypocrisy here, unless you think he must and should give up his position on the team because they have the sponsors they have.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 22, 2022, 07:44:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 21, 2022, 09:27:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PMhttps://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.
I don't see the hypocrisy.

He is a F1 driver. He doesn't get to pick who sponsors his team, nor does he get to pick what those sponsors get to slap all over his uniform or car.

He is a professional athlete, and he is choosing to give his voice to something he thinks is important. That voice, apparently, includes a small spot on his helmet.

Which is better - slapping another logo on there, or using that voice to speak out about climate change?

There is no hypocrisy here, unless you think he must and should give up his position on the team because they have the sponsors they have.


Professional athletes of that level have a say in their sponsor.  If a pilot like Vettel says "no way I'm wearing this", then it'll likely won't happen, they'll find some other sponsor for him.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 22, 2022, 07:47:58 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 22, 2022, 07:44:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 21, 2022, 09:27:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PMhttps://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.
I don't see the hypocrisy.

He is a F1 driver. He doesn't get to pick who sponsors his team, nor does he get to pick what those sponsors get to slap all over his uniform or car.

He is a professional athlete, and he is choosing to give his voice to something he thinks is important. That voice, apparently, includes a small spot on his helmet.

Which is better - slapping another logo on there, or using that voice to speak out about climate change?

There is no hypocrisy here, unless you think he must and should give up his position on the team because they have the sponsors they have.


Professional athletes of that level have a say in their sponsor.  If a pilot like Vettel says "no way I'm wearing this", then it'll likely won't happen, they'll find some other sponsor for him.

Maybe for a small sponsor, but not for the team's main sponsor.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 22, 2022, 08:09:27 AM
Depends how valuable he is I guess.
If we are talking the absolute superstar of a sport who instantly turns any team into undefeatable crush all opposition winners then you could easily see how they could have a veto on absolutely anything- do this or I walk.

Vittel...He's not that but he is OK. He will have some power I'd say.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 22, 2022, 08:15:49 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 22, 2022, 07:44:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 21, 2022, 09:27:26 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 21, 2022, 01:50:47 PMhttps://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a40351951/vettel-riles-politician-at-f1-canadian-grand-prix-for-hypocritical-stance-on-fossil-fuels/

Story from the past weekend I meant to post about, then forgot, now remembered.

F1 came to Canada last week.  One of the drivers is Sebastian Vittel, driving for Aston Martin.  Apparently he's very concerned about climate change, which is admirable.  Some have commented on the hypocrisy of campaigning against climate change when you're an F1 driver (they fly their massive teams all around the world week to week), but I think that might be uncharitable.

So when he comes to Canada he's conspicuously wearing a t-shirt in pre-race activities decrying Canada's "tar-sands".  Again, entitled to his opinion.

But when it comes to the race itself, he has a custom paint job on the back of his helmet, again calling Canada's tar-sands "Canada's climate crisis".

But right beside that, on the dude's very same helmet?  Why the logo for Aston-Martin's number one sponsor - Aramco.  That's right, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company and reportedly the biggest CO2 emitter IN THE WORLD.

Vittel tries to deflect criticism by admitting he's a hypocrite, but that shouldn't take away from his larger message... dude, I don't think that's how this works.
I don't see the hypocrisy.

He is a F1 driver. He doesn't get to pick who sponsors his team, nor does he get to pick what those sponsors get to slap all over his uniform or car.

He is a professional athlete, and he is choosing to give his voice to something he thinks is important. That voice, apparently, includes a small spot on his helmet.

Which is better - slapping another logo on there, or using that voice to speak out about climate change?

There is no hypocrisy here, unless you think he must and should give up his position on the team because they have the sponsors they have.


Professional athletes of that level have a say in their sponsor.  If a pilot like Vettel says "no way I'm wearing this", then it'll likely won't happen, they'll find some other sponsor for him.
I don't think it is anywhere near that simple. 

If he was Hamilton, maybe. But he isn't. 

He has a contract, and I am sure it has very specific stipulations about what control he has over sponsorship and advertising. 

You are making a HUGE assumption that he can just demand who is and is not going to sponsor the team.

Now, if he has a *personal* sponsorship with Aremco, then ok - the charge of hypocrisy sticks. Is that the case?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 22, 2022, 08:30:36 AM
QuoteNow, if he has a *personal* sponsorship with Aremco, then ok - the charge of hypocrisy sticks. Is that the case?

No, it's the team's main sponsor, AFAIK.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 22, 2022, 09:28:54 AM
Yeah - I don't really have an issue with it or think it can really be condemned as hypocritical (maybe being a race driver is) because it's a team sponsorship, not his personal sponsorship.

In the same way as I don't think there is hypocrisy by the players in drawing attention to human rights abuses but playing in the World Cup in Qatar, or Muslim players wearing shirts sponsored by alcohol or gambling companies, or taking a stand on climate change while wearing a shirt sponsored by "Visit Rwanda" or Qantas.

I think sportspeople are entitled to have views and to express them. I don't think they are or can be held responsible for decisions made by the teams or associations/federations that they are part of. And that, very often, criticising the sportspeople for contradictions between those things (such as team sponsors or the World Cup) is giving them grief for decisions they're not responsible for and letting the people who are responsible off the hook.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 09:35:47 AM
It's hypocritical.  Saudi oil is not climate friendly.  Aramco is paying his salary.  He's profiting from carbon emission just as much as Alberta oil producers.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on June 22, 2022, 10:12:43 AM
The idea that a driver has a say over main team sponsors is laughable, I don't think even Hamilton has that sway (and he hasn't been shy about using his clout to impose demands on his team).  This idea also assumes that there is a long line of sponsors lined up, and teams walk down that line and pick a lucky winner.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 22, 2022, 10:46:07 AM
Quote from: DGuller on June 22, 2022, 10:12:43 AMThe idea that a driver has a say over main team sponsors is laughable, I don't think even Hamilton has that sway (and he hasn't been shy about using his clout to impose demands on his team).  This idea also assumes that there is a long line of sponsors lined up, and teams walk down that line and pick a lucky winner.

You can pick your employer. Especially if you're an ex-F1 driver.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 22, 2022, 10:50:24 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 09:35:47 AMIt's hypocritical.  Saudi oil is not climate friendly.  Aramco is paying his salary.  He's profiting from carbon emission just as much as Alberta oil producers.
Aramco is a sponsor. There are a variety of income streams that fund a F1 team, not in small part being revenue from consumers, TV rights, and ticket sales.

"Aramco pays his salary" is like saying the bank that names a stadium pays the QBs salary. It is sort of true, but not in any way that actually means anything.

Everyone profits from carbon emissions. If that is the metric, we are all hypocrites, and maybe we are. So why single him out?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on June 22, 2022, 10:51:19 AM
I know Vettel's form has been questionable in recent years, but calling him an ex-F1 driver is still a little harsh.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 22, 2022, 11:16:33 AM
Quote from: DGuller on June 22, 2022, 10:51:19 AMI know Vettel's form has been questionable in recent years, but calling him an ex-F1 driver is still a little harsh.

I know you're joking, but for the benefit of other readers: I didn't want to assume that he could find another F1 team to drive for if he ragequit his current one.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 22, 2022, 12:23:02 PM
Quote from: The Brain on June 22, 2022, 11:16:33 AM
Quote from: DGuller on June 22, 2022, 10:51:19 AMI know Vettel's form has been questionable in recent years, but calling him an ex-F1 driver is still a little harsh.

I know you're joking, but for the benefit of other readers: I didn't want to assume that he could find another F1 team to drive for if he ragequit his current one.
Yeah, drivers are well paid, and allowed a certain amount of social freedom, but they by no means have real leverage over how the team itself is managed, much less sponsorship.

There are 20 of them, and 200 drivers looking at those spots and wanting their shot.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 22, 2022, 12:29:55 PM
Vettel is doing what he can in his circumstances.  The alternative is do nothing so as not to be called a hypocrite.  But that is the worst option.  He is using his platform for good. Those who are critiquing him are forgetting that the perfect is often the enemy of the good.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 22, 2022, 10:50:24 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 09:35:47 AMIt's hypocritical.  Saudi oil is not climate friendly.  Aramco is paying his salary.  He's profiting from carbon emission just as much as Alberta oil producers.
Aramco is a sponsor. There are a variety of income streams that fund a F1 team, not in small part being revenue from consumers, TV rights, and ticket sales.

"Aramco pays his salary" is like saying the bank that names a stadium pays the QBs salary. It is sort of true, but not in any way that actually means anything.

Everyone profits from carbon emissions. If that is the metric, we are all hypocrites, and maybe we are. So why single him out?

As I tried to say I don't think he's a hypocrite just because he's an F1 driver.  Yes lots of us profit from hydrocarbons.  I mean I'm a Gov't of Alberta employee, so a chunk of my salary is indeed funded by oil and gas royalties.

For me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible.  It's like how The Brain put it:

QuoteWhat's hypocritical about trying to hurt the competition, ensuring more profit for your client?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 22, 2022, 12:31:35 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 22, 2022, 10:50:24 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 09:35:47 AMIt's hypocritical.  Saudi oil is not climate friendly.  Aramco is paying his salary.  He's profiting from carbon emission just as much as Alberta oil producers.
Aramco is a sponsor. There are a variety of income streams that fund a F1 team, not in small part being revenue from consumers, TV rights, and ticket sales.

"Aramco pays his salary" is like saying the bank that names a stadium pays the QBs salary. It is sort of true, but not in any way that actually means anything.

Everyone profits from carbon emissions. If that is the metric, we are all hypocrites, and maybe we are. So why single him out?

As I tried to say I don't think he's a hypocrite just because he's an F1 driver.  Yes lots of us profit from hydrocarbons.  I mean I'm a Gov't of Alberta employee, so a chunk of my salary is indeed funded by oil and gas royalties.

For me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible.  It's like how The Brain put it:

QuoteWhat's hypocritical about trying to hurt the competition, ensuring more profit for your client?


And if he had some say in not having the ARAMCO logo on his helmet, you would have a stronger point.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 02:56:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PMFor me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible. 

There's no consistent reason to bitch about tar sands and not Saudi oil except self interest.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 22, 2022, 03:28:07 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 02:56:08 PMThere's no consistent reason to bitch about tar sands and not Saudi oil except self interest.
Well at the Saudi Grand Prix he wore these trainers the entire time he was in Saudi (as he previously had, with a rainbow mask, in Hungary). I think it's fine to focus on another issue in another country depending on what you think is the highest priority:
(https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article25603344.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_FFm_l3hXMAklUPvjpeg.jpg)

I think Hamilton also wore a rainbow helmet in Qatar and has said he plans to in Saudi as well.

Again as with sponsorship, the decision to have races there is made by people well above the individual sportspeople but that doesn't mean those sportspeople can't try to express their views or mean they're hypocrites if they do.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 22, 2022, 05:09:50 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 02:56:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PMFor me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible. 

There's no consistent reason to bitch about tar sands and not Saudi oil except self interest.

Right and if he didn't raise concerns about the Saudis you along with BB would have a stronger point.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 23, 2022, 04:05:51 AM
Why oh why can't it be global cooling instead 😢
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 23, 2022, 04:56:15 AM
:lol: I was just thinking yesterday wouldn't it be nice if we had weather like that for 4-5 straight months :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 23, 2022, 12:59:20 PM
If only certain countries hadn't closed down the nucleair capacity for energy production...

And since the anti-nucleair ideology is another of the Soviet products...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 23, 2022, 02:01:41 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 23, 2022, 04:56:15 AM:lol: I was just thinking yesterday wouldn't it be nice if we had weather like that for 4-5 straight months :ph34r:

So you're the one responsible for climate change.
I always had my suspicions...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 25, 2022, 11:44:23 AM
We will fight and we will...um...sort of win: https://youtu.be/LxgMdjyw8uw

My morale is constantly encouraged by the fact that despite everything, corrupt politicians and an apathetic public, we are making seemingly miraculous progress under the circumstances. The situation is desperate but not hopeless and in the end we will end up with a major disaster, but not an apocalypse. We will survive. Onwards!

If somebody had told me in 2007 when I decided to devote my life to this that we would have the kind of results we currently have in Texas I would have thought them a delusional optimist. The momentum feels like it is strongly on our side and weirdly the conservative politicians here are empowering it because incredibly it would take an enormous increase in energy rates and government subsidies to stop us. Back in 2017 I visited a coal plant and they were begging for more subsidies and government assistance to stay viable while the solar and wind people were booming with confidence.

But even with that we are still fucked, just you know, less fucked than it looked like we were going to be at one point. But maybe in the future we can unfuck things even more? I don't know.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 25, 2022, 01:28:01 PM
I wish i could be so optimistic.
The rise in the politics of spite and let's do the opposite of whatever the other side says worries me greatly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 27, 2022, 05:42:04 AM
John Oliver on the water crisis in the US South West.


Features a lovely cameo by Brian Cox.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 27, 2022, 05:56:52 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 27, 2022, 05:42:04 AMFeatures a lovely cameo by Brian Cox.

Things can only get better?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 27, 2022, 06:09:27 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 27, 2022, 05:56:52 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 27, 2022, 05:42:04 AMFeatures a lovely cameo by Brian Cox.

Things can only get better?

You know, I did want to specify "The old Scottish one, not the astrophysicist/ex-keyboarder for D:Ream", but decided to exercise restraint. :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on June 27, 2022, 07:05:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 22, 2022, 05:09:50 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 02:56:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PMFor me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible. 

There's no consistent reason to bitch about tar sands and not Saudi oil except self interest.

Right and if he didn't raise concerns about the Saudis you along with BB would have a stronger point.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2022, 02:56:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 22, 2022, 12:30:10 PMFor me it was the helmet ad.  Which was directly beside a very large ARAMCO logo.  The optics of it are terrible. 

There's no consistent reason to bitch about tar sands and not Saudi oil except self interest.

Democratic persuasion may be less effective in Saudi decision making vs. Canadian.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 27, 2022, 07:22:44 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 27, 2022, 05:42:04 AMJohn Oliver on the water crisis in the US South West.


Features a lovely cameo by Brian Cox.

Something mentioned in the program that they didn't show, and could have been really impactful, are images of the Colorado river "delta" in Mexico, where the river should empty into the Gulf of California, but is nowadays an almost fully dry area.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Coloradoriverdelta_oli_APR2020.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AM
The USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 27, 2022, 08:49:05 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AMThe USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.

Freedom! :w00t:

(https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/img/photo/2011/11/documerica-images-of-america-in-crisis-in-the-1970/d03_A-550175/main_1200.jpg)

(https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/t0lxSx0SWRA4MGlQaai1roiX8nE=/1200x783/media/img/photo/2011/11/documerica-images-of-america-in-crisis-in-the-1970/d34_A-549776/original.jpg)

(https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/_GvgoSd_kPmE9QOUElLzFZBH0X0=/1200x791/media/img/photo/2011/11/documerica-images-of-america-in-crisis-in-the-1970/d38_A-552154/original.jpg)

Clean air and water is only for those who deserve it. And per prosperity gospel, the ones who deserve it are the ones with TEH MONEY. :pope:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: CountDeMoney on June 27, 2022, 10:06:49 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AMThe USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.

Wait until we get to the point of 50 separate environmental standards, with the eventual inability of one state to sue another for its cross-border toxicity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 27, 2022, 10:25:39 AM
More like the inability of governmental actors to sue polluters.  Just wait for the mantra of the market will find a solution to start coming out of conservative talking heads.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on June 27, 2022, 10:31:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2022, 10:25:39 AMMore like the inability of governmental actors wanting to sue polluters.

FYP. No one wants to be the "bad guy" getting blamed for putting a brake on ECONOMIC GROWTH (PEACE BE UPON IT).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 27, 2022, 12:40:04 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 27, 2022, 10:31:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2022, 10:25:39 AMMore like the inability of governmental actors wanting to sue polluters.

FYP. No one wants to be the "bad guy" getting blamed for putting a brake on ECONOMIC GROWTH (PEACE BE UPON IT).

Friendly amendment accepted
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on June 27, 2022, 12:55:22 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 27, 2022, 10:06:49 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AMThe USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.

Wait until we get to the point of 50 separate environmental standards, with the eventual inability of one state to sue another for its cross-border toxicity.

We will then learn that pollution is a protected form of speech, as intended by the Founders.  :pope:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 08:24:02 AM
Quote from: Legbiter link=msg=1315708
Quote from: HVC on June 10, 2021, 08:35:54 AMTexas Republican, Louie Gohmert, comes up with a unique way to tackle climate change. Change the earths orbit  :wacko:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-gohmert-moon-orbit-nasa-climate-1180092/

Geoengineering concepts like this and more direct methods like carbon air capture are still just meme-tier at this stage. :hmm: For instance the carbon recapture plant being constructed here will annually sequester 4000 metric tons of carbon dioxide once it's up and running. According to this calculator https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator) that's the annual carbon emission output of around 900 passenger cars. In the grand scheme of things that's nothing, just proof of concept really. Yet these technologies are always just around the corner and have been for 20 years it feels.

40.000.000 metric tons of carbon dioxide captured and petrified into basaltic rock annually would be like 10 coal power plants, small but at least noticeable on a global scale.



Update on this project, it is to be progressively scaled up to 40.000 metric tons of co2 within a year and a half, by 2030 it will capture co2 in the millions of metric tons and the goal is that by 2050 it will sequester a billion tons annually. That is the annual output of around 270 coal power plants. :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 28, 2022, 08:51:32 AM
When will it break even vs the co2 to make it?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 09:06:58 AM
Local energy is all from hydro and geothermal. The new facility is the size of a warehouse. So the plan is to capture enormous quantities of atmospheric co2, pump it directly underground and let geology take it's course. The co2 will be petrified into basaltic rock. The last few years have mostly been about fine tuning the engineering.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on June 28, 2022, 10:21:45 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 08:24:02 AMUpdate on this project, it is to be progressively scaled up to 40.000 metric tons of co2 within a year and a half, by 2030 it will capture co2 in the millions of metric tons and the goal is that by 2050 it will sequester a billion tons annually. That is the annual output of around 270 coal power plants. :hmm:

That's edging into non-trivial :cheers:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 10:47:41 AM
Yeah theoretically build 10 of these gigaplants around the world and you have essentially turned mankind carbon neutral, even if you do nothing else. I hope they expedite the timeline.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:36:09 AM
Yeah, the timing is the important part - if we do nothing else, moving carbon neutrality forward to the 50s or 60s is too late. From a summary of the April IPCC report (which unfortunately, has become completely overshadowed by other issues):

QuoteIn the scenarios assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third. Even if we do this, it is almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold but could return to below it by the end of the century.

"It's now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F)," said Skea. "Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible."

The global temperature will stabilize when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5°C (2.7°F), this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2°C (3.6°F), it is in the early 2070s.

This assessment shows that limiting warming to around 2°C (3.6°F) still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/ipcc-now-or-never-15%C2%B0c-warming-limit

summary of the summary - it does not look like we are going to avoid going past 1.5C.  And it looks doubtful that we are going to avoid topping 2.0C.

 

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on June 28, 2022, 11:37:25 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 10:47:41 AMYeah theoretically build 10 of these gigaplants around the world and you have essentially turned mankind carbon neutral, even if you do nothing else. I hope they expedite the timeline.

That would be an interesting turn on the public discourse...

Say we build enough of these plants to make burning fossil fuel a non-event from a climate perspective, what would happen?

Would climate "sceptics" dial down their opposition to the science since it'd no longer impact fossil fuel?

Would the holy holier-than-thou/resentment-against-perceived-holier-than-thou dynamic go away?

Would oil/coal production go up or down in price or volume? Would would happen to the momentum of non-carbon energy production?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:40:26 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 28, 2022, 11:37:25 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 10:47:41 AMYeah theoretically build 10 of these gigaplants around the world and you have essentially turned mankind carbon neutral, even if you do nothing else. I hope they expedite the timeline.

That would be an interesting turn on the public discourse...

Say we build enough of these plants to make burning fossil fuel a non-event from a climate perspective, what would happen?

Would climate "sceptics" dial down their opposition to the science since it'd no longer impact fossil fuel?

Would the holy holier-than-thou/resentment-against-perceived-holier-than-thou dynamic go away?

Would oil/coal production go up or down in price or volume? Would would happen to the momentum of non-carbon energy production?

By the point there is meaningful carbon sequestration, the world would be in a position of needing to be negative, not neutral.  So no, all the dynamics we currently have would still exist.  Although, by that time the effects of climate change would be more severe and so, hopefully, less people will be part of the don't look up cult.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 11:48:52 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 28, 2022, 11:37:25 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 10:47:41 AMYeah theoretically build 10 of these gigaplants around the world and you have essentially turned mankind carbon neutral, even if you do nothing else. I hope they expedite the timeline.

That would be an interesting turn on the public discourse...

Say we build enough of these plants to make burning fossil fuel a non-event from a climate perspective, what would happen?

Would climate "sceptics" dial down their opposition to the science since it'd no longer impact fossil fuel?

Would the holy holier-than-thou/resentment-against-perceived-holier-than-thou dynamic go away?

Would oil/coal production go up or down in price or volume? Would would happen to the momentum of non-carbon energy production?

It will simply fade as an issue much like the ozone layer crisis.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on June 28, 2022, 11:52:51 AM
Legbiter, do you have any links on this Icelandic CCS scheme?

My understanding is that CCS was only ever remotely feasible at capturing emissions at their source.  Once CO2 is dispersed in the atmosphere it's still only present at parts per million quantities.  The idea of removing 40 million metric tons seems almost impossible.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 12:50:36 PM
https://fortune.com/2022/06/28/dac-carbon-capture-plant-climeworks-iceland-greentech/?fbclid=IwAR0p48VCSfvjWi5G5d_CQFV7yVcgHoetE74AkgLZk0ANsI_-e8EQcpUDoGU (https://fortune.com/2022/06/28/dac-carbon-capture-plant-climeworks-iceland-greentech/?fbclid=IwAR0p48VCSfvjWi5G5d_CQFV7yVcgHoetE74AkgLZk0ANsI_-e8EQcpUDoGU)

Only one I can find in English while on a Norwegian mountainside.  :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 28, 2022, 01:32:37 PM
https://www.wri.org/insights/direct-air-capture-resource-considerations-and-costs-carbon-removal#:~:text=Direct%20air%20capture%20is%20a,of%20air%20to%20pass%20through.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 28, 2022, 02:30:00 PM
Any link to the safety case of the deposit?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 28, 2022, 03:46:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on June 28, 2022, 02:30:00 PMAny link to the safety case of the deposit?
They do mention that with some links in that article:

QuoteFor all types of CO2 capture, community concerns have been raised around CO2 pipelines and geological storage of CO2, particularly around safety and the possibility of leakage for both. These concerns are especially salient given a 2020 CO2 pipeline rupture in Mississippi paired with $4.6 billion in funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for CO2 transport and storage. CO2 pipelines have been used since the 1970s and, like oil and gas pipelines, pose non-zero risks. However, with expected investment ramping up, attention is needed to ensure they have adequate safeguards for operational safety as well as consideration of impact on the environment and people. Geological storage has been demonstrated safely at million-tonne volumes, but expanding to multi-million or billion tonne scales similarly requires further attention to regulatory needs.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 28, 2022, 03:52:13 PM
I think the biggest issue with DAC and DAC-like technologies is that they will be used as an excuse to not actually tackle reducing emissions.

Best case estimates are that sequestering a tonne of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere will cost something like 2-3 times the amount of simply not releasing it to begin with. The problem is that releasing those gasses generates profits and money, but sequestration is just a cost disassociated with those making fat shareholder value from ignoring those costs. We know that as humans we are absolutely, consistently, and completely terrible at making objective decisions about these things.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 28, 2022, 07:45:26 PM
Garbon is killing the planet (https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment)

QuoteThe fashion industry is currently responsible for more annual carbon emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. If the industry maintains its course, an increase of 50% in greenhouse gas emissions is expected within a decade.

Sorry my friend, you are too well dressed.  :sleep:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 28, 2022, 08:30:54 PM
Time to start thrifting.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:08:57 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AMThe USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.

That doesn't make any sense. The executive branch cannot execute laws set up by Congress? Surely they cannot just cancel the constitutional framework and the separation of powers. What does this ruling actually say?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:10:40 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on June 28, 2022, 11:48:52 AMIt will simply fade as an issue much like the ozone layer crisis.

That would be fabulous. Here is hoping that is exactly what happens, and that is obviously what we are all working towards.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 28, 2022, 11:19:32 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:08:57 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2022, 07:45:14 AMThe USSC is about to rule that all the federal agencies in charge of protecting the environment, setup by Congress, are actually not allowed to do so - only Congress is allowed to do that.

And we know Congress cannot do anything.

This is brilliant. It's so fucking evil. Who cares what the US agrees to at this point in regards to climate change. No matter what we agree to do, internally or externally, the USSC is going to just make it impossible to actually execute.

That doesn't make any sense. The executive branch cannot execute laws set up by Congress? Surely they cannot just cancel the constitutional framework and the separation of powers. What does this ruling actually say?
There isn't a ruling yet.

But the basic "argument" is that federal agencies cannot create rules that have "major" impacts on the economy or government or business, because that is the job of Congress. If Congress passes a law saying "Hey EPA, regulate power plants so they don't pollute so much, and we give you the power to do that", then the EPA can only do so as long as they don't have a "major impact" that (presumably) is beyond the intended scope that Congress may have intended.

It is, of course, utter bullshit. The case is being brought by a bunch of state AGs who have banded together to gut federal regulatory power. If a regulatory agency is overstepping what Congress intended them to do, then why isn't Congress saying so?

When Trump told those agencies to NOT do what they were supposed to be doing, why didn't these AGs sue for THAT? 

Because again, this has nothing to do with the law, the constitution, or what makes sense. It's just power. There are six of us, and three of you, so go fuck yourself.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:33:02 PM
So shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 28, 2022, 11:48:02 PM
Anyone understand why fashion emits so much carbon?  It's not readily apparent to me.

Nice to have at least one area where i can say I'm doing my part. :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:50:07 PM
I'm guessing transportation. A lot of clothes are made in developing countries and then shipped.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:51:48 PM
Johnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:53:53 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:50:07 PMI'm guessing transportation. A lot of clothes are made in developing countries and then shipped.

In a way that exceeds the entire emissions of international shipping and international flights? No there has to be something else doing this. Is manufacturing clothing particularly energy intensive?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:55:00 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:51:48 PMJohnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn :P

So much great environmental work done by the legendary environmentalist hero Margaret Thatcher being undone.

I presume this is being done to offset Russian Gas?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:56:07 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:53:53 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:50:07 PMI'm guessing transportation. A lot of clothes are made in developing countries and then shipped.

In a way that exceeds the entire emissions of international shipping and international flights? No there has to be something else doing this. Is manufacturing clothing particularly energy intensive?


Hmm, good point. How far back in the chain do they go? Growing and harvesting cotton, producing synthetic fabric? Extracting oil to produce said fabric?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:58:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:33:02 PMSo shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 29, 2022, 12:04:51 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:58:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:33:02 PMSo shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

Well Congress is specifically not supposed to do that. That would violate the concept of separation of powers.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 29, 2022, 04:35:36 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 28, 2022, 11:48:02 PMAnyone understand why fashion emits so much carbon?  It's not readily apparent to me.

Logistics, production of synthetic fabrics, most of the world's production is concentrated in SE Asian countries where electrical power comes mostly from coal, and then there's the incredible, sheer scale of the industry, mostly since "fast fashion" became the order of the day.

Tbf, I wouldn't associate the fashion industry with such high CO2 emissions either. The main environmental impacts of the industry that would come to my mind would be in terms of water consumption, water pollution and generation of waste.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 04:53:57 AM
Yeah and I think there's a tonne of ethical/moral issues with the emergence of the fast fashion industry as you say. Climate is part of it but not the worst thing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on June 29, 2022, 05:00:49 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 04:53:57 AMYeah and I think there's a tonne of ethical/moral issues with the emergence of the fast fashion industry as you say. Climate is part of it but not the worst thing.

Oh indeed. Work conditions at some of the operations in countries like Bangladesh are terrifying.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 06:04:48 AM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:55:00 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 28, 2022, 11:51:48 PMJohnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn :P

So much great environmental work done by the legendary environmentalist hero Margaret Thatcher being undone.

I presume this is being done to offset Russian Gas?
No the UK has basically zero exposure to Russian gas in terrms of power. Ironically, at least until the war, we actually imported far more Russian coal than gas.

It's been in the works for years and it's one of those issues that I think highlights the challenges around climate policies. There is a large campaign against it on the principle that we should not be extracting more fossil fuels and that it is contrary to our net zero commitments.

Basically it's a coal mine in Cumbria that is not producing coal for general energy consumption, but coal for use in the steel industry. Currently we import that coking coal from Russia but also the US and Australia.

In the 2010s there was government intervention to save the British steel industry and broad support for continuing to keep it going. In part I think that's become more important in recent years. Steel is important in so many industries and sectors, we've seen global supply chain pressures, over 50% of steel is made in China - so I think there is an argument that it is important to maintain a national steel industry. That policy has the support of the Tories and Labour too.

My view is that given that I support maintaing a steel industry here I should also support opening the coal mine here. We can impose our own environmental requirements, we will reduce the carbon impact of shipping it from Australia and the US, but also I don't think it's necessarily principled or good from an environmental perspective to stop us building the mine and being responsible for the coal mine (if it's viable in other ways) if it just means someone else is doing the mining and we're just outsourcing the environmental impact.

But as I say there is a very strong campaign against it. Labour are against it too which I think is not consistent with their policy on British steel.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 29, 2022, 07:08:19 AM
Quote from: Valmy on June 29, 2022, 12:04:51 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:58:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:33:02 PMSo shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

Well Congress is specifically not supposed to do that. That would violate the concept of separation of powers.

The  executive is also entirely I'll equipped to replace all of the administrative decisions made by the many administrative decision makers.

I don't know what you are suggesting.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 07:38:06 AM
Interesting report from the UK's independent Climate Change Committee (which reviews policies against our net zero commitments). Basically we're still not there on our policies despite numerous initiatives over the last 12 months and hosting COP. The big gap is basically any policies that will have an impact on people's daily lives - but this is their assessment of where we are on surface transport (okay), electricity supply (pretty good), buildings (pretty bad), manufacturing (not great), agriculture (really bad) and engineered removals (pretty bad):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWa0wr7XgAEHRKl?format=png&name=large)

Some of this I think can be aligned with the cost of living crisis - increased moves to electric vehicles and better insulated and heated homes would have a big impact on two of the biggest chunks of our carbon emissions. They would also improve people's cost of living by reducing dependence on gas and probably help the economy - because there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

But there's not yet a credible plan on that and basically huge risks over who pays/bears the costs. I think there's also really important lessons from the yellow vests on that in that people might be willing to pay a bit but it needs to be distributed fairly and be seen to be distributed fairly - a bit issue with the fuel tax rise that Macron proposed was that it was seen as unfairly hitting the poor, especially rural and non-urban France.

The other big point is that basically current gas prices have absolutely transformed the cost/benefit analysis of spending money on buildings and to a lesser extent EV infrastructure:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWa1bDYXwAA68C8?format=png&name=small)

Given that I think a large chunk of that 2021 energy crisis price is because Asia has transitioned to gas and is a permanently higher price I think it really strengthens the argument to spend a significant amount on buildings and EV now - to get households out, as much as we can, of that market which I think is going to be permanently more expensive.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on June 29, 2022, 08:52:06 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 28, 2022, 03:52:13 PMI think the biggest issue with DAC and DAC-like technologies is that they will be used as an excuse to not actually tackle reducing emissions.

Best case estimates are that sequestering a tonne of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere will cost something like 2-3 times the amount of simply not releasing it to begin with. The problem is that releasing those gasses generates profits and money, but sequestration is just a cost disassociated with those making fat shareholder value from ignoring those costs. We know that as humans we are absolutely, consistently, and completely terrible at making objective decisions about these things.

A carbon cap and trade neatly solves that problem. Emitters will choose the most efficient way to reduce net carbon. Usually, this will be to change some of the production practices/methods, then on-site capture, then sequestration, because those are the increasingly expensive ways to do it.  Companies with the ability to exceed their emissions reductions have an incentive to do so, because they can trade their unused allotment.

This worked extremely well for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and mercury emissions in the US; reductions are in the 90-95% range compared to 1990.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 29, 2022, 08:56:31 AM
Shielbh, yeah farming practices are going to be the most difficult (the most politically sensitive).  It's going to require convincing farmers that they will get good/better results using other techniques.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 29, 2022, 09:22:43 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 28, 2022, 11:48:02 PMAnyone understand why fashion emits so much carbon?  It's not readily apparent to me.

Nice to have at least one area where i can say I'm doing my part. :)
From the article:
    The fashion industry consumes one tenth of all of the water used industrially to run factories and clean products. To put this into perspective, it takes 10,000 liters of water  to produce one kilogram of cotton or approximately 3,000 liters of water for one cotton shirt. Furthermore, textile dyeing requires toxic chemicals that subsequently end up in our oceans. Approximately 20% of the wastewater worldwide is attributed to this process, which accumulates over time. As many  factories moved overseas as stated previously, they may be in countries without strict environmental regulations, resulting in untreated water to enter the oceans. Regrettably, the wastewater created is extremely toxic and in many cases, cannot be treated to become safe again. 
Plastic Microfibers
     Next,  synthetic materials are the primary culprits that cause plastic microfibers to enter our oceans. To be exact, approximately 35% of all microplastics are from these synthetic materials.  To further lower the price, producers turn to materials that may be of low quality. For example, many of the fibers are made of polyester, consisting of plastic and tend to release far more carbon emissions than cotton. Furthermore, plastic is slow to degrade in the ocean until a long time has passed. When plastic finally breaks down, it creates a toxic substance with a [color=rgba(3, 92, 0, 0.6)]harmful impact on the marine ecosystems
. As these plastic microfibers cannot be removed, they end up in the human food chain through aquatic life, causing many negative health effects. There are a variety of ways they can enter our ocean - most commonly from our usage of the washing machine. Though it is evident that the washing machine has been an essential appliance in our households, it's important to wash full-loads when possible to minimize excess consumption of water.[/font][/size][/color]
[...]
  From the beginning of cellulosics, viscose was introduced in 1890 as a cheaper alternative to cotton for production. Viscose, also known as rayon, is a common cellulosic fiber made from wood pulp. It has extremely detrimental effects on the environment such as the usage of harmful chemicals and the unethical resourcing for the material. As the companies use toxic chemicals, others are worried about other impacts beyond environmental factors For instance, the carbon disulphide that is used in viscose fiber production leads to lethal health side effects on workers as well. Thus, perhaps it is not surprising that viscose consequently results in a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions than cotton production. 

[/quote]

Also, lots of excess use of clothes that ends up in landfills.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 29, 2022, 09:37:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 29, 2022, 07:08:19 AM
Quote from: Valmy on June 29, 2022, 12:04:51 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 28, 2022, 11:58:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 28, 2022, 11:33:02 PMSo shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

Well Congress is specifically not supposed to do that. That would violate the concept of separation of powers.

The  executive is also entirely I'll equipped to replace all of the administrative decisions made by the many administrative decision makers.

I don't know what you are suggesting.



I am suggesting that I don't understand what the Supreme Court will supposedly be saying nor do I understand how it is consistent with the Constitution. Even if the answer is that they are mustache twirling villains I still presume there is some legal reasoning behind it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 09:54:51 AM
The legal reasoning is as I described.

That the power to regulate these activities is vested in Congress. This is not under dispute.

Congress passes laws to create agencies to enforce their policies. Say the EPA.

The EPA then creates rules, regulations, and such to enforce the law as written by Congress. These agencies are run by the Executive.

What the USSC is going to say is that those agencies do not have the power to decide "major questions" without the enabling laws that created them *specifically* say that they can in fact do that. 

So the EPA can regulate and create rules, but there is some magic line beyond which they cannot, because to do so would be to exceed their Congressional authority, and hence that would be a transference of power from Congress, who passed the law creating and defining the EPA, to the Executive, who actually operates the EPA.

That is, as I understand it, the legal "reasoning" behind the USSC deciding that a bunch of state AGs, get to eviscerate the federal ability to basically do, well, much of anything.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:01:54 AM
Will anyone be answerable for having unconstitutionally created the EPA and similar and continually having let them operate?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:10:21 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:01:54 AMWill anyone be answerable for having unconstitutionally created the EPA and similar and continually having let them operate?
The argument is not that it was unconstitutional to set them up or allow them to operate.

The argument is that they have exceeded the authority that they were given when they were setup.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:16:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:10:21 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:01:54 AMWill anyone be answerable for having unconstitutionally created the EPA and similar and continually having let them operate?
The argument is not that it was unconstitutional to set them up or allow them to operate.

The argument is that they have exceeded the authority that they were given when they were setup.

So will EPA managers face jailtime?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:35:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:16:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:10:21 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:01:54 AMWill anyone be answerable for having unconstitutionally created the EPA and similar and continually having let them operate?
The argument is not that it was unconstitutional to set them up or allow them to operate.

The argument is that they have exceeded the authority that they were given when they were setup.

So will EPA managers face jailtime?
One would hope.

Can you imagine all the oil and coal that they have caused to be falsely imprisoned in the ground that should have been set free???
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:37:58 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:35:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:16:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 10:10:21 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 29, 2022, 10:01:54 AMWill anyone be answerable for having unconstitutionally created the EPA and similar and continually having let them operate?
The argument is not that it was unconstitutional to set them up or allow them to operate.

The argument is that they have exceeded the authority that they were given when they were setup.

So will EPA managers face jailtime?
One would hope.

Can you imagine all the oil and coal that they have caused to be falsely imprisoned in the ground that should have been set free???

:(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on June 29, 2022, 10:52:18 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 29, 2022, 09:54:51 AMSo the EPA can regulate and create rules, but there is some magic line beyond which they cannot, because to do so would be to exceed their Congressional authority, and hence that would be a transference of power from Congress, who passed the law creating and defining the EPA, to the Executive, who actually operates the EPA.

That is, as I understand it, the legal "reasoning" behind the USSC deciding that a bunch of state AGs, get to eviscerate the federal ability to basically do, well, much of anything.

So ultimately it would just create a big mess in the Federal Courts and eventually just lead to a reform in the way bills are written in Congress and rules are written in the executive.

So sure I guess it could have a catastrophic collapse in federal authority, at least on the level of Congress and the Executive, but it kind of seems like in the end it will just be a huge waste of time and money and enrich many lawyers but will just lead to bills being longer and more byzantine to account for this eventually defined legal requirement, after many hours of cases and precedents, and executive administration having more complicated and hard to comprehend rules.

So everybody loses. Except the lawyers. And the courts. And the federal agencies that benefit from the byzantine and labyrinthine nature of federal administration. And the lobbyists who write Congressional bills. So I guess the judges are just looking after the poor downtrodden lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, and lobbyists in the federal system to the expense of everybody else. Just more of the same really.

I thought conservatives were supposed to bring us leaner and more efficient government by cutting the fat and enabling heroic politicians to save America and make it great again. Instead they seem to be making it more bloated and inefficient and disempowering the ability of politicians to do any saving or making anything great by empowering bureaucrats and lobbyists.

So I predict this will not actually impact much but create massive amounts of inertia.

Conservative hero guy elected to save America: Hey executive branch! I demand you do this!

Bureaucrat guy: Sorry this exceeds the Congressional Authority given to us. You are unable to do anything.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 11:16:24 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 29, 2022, 08:56:31 AMShielbh, yeah farming practices are going to be the most difficult (the most politically sensitive).  It's going to require convincing farmers that they will get good/better results using other techniques.
Yeah - and in a way that is not simply of neo-colonialism where we impose standards on farmers in the global south.

The current crisis in Sri Lanka is a bit of a concerning precedent. Also the EU is split on supporting fertiliser production in developing nations (as an alternative to importing from Russia and Belarus). Some countries back it, which I think is the right thing to do given the current context around food security, but the Commission and other countries have opposed it because it's contrary to EU energy and environment policies - as I say in my view that approach isn't right in the context of a food security crisis. It seems wrong to me that European countries are turning coal fired power plants back on to mitigate their exposure to the impact of the war on energy, but also opposing on environmental grounds any measures to support fertiliser production in the developing world that would led them mitigate their exposure to the war.

The other sectors seem easier and less insoluble globally than agriculture - not least because they tend to be more concentrated. There is (generally - Africa is bucking this trend) a centralised grid and energy system; industry is concentrated as are major transport links. There is a vast number of small farmers across the world which need to be involved in any solution.

There's an interesting Brexit/war angle here. The UK has had to develop its own subsidies system - at the minute we're still basically using the EU one but at a national level. What was proposed was hugely welcomed by environmental campaigners because it was subsidies related to land use so it incentivised re-wilding and environmentally friendly ways of using land or using land for the public good etc (good summary here: https://www.science.org/content/article/united-kingdom-embark-agricultural-revolution-break-eu-farm-subsidies). There were big questions over whether it was deliverable on the proposed timeline but the idea behind it was really positive. It's now getting a lot of pushback because of the war and the effect on food supplies/markets globally with people arguing actually maybe we still need to stick with basically subsidising production and whether this new "public good" focused system could risk food security in the UK and the UK's (small) contribution globally.

It's a big, big challenge - I feel like a key first step would be massive funding on less energy intensive/fossil fuel reliant fertiliser especially for the global south (and it helps push back on Belarus's major export plus some of the Russian economy too).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on June 29, 2022, 11:53:31 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 29, 2022, 11:16:24 AMIt's a big, big challenge - I feel like a key first step would be massive funding on less energy intensive/fossil fuel reliant fertiliser especially for the global south (and it helps push back on Belarus's major export plus some of the Russian economy too).

I agree, that would be a good interim step.  But likely what is going to be required is further funding to subsidize farmers, and especially the small operators, to move to more sustainable farming practices.  Since a lot of Western countries already heavily subsidize farming, I am not sure how much more this would cost.  But it still needs farmer buy in.  If forced the results would be catastrophic.  If farmers, particularly in conservative areas, start pushing for that kind of support, then the politics will follow.  But I fear it is going to take more crop failures before they get it, and then its probably too late.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 30, 2022, 10:28:13 AM
The Founding fathers did not include the EPA in the Constitution.  Therefore, it must be unconstitutional. :P
 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 02, 2022, 05:52:47 PM
I found this thread by Sky Economics Correspondent on raw materials necessary for energy transition particularly in Chile really interesting:
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1543219541337165824?s=20&t=HY9PztQzIpN-2RBhwlxSBw

Particularly interesting around Chile because, from what I've read, the new Latin American left is really linked to environmentalists and indigenous communities and are strongly anti-extraction - which is going to be a weird tension between global demand. In an ideal world it would probably lead to huge investment in affected communities and mitigation against the local environmental impact - that feels unlikely though :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on July 03, 2022, 10:47:39 AM
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/live-updates/supreme-court-epa-regulate-greenhouse-gas-emissions/?fbclid=IwAR2QpC2JtoaoDRIipcvrJol_sOs99yRNc-qiPUJh09QZSW6a1g53PhbWDEY

Tell me more about what a consistent, and rational juror Gorsuch is....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 04, 2022, 06:46:38 AM
During the annual World Summit in Vienna, Lower Austria's governor Johanna Milk-Leiter (ÖVP) was asked what people could do against climate change in their daily lives. She said, "It starts with simple things, like clothing. You don't need 10 ball gowns, 3 are plenty." (She later apologized, saying that while she stands by the core of her message - more sustainable fashion/clothing decisions, considering keeping clothes for longer etc. - the chosen example may have come across as aloof or out of touch.)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 04, 2022, 01:27:26 PM
Why are you booing her, she's right?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 04, 2022, 01:37:56 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 04, 2022, 06:46:38 AMDuring the annual World Summit in Vienna, Lower Austria's governor Johanna Milk-Leiter (ÖVP) was asked what people could do against climate change in their daily lives. She said, "It starts with simple things, like clothing. You don't need 10 ball gowns, 3 are plenty." (She later apologized, saying that while she stands by the core of her message - more sustainable fashion/clothing decisions, considering keeping clothes for longer etc. - the chosen example may have come across as aloof or out of touch.)
She's a governor. If she wasn't wearing a ball gown to public reception, she would be instantly criticized by all the medias. :roll:

So, yeah, she's right.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 07, 2022, 01:29:07 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/04/spain-and-portugal-suffering-driest-climate-for-1200-years-research-shows


QuoteSpain and Portugal suffering driest climate for 1,200 years, research shows

Effects of human-caused global heating are blocking vital winter rains, with severe implications for farming and tourism

Spain and Portugal are suffering their driest climate for at least 1,200 years, according to research, with severe implications for both food production and tourism.

Most rain on the Iberian peninsula falls in winter as wet, low-pressure systems blow in from the Atlantic. But a high-pressure system off the coast, called the Azores high, can block the wet weather fronts.

The researchers found that winters featuring "extremely large" Azores highs have increased dramatically from one winter in 10 before 1850 to one in four since 1980. These extremes also push the wet weather northwards, making downpours in the northern UK and Scandinavia more likely.

The scientists said the more frequent large Azores highs could only have been caused by the climate crisis, caused by humanity's carbon emissions.

"The number of extremely large Azores highs in the last 100 years is really unprecedented when you look at the previous 1,000 years," said Dr Caroline Ummenhofer, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, and part of the research team.

"That has big implications because an extremely large Azores high means relatively dry conditions for the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean," she said. "We could also conclusively link this increase to anthropogenic emissions."

The Iberian peninsula has been hit by increasing heatwaves and droughts in recent years and this year May was the hottest on record in Spain. Forest fires that killed dozens of people in the region in 2017 followed a heatwave made 10 times more likely by the climate crisis, while the Tagus River, the longest in the region, is at risk of drying up completely, according to environmentalists.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, analysed weather data stretching back to 1850 and computer models replicating the climate back to AD850. It found that, before 1850 and the start of significant human greenhouse gas emissions, extremely large Azores highs occurred once every 10 years on average.

From 1850 to 1980, the frequency was once every seven years, but after 1980 this rose to every four years. Data showed that extremely large Azores highs slash average monthly rainfall in winter by about a third. Further data from chemical analysis of stalagmites in caves in Portugal show that low rainfall correlates closely with large Azores highs.

The computer simulations of the climate of the past millennium cover a period up to 2005. But other studies covering later years are consistent with new findings and the Azores high is expected to continue to expand, further increasing drought on the Iberian peninsula, until global carbon emissions are cut to net zero.

"[Our findings] have big implications for the water resources that are available for agriculture and other water intensive industries or for tourism," said Ummenhofer. "It doesn't bode well." Spain was the second most popular country for overseas tourists in 2019, hosting 84 million visitors.

Spain also is the world's biggest producer of olives and a major source of grapes, oranges, tomatoes and other produce. But rainfall has been declining by 5-10mm a year since 1950, with a further 10-20% drop in winter rains anticipated by the end of the century
.

Other research has projected a 30% decline in olive production in southern Spain production by 2100 and a fall in grape-growing regions across the Iberian peninsula of 25% to 99% by 2050 due to severe water shortages. Research in 2021 also linked the Azores high to the summer monsoon in India.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 07, 2022, 05:58:19 AM
I become increasingly convinced the end goal in many ways resembles the 1930s with regards to life style - cars for the rich and those who really love cars, vans for businesses, everyone else relies on public transport, bikes or walks.

The trouble is getting from the stage we are now where many peoples lives are built around the unsustainable late 20th century car focused life.

Petrol prices going up is good and should do the trick but it's hard to get people to admit that maybe the car is the problem rather than the price.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on July 07, 2022, 06:56:23 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 07, 2022, 01:29:07 AMSpain and Portugal suffering driest climate for 1,200 years, research shows

Can confirm that this year is being as described, even in places that weren't like that in normal years. I live in what is possibly the wettest region in the country, and we've had an extremely dry winter and spring, with only a fraction of the regular rainfall. At the same time, other parts of the coutnry got traditional summer events like short term heat waves or forest fires much earlier than usual. I was in Seville in mid May and the temperatures we had wouldn't have been out of place in the middle of the summer. Regarding wildfires, I really fear for this summer, as everything is in place for a really bad season of them.

As for further consequences regarding lower agricultural yields, it's quite disheartening how in some parts our agricultural sector doesn't seem to want to realize that things can't be kept going as usual in the future, and insist on some really water hungry crops being cultivated disregarding the dire situation of water resources in their areas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 12, 2022, 10:20:24 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKGZdok74f8

Climate protestors shut down Tour de France.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:29:59 PM
One would think climate protestors would be in favor of bicycles.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 12, 2022, 11:43:15 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:29:59 PMOne would think climate protestors would be in favor of bicycles.

And commuter trains for that matter.  Not sure why they're angry at the NBA.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:45:38 PM
Now shutting down F1 races, that would make sense.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 09:01:28 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:45:38 PMNow shutting down F1 races, that would make sense.

There are more cars on the road during the tour than during an F1 race.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 16, 2022, 08:11:20 AM
I think the current heat emergency will convince a fair few extra people that 'we' are definitely screwing up our shared climate.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 16, 2022, 11:53:57 AM
ever the optimist? :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 16, 2022, 11:55:47 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 16, 2022, 08:11:20 AMI think the current heat emergency will convince a fair few extra people that 'we' are definitely screwing up our shared climate.
you'd hope but Facebook is full of denialist bollocks.
Ranging from attempts at humour about how the weather is just trying to scare us and sunny days used to be heralded as awesome news to back in 75 it was the same and it just happens sometimes.

Even saw one nutter saying the council gritters being out spreading sand was also some corrupt heads in trough scheme as in dubai the roads don't melt :rolleyes:

Fucked my plans either way. Was meant to be putting tiles on my roof.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 17, 2022, 09:19:58 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 16, 2022, 08:11:20 AMI think the current heat emergency will convince a fair few extra people that 'we' are definitely screwing up our shared climate.

I like your optimism, but the people who don't already understand that we are in a climate emergency are not going to be persuaded by hot weather.

It's going to take consistent messaging in all media.  And that is not going to happen.

When people are told we are quickly running out of time to prevent disaster, there is still a lot of denial.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 18, 2022, 09:57:14 AM
It appears England is burning up, with typical European ill-preparedness for any form of heat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/britain-europe-heatwave-record-temperatures/

QuoteU.K. braces for record temperatures as 'heat apocalypse' hits Europe

By Rick Noack and William Booth
Updated July 18, 2022 at 10:50 a.m. EDT|Published July 18, 2022 at 5:02 a.m. EDT

PARIS — Britain is bracing this week for what could be its hottest day ever recorded, while French authorities warned of a "heat apocalypse" and emergency services across Europe confronted spreading wildfires and rising death tolls.

British authorities declared a national emergency and for the first time issued a "red extreme" heat warning for large parts of England, while France's meteorological service placed a stretch of its Atlantic coast under the highest-possible alert level.

Heat records were toppled in several places in France and Britain on Monday. More records could fall later in the day or on Tuesday, with Britain expecting temperatures of up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) — far above the current record of 101.7 degrees (38.7 Celsius), which was set in 2019. Temperatures in France were expected to top 104 degrees (40 Celsius).

Nikos Christidis, a climate attribution researcher at Britain's weather service, the Met Office, said it reflected scientists' expectation that climate change is making extreme heat events more frequent.

"The chances of seeing 40°C days in the U.K. could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence," he said in a statement.

Across Europe, the human toll of the continent's most recent heat wave was becoming increasingly visible Monday. Thousands more people were expected to be evacuated amid rapidly spreading wildfires in Spain, France and Portugal. Authorities warned that the heat would degrade air quality in major urban population centers, and hundreds were feared dead from the high temperatures. Much of Italy's north, which is facing one of its worst droughts in decades, remained under a state of emergency.

In many parts of France and Spain, firefighting services and hospitals were increasingly under strain. France's Interior Ministry announced it would deploy hundreds of additional firefighters to the most severely hit regions, including the popular beaches and vacation spots on the country's west coast. In Spain, authorities said in many places, the available firefighting planes were already working at capacity.

"Full solidarity with firefighters and disaster victims," wrote French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on Twitter. Her Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, on Sunday paid tribute on Twitter to a dead emergency service worker.

Hospital unions in France and other countries warned that the heat is putting an additional burden on services that were already dealing with a renewed rise in coronavirus-linked hospitalizations in recent weeks.

Models by Spain's public Carlos III Health Institute estimate that at least 350 people died last week as a result of country's heat — far above the weekly average of about 60 deaths but largely comparable to the toll of similar heat episodes in prior years. The institute reported more than 800 heat-linked deaths last month, when similarly scorching temperatures hit the country and other parts of Europe, with temperatures reaching between 104 and 110 degrees (40 to 43 Celsius).

The number of fatalities could still rise above the estimates — it sometimes takes days or weeks until authorities have a clear understanding of heat-linked death tolls, which are difficult to estimate in real time.

The U.K. Health Security Agency issued its highest level-four heat alert, warning illness and death could occur "among the fit and healthy." Public health officials predicted that thousands of excess deaths could occur, even as some skeptics considered it hype.

Conservative Party lawmaker John Hayes told the Telegraph newspaper, "this is not a brave new world but a cowardly new world where we live in a country where we are frightened of the heat."

But Britain isn't designed for extreme heat.

Very few homes have air conditioning and instead houses have traditionally been built to retain heat. Maintenance crews were spreading sand on the highways to keep the roads from, yes, melting.

Penny Endersby, the chief operating officer of the Met Office, called the forecast temperatures "absolutely unprecedented."

She acknowledged that while many Britons usually enjoyed a spell of sunny warmth, "this is not that sort of weather," Endersby said. "Our lifestyles and our infrastructure are not adapted to what is coming."

In London, workers wrapped the historic Hammersmith Bridge over the River Thames in silver insulation foil to protect the cast-iron spans from cracking.

Transportation officials advised passengers to stay away and ordered trains to slow down as maintenance crews were on the lookout for steel tracks bending and buckling in the heat.

A Network Rail manager, Jake Kelly, told BBC Radio on Monday morning that the system was under "exceptional stress."

"Our railway is made up of lots of components, many of them metal, which expand in the heat," Kelly said.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan warned riders to avoid all public transit, including the Underground, "unless absolutely necessary." The subway becomes a sauna on hot days. The system, parts of which date to the Victorian Age, has never seen the temperatures like those that are forecast.

In France, national railway operator SNCF similarly urged travelers to carry water bottles and to be prepared for delays.

This heat wave — already one of a series in Europe this year — has revived a debate over how to prepare citizens for the impact of climate change.

While environmental concerns over the use of air conditioning remain widespread in Europe, with as many as 75 percent of all French having no air conditioning, it is increasingly seen as a key tool to protect the most vulnerable groups.

After a heat wave killed an estimated 15,000 people in France in 2003, French nursing homes developed emergency plans. Many of them are now equipped with air-conditioned rooms, additional ventilation, or sprinklers that cool down building facades.

In Paris, city authorities encouraged residents and tourists to use a dedicated website to find 900 "islands of coolness," including city parks, cemeteries, swimming pools and museums. The site also points to dedicated "cooling routes" — for example, streets with lush trees — that connect those spaces. Some buildings are using cool water pipes as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to air conditioning.

Studies suggest that such measures have brought down heat-related mortality since 2003, which has encouraged more adaptation plans in cities like Paris. Over the next few years, the French capital wants to plant tens of thousands of additional trees, amid hopes that they may help to lower air and surface temperatures in cobblestone squares and asphalt roads that trap the heat.

But as climate change progresses, the increasingly brutal heat islands that build up in urban areas could pose risks that may be beyond conventional solutions — even today, the difference in temperatures between Paris and its greener surroundings can at times approach 18 degrees (10 degrees Celsius). People living in poorer areas, who are more likely to live in unrenovated buildings and without easy access to green spaces, are particularly impacted. Many of the elderly residents who died in recent heat waves in France were at home and not in nursing facilities.

In rural areas, heat waves are expected to have an increasingly serious impact on agricultural production. This year, French farmers faced a mix of frost, a record-hot May accompanied by a spring drought, intense hailstorms that brought heavy rain this year, followed by more drought this summer.

"The drought in much of Europe is critical," the European Commission's research branch concluded in a report released on Monday, which warned that "a staggering portion of Europe" — about half of the E.U.'s and U.K.'s territory — is now at risk of drought.

Booth reported from London.

The part about wrapping a bridge in tin foil to prevent it from cracking is kind of shocking.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 18, 2022, 10:31:31 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on July 18, 2022, 09:57:14 AMIt appears England is burning up, with typical European ill-preparedness for any form of heat.

40°C+ in wet and windy Albion is not any form of heat. A/C in the UK is overkill, most of the time, and going full A/C has its share of drawbacks (not just sore throats in the summer), specially in a time of infectious airborne diseases, not just in the UK.
Also mentioning European ill-preparedness by choosing the most insular and unused to heat at home Brits is weak trolling at best. Tuesday will have record temperates for the UK.
 
Given the drinking habits of Brits in Southern Europe when temperatures reach such heights, this is going to be a couple of busy days for emergency services.

Parks over here close at midnight, instead of the regular 21.30 summer schedule.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2022, 10:49:13 AM
I wonder if this is a strange European take on a/c, as I swear I've never heard so many people complaining about sore throats with a/c than once I moved to the UK.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2022, 10:50:20 AM
Also southern England does need a/c for more and more summer days each year. Just not yet hit the point yet where mass changing behavior.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 18, 2022, 11:15:17 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 18, 2022, 10:49:13 AMI wonder if this is a strange European take on a/c, as I swear I've never heard so many people complaining about sore throats with a/c than once I moved to the UK.

Full A/C when the temperature does not warrant it (not now) gets many complaints. Not to mention the thermal shock when going outside. Also, the increased energy consumption and greenhouse effect.

If there is a country in Europe that does not need A/C most of the time, it's the UK. Add in Ireland (British Isles/Hiberno-British archipelago whatever).
I can see being useful in Southern Europe (not to US amounts) but improved insulation and basic heat management (open windows at night not during the day and shutters during the day) would be enough.
Unless insulation in the UK is as bad  as their proverbially distressing plumbing.  :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 18, 2022, 11:41:11 AM
Older people I knew in my family who grew up pre-AC all hated the way it made the air "feel", and complained of it irritating their throats. They would use open windows and fans for as much of the year as possible and only turned on AC in old age when it got really hot.

By my generation we used it more, but both of my parents were anal retentives about not turning it on until as late in the summer as possible. The first time I had my own residence I had control over the temp in, I put the air on 72F and kept it there--and if that meant the AC randomly kicks on when it's only 77F out, cool. The modern American attitude is that our climate in our homes is whatever we want it to be, regardless of what it is outside.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 12:31:43 PM
I don't like A/C for the same reasons - we use it so infrequently that when it is on, I notice the difference.  I prefer to open the windows at night etc.  But during the heat dome event last summer, it was necessary and we used it. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 18, 2022, 01:08:23 PM
I was just thinking the other day that AC is one of the weird differences when moving to Japan you never hear about.
For months I would turn it on with the window open-as I had no idea how it worked. I thought it was just like a fan. They never thought to tell me as its just so default there.

The climate in summer was humid which I guess countered the shit air effect. That was worse using it as a heater in winter.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on July 18, 2022, 01:11:30 PM
If we fix the climate we don't need AC.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:34:23 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 18, 2022, 01:08:23 PMI was just thinking the other day that AC is one of the weird differences when moving to Japan you never hear about.
For months I would turn it on with the window open-as I had no idea how it worked. I thought it was just like a fan. They never thought to tell me as its just so default there.

The climate in summer was humid which I guess countered the shit air effect. That was worse using it as a heater in winter.

That's like leaving the refrigerator door open and being annoyed no one told you you should close it :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on July 18, 2022, 01:35:29 PM
You'd never been in a car with AC?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 18, 2022, 01:35:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 18, 2022, 01:11:30 PMIf we fix the climate we don't need AC.

Heh. It would take another ice age for Texans to stop using AC.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:44:23 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 18, 2022, 01:35:29 PMYou'd never been in a car with AC?

Sure, but never really use it.  I find it most aggravating in a car actually.
Quote from: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:34:23 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 18, 2022, 01:08:23 PMI was just thinking the other day that AC is one of the weird differences when moving to Japan you never hear about.
For months I would turn it on with the window open-as I had no idea how it worked. I thought it was just like a fan. They never thought to tell me as its just so default there.

The climate in summer was humid which I guess countered the shit air effect. That was worse using it as a heater in winter.

That's like leaving the refrigerator door open and being annoyed no one told you you should close it :P

Well, depending on what setting it is on, some A/Cs do also function as a fan.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on July 18, 2022, 01:45:43 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:44:23 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 18, 2022, 01:35:29 PMYou'd never been in a car with AC?

Sure, but never really use it.  I find it most aggravating in a car actually.

Sorry, I was actually asking Jos.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:56:46 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:44:23 PMSure, but never really use it.  I find it most aggravating in a car actually.

Are you a mouth breather? Legitimate question, not an insult :D. Just trying to figure out how it would dry you throat.  Most ac doesn't dehumidify to that large a level. I worked 5 years at a printing company. Now that was a dry place (paper stock sucked up moisture) but while I got sinus issues never bothered my throat.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2022, 01:58:37 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:56:46 PMAre you a mouth breather? Legitimate question, not an insult :D. Just trying to figure out how it would dry you throat.  Most ac doesn't dehumidify to that large a level. I worked 5 years at a printing company. Now that was a dry place (paper stock sucked up moisture) but while I got sinus issues never bothered my throat.

My nostrils connect to my throat. :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:59:59 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2022, 01:58:37 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:56:46 PMAre you a mouth breather? Legitimate question, not an insult :D. Just trying to figure out how it would dry you throat.  Most ac doesn't dehumidify to that large a level. I worked 5 years at a printing company. Now that was a dry place (paper stock sucked up moisture) but while I got sinus issues never bothered my throat.

My nostrils connect to my throat. :unsure:

But your nasal cavity is a giant mucus membrane and would condition the air better before it got to your throat.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 18, 2022, 02:33:50 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 18, 2022, 01:11:30 PMIf we fix the climate we don't need AC.

Precisely.:yes:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 18, 2022, 02:40:10 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 18, 2022, 01:35:29 PMYou'd never been in a car with AC?

That had it, probably, maybe? No idea when it became standard.
Actually using it... not that I can remember before moving to Japan- certainly never knowingly.
I'd been in shops with AC of course, but then I don't get to control the buttons.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on July 18, 2022, 02:46:18 PM
AC is busted in my car.  The temperature has been 90's-100's for three weeks.  The day I moved it was 103 degrees. :yucky:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 03:06:38 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 18, 2022, 01:56:46 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:44:23 PMSure, but never really use it.  I find it most aggravating in a car actually.

Are you a mouth breather? Legitimate question, not an insult :D. Just trying to figure out how it would dry you throat.  Most ac doesn't dehumidify to that large a level. I worked 5 years at a printing company. Now that was a dry place (paper stock sucked up moisture) but while I got sinus issues never bothered my throat.

The a/c in our building doesn't really bother me.  It's at home or in the car that I notice it.  Not sure why that is.  Because of the issue with my lungs I consciously try to breathe through my nose (when not hitting the gym that is).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 18, 2022, 05:50:18 PM
No need for AC here yet; today it hit 35C, but I managed to maintain a temperature gradient in the house of -13C or more, so at least I know the double glazing isn't 'bust'.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 18, 2022, 06:06:45 PM
I mean, well done, but that sounds uncomfortably cold :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 18, 2022, 06:08:22 PM
I turn on A/C when it barely starts getting hot but Heating, that's what I wait until the last possible moment. Usually when the basement hits 15Celcius.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 29, 2022, 10:23:00 AM
One of the independent Hungarian news sites has been beating the drum lately about the aridification of the counter, the south-east in particular. The signs have been there for decades of course but it seems the continued extreme weather and worsening water management have escalating the issue. They paint a picture where a whole (agricultural) region of the country is heading toward becoming an arid wasteland.

The second-biggest lake of the country, Lake Velence, has also just set an all-time low water record level just a day or two ago.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 02, 2022, 05:06:59 AM
Well, looks like we are fucked.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/01/african-nations-set-to-make-the-case-for-big-rise-in-fossil-fuel-output?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Every time I see this "the west did it so why can't we" argument it makes my eyes bleed. So dumb.
I like that there are some at least saying Africa should leapfrog fossil fuels. They already did this with telecoms so it does make sense. The 19th century way of development is not the only way.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on August 02, 2022, 08:05:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 02, 2022, 05:06:59 AMWell, looks like we are fucked.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/01/african-nations-set-to-make-the-case-for-big-rise-in-fossil-fuel-output?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Every time I see this "the west did it so why can't we" argument it makes my eyes bleed. So dumb.
I like that there are some at least saying Africa should leapfrog fossil fuels. They already did this with telecoms so it does make sense. The 19th century way of development is not the only way.
That is such a terrible idea, and it's a terrible idea for Africa.

Exploiting fossil fuels is not going to make Africa wealthier, it's going to make it poorer. It will make the corporations exploiting that wealth richer for sure, but the poor will just suffer the (already happening) consequences of the climate being damaged even more.

The developed world, however, does have a debt here. We do need to assist them in making that leap to renewables, and that is not something that we can leave to the invisible, benevolent and of "the market".
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 02, 2022, 08:36:28 AM
Though their countries and people won't see much improvement  it does make a lot of sense why African leaders would be keen on seeing more natural resource exploitation...

I wonder whether much ground can be made in opposing it by underlining this point. Smear the idea of it so much that any African leader who puts his head above the parapet on calling for this is announcing himself to be one of the infamous corrupt president for life types.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 08, 2022, 06:52:16 AM
On Saturday it reached 53C in Abadan, worlds highest temperature in 2022, sofar.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 11, 2022, 12:39:50 PM
(https://preview.redd.it/yi48mge623h91.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3c376c47e1cc9efd4203cb061adee6120ef204b1)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 11, 2022, 02:58:18 PM
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/297881147_10161700769074338_2101873546139355104_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p526x296&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=98oRC_RB6AcAX8U_Qta&_nc_ht=scontent.xx&edm=AM5uX9AEAAAA&oh=00_AT-xWsQHnzScvZl5g52vZew0-6piSrWnDJCurAqJ4Ym2FA&oe=62FAB821)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: alfred russel on August 12, 2022, 02:17:14 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 02, 2022, 08:05:03 AMThat is such a terrible idea, and it's a terrible idea for Africa.

Exploiting fossil fuels is not going to make Africa wealthier, it's going to make it poorer. It will make the corporations exploiting that wealth richer for sure, but the poor will just suffer the (already happening) consequences of the climate being damaged even more.

The developed world, however, does have a debt here. We do need to assist them in making that leap to renewables, and that is not something that we can leave to the invisible, benevolent and of "the market".

This is extremely first world oriented, which is an attitude dooming any hope for global climate coordination.

The US produces 11.6 million barrels of oil a day. We continue to seek out and exploit new drilling opportunities. The Biden administration was recently touting how many permits it had approved.

All of Africa produces 5.5 million barrels of oil a day.

Of course Africa has a population far in excess of the United States. We could look at oil consumption but the story is even more skewed to the US.

Of course we have a president that just went to Saudi Arabia to try to get them to increase oil production, and Europe has continued to buy fossil fuels from Russia while throwing a fit that places like India continue to trade with Russia.

It fails basic tests of reason to bemoan the global poor trying to exploit their resources at a fraction of the level we exploit our own.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 15, 2022, 10:47:21 AM
110 years ago:
(https://i.imgur.com/iKm27Yy.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 16, 2022, 03:14:14 PM
Growth of wind and solar:

(https://i.redd.it/uhp78cxrh1i91.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2022, 03:23:51 PM
The growth of hydro after 2000 is also interesting.  I wonder where all that extra generation of hydro power came from?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 16, 2022, 03:24:32 PM
China and Brazil I think.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 16, 2022, 03:28:06 PM
Yeah, the 3 gorges adds a lot. They've also built a bazillion dams on the mekong- big environmental disaster brewing there for SE Asia.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2022, 04:59:26 PM
Thanks, I did some quick reading about the impact of the dams on the Mekong over the last 20 years or so.  I was not aware of the damage they have caused. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on August 16, 2022, 06:23:50 PM
Thsis is hy i stopped worrying abotu retirinment.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2022, 07:04:46 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 16, 2022, 06:23:50 PMThsis is hy i stopped worrying abotu retirinment.

Because of environmental damage on the Mekong river? You had a very specific retirement plan.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 16, 2022, 07:59:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2022, 07:04:46 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 16, 2022, 06:23:50 PMThsis is hy i stopped worrying abotu retirinment.

Because of environmental damage on the Mekong river? You had a very specific retirement plan.

No, the collatoral damage those dams are done to his keybourd.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 17, 2022, 03:16:43 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2022, 07:04:46 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 16, 2022, 06:23:50 PMThsis is hy i stopped worrying abotu retirinment.

Because of environmental damage on the Mekong river? You had a very specific retirement plan.

Isn't this everyone's retirement plan? :p
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 17, 2022, 04:37:53 AM
With hydro you're hanging a sword of Damocles over everything downstream. In addition to making large areas uninhabitable just by normal operation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 17, 2022, 12:00:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2022, 04:59:26 PMThanks, I did some quick reading about the impact of the dams on the Mekong over the last 20 years or so.  I was not aware of the damage they have caused. 
The new Nile dam in Ethiopia also has the potential for war. The dams Turkey built on Euphrates and Tigris likely contributed to the Syrian Civil War. Water will be a source of conflict again in the 21st century...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 17, 2022, 02:29:40 PM
Quote from: Zanza on August 17, 2022, 12:00:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2022, 04:59:26 PMThanks, I did some quick reading about the impact of the dams on the Mekong over the last 20 years or so.  I was not aware of the damage they have caused. 
The new Nile dam in Ethiopia also has the potential for war. The dams Turkey built on Euphrates and Tigris likely contributed to the Syrian Civil War. Water will be a source of conflict again in the 21st century...

We'll see. Lots of great work being done with de-salination. Of course that just kicks the can down the road unless we continue to make strides in water conservation as well.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 17, 2022, 03:21:41 PM
https://www.popsci.com/environment/extreme-heat-belt-us-2050/

QuoteBy 2050, most of the US will be blanketed by extreme heat belt

Swaths of the country will see at least one day per year with a heat index of 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

BY LAURA BAISAS | PUBLISHED AUG 16, 2022 9:30 AM

This summer is already marked by megadroughts and extreme heat waves across the globe. A new report on extreme heat events from the First Street Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that studies risks associated with climate change, shows how this summer is just the beginning.

The 6th National Climate Risk Assessment: Hazardous Heat, released on August 15, uses a climate model to predict more than 100 million Americans will live in an "extreme heat belt" within the next 30 years. In these areas, residents could face at least one day per year with a heat index of 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat index is calculated by combining the actual air temperature with the humidity or dew point temperature to determine how it feels outside. A heat index of 125 degrees is at the top of the National Weather Service's extreme danger level.

The future extreme heat belts cover a vast swath of the continental United States, with one region stretching from the Gulf Coast up to southern Wisconsin. Additional extreme heat belts stretch across the interior southwest and southeast coast.

According to the report, communities will feel the sharpest heat increase in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Presently, Miami-Dade County can expect seven days with a heat index of 103 degrees. By 2053, that number could rise to 34 days per year. The report allows users to input their addresses into the Risk Factor and see how their property will be impacted by extreme heat by 2053.

Even with technological advances, predicting temperatures in a long-range forecast is particularly difficult. This report, however, uses climatological modeling instead of meteorological modeling to create a long-range temperature forecast. To best calculate a property's current heat exposure, the team used land surface temperatures, tree canopy cover, impervious surfaces like roads or sidewalks, green space, and proximity to a large body of water. Those measurements are then adjusted with the predicted emissions scenarios for the next three decades.

"Increasing temperatures are broadly discussed as averages, but the focus should be on the extension of the extreme tail events expected in a given year," said Matthew Eby, founder, and CEO of First Street Foundation via press release. "We need to be prepared for the inevitable, that a quarter of the country will soon fall inside the Extreme Heat Belt with temperatures exceeding 125°F and the results will be dire."

Extreme heat events are among the most dangerous natural hazards, with the Union of Concerned Scientists referring to May through October as the "danger season." In summer 2021, the Pacific Northwest saw three days of record-breaking temperatures that officials estimate was the cause of at least 100 fatalities. Extreme heat events can also lead to prolonged power outages from strained electrical grids, cause roads to buckle, and even melt or lift airport runways.


Study highlights: https://firststreet.org/research-lab/published-research/article-highlights-from-hazardous-heat/
Methodology: https://firststreet.org/research-lab/published-research/heat-simplified-methodology/ and https://firststreet.org/research-lab/published-research/heat-technical-methodology/

You can check your risk factors here: https://riskfactor.com/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 18, 2022, 06:48:39 PM
Well that might finally get people to stop moving to Texas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 18, 2022, 07:11:07 PM
Anyone else seen about the uncovering of the hunger-stones in the Rhine?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 18, 2022, 07:33:19 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 18, 2022, 07:11:07 PMAnyone else seen about the uncovering of the hunger-stones in the Rhine?

Yeah "if you see this, weep" or something like that.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on August 19, 2022, 12:26:49 AM
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/18/hunger-stones-drought/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 19, 2022, 03:51:57 AM
Awesome 17th century trolling.
Encourages me to keep it up with leaving hidden messages wherever I can.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 19, 2022, 11:01:53 AM
Quote from: garbon on August 19, 2022, 12:26:49 AMhttps://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/18/hunger-stones-drought/

This seems like a key factor from that link:

QuoteBut, based on our research, it was unknown whether that particular stone was visible in August 2022 and, if so, why. Ars Technica noted, "It's actually possible to see this particular stone some 126 days out of the year, thanks to the construction of a dam that was built on a tributary of the Elbe in 1926."

So do these rivers have dams that might be a larger factor in them being exposed?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 22, 2022, 04:57:20 AM
Austria has been without legislation to lower emissions for almost 2 years now.

The previous law, setting goals and targets, expired in 2020. Since then, Greens and ÖVP have not managed to reach a consensus on a new law.  Meanwhile, Austria's emissions have increased between 2015 and 2019, took a dip during the pandemic but have been rising again. It sits at ca. 85% of the value from 2005. The goal was that emissions should be halved by 2030 and Austria should be CO2-neutral by 2040.

The Greens would like to set binding targets, with penalties if they're not met. The previous law had such targets but had no means to enforce them, so it was ignored by everyone. A 2021 draft suggested automated increases for taxes on fuels if emission targets aren't met, but it was quickly shot down by everyone.

ÖVP finds targets and penalties too harsh and says a new law is not a top priority for them. They prefer working with the private sector and create incentives to invest in renewables, mostly by removing regulation for everyone.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 25, 2022, 09:38:53 AM
https://www.clevescene.com/news/ten-ohio-counties-ban-wind-solar-projects-under-new-state-law-39591055

QuoteTen Ohio Counties Ban Wind, Solar Projects Under New State Law

All of them in rural Ohio

At least 10 Ohio counties have passed resolutions blocking the development of new utility scale wind and solar projects within all or part of their jurisdictions in the last year.

The counties' moves come after the October 2021 enactment of a state law giving the locals the veto power over renewable energy generation sites — a veto power that doesn't exist for fossil fuel developments.

At least two more counties are actively considering such a prohibition. In Crawford County, meanwhile, citizens are pushing to reverse their commission's ban by placing the issue on the 2022 ballot.

The state law and subsequent county action add new roadblocks to renewable energy development as the international scientific community warns of a warming climate and a need to shift away from fossil fuels.

"As you can see, there are counties making use of the authority," said Jon Honeck, a policy analyst with the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, which did not take a formal position for or against the state legislation.

"It's a changed regulatory landscape."

The counties, all rural, that have moved against renewables include:

- The Allen County Commission unanimously passed a resolution April 24 banning large wind and solar projects in unincorporated areas
- The Auglaize County Commission unanimously passed a resolution April 26 banning large wind and solar projects in unincorporated areas
- The Butler County Commission passed a resolution June 23 banning large wind and solar projects in unincorporated areas in 12 townships in the county
- The Crawford County Commission passed a resolution in May banning wind farms in part of the county. Cleveland.com reports that a potential wind farm developer has submitted enough signatures to place the issue on the ballot in November
- The Hancock County Commission passed a resolution April 19 banning large wind and solar projects in most the county
- The Knox County Commission passed a resolution Aug. 11 banning large wind projects (not solar) in unincorporated areas of the county
- The Logan County Commission passed a resolution Aug. 11 banning large wind and solar projects in 16 townships and unincorporated areas of the county
- The Medina County Commission passed a resolution Jan. 25 banning large wind and solar projects in unincorporated areas of the county
- The Seneca County Commission passed a resolution Nov. 23 banning large wind and solar projects in Seneca County, according to The Advertiser-Tribune
- The Union County Commission passed a resolution June 15 that bans large solar projects (not wind) within eight townships that requested the prohibition

Other counties have broached but not yet finalized the issue. Ottawa County is set for a public hearing next month on a potential ban. Delaware County met to consider one in October but has yet to advance it further.

The legislation doesn't apply to wind and solar projects that have received approval from the state before it took effect.

Sarah Spence, executive director of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, has been tracking the counties' action on wind and solar. She said she's disappointed but not surprised by the speed with which the counties moved. She said it's a loss for economic development and renewables in the areas.

Environmentalists opposed Senate Bill 52, which gave counties the new authority, arguing there was room to create more community input on power siting without choking off wind and solar entirely.

"By implementing these bans now, it's going to make it harder to make the transition to clean energy that the public, business community, and public health and climate science all demand," said Neil Waggoner, an operative with the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "These bans close off communities from the investment dollars driving these projects, new sources of revenue for local services and education, and also limit local property owner rights."

The issue scrambles some typical political coalitions. The state legislation passed with only Republican support — somewhat unusual for legislation giving governments new control over landowners' private property rights. A handful of Republicans in both chambers voted with Democrats in opposition, though the bill was ultimately signed by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine. It passed over the objections of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, typically a conservative ally.

Republicans and outside supporters of the bill said the legislation restores local autonomy and prevents a situation where the Ohio Power Siting Board — a state level panel of gubernatorial appointees — grants an application for a project over objections from locals.

"Economic development and innovative energy technology is always welcome in the State of Ohio, but not at the expense of rural communities who do not want them," said GOP Senate President Matt Huffman in a statement. "This bill keeps local residents and officials informed and in-control of where they are located."

The bill's two sponsors did not respond to inquiries.

Some of the opposition to wind turbines gets a bit more far-fetched. In Crawford County, Apex Clean Energy applied to build a farm of 60 turbines that could power up to 300 MW of energy, which the company says could power 85,000 homes per year.

An organization called Crawford Anti Wind formed in opposition. Its website calls for readers to "vote out big wind" and hosts pictures of a turbine on fire. The site states it's paid for by the Crawford Neighbors United PAC, but no such group could be located in state or federal campaign finance databases.

Both Apex and Crawford Anti Wind did not respond to inquiries.

The Energy News Network previously reported on other dubious claims about renewables made during the legislative process, including one of solar panels "leaking" chemicals like lead or cadmium into the soil.

In April, 278 climate experts with the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change warned that the world is on track to pass a key climate target within eight years at the current rate of emissions. While the international goal can still be met to stave off disastrous effects of global warming, it will require an economically viable but politically difficult shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

Ohio's new legislation has moved in the opposite direction, erecting a new hurdle to clear for development and new risks for investors. In contrast, the state passed legislation last year removing authority from local governments seeking to block new buildings within their borders from natural gas hookups, an effort seen in some progressive cities to decarbonize buildings.

I find the last sentence rather telling. On one hand, "The locals should really have a say in this, and be able to block this." vs. "The locals should really not be able to block this."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 25, 2022, 11:14:20 AM
Disturbing trend. Though I notice a lot of bizarre unwarranted hostility towards all non-fuel burning technologies popping up. We'll see if this spreads beyond those 10 counties.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 25, 2022, 11:28:00 AM
Yeah...This kneejerk "If THE OTHERS like it then it must be bad" stuff that is modern conservatism is really disturbing. Wonder how long it'll be before state governments start rolling coal?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 25, 2022, 08:09:18 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLR78nocKWI

California regulators ban sales of new ICE autos starting 2035.  Intermediate targets in intermediate years.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 25, 2022, 10:00:59 PM
Hope they plan to beef up their power grid.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 26, 2022, 01:48:03 AM
Aye
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 05:53:26 PM
They are doing a lot of stuff over there with storage so I think they plan a big expansion on intermittent renewables in a short period of time. Those do have the advantage of fast mobilization. We'll see. They are giving themselves a lot of time at least.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 05:55:07 PM
Quote from: Josquius on August 25, 2022, 11:28:00 AMYeah...This kneejerk "If THE OTHERS like it then it must be bad" stuff that is modern conservatism is really disturbing. Wonder how long it'll be before state governments start rolling coal?

States like West Virginia might do that but Texas doesn't really have any coal to roll. We might just let the methane flow or something.

Of course we are leaders in wind and solar and the landowners in the West Texas desert are profiting immensely off of that so I don't think we are going to see a big move against that anytime soon. I don't think the countryfolk in Ohio stand to make the big bucks as much.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 26, 2022, 06:02:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 05:53:26 PMThey are doing a lot of stuff over there with storage so I think they plan a big expansion on intermittent renewables in a short period of time. Those do have the advantage of fast mobilization. We'll see. They are giving themselves a lot of time at least.

Didn't they recently kneecap incentives for solar panels, or am I misremembering?

*edit*
Residential I mean
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 06:14:00 PM
Quote from: HVC on August 26, 2022, 06:02:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 05:53:26 PMThey are doing a lot of stuff over there with storage so I think they plan a big expansion on intermittent renewables in a short period of time. Those do have the advantage of fast mobilization. We'll see. They are giving themselves a lot of time at least.

Didn't they recently kneecap incentives for solar panels, or am I misremembering?

*edit*
Residential I mean

In Texas? Not where I live but as more solar panels were going on the system lots of co-ops (remember socialism rules in energy even in the US) ended their net-metering programs and since they are monopolies lots of end users got fucked with little recourse. They were going to do it in mine, Pedernales EC, but we all bitched and they relented, this being a socialist collectively owned enterprise if there are enough of us bitching they have to do what we say. So like most things in this state for energy purposes: it depends.

However, Federal incentives remain and just got a massive shot in the arm with the recent bill.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 26, 2022, 06:16:17 PM
Sorry I thought were still talking about California.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 06:16:35 PM
Back about twenty years ago we used to have goals in renewable energy sources that we did have some programs to reach but we smashed through those so quickly and those programs were never renewed as wind and solar have just kind of exploded organically (well with the aid of Uncle Sam but it's not like Natural Gas plants are free market things either) since then.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 26, 2022, 06:18:56 PM
Quote from: HVC on August 26, 2022, 06:16:17 PMSorry I thought were still talking about California.

Oh sorry. I have no idea. I work in energy regulation in Texas so I know stuff here.

They might have for much the same reason. Rooftop solar has really exploded and that is not exactly a great thing for energy companies as there gets to be more and more of it. They sell less power and it starts to complicate operations of the distribution system.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 29, 2022, 05:58:45 AM
Near record monsoon rains in Pakistan, many districts are underwater.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 31, 2022, 12:24:11 AM
The summer months Jun/Jul/Aug in Austria in review.

Hottest summers on records, deviation from 1961-1990 average in degrees:

(https://i.postimg.cc/MGXBVKmt/image.png)

Average deviation from 1961-1990 average per year:

(https://i.postimg.cc/8PVL9GTP/image.png)

Days with with at least 30 degrees per Austrian state capitals, comparison 1961-1990, 1991-2020, and 2022. Note for Vienna: the station at Hohe Warte is on the outskirts; the Inner City which heats up/stores heat will likely might have a higher number of 30+ days.

(https://i.postimg.cc/T1PvYF6y/image.png)

Austrian meteorologist society has more details: https://www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/klima/news/viertwaermster-sommer-der-messgeschichte-1

What I find interesting is that despite the higher temperatures and less rainfall, the duration of sunshine has not changed by much.

Temp deviation 2022 compared to 1961-1990 and 1991-2022, respectively:

(https://wostal.at/zamg_bilder/sommer-2022_temperatur-abweichung_zamg_klein.png)

Rainfall deviation:

(https://wostal.at/zamg_bilder/sommer-2022_niederschlag-abweichung_zamg_klein.png)

Duration of sunshine deviation:

(https://wostal.at/zamg_bilder/sommer-2022_sonne-abweichung_zamg_klein.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: jimmy olsen on August 31, 2022, 05:18:23 AM
"This year's flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

"It's all one big ocean, there's no dry land to pump the water out,"

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pakistan-minister-1-3-of-the-country-under-water-from-monsoon-floods/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 01, 2022, 05:46:56 AM
Some good news. Makes me question the calls for nuclear. I do ponder quite how much we could build at once if there was maximum political support, there will be a limit of available turbines and people to set them up.

BBC News - Hornsea 2: North Sea wind farm claims title of world's largest
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62731923
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 01, 2022, 06:26:11 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 01, 2022, 05:46:56 AMSome good news. Makes me question the calls for nuclear. I do ponder quite how much we could build at once if there was maximum political support, there will be a limit of available turbines and people to set them up.

BBC News - Hornsea 2: North Sea wind farm claims title of world's largest
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62731923

QuoteThe Hornsea 2 project can generate enough electricity to power about 1.3 million homes - that's enough for a city the size of Manchester.

QuoteHornsea 2 has taken the title of "world's largest" from its neighbour Hornsea 1. It covers an area about four and half time the size of Liverpool. With even larger projects under construction nearby in the North Sea it's unlikely its title will last long. The Dogger Bank wind farm, which when fully built will be able to power 6m homes, is due to start coming on stream next year.

Each of the 165 turbines in Hornsea 2 stands about 200m tall from the sea level to the top of the 81m blades.

Is that really better than nuclear? Surely keeping 165 turbines each put on 200 meters tall poles operational over a two-Liverpool size area of the North Sea is more complicated than keeping a nuclear plant humming?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 01, 2022, 06:42:52 AM
I'm not sure the complexity matters too much. But they are variable - a factor right now in the UK (and I think France - not sure about the rest of Europe) is that wind is producing less than it should because we're having unseasonably still weather. From my understanding we are still nowhere near where we need to be on storage for just renewables.

Plus, obviously, we need to massively increase grid capacity and electricity generation in the next decade. Off-shore wind's a huge part of that for the UK, we should also be throwing money at research particularly into storage. But my basic view on climate is we're not in a position to be picky and should more or less do everything at once - we need, in my view, either nuclear or gas as a bridge and baseline fuel. Given everything I think nuclear's probably the better bet for the UK, it woon't be for everyone.

But it is still good news - more of this.

Edit: And on that I see Johnson's last big speech as PM is at Sizewell committing more funding (and calling for his successor to follow through) on Sizewell C - which is right. Hopefully it does create a bit of pressure on them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 01, 2022, 07:58:55 AM
QuoteEdit: And on that I see Johnson's last big speech as PM is at Sizewell committing more funding (and calling for his successor to follow through) on Sizewell C - which is right. Hopefully it does create a bit of pressure on them.

I do wonder if you managed to write "Johnson" "committing" and "create a bit of pressure on them" with a straight face.  :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 01, 2022, 09:02:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on September 01, 2022, 06:26:11 AMIs that really better than nuclear? Surely keeping 165 turbines each put on 200 meters tall poles operational over a two-Liverpool size area of the North Sea is more complicated than keeping a nuclear plant humming?
The main difference is that Hornsea 2 was first planned in 2016, construction started 2020 and it is now fully operational in mid 2022. It's also possible to finance and insure it privately. And yes, keeping 165 wind generators operational is much easier than a single reactor.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 02, 2022, 12:14:55 AM
Greenland ice cap melting is now inevitable, no matter what we do.  Sea level will rise of a minimum of 27 cm (10.6").

Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/29/major-sea-level-rise-caused-by-melting-of-greenland-ice-cap-is-now-inevitable-27cm-climate)

There's a link to the study inside the article.

While I am safe where I live, there are some areas not too far from here where the roads will have to be moved sooner than later.  Floods that go over the roads are already getting more&more frequent every year.

And some cottages along the St-Lawrence will have to think about some additional protections from the high autumn tides within a couple of decades. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 02, 2022, 12:47:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 02, 2022, 12:14:55 AMWhile I am safe where I live, there are some areas not too far from here where the roads will have to be moved sooner than later.  Floods that go over the roads are already getting more&more frequent every year.

And some cottages along the St-Lawrence will have to think about some additional protections from the high autumn tides within a couple of decades. :(

The town I grew up in sees more frequent flooding these days. I lived there for the first 20+ years of my life, and there was one flood that reached some of the main roads during that time. It was a major event. There was the occasional high water that flooded a meadow or two or got close to some of the dikes along the river, but none that flooded the town itself.

They had 4 or 5 such floods in the past 10 years (though a major part of that is building on and sealing of land alongside the river - former meadows that would flood first).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 02, 2022, 01:12:28 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 02, 2022, 12:47:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on September 02, 2022, 12:14:55 AMWhile I am safe where I live, there are some areas not too far from here where the roads will have to be moved sooner than later.  Floods that go over the roads are already getting more&more frequent every year.

And some cottages along the St-Lawrence will have to think about some additional protections from the high autumn tides within a couple of decades. :(

The town I grew up in sees more frequent flooding these days. I lived there for the first 20+ years of my life, and there was one flood that reached some of the main roads during that time. It was a major event. There was the occasional high water that flooded a meadow or two or got close to some of the dikes along the river, but none that flooded the town itself.

They had 4 or 5 such floods in the past 10 years (though a major part of that is building on and sealing of land alongside the river - former meadows that would flood first).
The road that gets flooded in the nearby town is, thankfully, now major road, but in the eastern part of the province, the main road, one of the two that crosses the entire province on each shore of the St-Lawrence will have to be completely rebuilt further away from the river due to constant flooding.  We're there now.  Didn't think I'd see it so soon.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 08, 2022, 08:41:27 AM
Feels like an important point - for the first time ever more people are employed in green energy than fossil fuels:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FcHY1kZXgAYt9Vm?format=jpg&name=small)

Given the national security/green industrial complex angle of the recent law in the US this feels like another important step on renewables as industrial policy (which was also Johnson's big angle - it's the right thing to do but there'll be shedloads of jobs and we can use it to "level up" areas etc).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 08, 2022, 07:09:36 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission-vehicles.html

GM will stop making gas cars by 2035.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2022, 12:00:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 08, 2022, 07:09:36 PMhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission-vehicles.html

GM will stop making gas cars by 2035.

Beaten by Saab, Delorean, and many others.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: celedhring on September 09, 2022, 01:13:04 AM
Quote from: The Brain on September 09, 2022, 12:00:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 08, 2022, 07:09:36 PMhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission-vehicles.html

GM will stop making gas cars by 2035.

Beaten by Saab, Delorean, and many others.

Yeah, by that time sales of new gas cars will be banned in many jurisdictions (EU, UK, several US states), hardly a bold move by GM.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 09, 2022, 02:10:39 AM
No, not a bold move, but a sign of the times.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 09, 2022, 02:13:30 AM
I'm looking forward to the GOP slamming this move and trying to push (state) laws that take away public contracts. :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 09, 2022, 02:14:57 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 09, 2022, 02:13:30 AMI'm looking forward to the GOP slamming this move and trying to push (state) laws that take away public contracts. :P

GM has plants throughout the south.  I don't think the GOP wants to take on GM.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 03:02:18 AM
This feels like a good point to repeat my grievance of regularly seeing very expensive and big "hybrid" cars with their green "look, I have a tax break!" licence plates on the road (my current favourite is the Mustang SUV (?!!) parking on our street sometimes, but boat-sized SUVs also have them), while my old beaten up car having punitive levels of taxes on it while used car prices have risen so that if I wanted to buy this exact same make and year of car, it would cost me right about the same amount despite 6 years have passed since, not to mention something newer. Ok, fine, I COULD buy a hybrid if I wanted to, but I also want a home on this side of 2030. And there must be people genuinly unable to afford better cars, who are getting punished for it while well-off bastards pay little to no tax to reward them for putting in a few batteries to bloody land cruisers.

I don't deny the climate crisis we are in, but "addressing" it has been an upper middle-class circle jerk.   
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 09, 2022, 03:38:58 AM
Electric cars and hybrids are a huge disreaction from actually addressing climate change.
Increasingly I note a number of people shifting from denial onto being super pro electric cars; anything to minimise change.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 04:03:11 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 09, 2022, 03:38:58 AMElectric cars and hybrids are a huge disreaction from actually addressing climate change.
Increasingly I note a number of people shifting from denial onto being super pro electric cars; anything to minimise change.

Yep it's "look I bought an expensive big fuel gulper that can sometimes run a mile on its batteries, I have done my bit against climate change, even have a tax break to prove it!"
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 09, 2022, 05:03:03 AM
The growth in numbers of big SUVs in the UK really annoys me. I want to ban them  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 09, 2022, 05:49:43 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2022, 05:03:03 AMThe growth in numbers of big SUVs in the UK really annoys me. I want to ban them  :ph34r:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you want to ban nearly all cars? :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on September 09, 2022, 05:55:36 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 09, 2022, 05:03:03 AMThe growth in numbers of big SUVs in the UK really annoys me. I want to ban them  :ph34r:

Banning people inclined to buy them would be even more effective.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 09, 2022, 07:35:39 AM
Jeeps in the UK are like guns in the US.
They're obviously bad, they obviously need banning.
But when the roads are so full and dangerous you can understand why people want them.
Which in turn makes the roads more full and dangerous....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 09, 2022, 07:36:20 AM
Quote from: HVC on September 09, 2022, 05:49:43 AMCorrect me if I'm wrong, but don't you want to ban nearly all cars? :D
It's a baby step :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 09, 2022, 07:42:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 09, 2022, 07:35:39 AMJeeps in the UK are like guns in the US.
They're obviously bad, they obviously need banning.
But when the roads are so full and dangerous you can understand why people want them.
Which in turn makes the roads more full and dangerous....

Full and dangerous roads?  :huh:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 09, 2022, 08:16:40 AM
Quote from: The Larch on September 09, 2022, 07:42:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 09, 2022, 07:35:39 AMJeeps in the UK are like guns in the US.
They're obviously bad, they obviously need banning.
But when the roads are so full and dangerous you can understand why people want them.
Which in turn makes the roads more full and dangerous....

Full and dangerous roads?  :huh:

Yeah the roads around here are often full, but that makes them relatively safe as all of that SUV infested traffic isn't moving anywhere.

It's just an impart status driven affectation to have an SUV because you 'need to be/feel safer'.
And of course SUVs are more deadly to other road users especially pedestrians if they're hit or rundown by them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 08:58:26 AM
Yeah I think choke full roads actually make them safer. You can see that on motorways where the jackasses are much bolder than on regular roads where something coming in the opposing lane even if you can't see it is pretty much guaranteed.

Big SUVs are ridiculously unnecessary in the UK. You can so often see them struggle on the small medieval streets. They are just simply way too big to be even remotely practical.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on September 09, 2022, 09:08:18 AM
Big SUVs (ugly failed hybrid vehicle category) are ridiculously unnecessary, if not dangerous (drivers "feeling" safe not seeing pedestrians), in all European cities.
I can see some value for jeeps when living in the country side, when needing off-road capacity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 09, 2022, 10:06:38 AM
I currently drive a small hybrid SUV in one of the bigger German cities and I quite like it.

On the hybrid drivetrain: It has about 50 km electric range, maybe 40 km in winter. About 9.6k of the total 18.8k were driven with battery.
Basically the normal commute and shopping, while most of the rest is longer trips on the autobahn 
Energy consumption is 2.5 l plus 9.9 kWh per 100 km.

On the SUV form: It's more comfortable to get in and out, also easier to lift a small kid in and out. On visibility I have a 360 degree camera, so at least for parking it is no problem.

There are lots of incentives to get such a car as well: much cheaper taxation, free parking in the city.

Edit: I consider getting the full electric version of that car next.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 12:42:57 PM
Zanza we are not talking about compact SUVs I do like those. But I don't think you can imagine the number of Land Rovers and massive BMW SUVs over here. They are ridiculously oversized for English roads.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2022, 01:01:59 PM
Quote from: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 12:42:57 PMZanza we are not talking about compact SUVs I do like those. But I don't think you can imagine the number of Land Rovers and massive BMW SUVs over here. They are ridiculously oversized for English roads.

Yeah, same problem here.  Hate them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 09, 2022, 01:13:15 PM
Only SUVs I hate are Porsche's. The look stupid as hell and defeats the whole purpose of a Porsche
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 09, 2022, 01:25:25 PM
Quote from: Tamas on September 09, 2022, 12:42:57 PMZanza we are not talking about compact SUVs I do like those. But I don't think you can imagine the number of Land Rovers and massive BMW SUVs over here. They are ridiculously oversized for English roads.
Ok. I have no way to compare how many of those are in the UK versus e.g. Germany, France or so. In general the large SUV segment has grown in most countries over the last decade.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 09, 2022, 01:30:11 PM
Quote from: HVC on September 09, 2022, 01:13:15 PMOnly SUVs I hate are Porsche's. The look stupid as hell and defeats the whole purpose of a Porsche
Porsche actually makes more Cayenne and Macan than they do sport cars.

Anyway,may I introduce you to the Lamborghini Urus?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Lamborghini_Urus_20180306_Genf_2018.jpg/1280px-Lamborghini_Urus_20180306_Genf_2018.jpg)

Even Ferrari will make a kind of SUV in 2023 with the Purosangue. Also the RR Cullinan and the Bentley Bentayga are horrible if you ask me.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on September 10, 2022, 05:10:49 AM
Quote from: Zanza on September 09, 2022, 01:30:11 PMPorsche actually makes more Cayenne and Macan than they do sport cars.

Anyway,may I introduce you to the Lamborghini Urus?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Lamborghini_Urus_20180306_Genf_2018.jpg/1280px-Lamborghini_Urus_20180306_Genf_2018.jpg)

Even Ferrari will make a kind of SUV in 2023 with the Purosangue. Also the RR Cullinan and the Bentley Bentayga are horrible if you ask me.
:frusty:
 :x
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on September 15, 2022, 01:30:23 PM
QuotePatagonia's billionaire owner gives away company to fight climate crisis
Founder Yvon Chouinard announced that all the company's profits will go into saving the planet

Setting a new example in environmental corporate leadership, the billionaire owner of Patagonia is giving the entire company away to fight the Earth's climate devastation, he announced on Wednesday.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who turned his passion for rock climbing into one of the world's most successful sportswear brands, is giving the entire company to a uniquely structured trust and non-profit, designed to pump all of the company's profits into saving the planet.

"As of now, Earth is our only shareholder," the company announced. "ALL profits, in perpetuity, will go to our mission to 'save our home planet'."

Chouinard, 83, worked with his wife and two children as well as teams of company lawyers to create a structure that will allow Patagonia to continue to operate as a for-profit company whose proceeds will go to benefit environmental efforts.

"If we have any hope of a thriving planet – much less a thriving business – 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have," said Chouinard in a statement. "This is another way we've found to do our part."

Chouinard's family donated 2% of all stock and all decision-making authority to a trust, which will oversee the company's mission and values. The other 98% of the company's stock will go to a non-profit called the Holdfast Collective, which "will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities, as quickly as possible", according to the statement.

Each year, the money Patagonia makes after reinvesting in the business will be distributed to the non-profit to help fight the environmental crisis.

The structure, the statement said, was designed to avoid selling the company or taking it public, which could have meant a change in its values.

"Instead of 'going public', you could say we're 'going purpose'," said Chouinard. "Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we'll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth."

Patagonia's new direction is designed to set an example that disproves the old shareholder capitalism axiom that corporate goals other than profit will just confuse investors, wrote Patagonia's board chair, Charles Conn, in an opinion piece in Fortune magazine on Wednesday.

"Instead of exploiting natural resources to make shareholder returns, we are turning shareholder capitalism on its head by making the Earth our only shareholder," he wrote.

Chouinard and Patagonia have long been groundbreakers in environmental activism and employee benefits. In its nearly 50 years in operation, the Ventura, California-based company has been known for extensive benefits for employees, including on-site nurseries and afternoons off on good surf days.

In the 80s, the company began donating 1% of its sales to environmental groups, a program formalized in 2001 as the "1% for the Planet Scheme". The program has resulted in $140m in donations for preservation and restoration of the natural environment, according to the company.

Patagonia was one of the earliest companies to become a b-Corp, submitting to certification as meeting certain environmental and social standards, and recently it changed its mission to state: "We're in business to save our home planet."

Chouinard, the famously eccentric entrepreneur who started his business fashioning metal climbing pitons (or spikes to wedge into cracks while rock climbing) and lived out of his van at climbing destinations for many years, was horrified to be seen as a billionaire, he told the New York Times.

"I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off," he said. "I don't have $1bn in the bank. I don't drive Lexuses."

The Chouinard family are at the forefront of charitable giving, philanthropy and trust experts told the New York Times.

"This family is a way outlier when you consider that most billionaires give only a tiny fraction of their net worth away every year," David Callahan, founder of the website Inside Philanthropy, told the newspaper.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 15, 2022, 02:23:38 PM
Well looks like I am going to be a Patagonia customer from here on.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 15, 2022, 02:57:07 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 15, 2022, 02:23:38 PMWell looks like I am going to be a Patagonia customer from here on.

Oh. you and AR are going climbing together?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 15, 2022, 03:09:52 PM
No. I don't trust the judgement of somebody who thinks Dorsey should have won the Heisman.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 15, 2022, 03:14:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 15, 2022, 03:09:52 PMNo. I don't trust the judgement of somebody who thinks Dorsey should have won the Heisman.

It always cracks me up / depresses me to realize that when we started this forum Ken Dorsey was a college player and finalist for the Heisman.  And that today Ken Dorsey is 41, has been retired for 12 years, and is the offensive co-ordinator for the Bills (who supposedly are favourites to win the Superbowl).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 15, 2022, 03:26:34 PM
You know, I never knew what that username meant. I always thought it was just a odd name.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on September 15, 2022, 03:45:16 PM
Quote from: Josquius on September 15, 2022, 03:26:34 PMYou know, I never knew what that username meant. I always thought it was just a odd name.

:o

Ken Dorsey was a Miami University Quarterback (American football).  His team won a national championship in 2001 and lost in overtime in 2002. The Heisman trophy is the trophy given to the most outstanding player in college football.  Ken Dorsey was a finalist both years, but did not win.

"Dorsey4Heisman" just means our Dorsey thought Ken Dorsey should win the Heisman trophy.  I don't know the timing - if he made the name while Ken Dorsey was a finalist, or afterwards because he thought Ken Dorsey was robbed.

Anyways after college he had a generally poor professional career, playing 17 games over 5 seasons, before finishing up as a backup qauarterback in the CFL.  He then moved on to coaching.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on September 15, 2022, 08:57:30 PM
Dorsey made his username on Paradox in 2001 when Ken Dorsey was leading the Miami Hurricanes to glory. By the time he migrated to Languish in 2003 his username was already outdated.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 14, 2022, 07:00:49 AM
I guess it gets them talked about - but I don't know if to the right ends

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/14/just-stop-oil-activists-throw-soup-at-van-goghs-sunflowers

QuoteJust Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Activists from Just Stop Oil have thrown tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London.

There were gasps, roars and a shout of "Oh my gosh!" in room 43 of the gallery as two young supporters of the climate protest group threw the liquid over the painting, which is protected by glass, just after 11am.

They removed jackets to reveal Just Stop Oil T-shirts before gluing themselves to the wall beneath the artwork, which is one of the gallery's most important treasures.

"What is worth more, art or life?" said one of the activists. "Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

"The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can't even afford to heat a tin of soup."

National Gallery staff quickly cleared the room.

For the past two weeks, the group has been staging sit-down protests on roads around central London, infuriating drivers and commuters, but Friday's action appeared to be an escalation of its tactics.

Bystanders in the National Gallery had mixed feelings about the action. One man, who declined to give his name, said he could understand their cause, but worried about targeting "a beautiful piece of art, which is the best of humanity".

He added: "They may be trying to get people to think about the issues but all they end up doing is getting people really annoyed and angry.

"The typical unthinking individual who doesn't think about the big issues of the planet is not the kind of person who walks around the National Gallery."

Alienating people from their cause was a concern, said Alex De Koning, a Just Stop Oil spokesperson, who spoke to the Guardian outside the gallery after the room was cleared.

"But this is not The X Factor," he added. "We are not trying to make friends here, we are trying to make change and unfortunately this is the way that change happens."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 14, 2022, 07:03:29 AM
Just Stop Oil thinks that oil should be cheaper?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on October 14, 2022, 07:07:56 AM
Seems rather extreme, even if they do not like oil paintings.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 07:46:42 AM
I tend to have very limited sympathy for those protesters and looking at their materials them and Animal Rebellion and the other splinter groups from Extinction Rebellion (where I have more sympathy) remind me a little bit of the way cults splinter into more extreme, doomsday variations - that their approach is correct, former allies are compromising with society etc. I was in the area at the weekend and saw that, I think Animal Rebellion, we're blocking one of the bridges which makes more sense to me as a protest.

Separately just saw an incredible estimate that about a quarter of the UK's carbon footprint is advertising/adland. I knew the carbon impact of online advertising was horrendous (globally, I believe it's about the same as aviation) but had no idea more broadly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 14, 2022, 08:28:56 AM
I did just recall when XR thought they'd fuck with east Londoners on the DLR. :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 14, 2022, 08:34:12 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe

QuoteAnimal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

Huge scale of human-driven loss of species demands urgent action, say world's leading scientists

Earth's wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale.

From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. Two years ago, the figure stood at 68%, four years ago, it was at 60%.

Many scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction – the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs – and that it is being driven by humans. The report's 89 authors are urging world leaders to reach an ambitious agreement at the Cop15 biodiversity summit in Canada this December and to slash carbon emissions to limit global heating to below 1.5C this decade to halt the rampant destruction of nature.

The Living Planet Index combines global analysis of 32,000 populations of 5,230 animal species to measure changes in the abundance of wildlife across continents and taxa, producing a graph akin to a stock index of life on Earth.

Latin America and the Caribbean region – including the Amazon – has seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF-UK, said: "This report tells us that the worst declines are in the Latin America region, home to the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon. Deforestation rates there are accelerating, stripping this unique ecosystem not just of trees but of the wildlife that depends on them and of the Amazon's ability to act as one of our greatest allies in the fight against climate change."

Africa had the second largest fall at 66%, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 55% and North America at 20%. Europe and Central Asia experienced an 18% fall. The total loss is akin to the human population of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania and China disappearing, according to the report.

"Despite the science, the catastrophic projections, the impassioned speeches and promises, the burning forests, submerged countries, record temperatures and displaced millions, world leaders continue to sit back and watch our world burn in front of our eyes," said Steele. "The climate and nature crises, their fates entwined, are not some faraway threat our grandchildren will solve with still-to-be-discovered technology."

She added: "We need our new prime minister to show the UK is serious about helping people, nature and the economy to thrive, by ensuring every promise for our world is kept. Falling short will be neither forgotten nor forgiven."

Leading nature charities have accused Liz Truss of putting the economy before nature protection and the environment, and are concerned rare animals and plants could lose their protections when her promise of a "bonfire" of EU red tape happens later this year.

The report points out that not all countries have the same starting points with nature decline and that the UK has only 50% of its biodiversity richness compared with historical levels, according to the biodiversity intactness index, making it one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

Land use change is still the most important driver of biodiversity loss across the planet, according to the report. Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK, said: "At a global level, primarily the declines we are seeing are driven by the loss and fragmentation of habitat driven by the global agricultural system and its expansion into intact habitat converting it to produce food."

The researchers underscore the increased difficulty animals are having moving through terrestrial landscapes as they are blocked by infrastructure and farmland. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000km (600 miles) remain free-flowing along their entire length, while just 10% of the world's protected areas on land are connected.

Future declines are not inevitable, say the authors, who pinpoint the Himalayas, south-east Asia, the east coast of Australia, the Albertine Rift and Eastern Arc mountains in eastern Africa, and the Amazon basin among priority areas.

The IUCN is also developing a standard to measure the conservation potential of an animal, known as its green status, which will allow researchers to plot a path to recovery for some of the one million species threatened with extinction on Earth. The pink pigeon, burrowing bettong and Sumatran rhino were highlighted as species with good conservation potential in a study last year.

Robin Freeman, head of the indicators and assessments unit at ZSL, said it was clear that humanity is eroding the very foundations of life, and urgent action is needed. "In order to see any bending of the curve of biodiversity loss ... it's not just about conservation it's about changing production and consumption – and the only way that we are going to be able to legislate or call for that is to have these clear measurable targets that ask for recovery of abundance, reduction of extinction risk and the ceasing of extinctions at Cop15 in December."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 14, 2022, 10:34:07 AM
Prior to COVID I was optimistic that we would reach a critical mass of people who care enough about climate change for politicians to take the steps needed to address the issues in the short time we have left before reaching 2C of warming.

COVID, Trumpism, UK going insane, and war in the Ukraine make it highly unlikely this becomes a major political issue until it is too late to avoid 2C.

And then frankly we are just into full mitigation mode.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AM
Not sure the UK going insane is making a difference on net zero. I think that's just politics as vibes. Climate's a consensus issue here:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8XQxTrXsAMqrIR.jpg)

It's low key probably one of the biggest successees of the government in the last twelve years which they don't really get any credit for because the vibe is that Tory = anti-environment/climate sceptic, even though that's not really true.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 14, 2022, 10:52:56 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AMNot sure the UK going insane is making a difference on net zero. I think that's just politics as vibes. Climate's a consensus issue here:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8XQxTrXsAMqrIR.jpg)

It's low key probably one of the biggest successees of the government in the last twelve years which they don't really get any credit for because the vibe is that Tory = anti-environment/climate sceptic, even though that's not really true.

Lets see:

Dozens of new oil and gas drilling licences announced in the last few days.

The replacement for the EU farming regulations so watered down as to be non-effective, certainly not prioritising the farming environment over cheap produce.

Water companies allowed to pollute in an unfettered way; rivers becoming open sewers.

Tory ministers, and liz truss boasted about this, slashing environment agency farm inspection to a small, very small percentage of the previous amount. And despite 50% of inspections uncovering pollution, not one single prosecution since ministers told DEFRA to back off.

 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 11:21:23 AM
Quote from: mongers on October 14, 2022, 10:52:56 AMLets see:
Fine - but that doesn't change the fact the the fall in carbon emissions in the last 12 years is a fact. It's been substantial, supported by government policy and a good thing. If cutting carbon emissions is a priority then they deserve some credit.

QuoteDozens of new oil and gas drilling licences announced in the last few days.
A licensing round was opened. No new licences have been awarded - if you want to bet on the longevity of this government maybe some will.

In the current context I'm not sure that new gas drilling especially isn't a good idea. We (and Europe) can't transition immediately. Gas is being used as a weapon. The UK doesn't have vast reserves but could produce a little bit more that might help. As I say I think on Ukraine the calculation is different for the US or Canada - but from a European perspective I think economically and morally it makes energy transition even more urgent. It's a catalyst for that and I think that applies to China and Asia too economically because they're also exposed to the global gas market.

Obviously the unfortunate counter-point to that is that Europe doesn't really matter that much. The EU and UK collectively are about a third of China's emissions - we obviously still need to do more (and historically emitted a lot so should consider climate justice/reparations). But in terms of the actual environment it's really all about China's energy transition.

QuoteThe replacement for the EU farming regulations so watered down as to be non-effective, certainly not prioritising the farming environment over cheap produce.
Again a little bit in flux over this with the current government.

Johnson's government had announced and designed new land management and subsidies that were widely praised including by environmental campaigners. Payments were tied to sustainable farming or things like re-wilding or re-forestation etc.

Truss wanted to cancel that and revert to more focus on agriculture.

And I think there's a debate over priorities here. My general view is that we should go for the Johnson model. But in a world of inflation, climate events, shock to food supplies and massive transport of imported food I'm not sure domestic production is necessarily a bad idea. I think those are lower priority or can be mitigated - but that's the trade-off.

QuoteWater companies allowed to pollute in an unfettered way; rivers becoming open sewers.
Totally agree - they should be renationalised.

QuoteTory ministers, and liz truss boasted about this, slashing environment agency farm inspection to a small, very small percentage of the previous amount. And despite 50% of inspections uncovering pollution, not one single prosecution since ministers told DEFRA to back off.
Yeah again totally agree on austerity and cutting state agencies.

But I think there is also a clash of what we mean by environment. I think the policies and solutions to the carbon emissions and climate probably clash with conservation and protecting the "rural environment". It's AOC/New Green Deal/Green Industrial Revolution view v the Greta/Just Stop Oil/conservation/de-growth view - because they're not the same but they're both environmental/green. Not all good things go together.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: frunk on October 14, 2022, 12:46:34 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8XQxTrXsAMqrIR.jpg)

This is one of the most confusing graphs I've seen in a while.  It's a percentage of "relative change".  It isn't clear what it is a percentage of, presumably not annual but I'm not sure what.  Above and below 0 is a negative percentage which means it's the same either way?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 14, 2022, 01:00:11 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on October 14, 2022, 07:07:56 AMSeems rather extreme, even if they do not like oil paintings.

they're just a step removed from killing people.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on October 14, 2022, 01:18:59 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AMNot sure the UK going insane is making a difference on net zero. I think that's just politics as vibes. Climate's a consensus issue here:

What the hell does this graph even say? It goes negative both directions?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 14, 2022, 03:28:00 PM
Quote from: frunk on October 14, 2022, 12:46:34 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8XQxTrXsAMqrIR.jpg)

This is one of the most confusing graphs I've seen in a while.  It's a percentage of "relative change".  It isn't clear what it is a percentage of, presumably not annual but I'm not sure what.  Above and below 0 is a negative percentage which means it's the same either way?

It starts at 1991 so I guess it's relative to that?

Pretty sure they fucked up the labels on the left.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on October 14, 2022, 09:50:41 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 14, 2022, 01:18:59 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 10:42:38 AMNot sure the UK going insane is making a difference on net zero. I think that's just politics as vibes. Climate's a consensus issue here:

What the hell does this graph even say? It goes negative both directions?
That's why I hate statistics. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on October 14, 2022, 10:39:06 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 09, 2022, 12:00:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 08, 2022, 07:09:36 PMhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission-vehicles.html

GM will stop making gas cars by 2035.

Beaten by Saab, Delorean, and many others.
:lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2022, 10:50:51 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 14, 2022, 07:00:49 AM"What is worth more, art or life?" said one of the activists. "Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

These guys are in a contest to see who can make the least sense.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on October 15, 2022, 04:08:43 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2022, 10:50:51 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 14, 2022, 07:00:49 AM"What is worth more, art or life?" said one of the activists. "Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

These guys are in a contest to see who can make the least sense.

I think it is performative, to impress other members of whatever micro-sub-culture they belong to. unfortunately they are a great help to those who don't want to make the necessary changes  :mad:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on October 16, 2022, 05:41:17 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 14, 2022, 07:46:42 AMI tend to have very limited sympathy for those protesters and looking at their materials them and Animal Rebellion and the other splinter groups from Extinction Rebellion (where I have more sympathy) remind me a little bit of the way cults splinter into more extreme, doomsday variations - that their approach is correct, former allies are compromising with society etc. I was in the area at the weekend and saw that, I think Animal Rebellion, we're blocking one of the bridges which makes more sense to me as a protest.

Separately just saw an incredible estimate that about a quarter of the UK's carbon footprint is advertising/adland. I knew the carbon impact of online advertising was horrendous (globally, I believe it's about the same as aviation) but had no idea more broadly.

Animal Rebellion is busy spilling milk in shops. :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 16, 2022, 06:21:08 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/15/alaska-snow-crab-season-climate-change/


QuoteAlaska cancels snow crab season for first time after population collapses

Alaska will cancel the upcoming winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea for the first time, and bar fishers from catching king crabs in the Bristol Bay for a second consecutive year, because of a sharp decline in their estimated population.

This week's announcements by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game deal a severe blow to fishers that make a living off the crabs. They also bring back to the forefront questions about the role of climate change in the rapid decline of the snow crab population: The number of juvenile snow crabs was at record highs just a few years ago, before some 90 percent of snow crabs mysteriously disappeared ahead of last season.

Alaskan officials said they had consulted carefully with stakeholders before canceling the season. They said they were aware of the impact of the closures on "harvesters, industry, and communities" but that they had to balance economic needs with conservation.

"These are truly unprecedented and troubling times for Alaska's iconic crab fisheries," said Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association that says it represents some 70 percent of local crab harvesters, in a statement. "Second and third generation crab-fishing families will go out of business due to the lack of meaningful protections by decision-makers to help crab stocks recover."

Alaska's crab fishing industry is worth more than $200 million, according to a report by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, which promotes seafood. The state supplies 6 percent of the world's king, snow, tanner and Dungeness crabs, per the institute.

Male Alaska snow crabs can have a shell width of up to 6 inches. King crabs are much larger, and eating one in a restaurant can cost hundreds of dollars.

The industry is a crucial source of income for many of the 65 communities that make up the Western Alaska Community Development Quota Program, which reserves parts of each year's harvest for remote villages that have limited economic opportunities, The Washington Post previously reported.

For about a decade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has documented a continued decline in the estimated population of mature male snow crabs — the only kind allowed to be harvested — in the Bering Sea. But hopes were raised after a record number of juvenile crabs were spotted on the ocean bottom in 2018 and 2019, suggesting a possible boom for future crab seasons.

(https://i.postimg.cc/y88skmzy/image.png)

But for reasons that are still not entirely clear, the population appears to have crashed. The federal government now designates snow crabs as overfished. The stock of some red king crabs, the largest of the commercially harvested crabs in size, is considered "below the target level" by the NOAA in some waters. Last year, Alaska closed king crab season for the first time since the 1990s.

Scientists have expressed suspicion that warmer temperatures in recent years have been responsible. Alaska's summers and oceans have become warmer, scientists say, resulting in a significantly higher seasonal loss of sea ice. The U.S. Environment Protection Agency said in a recent report that rising temperatures may have forced species such as snow crabs further north or into deeper seas.

"In the Bering Sea, Alaska pollock, snow crab, and Pacific halibut have generally shifted away from the coast since the early 1980s," the EPA wrote. "They have also moved northward by an average of 19 miles."

A December 2020 study co-written by Alaska fishing officials also found that the decrease in the geographical size of snow crab habitats could be linked to warming.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on October 16, 2022, 06:42:34 AM
Must be because of all the reality shows, of course.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on October 16, 2022, 08:10:14 AM
These are the warmest Pilares (local festivities) I can remember.

This past week is usually when you need to start wearing coats. People are instead enjoying a beer outside wearing T-shirts.

Meteo app say to expect up to 32º C this next week.  :wacko:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 16, 2022, 11:24:14 AM
Quote from: The Larch on October 16, 2022, 06:42:34 AMMust be because of all the reality shows, of course.

I thought they got drafted by Putin...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: celedhring on October 16, 2022, 11:43:02 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on October 16, 2022, 08:10:14 AMThese are the warmest Pilares (local festivities) I can remember.

This past week is usually when you need to start wearing coats. People are instead enjoying a beer outside wearing T-shirts.

Meteo app say to expect up to 32º C this next week.  :wacko:

I went to the beach today...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on October 16, 2022, 11:52:09 AM
Quote from: celedhring on October 16, 2022, 11:43:02 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on October 16, 2022, 08:10:14 AMThese are the warmest Pilares (local festivities) I can remember.

This past week is usually when you need to start wearing coats. People are instead enjoying a beer outside wearing T-shirts.

Meteo app say to expect up to 32º C this next week.  :wacko:

I went to the beach today...

Here it's raining cats and dogs (for basically the first time since spring), so screw you.  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 16, 2022, 06:41:45 PM
Went to brunch in the restaurant's garden patio.  It is normally closed this time of year and their services only indoors. I wore my shorts and it was a hot summer day. In October.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on October 16, 2022, 08:43:25 PM
Had you guys up there been having the same issues with smokey air as Seattle has had recently?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 17, 2022, 07:29:04 AM
Yeah, lots of smallish fires around the edges of the metro area. The Forests are bone dry.

Rain is supposed to start at the end of the week. Everyone has their fingers crossed that it's true. The long range forecast has been predicting rain at the end of the week for about four weeks now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 23, 2022, 06:54:33 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG75eyBXkNI

This time mashed potatoes on a Monet in Potsdam.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 24, 2022, 05:40:43 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 23, 2022, 06:54:33 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG75eyBXkNI

This time mashed potatoes on a Monet in Potsdam.

the bystanders should be kicking their skulls in so they can't throw bombs later on.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on October 24, 2022, 05:57:47 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 23, 2022, 06:54:33 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG75eyBXkNI

This time mashed potatoes on a Monet in Potsdam.

Dancing is great exercise.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:38:09 AM
One for the "no shit, Sherlock" category.

QuoteEnormous emissions gap between top 1% and poorest, study highlights
'Polluting elite' responsible for same amount of carbon dioxide in a year as poorest 10% are in more than two decades, data shows

The top 1% of earners in the UK are responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year as the bottom 10% over more than two decades, new data has shown.

The findings highlight the enormous gaps between what have been termed "the polluting elite", whose high-carbon lifestyles fuel the climate crisis, and the majority of people, even in developed countries, whose carbon footprints are far smaller.

It would take 26 years for a low earner to produce as much carbon dioxide as the richest do in a year, according to Autonomy's analysis of income and greenhouse gas data from 1998 to 2018, which found that people earning £170,000 or more in 2018 in the UK were responsible for greenhouse gas emissions far greater than the 30% of people earning £21,500 or less in the same year.

The period covered by the dataset ends in 2018, before the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, which disrupted high-carbon activities such as flying.

Autonomy also found that if the UK had started taxing carbon emissions from just the top 1% of income groups two decades ago, the effort could have raised about £126bn by now, which could have gone towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an equitable way, for instance through home insulation for poorer households.

Peter Newell, professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the Autonomy report but has worked extensively on the "polluting elite", told the Guardian the massive gap should be addressed.

"'This new report on the benefits of taxing extreme carbon emitters makes for shocking reading," he said. "On the eve of a critical climate summit [Cop27] in Egypt, and staring down an unprecedented cost of living crisis, it is clear we are not all in this together. Revenue raised from a carbon tax on the wealthiest top 1% of the population would have raised enough money to retrofit nearly 8m homes, keeping us warm this winter and bringing down fuel bills, while providing critical support for renewable energy and making us less dependent on Putin's gas."

The UK is not alone in having such a gulf between high and low earners on greenhouse gas emissions. A growing body of research points to the existence of a "polluting elite" whose lifestyles bear little relation to those of the majority of people. This holds true in developed and developing countries, where the poorest tend to be responsible for a tiny amount of greenhouse gas emissions, while those with most wealth are comparable in their impact with the elite of rich countries.

For instance, in any given year, fewer than half of people in the UK take a flight. But 1% of people are responsible for one-fifth of the overseas flights taken from the UK.

Flying, driving large, expensive cars, owning multiple homes and travelling between them, eating a diet rich in meat and imports, buying more clothes and imported luxury goods are all reasons for the richest generating far higher carbon footprints. Poorer people tend to stay closer to home in small houses and use public transport, while their expenditure on luxuries and items such as "fast fashion" is much smaller.

Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: "The enormous release of carbon emissions by the very richest in society over the past few decades is astonishing. Our analysis suggests that the most effective way for the government to tackle climate change would be to properly tax the rich, through a well-targeted carbon tax scheme."

Taxes on the most polluting activities could target only the rich and need not add to the cost of living crisis for the great majority of people. They could also help to plug the yawning gap in the UK's public finances.

However, the government has preferred to reduce taxes on activities such as flying and driving, despite their environmental impact.

Stronge said the actions taken by most people, such as turning off lights to save energy, would "make no difference if the government doesn't address the fact it's the rich who are disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis".

Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green party, said: "Last year, the Green party called for the UK to show genuine global leadership by introducing a carbon tax at Cop26. As this report demonstrates, such a tax could be a key lever in driving the transition to a cleaner and greener economy.

"But it is also only fair that the top 1% of UK earners, who are disproportionately responsible for such a large amount of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, pay a wealth tax. A modest tax on the wealthiest 1% of households could raise in the region of £70bn and be used to contribute significantly to funding a nationwide home insulation programme, creating warmer, more comfortable homes and bringing bills down for good. Such a tax will particularly benefit the poorest 10%, who are the least responsible for the UK's carbon emissions."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on November 01, 2022, 03:17:11 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 23, 2022, 06:54:33 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG75eyBXkNI

This time mashed potatoes on a Monet in Potsdam.

kartoffel brei is ( a very liquid) purée, not mashed potatoes.

 :nerd:  :frog:

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 07:36:05 AM
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691170046/utopianism-for-a-dying-planet

Recently published. I saw it being discussed it my Twitter feed.  Looks interesting.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 02, 2022, 07:42:26 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:38:09 AMOne for the "no shit, Sherlock" category.
...

Interesting Larch, do you have the url for that article?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 07:44:41 AM
Quote from: mongers on November 02, 2022, 07:42:26 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:38:09 AMOne for the "no shit, Sherlock" category.

QuoteEnormous emissions gap between top 1% and poorest, study highlights
'Polluting elite' responsible for same amount of carbon dioxide in a year as poorest 10% are in more than two decades, data shows

Interesting Larch, do you have the url for that article?

There you go: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 02, 2022, 07:49:58 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 07:44:41 AMThere you go: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study)

Thank you, food for thought.

Not thought of climate change as a class issue, :bowler:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 08:02:38 AM
Quote from: mongers on November 02, 2022, 07:49:58 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 07:44:41 AMThere you go: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/polluting-elite-enormous-carbon-dioxide-emissions-gap-between-poorest-autonomy-study)

Thank you, food for thought.

Not thought of climate change as a class issue, :bowler:

It is very much one. In the last few years studies have been published on how the vast majority of flights (a very polluting activity) are due to a tiny amount of people who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of them. The focus that some countries are putting on private flights and how to regulate/tax them goes in this direction.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:23:11 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 08:02:38 AMIt is very much one. In the last few years studies have been published on how the vast majority of flights (a very polluting activity) are due to a tiny amount of people who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of them. The focus that some countries are putting on private flights and how to regulate/tax them goes in this direction.
Yeah - I remember an insane stat about France which is probably the most visited country in the world. But 10% of their flights are private jets.

Climate is a class issue and a justice issue in terms of both historic emissions and present impact. I don't think any solution is possible that doesn't address that in some way - if it is felt to be unjust then no solution will be possible. I think about this with the gilets jaunes where I think the lesson European leaders have taken is that people want action on climate but aren't willing to pay new taxes on it. I think the key, though, is that the perception of Macron's policy was that it was unfair and disproportionately hit everyday rural folk, working class people etc - it wasn't distributed well and I think that's the key.

I think it's also where climate will move from a general issue (outside the US) where everyone agrees on the basic point and need to do something/get to net zero to something more contentious, because I think it is, above all, an issue of distribution.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 02, 2022, 08:26:49 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:23:11 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 08:02:38 AMIt is very much one. In the last few years studies have been published on how the vast majority of flights (a very polluting activity) are due to a tiny amount of people who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of them. The focus that some countries are putting on private flights and how to regulate/tax them goes in this direction.
Yeah - I remember an insane stat about France which is probably the most visited country in the world. But 10% of their flights are private jets.

Climate is a class issue and a justice issue in terms of both historic emissions and present impact. I don't think any solution is possible that doesn't address that in some way - if it is felt to be unjust then no solution will be possible. I think about this with the gilets jaunes where I think the lesson European leaders have taken is that people want action on climate but aren't willing to pay new taxes on it. I think the key, though, is that the perception of Macron's policy was that it was unfair and disproportionately hit everyday rural folk, working class people etc - it wasn't distributed well and I think that's the key.

I think it's also where climate will move from a general issue (outside the US) where everyone agrees on the basic point and need to do something/get to net zero to something more contentious, because I think it is, above all, an issue of distribution.

Yes, I'm afraid you're right.

Shelf, some interesting points raised by you and the Larch.

Don't think I'll attend this evenings Green Party meeting; nice people and well intentioned by somewhat of a preaching to the converted activity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 02, 2022, 01:57:13 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:23:11 AMClimate is a class issue and a justice issue in terms of both historic emissions and present impact. I don't think any solution is possible that doesn't address that in some way - if it is felt to be unjust then no solution will be possible.

The beauty of a carbon tax is it already has progressivity built into it, since the people currently consuming more carbon--the rich--would pay more.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 03, 2022, 03:59:41 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 02, 2022, 01:57:13 PMThe beauty of a carbon tax is it already has progressivity built into it, since the people currently consuming more carbon--the rich--would pay more.
Just like the famously progressive VAT :P

Separately really striking illustration of just how much every country's shift to net zero runs through China. This is about EVs but I think it's similar in other energy transition essential areas:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbThhlyWIAU4Dc9?format=png&name=small)

And again this is the worry that the West (at least Europe) just weaning off an energy dependency on one authoritarian state is creating a new one with another.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: PJL on November 03, 2022, 04:09:37 PM
20 years ago the ideas of the Left of nationalising the 'commanding heights of the economy' were seen as terribly old-fashioned and a relic of the '60s & '70s. But in a way they did have a point - much of it was connected to energy & military security and therefore ultimately economic security. Of course, the execution left much to be desired. Labours' new GB Energy publicly owned company setup they announced when they get elected is a step in the right direction. Let's hope the execution is better than last time (then again it'll probably end up like another HS2 project).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on November 03, 2022, 09:38:02 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 02, 2022, 01:57:13 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:23:11 AMClimate is a class issue and a justice issue in terms of both historic emissions and present impact. I don't think any solution is possible that doesn't address that in some way - if it is felt to be unjust then no solution will be possible.

The beauty of a carbon tax is it already has progressivity built into it, since the people currently consuming more carbon--the rich--would pay more.
Progressivity is defined as rising percent tax, not rising absolute tax.  Sales/consumption taxes are notoriously regressive in practice, and flat nominally, because consumption at some point doesn't scale with income.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 03, 2022, 09:55:09 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 03, 2022, 09:38:02 PMProgressivity is defined as rising percent tax, not rising absolute tax.  Sales/consumption taxes are notoriously regressive in practice, and flat nominally, because consumption at some point doesn't scale with income.

If carbon consumption rises at a greater rate than income, a flat carbon tax would be progressive with respect to income.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 04, 2022, 12:03:37 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 03, 2022, 03:59:41 PMSeparately really striking illustration of just how much every country's shift to net zero runs through China. This is about EVs but I think it's similar in other energy transition essential areas:

I am not convinced the technology is mature enough for this to be that predictive. There are so many more designs and technologies being developed in these areas, it could be that soon the materials and construction processes are very different.

Though currently as it stands this is indeed the case, and China has been working on this for a long time.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on November 04, 2022, 12:42:30 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 03, 2022, 09:55:09 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 03, 2022, 09:38:02 PMProgressivity is defined as rising percent tax, not rising absolute tax.  Sales/consumption taxes are notoriously regressive in practice, and flat nominally, because consumption at some point doesn't scale with income.

If carbon consumption rises at a greater rate than income, a flat carbon tax would be progressive with respect to income.
That's true if that were the case, but that's probably not the case.  Elon Musk doesn't fly his private jet a 1000 times more than some CEO grunt.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 12:52:10 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 04, 2022, 12:42:30 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 03, 2022, 09:55:09 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 03, 2022, 09:38:02 PMProgressivity is defined as rising percent tax, not rising absolute tax.  Sales/consumption taxes are notoriously regressive in practice, and flat nominally, because consumption at some point doesn't scale with income.

If carbon consumption rises at a greater rate than income, a flat carbon tax would be progressive with respect to income.
That's true if that were the case, but that's probably not the case.  Elon Musk doesn't fly his private jet a 1000 times more than some CEO grunt.

Is his income 1000 times more however? I understand much of his wealth is stock.
Which is a problem with trying to tax the rich. The truly rich don't care about salaries. Tax them 100% and they will only oppose you on principle, they don't need that money.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on November 04, 2022, 12:55:16 AM
Well, we do have that pesky capital gains tax...for when they sell off some of that stock to fund the mega-yacht.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 04, 2022, 02:51:39 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 12:52:10 AMThat's true if that were the case, but that's probably not the case.  Elon Musk doesn't fly his private jet a 1000 times more than some CEO grunt.

You're right.  I read the report sloppily.

However, I do think the data they presented was screened in such a way as to make drawing conclusions about progressivity impossible.

Which leads me to believe the report is crap.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 10:05:09 AM
If somebody wants to give it a go, the Financial Times has a cool web game on its site about how to reach net zero by 2050. It's not super complex, but gives a good overview of the main issues.

https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/ (https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 05, 2022, 06:54:42 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 10:05:09 AMIf somebody wants to give it a go, the Financial Times has a cool web game on its site about how to reach net zero by 2050. It's not super complex, but gives a good overview of the main issues.

https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/ (https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/)

Less a game than a quiz on whether you can spot the various wasteful "wunder tech will save us all!" stuff. But pretty nice for being that. People do need to see more importance in actual action
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 05, 2022, 07:32:18 PM
*spoiler*

I played the first round of the game.  AFAICT it's a powerpoint dressed up as a game to make the point that lots of really big changes need to be made to get to net zero.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PM
I have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 08, 2022, 01:25:32 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PMI have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?
No. The COPs are valuable precisely because it's a UN body so it allows small countries equal standing and means their voice is heard unlike at, say, the G7 or the G20 or even regional forums.

But COPS (since Paris I think) are basically split into "deciding" conferences when there's an update to NDCs and a process for countries to make pledges and "monitoring" conferences which does what it says on the tin - they're about monitoring and holding countries to account on their progress against their NDCs. The deciding conferences are every five years - which was Paris, then Glasgow - and the ones in between for monitoring.

So the purpose of this COP is for small countries to have a voice but also to hold to account countries, especially if they haven't followed through on their promises which rich countries haven't really on climate finance. There's not goin to be much in the way of new announcements but there might be a bit more money or updates on rich countries actually paying out what they've already promised.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on November 08, 2022, 01:38:56 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 05, 2022, 07:32:18 PM*spoiler*

I played the first round of the game.  AFAICT it's a powerpoint dressed up as a game to make the point that lots of really big changes need to be made to get to net zero.

Yeah - there's a series of questions, with only one being the right one and the others being wrong (though occasionally they're "wrong" for being too top-down).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 11, 2022, 09:34:14 AM
Interesting debate on the IRA in the US.

The EU has sent a list of complaints about this because bits of it are pretty clearly in breach of the US' WTO obligations, especially around EV batteries. But the EU's complaint is far wider as basically anti-WTO obligations and discriminatory against EU producers. The EU is threatening to take this to the WTO but at the minute have just issued a list of their issues to the US Treasury. So they're not happy with the EV battery stuff, but other complaints include tax credits for renewables and "clean energy", tax credits for hyrdogen and advanced manufacturing for renewables etc.

But it's really interesting because there is a dilemma/depends of perspective here. The EU line is basically that the US is clearly using climate as an excuse for old fashioned protectionism, plus massive bungs for domestic production/buidling up domestic industry. That's basically right from my understanding.

I think the line from the US/Biden would be that the way to get significant funding/policies on climate in the US is to basically link it to national security and a "green industrial complex". I think that's probably also right.

From a purely climate/decarbonisation perspective the impact of the IRA is huge. I think the IRA is transformative and at its heart is an awareness that the US is becoming and doesn't want to be dependent of China for the materials of energy transition. Without the China angle and the domestic bungs, I think there's zero chance the US passes a law this signficant for decarbonisation. So my instinct is it's worth it because I think the decarbonisation is more important than trade rules and I worry about the China angle of decarbonisation.

But it struck me as an interesting case of where priorities sit and how we think about government policy towards the economy in the context of climate - as I say I think it maybe boils down to how seriously people declaring a climate "emergency" take that state of "emergency" given what that implies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 11, 2022, 10:50:59 AM
They really should have come up with a better name than one with the inevitable IRA acronym.

Sounds like a clear case of friendshoring needing to get official recognition.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 13, 2022, 05:11:28 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PMI have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?

draining, if not destroying western affluence, is and always has been part of the concept. Environment is just the means.
not that surprising since far too many of these groups trend towards the authoritarian left.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 13, 2022, 05:30:38 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 13, 2022, 05:11:28 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PMI have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?

draining, if not destroying western affluence, is and always has been part of the concept. Environment is just the means.
not that surprising since far too many of these groups trend towards the authoritarian left.
:lmfao:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 14, 2022, 07:29:38 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 13, 2022, 05:11:28 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PMI have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?

draining, if not destroying western affluence, is and always has been part of the concept. Environment is just the means.
not that surprising since far too many of these groups trend towards the authoritarian left.

Just because the nihilistic right ignores it doesn't make it non-existent, though.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 14, 2022, 07:54:41 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 14, 2022, 07:29:38 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 13, 2022, 05:11:28 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2022, 01:17:13 PMI have only been going by the first page highlights on The Guardian, but is COP27 about anything else other than small countries trying to get blank checks from the big ones?

draining, if not destroying western affluence, is and always has been part of the concept. Environment is just the means.
not that surprising since far too many of these groups trend towards the authoritarian left.

Just because the nihilistic right ignores it doesn't make it non-existent, though.

true, and being tricked into a never ending guilt-complex by the left is not going to help anyone. Least of all ourselves.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:49:56 AM
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faucets-poised-run-dry-hundreds-arizona-residents-years-end-rcna57550

QuoteFaucets poised to run dry for hundreds of Arizona residents by year's end

As drought tightens its grip on the West, the city of Scottsdale says it will no longer allow private trucking companies to haul water to the desert community of Rio Verde Foothills.

RIO VERDE FOOTHILLS, Ariz. — More than 500 homes in this affluent desert community that boasts mountain views, ample trees and ranches hidden in the crooks of scrubby hills will run out of water by year's end as drought tightens its grip on the West.

Residents of Rio Verde Foothills outside Scottsdale have tried for years to resolve the looming crisis to no avail as the deadline to stop their water deliveries draws closer, forcing individual homeowners to find their own sources of water for drinking, bathing, washing dishes or doing their laundry.

"It's going to be really ugly and terrible for our homeowners and landowners," said Karen Nabity, who has lived in Rio Verde Foothills for seven years. "Some of us will borrow water from a friend's well, others will have to pay a water hauler from far away."

As climate change makes the Western United States hotter and drier, the looming crisis in Rio Verde Foothills exemplifies how cities and states could be forced to vie for a diminishing amount of the natural resource.

The rural community of about 2,200 homes in unincorporated Maricopa County does not have its own water system, and most residents get their water from private wells on their properties. But more than 500 homeowners rely strictly on truck haulers to deliver water from a standpipe in Scottsdale. Another 200 whose wells are running dry periodically use the water haulers, as well, residents say.

But a year ago, Scottsdale notified Rio Verde homeowners that its water supply would be limited to city residents only starting Jan. 1, 2023, barring trucking companies from purchasing and exporting its water.

The notice came nearly a decade after Scottsdale first asked Rio Verde residents to search for an alternative water source, city officials said.

Scottsdale Water, the municipal utility, said the decision was one element of a larger contingency plan by the Central Arizona Project, which delivers water from the Colorado River to central and southern Arizona, to reduce its consumption. Scottsdale residents also were urged to reduce their usage as a first step toward more stringent restrictions.

The contingency plan was activated after the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees Colorado River operations, declared a "Tier 1" shortage in August 2021 for the first time. The declaration reduces the amount of water Arizona, Nevada and Mexico can get from the river, which supplies water to about 40 million people in the Western U.S. The tier goes up as river levels go down, with Tier 3 being the most severe.

Some Rio Verde Foothills residents said they don't know how such an important issue could have dragged on so long without a resolution.

"It's a priority because why wouldn't we want to solve this problem," said Jennifer Simpson, who was drawn to Rio Verde Foothills 23 years ago by its wide-open spaces.

Maricopa County officials said they can't fix the problem because they're not water providers. Scottsdale officials said they have no other option because their first commitment is to their own residents.

In Rio Verde Foothills, a sprawling community bisected by horse ranches and dusty gravel roads, the impending cutoff is likely to translate into much higher costs to have water shipped in from locations at least 60 miles away.

Some property owners thought they had solved the problem when they banded together to try to create their own water improvement district. But the plan was dashed this year when the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted down their petition, saying the majority of residents didn't want the proposed district because it could potentially lead to some of their properties being condemned to build a new water delivery system.

A Canada-based water company, Epcor Utilities, filed an application in October to supply Rio Verde Foothills with water, said Nick Debus, a spokesman for the Arizona Corporation Commission, a state agency that regulates private water.

If the project were approved, he said, the utility would have to acquire land, construct a standpipe and drill a new well, which could take two to three years.

Though water supply costs vary widely, rates for Rio Verde residents would increase exponentially to $20 for 1,000 gallons of water delivered, according to the application. The average Scottsdale resident pays $1.65 for 1,000 gallons and residents of nearby Glendale pay 33 cents for the same amount, according to KPNX, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. Collectively, Rio Verde uses 48 million gallons of water a year, according to its residents.

Thomas Loquvam, general counsel for Epcor, said the commission asked the utility to provide water for residents, who would foot the bill for the project, resulting in the higher rates. Only homes built before 2024 would receive water from the proposed district, he added.

Although unfamiliar with the details, Rio Verde Foothills resident Adam Zingg said he prefers Epcor over a water improvement district because the latter would create another layer of government.

"We need as a community to find a solution," he said. "I'm sure that if there's no access to water, we'd be up in arms."


Many Rio Verde Foothills residents say they feel abandoned.

"I'm frustrated and flabbergasted," said Simpson, the 23-year resident. "We're sitting here still waiting."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:08:18 AM
Maybe this people will end up realizing that living in the desert is not a great idea.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:55:01 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:08:18 AMMaybe this people will end up realizing that living in the desert is not a great idea.
It really seems like getting water should be a solvable technical problem.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 08:57:20 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:55:01 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:08:18 AMMaybe this people will end up realizing that living in the desert is not a great idea.
It really seems like getting water should be a solvable technical problem.

That something is technically solvable doesn't mean that it's the best possible solution to a problem. Not to mention the cost of that solution.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 09:39:07 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 08:57:20 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:55:01 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:08:18 AMMaybe this people will end up realizing that living in the desert is not a great idea.
It really seems like getting water should be a solvable technical problem.

That something is technically solvable doesn't mean that it's the best possible solution to a problem. Not to mention the cost of that solution.

"Technically solvable" includes the assumption that the "solving" it is affordable as well. 

We know that we can simply create water if cost was not an object. That isn't what I am talking about.

I just wonder if this is a resource allocation problem. IE, the "market" hasn't decided that investing a bunch of money in researching how to (as an example) desalinate salt water is a worthy risk. Kind of like how the "market" won't invest in a viable, multi-spectrum flu vaccine, even though the societal return on such an investment would be immense.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 09:49:43 AM
I see what you mean, I thought you were talking on the purely technical side. And yes, it's true that a lot has to do with resource allocation, and this has mainly to do with agriculture, as on the broader picture human consumption of water is a small % of the total water consumption.

In the case of that particular community the problem seems to be that they simply don't have enough water at the local level to satisfy their direct needs, which is a bit more straight forward, though. If they manage by simply getting their water by truck from far away locations, as long as it's economically viable they can keep going at it, I guess, but that's a cost that is only going up. Also, most of the time the direct cost of water to their users doesn't really reflect its true value.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PM
What exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on November 19, 2022, 09:14:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

Wavell's in about 1941, I think a magician was also involved. :bowler:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2022, 06:14:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

crippling the western countries, as always. By blackmail or guilttripping.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 24, 2022, 11:12:49 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2022, 06:14:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

crippling the western countries, as always. By blackmail or guilttripping.
Crisis prevention costs less than crisis mitigation.  Since we did not prevent and we still do not intend to do anything about it...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2022, 11:12:49 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2022, 06:14:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

crippling the western countries, as always. By blackmail or guilttripping.
Crisis prevention costs less than crisis mitigation.  Since we did not prevent and we still do not intend to do anything about it...


The crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think. And even then, the west cannot be the one to pay for all the others. The others need to take care of their own shit, while staying in their own countries.
Virtue signaling politicians, businesspeople and celebrities need to use their own money instead of public fund for their virtue signaling.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 25, 2022, 05:06:40 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2022, 11:12:49 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2022, 06:14:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

crippling the western countries, as always. By blackmail or guilttripping.
Crisis prevention costs less than crisis mitigation.  Since we did not prevent and we still do not intend to do anything about it...


The crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think. And even then, the west cannot be the one to pay for all the others. The others need to take care of their own shit, while staying in their own countries.
Virtue signaling politicians, businesspeople and celebrities need to use their own money instead of public fund for their virtue signaling.

No.
The crisis is far greater than the nonchalance the "ex-deniers now forced to admit facts" want you to think.
Way too many read about sea levels rising a metre, look at their local beach, and realise that won't actually mean that much damage at all.... Look at the rise in average temperatures and just can't see an issue that they're now looking at 22 degree rather than 18 degree Septembers and no snow in winter. Completely neglecting that this is a global problem and as incidents live covid shows the slightest is shoves to the economy and society can have massive implications.

The west HAS TO pay for the others. This is like thinking having a bunch of roommates who you freely allow to shit wherever they want in the house is OK just because you use the toilet.

More action than virtue signalling would be very welcome. But this is a problem of a scale only governments can tackle.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on November 25, 2022, 11:04:04 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2022, 11:12:49 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2022, 06:14:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 19, 2022, 09:07:56 PMWhat exactly is the point of COP27 and who's idea was it to light up the entire Nile Valley?

crippling the western countries, as always. By blackmail or guilttripping.
Crisis prevention costs less than crisis mitigation.  Since we did not prevent and we still do not intend to do anything about it...


The crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think. And even then, the west cannot be the one to pay for all the others. The others need to take care of their own shit, while staying in their own countries.
Virtue signaling politicians, businesspeople and celebrities need to use their own money instead of public fund for their virtue signaling.
Sure.  It's your neighbour dumping its garbage on your lawn and telling you to deal with it.

Or an industry that contaminates a city's water supply and let the citizen pay to decontaminate it while it rakes in the profit.

It is totally fair practice.  The people living with the consequences should deal with it and shut up.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on November 25, 2022, 02:26:07 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AMThe crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think.

How big do you think the crisis actually is?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 29, 2022, 10:13:40 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 25, 2022, 02:26:07 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AMThe crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think.

How big do you think the crisis actually is?
Not enough to lose any sleep over it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 10:41:01 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 01:50:20 AMThe crisis is probably much smaller than the hysteria and doomsayers want you to think. And even then, the west cannot be the one to pay for all the others. The others need to take care of their own shit, while staying in their own countries.

Well first lots of the heavy lifting in the new technologies we need has been done by the Chinese.

Second the crisis is smaller than what the doomsayers have said but only because of the considerable and heroic efforts that have been expended so far and why I anticipate we will overcome this crisis sometime in the next few decades. And far from paying for all the others, the West (and others) are creating new and innovative technologies in response that we will benefit from.

I don't get the "taking care of their own shit" idea since everybody's actions impact everybody else when it comes to climate change. You can take care of your own shit but it will make no difference at all if everybody else doesn't. That is the prisoners dilemma this situation can have on national governments.

But ultimately I think this is an engineering priorities issues. We make carbon emissions a priority and we will solve it...eventually. The only real question is how much damage will be done before then.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 10:42:09 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 29, 2022, 10:13:40 AMNot enough to lose any sleep over it.

Only because better humans are losing sleep over it and are getting off their asses to solve it, enabling the rest to just sit around passively. Like most of the big challenges humanity faces.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on January 28, 2023, 10:57:12 AM
We would have definitely flood here, if it wasn't for the £1 million of flood defences for just 10 houses that keep the river back and the groundwater in check, unlike nearly everyone in the 3rd world.

Our regions had an above average amount of rain this winter, but what tipped it into record equalling river levels was an intense rain storm coming up the channel Sunday/Monday, 12/13 days about, almost like monsoon rains.*

Which is why the next morning the river was way up and has only been declining by about 2cm a day since. That's a very slow rate of decline for even this chalk river, let alone other rivers with less advantageous geology and topography.


*I suggest it's reached a point with climate change, that us Brit need to come up with additional new  weather terminology to describe these non-drizzle/lt.rain events.
 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 10, 2023, 11:24:11 AM
Really good piece on the fight in the Netherlands of nitrogen and farmers. In particular on how important it's going to be for energy transition and fighting climate change to be fair and perceived as fair (also the lesson of the gilets jaunes) - or this will be the next flashpoint for the populist right.

Also, perhaps relatedly, that of the big chunks of the economy that we need to deal with (energy, transport, housing, industry and agriculture), agriculture is possibly going to be the most difficult and contentious.

And this all presents a really big challenge I think particularly for democratic societies:
QuoteThe chemist vs. the Dutch farmers
Is Johan Vollenbroek saving the Netherlands — or tearing it apart?
By KARL MATHIESEN
in Nijmegen, Netherlands
March 9, 2023 1:10 pm CET

Johan Vollenbroek is accustomed to threats on his life. On a cold January day, as he was opening his mail at his home in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, a fine powder spilled from an envelope.

With the calmness of a trained chemist, Vollenbroek closed the package, washed his hands and dialed the police contact number he's been told to use to report death threats. The police arrived in full protective gear. It turned out to be silicate, a benign chemical sent with malign intent, but it was not the first time the 73-year-old had received a menacing letter.

Vollenbroek is both a green campaigner and a wellspring of mayhem — the progenitor of a series of legal battles that has upended the country by forcing the government to enforce its environmental commitments. Vollenbroek has made the Netherlands cap the number of flights arriving at major airports, reconsider housing projects and cut the speed limits on its highways. But it's his showdown with Dutch farmers over nitrogen pollution that has drawn the most attention and spilled the greatest quantities of bad blood.

With thousands of farmers facing uncertain futures because of his efforts, the conflict has turned bitter, violent and arguably deadly — but Vollenbroek has no intention of slowing down. Indeed, he believes what's happening in the Netherlands is just the beginning. "It is clear that farmers all over Europe will have to go through a transition," he said.


Spider-thin, with long legs and hang-low arms, Vollenbroek chuckles in disbelief as he recounts the scale of his legal victories. On his mantelpiece, he keeps a yellow scroll bound with red and green ribbon, stood on its end like a trophy. In hundreds of lawsuits across more than two decades, Vollenbroek's tiny NGO and consultancy Mobilisation for the Environment has brought polluters large and small to heel for their impact on nature. But it was this 2019 court ruling that was his coup de grâce.

The decision by the Netherlands' highest court jettisoned the country's permitting system for nitrogen pollution. No longer could construction companies, factories or farms obtain permission for polluting beyond the legal limits with a promise to make up for it later. That has left thousands of businesses now effectively operating illegally and the government scrambling to come up with solutions.

The stikstofcrisis — or nitrogen crisis — ripped across Dutch industry but it fell hardest on the farmers. Specifically, it has affected those living close to Natura 2000 zones, areas the Netherlands agreed to conserve under European Union law. Crucially for Vollenbroek, the country's more than 160 protected sites cover 10 percent of its area. Stretching like a latticework across its territory, they often sit cheek-by-jowl with intensive agriculture, the country's largest producer of nitrogen through animal waste and fertilizer. Next month, the government is due to publish a list of 3,000 of the most polluting farms, which are to be forcibly closed this year and provided with compensation from a €24 billion fund.


Vollenbroek doesn't know who sent him the threatening letter. But there are plenty of landowners who might want to scare him. Or worse. He has been told by police to take note of strange cars. Two years ago, the mayor of Nijmegen stopped a group of farmers from entering the city with a plan to stage a protest at his home. "We are quite relaxed about it," he shrugged.

Death threats aside, he seemed to be having the time of his life, fussing around the house preparing tea — there were at least a dozen kinds on offer. His manner was warm and open.

Because of Vollenbroek, the Netherlands is the first country being forced to reconcile its environmental ambitions with its economic reality in such a dramatic fashion. The hammer is falling there first, and it's falling hard. As countries try to align their societies with the limits of nature, including cutting back carbon dioxide emissions to stop climate change, the hammer is going to fall elsewhere.

In the Netherlands, the nitrogen crisis has featured riots and intimidation of government ministers. On Saturday, a farmers' protest ahead of provincial elections on March 15, is being promoted as a "revolt" by figures from the far right. It has also spread to next-door Belgium, where Flemish farmers blockaded central Brussels last week with 2,700 tractors in protest of a regional plan to limit emissions. In the self-governing region of Flanders, Environment Minister Zuhal Demir has been placed under police protection after a farmer turned up to an event where she was speaking with a life-sized doll hung from gallows on the front of a tractor.

Across Europe, the pressure is set to grow. The EU has proposed a cluster of new laws that, if they are adopted, would push farmers to do far more to protect nature, potentially offering campaigners new legal weapons. And so — as the collateral damage, measured in wrecked lives and political upheaval in the Netherlands, accrues — what is happening there raises uncomfortable questions about the change needed for societies to live within their earthly means. Does saving nature necessarily mean ripping society apart? And if so, will this green transformation happen at all?

1. 'A typically Dutch problem'

Vollenbroek was raised on a farm. Today, we'd call his parents biodynamic farmers. Pesticides and fertilizers were expensive and rare. The pigs lived in the garden, snaffling the fallen fruit of the apple trees. His dad had a bad back, so Johan helped with the work. But his mother was the real farmer in the family. She had an intuition with the animals and a special bond. When a cow went to the slaughterhouse, she mourned for it. 

Dutch farmers are quite literally a national treasure. Ever since the mid-19th century, their ability to produce greater yields per acre than their German or French neighbors meant vast wealth was able to be made by selling produce to the rest of Europe. In the spring of 1886, the French embassy in Amsterdam invited Claude Monet to paint the tulip fields on the outskirts of The Hague. The sights left the great master nursing his limitations. Holland's empire of dirt was "impossible to convey with our poor colors," he wrote to a friend.

(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=683,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/farmers_air_166x249.jpg)
Tractors blocking on a road in De Bilt during a 2019 protest against nitrogen policy rules | Jerry Lampen/AFP via Getty Images

To capitalize on their competitive edge, the Dutch created a system of agricultural colleges; hotbeds of research aimed at one goal: eking more from the land. After World War II destroyed much of Europe's agricultural capacity, the Dutch established themselves as not only the Continent's predominant agricultural exporter but — in terms of the value of the trade and including re-exports — second only to the United States in all the world. With one-eighth of the land area, the Netherlands grows more than Poland.

But there's a downside to the Dutch miracle. Dutch farmers pushed the land harder and reached for chemical advantage. When Vollenbroek was 8 or 9 years old, he saw a vision that would never leave his mind. Looking into the cab of an approaching tractor, he saw the driver, his clothes and skin stained an ungodly yellow. With horror, Vollenbroek realized the man was coated in the residue of the pesticide spray he had been dousing to kill crop-nibbling mice.


Around the same time, Vollenbroek saw his first giant stables, a common feature in Dutch industrialized farming where hundreds of animals are kept inside for much of their lives. More than six decades later he described them as "dark places" that filled his mind with scenes of animals fighting for space, clogging his memory with the reek of ammonia from their piss and shit that made the floor slimy. "I found it disgusting," he said. "I felt that this is madness."

Vollenbroek's parents had ridden the Dutch agricultural wave. They bought their farm in 1945 and raised cows, pigs and chickens. The money was good. For a while, their few hundred animals earned them around the same as a senator in the Dutch parliament. But Vollenbroek's dad disliked the modern methods and the farm struggled; eventually, it was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the young Vollenbroek was questioning everything. He started fighting with his father. Usually, the topic was religion. Vollenbroek was raised a strict Catholic but fought against both the religion and his parents' expectations of church attendance. He left home at 16, seeking an independent life. He studied chemistry, served in the military and eventually joined an engineering consultancy, advising governments across the world.

When he started Mobilisation for the Environment (MOB) in the 1990s, the idea was simple. When the government fails to adhere to the law, MOB sues. At first, the targets were coal plants and oil refineries. In 2008, Vollenbroek was made a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in recognition of his services to nature.

It was perhaps inevitable that Vollenbroek would eventually train his sights on the country's farms. The Netherlands is awash with ammonia, the nitrogen-rich gas released by animal manure. In satellite imagery that detects the airborne chemical, the country sits under an angry red splodge. Since the 1970s, Dutch governments have nibbled at the problem without opting for real solutions. In 1993, the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Europe called the vast quantities of farm waste "a typically Dutch problem." Technical fixes, like adding air filters to barns, have helped a bit. But the amount of nitrogen dumped onto every acre of farmed land remains three times the EU average, second only to Cyprus in the 27-country bloc.


While nitrogen is an essential building block of life, in large quantities it becomes a toxic killer. Some fast-growing plants thrive on it and turn into monstrous ecosystem overlords. Smaller, rarer species, like herbs, lichens and mosses, are driven out. Across the Netherlands, but especially in sensitive grasslands and marshes, the soil is turning increasingly acidic. In waterways, nitrogen spurs algal growth, sucking oxygen from the water. Fish suffocate.

Vollenbroek likes to jog in the forests around Nijmegen, where, he said, the undergrowth has been replaced by a snarl of nitrogen-loving nettles. "Where are we heading to?" he asked. "It seems like the 'Silent Spring' for Rachel Carson is coming back again" — a reference to the 1962 book that launched the environmental movement.

For Vollenbroek, nitrogen is just the easiest target. Combined with Dutch and EU law, it provides the leverage he needs to force the government to act. But if he succeeds in slashing the number of animals the Dutch farm, he'll also be tackling a far bigger problem. Agriculture, mainly meat and dairy production, is the source of 12 percent of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions, which the bloc aims to zero out overall by 2050.

Vollenbroek's ambition, in other words, is to change Dutch, and perhaps European, agriculture forever.

"It's a revolution," he said.


2. 'How do you stay happy?'

Spend any time at all with dairy farmers and it becomes clear one thing above all defines them: motion. Each day is filled with unmissable appointments: milking, feeding, cleaning, tending to the fields. Some farmers believe the Dutch police have deliberately slowed down their protests, knowing they will eventually be forced to go home to relieve their cows' hyperactive udders.

That relentless energy was on full display as Nanda van den Pol showed me around her family farm, around 45 kilometers southeast of Amsterdam. Her husband Harry came bounding through their 100-odd cows, grabbing my hand and pumping it up and down, chatting in effusive Dutch. Their 2-year-old son Jelte charged around the stables on a balance bike, occasionally slamming himself into the dirt. "My husband is really spicy. Someone with a lot of passion," Van den Pol said. "When he has something in his mind, he should go all the way for it. And I really recognize that in our son. I love it about him."

(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=1024,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/0055_Nanda-op-boerderij-8111.jpg)
Nanda van den Pol is a dairy farmer and therapist from the Gelderland province | Manon Bruininga for POLITICO

Walking with us was Vollenbroek's shadow, threatening to bring all that activity to a halt. Their farm, which sits about 15 kilometers from a Natura 2000 area, could be in what the Dutch government has designated as "a nitrogen buffer zone" — the Van den Pols don't know yet where the government will draw the line. That uncertainty means they can no longer get loans from the bank. In April, when the government releases its list of farms to be shut down, three generations of work and investment could immediately sink into the ground. "But right now, nobody knows," she said. "It's really scary."

Later, around the table for a meal of tinned hotdogs, bread rolls and tall glasses of that morning's milk, Van den Pol discussed their options. Some farmers in the Netherlands have switched to farming insect larvae, a protein source for pets and farm animals. But the question isn't just about how you stay on the farm, she said, "but also how do you stay happy? And if I see the passion that Harry has for his cows, I really question if he will be so happy with insects."

Van den Pol's concern for her husband's mental health isn't casual. Dutch farmers don't talk about their feelings, she said. (This was also the main finding in a psychological study published last year.) Faced with failure, they work harder, dialing up their perpetual motion. For some, it appears, this pace, the pressure, the solitude, the shame has been more than they were able to bear.

Farmers in the area have taken their lives, said Van den Pol. None left a letter, so no one knows if the nitrogen crisis was a factor, but there are more such deaths now than before, she said. The stories "piled up and this touched everyone in our neighborhood right in the heart." Last summer, in Stroe, the village where her parents live, farmers gathered for a solemn ceremony, laying wreathes in a field for those who had died.

(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=2640,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/farmers_kid_143x95-scaled.jpg)
(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=2640,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/0062_Nanda-op-boerderij-7891-scaled.jpg)
Nanda van den Pol's farm could be in what the Dutch government has designated as "a nitrogen buffer zone" | Manon Bruininga for POLITICO

It's difficult to obtain data on farmer suicides. The government statistics bureau said it does not keep specific records. A report for the main farming lobby, Land- en Tuinbouworganisatie (LTO Nederland), found the suicide rate in farmers was 37 percent higher in 2020 — the most recent year for which data was available — than the average of the previous seven years. Josephine Stellingwerf, a spokesperson for the LTO, said the organization did not have evidence to attribute those deaths to the nitrogen crisis and did "not want to speculate." But the group is running outreach campaigns to better support farmers who are struggling.

Before I left, the Van den Pols prayed for my safety on the road.

3. 'I will fight for my farm'

Eddie van Marum has personally lifted three farmers "from the rope."

In Dutch funeral rites, the body lies in an open casket, or even in their own bed, for five working days before the funeral. When the bodies are damaged, usually due to a devastating car accident, it's Van Marum's job to perform repairs. When the dead person has hanged themselves, Van Marum draws down the bunched skin around the neck and does his best to disguise the bruising to make the family's final farewell less harrowing.

In his house outside the tiny rural hamlet of Niekerk in the northeastern province of Groningen, surrounded by books on local birdlife and other creatures, Van Marum smoked a filterless cigarette. Outside, his station wagon was filled with animal traps. The walls of the hallway were marked, as if something heavy had been dragged in, or an exhausted mud-covered man had leaned as he walked.

In addition to his work for a nearby funeral home, Van Marum is the local expert on environmental regulation; he helps farmers obtain EU subsidies; he traps and kills the foxes, feral cats and martens that prey on the migratory birds farmers get grants to protect; he helps farmers file insurance claims; and, when the nitrogen crisis hit, he became their vocal advocate. He's now running in the provincial election as a candidate for the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) — the FarmerCitizenMovement — a political party founded just three years ago in response to the crisis, which is now running third nationally, according to POLITICO's Poll of Polls.

Van Marum claimed to know of ten farmers who died during the crisis and said their deaths often coincided with a new announcement from the courts or the government that went against them. In the Netherlands, where farms are passed down through families, sometimes for centuries, the weight of ancestral responsibility is an "underestimated" factor, said Van Marum. "Every time a farm is given to the son ... it's a kind of trust that the family puts into you that you can maintain this farm," he said. He could not understand why, faced with this level of despair, Vollenbroek and MOB kept dialing up the pressure. "This organization is going over dead bodies," he said. "It's morally despicable."

Van Marum drove me to introduce an old school friend of his, Omgo Nieweg, who is trying to pass his nearby dairy farm on to his 20-year-old son Willem. Nieweg outlined the dilemma faced by thousands of farmers. For decades, all the economic incentives were aimed at intensifying their farming. Under pressure from the bank to expand his production, he bought the neighboring farm in 2022 to grow his herd from 180 cows to 240. He's deeply in debt, farming without a license, and if he's shut down, he'll lose everything.

(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=1024,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/farmers_cows_122x81.jpg)
Omgo Nieweg, at his dairy farm in the Groningen province | Manon Bruininga for POLITICO

Vollenbroek says he doesn't target individual farmers. But in January 2022, MOB won an appeal against a government decision to redact the addresses of 3,500 farms that were operating without a nitrogen permit since the system was suspended. Nieweg's dairy is on that list. Since then, MOB has launched batches of court actions, targeting 50 farms at a time, to try to force the provinces to enforce the law by shutting them down (or introduce new policies that would allow them to keep operating). So far, the provinces have been unwilling to close anyone's farm.

Willem shrugs. If they lose the farm, they'll go to Romania, or Germany, or Texas. But his dad is taking it harder. "Our farm is our life," he said over coffee in his living room, surrounded by family photos and doodads dedicated to the rural idyll. "It's not only at the barn. It lives at this table."

He stood up and reached for a picture frame on a high shelf. Inside it is a photograph of Nieweg straight-backed against a bottle green door, crimson blood from a head wound running like a red delta down one side of his face. He's standing still among a sprawl of men. The composition of the shot has the circular motion of a Renaissance painting. Nieweg is staring at something outside the frame with an expression that, if he turned it on you, would make you want to run away. Fast.

The image was taken during a protest in 2019, just after a tractor had forced open the door of the building housing the Groningen provincial government and Nieweg and others had been repelled by baton-wielding cops. After the photo was picked up by newspapers and television across the country, Nieweg became briefly famous. Other farmers looked to him as a leader.

"I'm not proud of it," he said, pointing at the photo. "I'm not that man." But after the incident, he became increasingly involved in the Farmers Defence Force (FDF), one of the more radical rural groups, organizing protests nationwide.

The years since Vollenbroek's 2019 victory have been a blur of frustration for the Netherlands' farmers, as the farmers' campaign of tractor blockades and burning haystacks hasn't resulted in a satisfying settlement with the government. As he took part in the protests, Nieweg traveled constantly. And "when I was at home," he said, "it was in my head." He became irritable, withdrawn. Eventually, Margriet, the mother of his four children, left him.

"I'm not an activist, I don't want to be it," he added. "But I will fight for my farm," he said.

4. 'Opposing the climate tyranny'

That fight has at times turned vicious.

Crowds of farmers surrounded the house of Christianne van der Wal, the minister for nature and nitrogen policy, three times last summer. During one protest, police lost control of the crowd. A police car was wrecked, and a truckload of manure was sprayed across the street in front of Van der Wal's home. The minister was an hour and a half's drive away in The Hague as her family was terrorized. "It was terrible. You can't do anything," she said. On another occasion in February, a mob carrying torches confronted Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag during a campaign stop. "The values ��that unite us are under pressure," she said later.

This anger has spurred the creation of new political forces, like Van Marum's BBB party and Nieweg's FDF farmers' lobby. But it's also created openings for familiar faces, both from the Netherlands and further abroad, who have sought to find common cause with the farmers or co-opt them into a greater, civilizational confrontation. "The Dutch farmers' fight is our fight," Steve Bannon, a prominent right-wing agitator and former U.S. President Donald Trump's former adviser, said on his War Room podcast in July last year.

In a YouTube post last month, FDF Chairman Mark van den Oever announced that the national farmer protests scheduled for March 11 would be attended by the leaders of two right-wing, anti-immigration parties: Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom who has been convicted of insulting people of Moroccan descent, and Wybren van Haga, head of Netherlands' Interest, a spin-off of Wilders' party. Both will speak at a rally in The Hague.

Nieweg said he planned to vote for Van Haga's Netherlands' Interest at the provincial elections next week, and not for Van Marum's BBB. At this admission, the wannabe parliamentarian stormed jokingly from the room, yelling that their friendship was over. Frankly, Nieweg said, when Van Marum was gone, the BBB is not right-wing enough for his taste.

His friend's politics notwithstanding, Van Marum has a reasonable expectation of becoming a member of the provincial parliament. The BBB has surged from nowhere to running a close third nationally behind Wilders' Party for Freedom in second and the ruling People's Party for Freedom and Democracy of Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The provinces affect the makeup of the national senate, meaning a big win for the BBB will give them greater power to fight the government's nitrogen policies. Van Marum vowed to stop it from cutting herd sizes or closing farms.

Van Marum thinks the farmers are making a strategic misstep by allowing the far right to join their cause. "I don't want to have anything to do with it," he said. Nieweg disagreed. The alliance has attracted the kind of international spotlight the farmers could never achieve on their own. The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has voiced her support. In a speech in Florida last summer, Trump said that "farmers in the Netherlands, of all places, are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government."

Also attending on Saturday will be Eva Vlaardingerbroek. An anti-vax commentator and former member of another far-right party Forum for Democracy, she has promoted the lie that the nitrogen crisis is a front for a covert land grab, organized by the World Economic Forum, to build a 40-million-person super city stretched across the Netherlands, Belgium and western Germany. Last year, Vlaardingerbroek told Tucker Carlson's Fox News program in the U.S. that the Dutch "government is not doing this because of a nitrogen crisis. They are doing this because they want these farmers' land, and they want it to house new immigrants."


Most Dutch farmers remain unconvinced by the specifics of these wild theories. But many have started to believe there might be some kernel of truth to them. Nieweg said he agreed with "a lot of things" far-right groups have to say. "But I'm afraid to be connected with it."

Van Marum too, when we were speaking privately in his living room, allowed he was full of doubt. He sees how rural life around the world is being eroded and he's been searching for answers in dark corners of the internet. The way farmers are being targeted by the government through the nitrogen crisis appears so extreme, he added, it's hard not to wonder whether there is some larger agenda at play.

"You lay it together, making a puzzle," he said. "It sometimes doesn't fit. And that's what makes me scared."


5. 'The system is going to react'

Back in his kitchen in Nijmegen, Vollenbroek is baffled by farmers who don't see the world in his terms. "We do not want you to get out of business, but you have to change," he tells farmers when he meets them. "We have neglected the climate and we have neglected our natural reserves all over the world."

Vollenbroek's efforts in the Netherlands, however, raise serious questions about how goals like his will be achieved, if what's happening in the country is what's required to try to reach them. Dreams frozen, marriages and lives ruined, death threats, radicalization and a country divided — this is hardly a recipe for lasting, positive change.

He insists he is simply acting in the pursuit of justice — and lays the blame for the damage being caused at the feet of the government and the agriculture lobby and, to a lesser extent, the farmers themselves, for failing to act on years of scientific warnings.

That's a charge that Van der Wal, the nitrogen minister, is willing to accept. "We pushed it away for decades," she said this week in a video call from her car as she traversed the country meeting with farmers — something she does almost every Monday. Ministers from Europe's most intensive farming countries are watching closely. "Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Denmark, Belgium, they're all asking me: How do you solve this problem?" she said.

The conclusion she has reached is frank and, given the turmoil in the Netherlands, chilling. "It's not possible without pain, for the farmers especially because they live and work for generations from the same place," she said. "It's their way of living. It's who they are." She summed up her view of Vollenbroek and his group with a shrug: "They have the right," she said, to hold the government accountable.

Over more than three hours, across two days, I pressed Vollenbroek to reflect on the suffering that has stemmed from his lawsuits. If he had doubts about his righteousness, he wasn't sharing. "There are human consequences. But ... the problem is that we have politicians in the Netherlands who are telling fairy tales to the farmers," he said.

"The transition for the farmers may be painful, but it's also painful for someone who cares about nature," he added. Harking back to old fights with his father, Vollenbroek also blamed God — or at least Genesis. "I think that Christianity is causing this disastrous attitude toward the climate," he said. "Because ... if you read the Bible, then mankind is on a much higher level than nature."

"We should start to consider that we are part of nature," he said. "From a purely biological point of view ... you could consider mankind as a kind of fungus covering the Earth." Rather than being the builder of a new and better world — arguably in this case the job of the Dutch government — Vollenbroek described himself as something closer to Mother Nature's immune response. "When you've got some bacteria or viruses in your stomach and the system is getting upset," he said. "Well then, the system is going to react."

(https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=683,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/09/h_21546776_240x360.jpg)
Photo of Johan Vollenbroek by Judith Jockel/Laif via Reporters

From a purely data/privacy perspective I'm astonished that they got the names of those farms unredacted. Luxembourg has just successfully sued the Commission to stop public registers of beneficiary ownership of companies - on the grounds that it's not a lawful use of personal data.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on March 10, 2023, 12:16:09 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 10, 2023, 11:24:11 AMor this will be the next flashpoint for the populist right

It already is, or at least there's already a conspiracy theory about it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 10, 2023, 12:20:10 PM
Quote from: The Larch on March 10, 2023, 12:16:09 PMIt already is, or at least there's already a conspiracy theory about it.
Yeah and that's just based on Dutch farmers. Now, not to be rude because that's an important sector in the Netherlands, but imagine it on a scale that has an impact to the global issue of climate change and carbon.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on March 10, 2023, 03:40:49 PM
I'm not sure on just being fair as enough.
The populist right operate in such bad faith they'd moan even giving them anything they could ever want.
The problem is more fundamentally a zero sum view of the world where there can only ever be a winner and a loser.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 17, 2023, 12:25:28 PM
Maybe - I saw Larch's reminder in Off Topic.

I think there are parts of energy transition which will not be zero sum. I think there are some parts that will in particular if energy transition also includes other environmental goals, biodiversity loss etc. I think it's not really zero sum for the grid/power, housing or transport but I think probably going to be most extremely jarring in agriculture and maybe also industry. The Netherlands is a really extreme case of a country that has been all in on mass production of agricultural produce using lots of chemical fertilisers, pesticides etc and a lot of energy as well to move from that to a better environmentally but lower production system of agriculture is going to have people who lose out.

With farmers especially I think it'll even be people losing out in identity terms even if not financially. Compensation is necessary but having to shut down a family farm after three generations is still going to have a big non-financial impact - it goes to how people define themselves. I think agriculture and industry are the areas that are possibly going to be most difficult to manage because I think there will be winners and losers in that bit of energy transition - and I think there's a real risk that we just outsource environmental degradation and exploitation to areas of the world already facing the biggest hit from climate.

On this party though - breakdown of their support since 2021: 27% from the radical/far right, 6% had previously voted for them, 32% from the mainstream right, 12% from the centre/liberals, 13% from the left and 7% non-voters:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrXEOiNXoAQ4M24?format=jpg&name=small)

And their map of support (population weighted so you see rural/urban):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrXVOLQWYAAMXeZ?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on March 17, 2023, 01:05:01 PM
Such a shame all these people get co-opted by the racist grifters from all over the world. They should be lefties, ffs. We should be looking into how the left can help them get out of their debts & financials issues while preserving their way of life.

So many farmers of today thinks that the industrialized way is the only way.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on March 17, 2023, 01:07:44 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 17, 2023, 01:05:01 PMSuch a shame all these people get co-opted by the racist grifters from all over the world. They should be lefties, ffs. We should be looking into how the left can help them get out of their debts & financials issues while preserving their way of life.

So many farmers of today thinks that the industrialized way is the only way.

It is if you want to be competitive. People are bitching about food prices now, but organic/free range/"ethical" foods cost more before Covid then regular stuff costs now. Market can sustain a few niche producers, and farmers market hippies, but not a whole industry unless you just cut out foreign trade
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on March 17, 2023, 01:18:57 PM
Yes. That's a problem. We need government programs to help them transition adequately.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on March 17, 2023, 01:28:12 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 17, 2023, 01:18:57 PMYes. That's a problem. We need government programs to help them transition adequately.

Not sure how you can, with free trade, really. Schemes like Canada's dairy program is a way, but then food gets very expensive and who probably be challenged at the WTO level. Government subsidies at the consumer level would go against trade laws, I believe. I guess who could pay people not to produce, but there goes the way of life argument .  It's a tough situation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on March 17, 2023, 08:10:38 PM
Luckily for the Netherlands they're unlikely to be impacted by global warming,...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AM
Given the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on March 20, 2023, 09:37:14 AM
Quote from: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AMGiven the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?
Define no return.
The world isn't getting colder again any time soon (bring out the solar shield swarm) and we do have to get more of a move on, but I remain optimistic the rate of change should  avoid the worst provided we can keep cunts out of power.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on March 20, 2023, 09:38:25 AM
Even if climate wasn't a problem getting rid of coal (for instance) would still be very important from a health perspective.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 20, 2023, 02:40:11 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AMGiven the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?


There are a range of potential outcomes depending on what we do in the short term.  The nightmarish outcome of 4.4 degrees by 2081-2100 if we keep doing what we are doing.  The say that it is more likely than not that we will now exceed 1.5 even if we go low GHG emissions now. But there is still a chance to keep around that level of warming into the future.  But time is running out.

They have a whole section of the risks of irreversible changes in section B.3 of the Summary.  It is well worth a read.

https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf


Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 20, 2023, 02:47:15 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AMGiven the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?
Not yet.  We can still burn coal a little more.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 20, 2023, 02:53:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 20, 2023, 02:47:15 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AMGiven the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?
Not yet.  We can still burn coal a little more.


Not actually the findings.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 20, 2023, 08:32:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 20, 2023, 02:53:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 20, 2023, 02:47:15 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 20, 2023, 09:21:29 AMGiven the findings of the new UN climate report, are we now past the point of no return?
Not yet.  We can still burn coal a little more.


Not actually the findings.
I wasn't entirely serious.
We're not past the point of no return meaning we can still reverse it, but we can't really waste time.

Basically, we are fucked.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on March 21, 2023, 01:38:38 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 20, 2023, 08:32:14 PMBasically, we are fucked.


Problem solved then.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 28, 2023, 06:00:39 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 17, 2023, 08:10:38 PMLuckily for the Netherlands they're unlikely to be impacted by global warming,...
Yeah although this isn't really about emissions or climate change - it's another environmental/biodiversity issue around nitrogen. I think the reason it's interesting both in terms of the issue itself and the backlash is that I think it's a foretaste of what energy transition will involve politically. I thought the Charlemagne column on this was good (the criticism of Dutch veg - which also applies to some British veg - is also very fair):
QuoteThe cucumber Saudis: how the Dutch got too good at farming
A small, fertiliser-rich country sniffs the limits of its old model
Mar 23rd 2023

Visitors to dairy farms are always well advised to watch their step. Those inspecting the three dozen milking cows kept by Minke van Wingerden and her team have more to fear than landing in manure: the entire farm is set up on a floating platform, docked a 20-minute cycle ride away from Rotterdam's central railway station. One wrong step and you will wind up spluttering in the Nieuwe Maas river—as a couple of the cows have discovered (firemen fished them out of the harbour). Forget vistas of the placid Frisian countryside: these animals spend their days overlooking tankers and trucks unloading wares at Europe's biggest port. Throughout the day schijt-scooping robots scour the milking area, keeping it clean. On two lower floors of the barge, the cows' output is variously turned either into cheese or fertiliser.

Ms Van Wingerden's Floating Farm is the apotheosis of centuries of Dutch thinking about how to grow lots of food in a crowded corner of northern Europe. Since the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, land has been reclaimed from the sea and windmills erected to drain the plains. Town-size greenhouses are built to grow tulips or vegetables. A food shortage during the second world war convinced the Dutch they needed to grow as much as their fields could manage. Calvinist industriousness turned the Netherlands into an unlikely agrarian powerhouse: with more than €100bn ($108bn) of annual farming sales overseas, it is the world's biggest exporter of agricultural products after America, a country more than 250 times its size. Some of that is re-exported imported food. But the Dutch make twice as much cheese per head as France.

Two questions have long dogged Dutch farming. The first is whether quantity made up for quality: having tasted the tomatoes, cucumbers and chilies grown in its hyper-efficient greenhouses, one may be forgiven for not being able to tell them apart. The second is whether its approach made any sense. The Netherlands is the most densely inhabited country in the EU bar tiny Malta; officials joke it is a city-state in the making. Efficient as its farmers may be, the sector is a footnote to the modern Dutch economy, employing just 2.5% of workers. Countries usually pick between having lots of farms or lots of people. The Dutch approach was to have their Gouda and eat it. That has landed both farmers and politicians in a heap of natural fertiliser.

Limits to the Dutch model of turbo-farming have been suspected for decades. Already in the 1980s, authorities realised that importing lots more animal feed would result in lots more animal excrement. Yet the limits of the land kept being tested: each acre of Dutch farm supports four times as many animals, by weight, as others in Europe. The result of all those digestive tracts has been a surfeit of excreted nitrogen, a key nutrient for plants but one that in excessive quantities can destabilise ecosystems. Cars and industry emit nitrogen compounds too. All this has contributed to damaging the soil and polluting waterways. Flora that thrive on excess nitrogen have been killing off plants that would otherwise manage to compete for resources. That in turn has knock-on effects, not all of which scientists understand.

Ernst van den Ende of Wageningen University, a food-research hub, says there is not much wrong with individual Dutch farms, which are often models of sustainability. The problem is that there are too many of them, pumping out too much nitrogen. For more than a decade there have been efforts (mostly ineffectual) to cut back such emissions to meet EU rules that protect nature reserves. But in 2019 things came to a head. A decree from the highest Dutch court gave wishy-washy laws unexpected bite. Every activity that led to nitrogen being produced—including the construction of buildings, roads and other infrastructure—would henceforth require cuts in nitrogen elsewhere. The country has a housing shortage, but new building has been throttled by the rule. Daytime speed limits on motorways were cut from 130kph to 100kph in the hope that lower emissions might let other bits of the economy keep going. Schiphol airport, one of the world's busiest, resorted to buying farms to shut them down so planes could take off.

The crisis has been all-encompassing. A bastion of free-market liberalism in Europe has morphed into something akin to a planned economy, with a "Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy" as lead commissar. In the end, it became clear a piecemeal approach would not cut it. Last year a sweeping plan to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030 was unveiled. The government said it would pay €24bn to buy out as many as 3,000 big emitters, meaning mostly farms. Livestock numbers would be cut by nearly a third. The era of ever-increasing agricultural exports was over.

Sacred cows, this way please

Strangely, even in a country bursting at the seams, picking people over cows turns out to be politically fraught. The prospect of buy-outs or expropriations fuelled farmer protests across the country. (Think burning hay-bales and nitrogen-rich animal matter dumped on motorways.) Last week the revolt hit the ballot box. A newish party representing farmers triumphed in local elections on March 15th, topping the polls that elect the nationwide senate as well as regional governments. The farmers' party got 1.5m votes, 19% of the total, in a country that employs just 244,000 people in agriculture. City-dwellers backed it out of a nostalgic attachment to farmers and resentment against nagging authorities. Whether the government can force through its nitrogen cuts is up in the air.

Other countries are heading for nitrogen crises too; neighbouring Belgium, also pretty crowded, already has one. But the wider parallel is with carbon emissions, which Europe plans to cut to "net zero" by 2050. That will demand adaptations well beyond what the Dutch have experienced with nitrogen. The Netherlands, a generally well-run place, has made a hash of adapting its economy to ecological constraints it knew about for decades. That does not bode well for everyone else.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on March 30, 2023, 01:59:52 PM
Antarctic ocean is heading for collapse (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65120327?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 31, 2023, 04:53:48 PM
And following on from the Norwegian arms manufacturing having an issue getting energy because of a Tik Tok data centre, this piece on how the Netherlands farming/nitrogen crisis interacts with data centre building is really interesting:
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-netherlands-hyperscale-data-centers/

Particularly focused on one Microsoft hyperscale data centre and, as demonstrated by Irish campaigners, where there are concerns similar data centres for Google and Aamazon may overlaod the grid thus interacts with energy. The scale of energy required given the context of European energy supply and concerns about de-industrialisation is really striking. There may be a point where it's not zero sum - but at the minute I think there are very real losers and winners (and I'm a little worried the winners so far are projects that employ relatively few people and companies who don't pay their taxes).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 02, 2023, 09:32:12 AM
Now that 'we' also have to move to adaptation, looking at the reports of the 65 tornados hitting the South and Mid-west yesterday, how many of the homes hit have concrete survival rooms?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 02, 2023, 10:14:31 AM
I don't get why you don't see more use of data centre heat for various purposes. It always seems to be cool and quirky but not scalable examples I read about.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 08:12:47 AM
It seems that Texas has a new enemy: Renewables. Valmy, any insider insight you can share?

QuoteTexas leaders threaten wind and solar boom with legislative push
Bills that hobble renewables would slow decarbonisation in power-hungry state


A renewable energy boom in Texas is under threat at the state legislature, as lawmakers take up new bills that would hobble wind and solar projects.

Texas is well known as the top US state in oil and natural gas production. It has also become the leading state in wind power and is on track this year to surpass California with the largest solar capacity in the US.

The renewable technologies were already proliferating before the US Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act climate law last year, which with $369bn in clean-energy subsidies promises to supercharge solar and wind development.

The Republican-dominated state legislature is now debating bills that throw up new hurdles for wind and solar projects and guarantee fossil fuels' future as an energy source on the state power grid.

"We have invested heavily in renewables, but now it's time to focus on dispatchable," Dan Patrick, the Texas lieutenant-governor spearheading the effort, said at a recent press conference, using a term commonly used to refer to fossil fuel power generation.

One bill would impose new environmental permit requirements for renewable energy projects but not other types of power plants, evaluating factors such as encroachment on agricultural and wildlife lands. The measure would even require currently operating plants to apply for the permits.

"Texans have always prided themselves on having an open market, not picking and choosing which technologies should win, and being a state where we don't heavily regulate. None of those things are true about this," said Becky Diffen, a partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.

"It is absolutely being viewed as a real threat. Renewables is basically a bad word at the Capitol right now, there's just a lot of opposition," she added.

The proposed state permit regulations run counter to an important energy bill passed by the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives last week that would streamline federal permitting for big energy projects.

The swift rise of renewable energy has drawn a backlash from many Texas Republicans who argue the rising share of intermittent wind and solar resources on the grid has made the state's energy system less reliable and is hurting the oil and gas sector.

Many blame renewables for the devastating blackouts during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, which led to hundreds of deaths and more than $100bn in economic damage, although natural gas-fuelled generation was also significantly disrupted during the deep freeze.

Charles Schwertner, a Texas state senator, said Republicans wanted to offset "market distortions" created by federal subsidies for "less reliable generation" in the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's flagship climate law, and ensure fossil-fuel generation was still being added in the state.

The clean energy backlash could hurt Texas' ability to take advantage of the subsidies in the IRA.

"Texas stands to be a major winner under [the IRA], but a lot of our political leaders just seem dead set on cutting off our nose to spite our face," said Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy, a consultancy.

Another bill under debate in the biennial legislative session would lead Texas to spend more than $10bn to back construction of 10 gigawatts of gas-fired power generating capacity, about 12 per cent of the state's total current grid capacity, that could be tapped when power demand peaks. The state would guarantee the plants an annual rate of return of around 10 per cent.

Patrick has also proposed using funds from the state's budget surplus to provide low-cost loans to fossil fuel power projects.

"We want to ensure there's an incentive for more thermal power to be built in this state as quickly as we can build it," Patrick said.

Governor Greg Abbott has said that he wants renewable projects excluded from any new state-backed economic incentive programmes, which have been critical to drawing big investors to the state, such as Elon Musk's Tesla and Samsung of South Korea.

"There's already a federal incentive for renewable projects," Abbott said. "Our focus is on dispatchable power to make sure that we will have the needed dispatchable power to provide reliable electricity to everybody in the state."

Texas has by far the highest electricity consumption of any state, so efforts to preserve fossil fuel use would deal a serious blow to federal goals of stripping carbon from the national power system.

Jeff Clark, president of the Advanced Power Alliance, an Austin-based renewable energy industry group, said the Republican legislative effort put the clean energy sector in the state "at risk".

"Companies looking at Texas and contemplating investment here should listen, because Texas is turning its back on clean energy," he said.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 12:15:38 PM
Edit: Actually I will stick this in the Backroom



Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 12:49:44 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 08:12:47 AMIt seems that Texas has a new enemy: Renewables. Valmy, any insider insight you can share?
Although at least they have an excuse. Texas is, as the article says, on course to beat California in renewable generation and, I believe, now has as muchof its energy supply from renewables as Germany.

Obviously this'd be bad, but they're a state with a big oil and gas sector and that's ideologically dubious about any climate action. I feel like we should be as, if not more, annoyed at the states that strongly believe in taking climate action (and may even have declared a climate emergency) but, despite that, are being overhauled by Texas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:00:13 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 12:49:44 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 08:12:47 AMIt seems that Texas has a new enemy: Renewables. Valmy, any insider insight you can share?
Although at least they have an excuse. Texas is, as the article says, on course to beat California in renewable generation and, I believe, now has as muchof its energy supply from renewables as Germany.

Obviously this'd be bad, but they're a state with a big oil and gas sector and that's ideologically dubious about any climate action. I feel like we should be as, if not more, annoyed at the states that strongly believe in taking climate action (and may even have declared a climate emergency) but, despite that, are being overhauled by Texas.

It is because our geography is really well suited to wind and solar. Like ridiculously so. The generation was put there to generate cheap electricity, not for climate reasons (though obviously those who do care about climate were enthusiastic supporters).

Germany would kill to have the solar and wind resources Texas has...well hopefully not literally knowing how Germany traditionally has done killing for resources.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:07:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:00:13 PMIt is because our geography is really well suited to wind and solar. Like ridiculously so. The generation was put there to generate cheap electricity, not for climate reasons (though obviously those who do care about climate were enthusiastic supporters).

Germany would kill to have the solar and wind resources Texas has...well hopefully not literally knowing how Germany traditionally has done killing for resources.
It'll be a different mix everywhere - but is California really bereft of wind and sun?

The other thing that springs to mind is all of thsoe requirements Texas legislators are now proposing to impose on renewables (only) are already, I imagine, standard in California and Germany for everything including renewables. I don't fully have a NIMBYism theory of everything but in addition to good sun and wind it feels like part of the reason is it's quite easy (at least until now) to build things in Texas. Add that to the conditions and of course it'll boom - the question is more why states that care about climate like California, Germany or the UK are still getting in the way if it's a climate emergency.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 01:09:28 PM
New Mexicos time is now?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:12:07 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:07:27 PMIt'll be a different mix everywhere - but is California really bereft of wind and sun?

Only in comparison to us. We have the great plains, the holy grail of wind energy. A huge area of high winds virtually all the time that is sparsely inhabited with little economic activity and the economic activity that there is can easily go on unimpeded alongside the wind farms.

If you don't have something like that then you can use coastal winds...which hey Texas also has a shitload of.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:24:22 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 12:49:44 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 08:12:47 AMIt seems that Texas has a new enemy: Renewables. Valmy, any insider insight you can share?
Although at least they have an excuse. Texas is, as the article says, on course to beat California in renewable generation and, I believe, now has as muchof its energy supply from renewables as Germany.

Obviously this'd be bad, but they're a state with a big oil and gas sector and that's ideologically dubious about any climate action. I feel like we should be as, if not more, annoyed at the states that strongly believe in taking climate action (and may even have declared a climate emergency) but, despite that, are being overhauled by Texas.

But this has absolutely nothing to do with climate action whatsoever. The Texas renewables sector should be the ideal of any free market absolutist, as it has risen to that position of prevalence on a sheer economic rationale. There's so much of it because it is very profitable and technically feasible. No sane administration would put undue restrictions on it besides the ones that would be needed to regulate any similar economic activity, but what Texas seems to want to do is exactly that, to put them at a regulatory disadvantage in relation to oil and gas, because reasons.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:33:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 01:09:28 PMNew Mexicos time is now?

God I hope so. New Mexico is one of the poorest and most depressing places in the United States (outside of Santa Fe and Albuquerque anyway). The poverty and desolation of the place is really sobering, it looks like a developing nation out there. So far New Mexico's time has been never so I hope it's time has come.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:35:04 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:24:22 PMBut this has absolutely nothing to do with climate action whatsoever. The Texas renewables sector should be the ideal of any free market absolutist, as it has risen to that position of prevalence on a sheer economic rationale. There's so much of it because it is very profitable and technically feasible. No sane administration would put undue restrictions on it besides the ones that would be needed to regulate any similar economic activity, but what Texas seems to want to do is exactly that, to put them at a regulatory disadvantage in relation to oil and gas, because reasons.
It does because they're generating a lot of low carbon energy - the impact of their current policy choices is absolutely to do with climate action, even if their motives are impure.

You're right that doing this is mad and against their stated free market ideals because reasons. My point is the same is true of states and countries who have ideals of really caring about the climate emergency but are being overtaken by Texas in terms of low carbon energy production because reasons (largely ones that make it difficult to build infrastructure and I think should be overridden or disapplied if decarbonisation is a real priority).

Edit: Or simply put - which of these states looks like it's responding to an emergency:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsKFw6hWIAA3VCY?format=png&name=small)

Maybe we should learn something from it now (and hope they don't stop).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:42:47 PM
Why do you bring up California at all? We're talking about how retarded Texas' planned bills are. There are many reasons that can explain why renewables are so successful in Texas that have nothing to do with regulations.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:45:18 PM
And that completely leaves out distributed generation resources. Granted those are huge in both states.

I don't know enough about utility scale solar in California to explain why there isn't more of it. But one thing to remember about non-Texas western states is they have tons of federal land that is off limits to them. Texas can use its huge desert and plains to put solar facilities in. Nevada, for example, cannot as all of that belongs to the Feds. So maybe something like that is going on.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 01:48:12 PM
Yeah check this out: (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Map_of_all_U.S._Federal_Land.jpg/1280px-Map_of_all_U.S._Federal_Land.jpg)

California is limited in their cheap land to put solar farms on that we are not.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:51:36 PM
There's a great CGP Grey video about federal land. Here you go!

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:57:46 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:42:47 PMWhy do you bring up California at all? We're talking about how retarded Texas' planned bills are. There are many reasons that can explain why renewables are so successful in Texas that have nothing to do with regulations.
The article mentions California because Texas is the leader in the US on renewables now even though they hate them.

A proposed bill in Texas is bad - let's see if it becomes law. But the reality is Texas have added more low carbon energy in the last decade than any other state. In terms of decatbonisation of energy, despite not caring/being ideologically opposed to energy transition, Texas is the national leader in recent years. That is good, despite their politics being bad.

We should be asking states that claim to care about climate and may even have declared a climate emergency why they're being outpaced by Texas. I'd have Texas as a bit of a write-off on climate action given oil and gas in their economy etc - instead I think we should probably learn from how they've achieved that last decade of remarkable growth, and then not copy the bad draft law.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 02:02:12 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:57:46 PMWe should be asking states that claim to care about climate and may even have declared a climate emergency why they're being outpaced by Texas. I'd have Texas as a bit of a write-off on climate action given oil and gas in their economy etc - instead I think we should probably learn from how they've achieved that last decade of remarkable growth, and then not copy the bad draft law.

Those oil and gas facilities? Crazy energy intensive. They want that cheap electricity. Obviously coal hates the status quo but there is next to no coal in Texas, and what there is is very low quality.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 02:03:22 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 01:57:46 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 01:42:47 PMWhy do you bring up California at all? We're talking about how retarded Texas' planned bills are. There are many reasons that can explain why renewables are so successful in Texas that have nothing to do with regulations.
The article mentions California because Texas is the leader in the US on renewables now even though they hate them.

Oh come on, it's a throwaway line just to make the point of how strong the renewables sector is in Texas. The point of the discussion is not chastising California for getting their lead eaten away.

QuoteWe should be asking states that claim to care about climate and may even have declared a climate emergency why they're being outpaced by Texas. I'd have Texas as a bit of a write-off on climate action given oil and gas in their economy etc - instead I think we should probably learn from how they've achieved that last decade of remarkable growth, and then not copy the bad draft law.

I believe that Valmy already gave you the proper answer for that. Texas is in such a strong position for renewables because of their unique geography and political situation, their privileged position can't be replicated with regulations.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 02:16:29 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 05, 2023, 02:03:22 PMOh come on, it's a throwaway line just to make the point of how strong the renewables sector is in Texas. The point of the discussion is not chastising California for getting their lead eaten away.
But it's a relevant comparison. I don't think the real story about Texas and renewables is a bad draft law, but this reality:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqzyB1NWIAAwxJP?format=jpg&name=900x900)

Don't doubt some of it is geographical - and it doesn't include California's (considerable but diminishing because of drought) hydro sector. But I don't think Texas is such a special snowflake that there's nothing for others to learn from a state that's doubled the share of energy generated by renewables in the last decade.

QuoteI believe that Valmy already gave you the proper answer for that. Texas is in such a strong position for renewables because of their unique geography and political situation, their privileged position can't be replicated with regulations.
But surely the regulatory framework is part of it. I mean that article basically seems to be around environmental impact assessments. Obviously that legislator's trying to hobble a specific industry but from what I can see by requiring that industry to do what is mandatory for all infrastructure in California and much of Europe.

The EU has just created exemptions for certain renewables projects to not have to do environmental impact assessments or nature impact assessments (so they can go Texan) and I think Spain has taken full advantage of that. Not sure how far other member states have gone (it's a directive). But every EU member state and the UK and some US states have declared climate emergencies - maybe we should do a good thing and the opposite of this bill and basically replicate Texas' regulatory environment for renewables projects? Feels like it could help.

Edit: Not least because I think it's a big I don't care if the cat's black or white as long as it catches mice. I don't care whether the environment cares who is worried about the climate or not - all that matters is who's increasing the share of renewables most. There's specific factors in Texas, for sure, but whatever its done has been good.

I sort of thing the same with bringing back big hydro projects.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 02:56:10 PM
It's obvious why say Maine can't copy Texas.
But it is mystifying the other southern desert states can't match it in solar at least.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 05, 2023, 04:18:15 PM
I've never thought about it before but wind turbines must be tornado proof.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 05, 2023, 04:35:22 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 05, 2023, 04:18:15 PMI've never thought about it before but wind turbines must be tornado proof.

Not necessarily, the could be violent changes of wind direction they couldn't cope with, I guess strong up or down current could be problematic.

Or perhaps for the biggest turbings smaller tornados could be pushing the blades in opposed directions at the same time.

But thinking about it, won't the range of possible debris that a tornado whips up, threaten to seriously damage it's blades and it's tower/infrastructure?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 05, 2023, 06:37:33 PM
Quote from: mongers on April 05, 2023, 04:35:22 PMNot necessarily, the could be violent changes of wind direction they couldn't cope with, I guess strong up or down current could be problematic.

Or perhaps for the biggest turbings smaller tornados could be pushing the blades in opposed directions at the same time.

But thinking about it, won't the range of possible debris that a tornado whips up, threaten to seriously damage it's blades and it's tower/infrastructure?

I've never seen or read about toppled turbine on news reports.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 11:36:08 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 05, 2023, 02:16:29 PMBut it's a relevant comparison. I don't think the real story about Texas and renewables is a bad draft law, but this reality:

One of the funny things about the United States is that a lot of is made about "blue states" and "red states" but when you actually look at statistics about the states they never really correspond in results or policy. There are red states and blue states evenly up and down every list. Who would have thought North Carolina and Florida would be big leaders in  utility scale solar while blue New York, which is a giant state with tons of land and a giant load footprint, barely does shit.

It reminds me of all the protests against putting up wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts, by fucking environmentalist groups. I know we talked about that way back in the distant past of Languish and I remember reflecting how frustrating those kinds of groups are. They always oppose the next step to protect the environment because it is not perfect. And look at Massachusetts now: not a watt of wind power.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 11:36:25 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 05, 2023, 04:18:15 PMI've never thought about it before but wind turbines must be tornado proof.

That is actually a good question. I will look into it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on April 06, 2023, 12:01:43 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 02:56:10 PMIt's obvious why say Maine can't copy Texas.
But it is mystifying the other southern desert states can't match it in solar at least.

I would like to see a per capita version of the list. Texas has 30m people and New Mexico just over 2m; so NM is doing better than Texas per capita. On that basis Iowa(3m) and Oklahoma(4m) look very good.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on April 06, 2023, 01:15:16 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 11:36:25 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 05, 2023, 04:18:15 PMI've never thought about it before but wind turbines must be tornado proof.

That is actually a good question. I will look into it.

A quick Google shows that it can happen but also they are designed with some resistance to winds/storms in mind.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 06, 2023, 01:49:03 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on April 06, 2023, 12:01:43 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 02:56:10 PMIt's obvious why say Maine can't copy Texas.
But it is mystifying the other southern desert states can't match it in solar at least.

I would like to see a per capita version of the list. Texas has 30m people and New Mexico just over 2m; so NM is doing better than Texas per capita. On that basis Iowa(3m) and Oklahoma(4m) look very good.


Good point.
But on the other hand having far more space without people should boost the amount you can do?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on April 06, 2023, 03:48:45 AM
Yeah, my brit-based image of Iowa is a vast prairie/cornfield where it would be very easy to install wind turbines at field boundaries. Looking at this https://iub.iowa.gov/iowas-electric-profile we find that wind provides 55% of the state's electricity; it may be difficult to improve on that given the intermittent nature of windpower.

If we think of New Mexico, hot and sunny, surely it is routine to have solar panels on your roof to power your aircon...this would be very green and also profitable  :cool:

I notice that California has a lot of solar, maybe for that reason.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 06, 2023, 04:09:35 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 02:56:10 PMBut it is mystifying the other southern desert states can't match it in solar at least.

Contrary to what might seem logical, a desert environment is not necessarily great for solar energy. It is great from a pure production potential pow, but AFAIK it's a nightmare for maintenance and it'd require a lot of transmission to get the energy produced to where it can be consumed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 06, 2023, 04:15:57 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 05, 2023, 11:36:08 PMIt reminds me of all the protests against putting up wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts, by fucking environmentalist groups. I know we talked about that way back in the distant past of Languish and I remember reflecting how frustrating those kinds of groups are. They always oppose the next step to protect the environment because it is not perfect. And look at Massachusetts now: not a watt of wind power.

What's the situation of offshore windfarms over there? Here in Spain we've just announced the planning for coastal area uses that allows for it (required by the EU and overdue for a couple of years already) and our fishermen are already thowing a fit a good 5-10 years before a single windmill is installed at sea.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 06, 2023, 05:38:10 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on April 06, 2023, 03:48:45 AMIf we think of New Mexico, hot and sunny, surely it is routine to have solar panels on your roof to power your aircon...this would be very green and also profitable  :cool:

Nowadays having solar panels at homes should be mandatory basically everywhere, if only for water heating purposes. Power generation is nowadays also an option almost everywhere, and it's a very attractive proposition for industries that can take advantage of large premises.

QuoteI notice that California has a lot of solar, maybe for that reason.

IIRC, California has long favoured large solar power plants in the southern parts of the state since that technology became viable and was a pioneer on it at the time. Many of the world's largest solar plants are or used to be located there.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 06, 2023, 05:43:19 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on April 06, 2023, 12:01:43 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 05, 2023, 02:56:10 PMIt's obvious why say Maine can't copy Texas.
But it is mystifying the other southern desert states can't match it in solar at least.

I would like to see a per capita version of the list. Texas has 30m people and New Mexico just over 2m; so NM is doing better than Texas per capita. On that basis Iowa(3m) and Oklahoma(4m) look very good.

I found this on wiki. It's just for wind power and with 2017 data, but it's better than anything.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/State_Per_Capita_Monthly_Wind_Generation_2017.svg/327px-State_Per_Capita_Monthly_Wind_Generation_2017.svg.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 07, 2023, 05:09:22 AM
Related. A cool thing I was shown last night. Mapping energy sources with good easy to read data

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 11, 2023, 02:24:34 AM
(https://external-preview.redd.it/vbmVTCuC_yiBkDvQOEJrOrCZLZ3581WKIyI_ZVeRMSs.png?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=f67430f726fe768f2b9cb77e3fec1abfa1cebddb)

 :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 11, 2023, 03:28:30 AM
How well do their customers sleep?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Oexmelin on April 11, 2023, 03:55:13 PM
I always forget how easy it is to live off the grid.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 13, 2023, 07:58:36 AM
QuoteAmsterdam Schiphol Airport proposes a ban on private jets

High flyers hoping to hop to the Netherlands in a private jet might be forced to rethink their travel plans, as Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is proposing a private jet ban.

The notoriously busy airport has suggested a series of measures to reduce its air traffic and create a "quieter, cleaner and better" system, according to a Schiphol airport statement.

Under new proposals the airport hopes will come into effect "no later than 2025-26," private jets will "no longer be welcome" at Schiphol. There will also be no aircraft landing between midnight and 5 a.m. local time or taking off between midnight and 6 a.m. local time. Plans for a new runway have also been scrapped.

Schiphol says it's targeting private jets because they cause "a disproportionate amount of noise nuisance and CO2 emissions per passenger." Private jets produce up to 14 times more planet-warming pollution than commercial planes, and 50 times more than trains, according to European clean transport organization, Transport & Environment.

When these small, swanky aircraft depart from Schiphol, 30% to 50% of them are heading to vacation hot spots like Ibiza in Spain, Cannes in France or Innsbruck in Austria, according to Schiphol. The airport argues there are plenty of airplanes flying from Amsterdam to those destinations, and suggests private passengers should go commercial instead.

"Sufficient scheduled services are available to the most popular destinations flown to by private jets," says Schiphol Airport in a statement, adding that small police and ambulance aircraft will be permitted to take off and land as they do currently under the new system.

Cutting emissions and reducing noise
Last month, the Dutch government announced plans to restrict international aircraft departures in a quest to cut the country's carbon emissions.

The Dutch government's "Preliminary Scheme Schiphol," published in January, proposed slashing flight numbers from 500,000 to 460,000 between winter 2023-2024 and summer 2024.

Airlines including Dutch flagship carrier KLM, as well as Delta and EasyJet, pushed back on this proposed flight cap, launching a legal challenge against the Dutch government.

The airport's recent statement suggests limiting nighttime air traffic would mean 10,000 fewer night flights each year, and therefore could help get Schiphol to its target.

Cutting down on overnight landings and departures should also reduce noise pollution for local residents, with airport data suggesting the number of local residents experiencing severe sleep disturbance will fall by approximately 54%.

It's not uncommon for even the busiest airports to implement nighttime curfews – take London Heathrow Airport, for example, which restricts overnight operations.

"Around 80% of the night flights at Heathrow are between 04:30 - 06:00 with an average of 16 aircraft arriving each day between these hours under normal pre-Covid conditions," reads Heathrow's website, which adds that flights are never scheduled to depart between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Frankfurt Airport and Zurich Airport are among the other travel hubs with limitations on overnight air traffic.

Concerns about noise are also reflected in Amsterdam's proposed "stricter approach regarding noisier aircraft," with Schiphol suggesting it will gradually tighten "existing standards for aircraft that are allowed to take off from and land at Schiphol."

The airport also pledged to put aside 10 million euros a year for an "environmental fund for the local area," in a bid to be a friendlier neighbor to its surrounding residents.

In these new measures, Schiphol also promises to safeguard cargo flights, reserving 2.5% of the available takeoff and landing slots for cargo.

"However, cargo flights will have to adhere to new, tighter rules for noisier aircraft and the new night closure will also apply to cargo," reads the airport's statement.

Ruud Sondag, the CEO of the Royal Schiphol Group, which manages Amsterdam's airport, says the Schiphol proposals demonstrate that "we mean business."

"We have thought about growth but too little about its impact for too long," he said in a statement. "We need to be sustainable for our employees, the local environment and the world. I realise that our choices may have significant implications for the aviation industry, but they are necessary."

Many of the currently scheduled Schiphol night flights are operated by KLM or its subsidiary Transavia. In response to Schiphol suggestions, KLM said in a statement that the airline was "astonished," and planned to put forward alternative proposals later this year.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 13, 2023, 08:58:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 11, 2023, 03:28:30 AMHow well do their customers sleep?

The number of kind of shitty things you are probably unwittingly participating in as a consumer is incredibly long if you really look into it. Likewise if you have a 401K or something that is investing in companies that are doing shenanigans. It is just something that exists if you live in the modern world and don't go live in a cave or something.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on April 13, 2023, 12:07:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 11, 2023, 03:28:30 AMHow well do their customers sleep?
I take pills for insomnia.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 13, 2023, 05:33:46 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 13, 2023, 08:58:13 AMThe number of kind of shitty things you are probably unwittingly participating in as a consumer is incredibly long if you really look into it. Likewise if you have a 401K or something that is investing in companies that are doing shenanigans. It is just something that exists if you live in the modern world and don't go live in a cave or something.

No one unwittingly drives their car or heats their house or anything else that emits carbon.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on April 13, 2023, 05:48:27 PM
They also don't lobby states and countries to hobble renewable energy for the sake of profit. I get what you're saying, but it's not as comparable as you imply it to be.


Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 16, 2023, 09:13:47 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 13, 2023, 05:33:46 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 13, 2023, 08:58:13 AMThe number of kind of shitty things you are probably unwittingly participating in as a consumer is incredibly long if you really look into it. Likewise if you have a 401K or something that is investing in companies that are doing shenanigans. It is just something that exists if you live in the modern world and don't go live in a cave or something.

No one unwittingly drives their car or heats their house or anything else that emits carbon.



Again sure I can put on a hair shirt and go live in a cave. But that will make no difference at all because the problems are entirely created by the systems that run our modern world. They need to be changed at the level of the problem not by my the individual going to live in a cave.

If a million people go live in caves the amount of carbon being emitted in the world will barely change. If a key system that currently emits carbon is engineered and designed to not do that then suddenly a huge change is made.

So no I don't think people not putting on hairshirts and living in caves is the problem. That is just stupid IMO, and distracts from the actual solutions. It is just a tool to distract with virtue signaling and nonsense.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 16, 2023, 09:55:41 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 11, 2023, 03:28:30 AMHow well do their customers sleep?

Personally I vote for representatives who are working to change the systemic incentives around pollution and global warming.

I suspect the customers voting for the GOP in Texas and Florida (f. ex.) sleep by telling themselves that global warming is a hoax and liberal tears are delicious.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2023, 10:49:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 16, 2023, 09:13:47 PMAgain sure I can put on a hair shirt and go live in a cave. But that will make no difference at all because the problems are entirely created by the systems that run our modern world. They need to be changed at the level of the problem not by my the individual going to live in a cave.

If a million people go live in caves the amount of carbon being emitted in the world will barely change. If a key system that currently emits carbon is engineered and designed to not do that then suddenly a huge change is made.

So no I don't think people not putting on hairshirts and living in caves is the problem. That is just stupid IMO, and distracts from the actual solutions. It is just a tool to distract with virtue signaling and nonsense.

The problem is created by the release of carbon into the atmosphere, not by systems.  Any individual or entity that releases carbon into the atmosphere is part of the problem.

My beef is with the people who pretend TEH OIL COMPANIES are the only culprits, and the rest of us are innocent.  Anyone who burns carbon is part of the problem.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on April 16, 2023, 11:30:32 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2023, 10:49:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 16, 2023, 09:13:47 PMAgain sure I can put on a hair shirt and go live in a cave. But that will make no difference at all because the problems are entirely created by the systems that run our modern world. They need to be changed at the level of the problem not by my the individual going to live in a cave.

If a million people go live in caves the amount of carbon being emitted in the world will barely change. If a key system that currently emits carbon is engineered and designed to not do that then suddenly a huge change is made.

So no I don't think people not putting on hairshirts and living in caves is the problem. That is just stupid IMO, and distracts from the actual solutions. It is just a tool to distract with virtue signaling and nonsense.

The problem is created by the release of carbon into the atmosphere, not by systems.  Any individual or entity that releases carbon into the atmosphere is part of the problem.

My beef is with the people who pretend TEH OIL COMPANIES are the only culprits, and the rest of us are innocent.  Anyone who burns carbon is part of the problem.
Everyone burns carbon, as long as they live and breathe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 12:47:08 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2023, 10:49:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 16, 2023, 09:13:47 PMAgain sure I can put on a hair shirt and go live in a cave. But that will make no difference at all because the problems are entirely created by the systems that run our modern world. They need to be changed at the level of the problem not by my the individual going to live in a cave.

If a million people go live in caves the amount of carbon being emitted in the world will barely change. If a key system that currently emits carbon is engineered and designed to not do that then suddenly a huge change is made.

So no I don't think people not putting on hairshirts and living in caves is the problem. That is just stupid IMO, and distracts from the actual solutions. It is just a tool to distract with virtue signaling and nonsense.

The problem is created by the release of carbon into the atmosphere, not by systems.  Any individual or entity that releases carbon into the atmosphere is part of the problem.

My beef is with the people who pretend TEH OIL COMPANIES are the only culprits, and the rest of us are innocent.  Anyone who burns carbon is part of the problem.

The world doesn't work in black and whites.

Sure. By living in modern society you're part of the problem. You could choose not to take that flight. You could choose not to heat your home. You could choose not to eat tomatos in winter. Loads of changes big and small you can make.

But blaming consumers is wrong. Individuals are pretty powerless entities that can only influence the decisions of the true impactors enmasse.

Sure I personally account for 0.000 (keep going for a long time) 1% of climate change... But estimates have the oil companies as responsible for 20-45% of greenhouse gas emissions. Which for a handful of organisations is pretty damn high even with the most conservative number.

It's these big companies sitting on billions with a massive yearly income who have the power to change. They're the ones who can afford to build a tonne of wind farms and drastically cut down on oil drilling.
All we can do is try to do the best we can in the world they make.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AM
Customers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

That 20-45% is bullshit.  The oil companies pump oil out of the ground.  That doesn't cause climate change.  Climate change is caused when the customer they sold gas to turns on the ignition.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 01:28:33 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AMCustomers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.
Maybe in astract theory. Not in reality.
If you want to heat your house then for 99% of people there's zero practical choice but do use what's already there, likely a gas boiler or possibly mains powered electric heating.
If you want to eat then you're severely limited by your budget and what time and travel resources you have to visit shops with varied stock.
These are things which aren't really choices to do.


QuoteThat 20-45% is bullshit.  The oil companies pump oil out of the ground.  That doesn't cause climate change.  Climate change is caused when the customer they sold gas to turns on the ignition.
Nope. I even gave a conservative number despite it making a ridiculously broad range.
Googling a bit more I see a figure of 9% purely for the production side... Which is still quite a lot more than what you or I come up with.
And that's a ridiculous niche to limit their output to.

If I lock you in a room with only cola to drink then sure you could choose not to drink the cola... But you're not getting anything else and drinking is a fundamental human need.

The world isn't black and white. To blame consumers 100% for consuming their only choice is bad logic.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 01:37:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2023, 10:49:40 PMMy beef is with the people who pretend TEH OIL COMPANIES are the only culprits, and the rest of us are innocent.  Anyone who burns carbon is part of the problem.

TEH OIL COMPANIES are not the only culprits, no. However...

Many oil companies - and owners of oil companies - do however deploy significant financial resources and apply critical political pressure to defend their businesses in ways that are often completely counter to addressing the issues.

It's well established that Exxon knew of the dangers of climate change as early as the 1970s, with other major oil corporations potentially knowing earlier... and it was definitely well known in the industry by the 80s. Their response to identifying this global threat - and the threat to their businesses - was to kick the can as far down the road as possible and to minimize the amount of responsibility and expected action accruing to them. The idea of "the individual carbon footprint" comes from an ad campaign developed by BP explicitly designed to shift away from the idea that there was a point to do anything with the oil industry and towards the notion that individual consumer choice is what matters.

... and the reality is that humanity only has one proven method of dealing with large scale challenges, and that's concerted collective action driven by government policy (and cooperation between multiple governments). The idea that individual consumer choice is going to have any kind of substantial impact without active government intervention (supporting relevant industries, discouraging destructive behaviour, creating incentives so individuals are able to actually select the better courses of action) is a complete red herring.

So the bottom line is that those who actively oppose the ability of governments to take action on climate change are the primary culprits - whether that's big capital using its influence to hamstring government policy, whether it's politicians or parties opposing taking useful action, or whether it's voters (in democracies at least) voting for climate denialist politicians.

... and while casting blame for past action isn't particularly constructive, the fact remains that the "climate sceptic" global warming denialist movement was conceptualized, created, funded, and astro-turfed by big oil and its PR firms to protect year-over-year profitability.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 01:43:18 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 01:28:33 AMThe world isn't black and white. To blame consumers 100% for consuming their only choice is bad logic.

... it's the result of a concerted PR campaign by big oil - conventially thought to have taken off with BP's "calculate your individual carbon footprint" ad campaign in 2005, designed by Ogilvy - to avoid having to take any responsibility for countering climate change.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 01:52:43 AM
Article from earlier this year about how accurate Exxon's internal predictions re: global warming were in the 1970s. (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research#:~:text=A%20trove%20of%20internal%20documents,earlier%2C%20from%20around%20the%201950s.)

But fear not, Exxon has made clear it is not to blame in any shape or form because:

Quote...  In 2019, Judge Barry Ostrager of the NY State Supreme Court listened to all the facts in a related case before him and wrote: "What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible....The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AMCustomers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:15:42 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AMWhen in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

Jared Diamond gives a few examples of bottom up ecosystem preservation and population stabilization in his book Collapse.  The New Guinea highlands is the best example.

Please not you have shifted the goalposts.  I said oil companies are not the only ones to blame for climate change, the end users bear just as much.

Consider a carbon tax.  This would work by making carbon emitting goods more expensive and induce individuals to switch their consumption basket to goods who's production emits less carbon.  But if this possible with the existence of a carbon tax, it is just as possible without one.

Anyone with the cash can switch out their gas stove for an electric one.  A ban on gas stoves is not a necessary precondition for this action.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:18:14 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 01:28:33 AMNope. I even gave a conservative number despite it making a ridiculously broad range.
Googling a bit more I see a figure of 9% purely for the production side... Which is still quite a lot more than what you or I come up with.
And that's a ridiculous niche to limit their output to.

If I lock you in a room with only cola to drink then sure you could choose not to drink the cola... But you're not getting anything else and drinking is a fundamental human need.

The world isn't black and white. To blame consumers 100% for consuming their only choice is bad logic.

If 20-45% is a conservative number what do you mean by 9% only on the production side?  Oil producers only have a production side.  The consumption side is someone else

Who exactly is blaming consumers 100%?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 02:34:44 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:18:14 AMWho exactly is blaming consumers 100%?
You. As in the bit above this in your post.
QuoteIf 20-45% is a conservative number what do you mean by 9% only on the production side?  Oil producers only have a production side.  The consumption side is someone else

So they pump the oil and sell it and then any use of that oil is 100% the fault of consumers?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:40:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 02:34:44 AMYou. As in the bit above this in your post.
Please be a little more vague.

QuoteSo they pump the oil and sell it and then any use of that oil is 100% the fault of consumers?
It's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on April 17, 2023, 02:59:46 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:15:42 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AMWhen in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

Jared Diamond gives a few examples of bottom up ecosystem preservation and population stabilization in his book Collapse.  The New Guinea highlands is the best example.

Anymore detail on this? I tried to google Jared Diamond and New Guinea but didn't really see much apart from his work and interest in New Guinea.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 03:00:25 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:40:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 02:34:44 AMYou. As in the bit above this in your post.
Please be a little more vague.
I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

QuoteIt's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 03:34:36 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 17, 2023, 02:59:46 AMAnymore detail on this? I tried to google Jared Diamond and New Guinea but didn't really see much apart from his work and interest in New Guinea.

Well I've got the book so I could give you plenty of detail.  What are you interested in?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 03:38:57 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 03:00:25 AMI mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?
I was not able to find anything in my post immeditely preceding the one in which you talked about "the bit above this" that I think a reasonable person could interpret as "100% of the blame goes to the consumers."

QuoteWell thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

I do not.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on April 17, 2023, 03:50:02 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 03:34:36 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 17, 2023, 02:59:46 AMAnymore detail on this? I tried to google Jared Diamond and New Guinea but didn't really see much apart from his work and interest in New Guinea.

Well I've got the book so I could give you plenty of detail.  What are you interested in?

Just a clarification of the example. I've not read the book so unclear on example about the New Guinea highlands.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 04:01:41 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 17, 2023, 03:50:02 AMJust a clarification of the example. I've not read the book so unclear on example about the New Guinea highlands.

No central authority, weak or nonexistent hierarchy, no one to give orders.

Jared claims that thousands of years ago the inhabitants figured they needed to terrace, provide drainage, plant some special tree, etc.  Off the top of my head I can't remember what system they used for population control.  All to prevent erosion, weakening of the soil, silting of river beds, etc., which destroyed many other cultures that he describes in the book.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on April 17, 2023, 06:32:11 AM
Thanks
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 17, 2023, 07:18:44 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 03:00:25 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:40:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 02:34:44 AMYou. As in the bit above this in your post.
Please be a little more vague.
I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

QuoteIt's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

People have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Much time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

My suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.
But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 07:28:58 AM
Quote from: mongers on April 17, 2023, 07:18:44 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 03:00:25 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:40:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 02:34:44 AMYou. As in the bit above this in your post.
Please be a little more vague.
I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

QuoteIt's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

People have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Much time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

My suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.
But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.

"Agency" is a bit of a myth of the right. There's no such thing as society and all that.
The fact is we are all a product of our environment. We all think we're rational independent actors making our own decisions free of any outside influence but if that was the case why does so many billions still get pumped into marketing and sales?

As I keep saying nothing is black and white.
Its perfectly valid to criticise the oil companies for their role in climate change because their part of it is so very huge.
This doesn't mean people should just kick back and wait for all problems to be solved. We should do what we can as well. But the idea that we can all just choose to live in a perfectly sustainable way overnight is simply naiive.
You'll know yourself from your experiences avoiding cars, cycling and taking trains in the UK that things really aren't made easy for those who want to take these steps.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on April 17, 2023, 10:33:57 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AMCustomers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

In 1979 the WHA was involved in merger discussions with the NHL, which would have seen teams in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City join the NHL (together with Hartford).  The NHL owners voted 12-5 in favor of the merger, but league rules required a 3/4 majority.  One of the "no" votes was from Montreal, which was owned by Molson's brewery.

Canadian hockey fans responded by boycotting Molson's beer.

The league quickly held a second vote and the merger was approved.

Now solving global climate change is just slightly harder than forcing a hockey merger, but it is my absolute favourite example of where customer action resulted in real and meaningful change. :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 11:36:40 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 02:15:42 AMJared Diamond gives a few examples of bottom up ecosystem preservation and population stabilization in his book Collapse.  The New Guinea highlands is the best example.

It's an interesting example, thanks for sharing. Re: the current situation it misses the mark a bit in that the New Guinea highlands didn't really have a modern consumer society in the time period, and we have (I believe) little understanding in what drove the society to make the required changes - was it individual families deciding to do their bit on their own? Was it some sort of religious movement? Was it dictatorial imposition by a ruling class?

I was looking for situations where modern societies had successfully enacted transformative solutions in the faces of impending crisis based on relying on individual consumer purchasing decisions, especially absent robust government action which you seem to suggest. BB's charming example notwithstanding I don't think we have any evidence that such an approach has ever worked on a significant scale, nor that it is likely to be effective.

Conversely, we have plenty of evidence of consumer and industry behaviour changing in response to government action.

QuotePlease not you have shifted the goalposts.  I said oil companies are not the only ones to blame for climate change, the end users bear just as much.

Agree that oil companies do not have 100% of the responsibility. Disagree that end users bear a significant amount of responsibility, except in their roles of voters (in democracies).

The other major holder of responsibility are governments (and by extension voters, in democracies). But oil companies - in this particular situation - do bear more responsibility than industry normally does, in that they knew the scope of the problem early and took concerted efforts to cloud the issue and undermine preventative action (and significantly, they succeeded).

QuoteConsider a carbon tax.  This would work by making carbon emitting goods more expensive and induce individuals to switch their consumption basket to goods who's production emits less carbon.  But if this possible with the existence of a carbon tax, it is just as possible without one.

In the realm of abstract hypotheticals, yes. In actual practice, no.

QuoteAnyone with the cash can switch out their gas stove for an electric one.  A ban on gas stoves is not a necessary precondition for this action.

It's not a necessary precondition, no, but it will massively impact the uptake - and thus effectiveness - of the switch.

You're obviously going to see significantly greater uptake of electrical stoves if the cost of running them are 10% of running gas stoves, compared to a scenario in which gas stove costs are 10% of electric stove costs. And if gas stoves are banned and a 100% tax is slapped on domestic gas, then we'll see usage drop significantly faster than if we leave things up to individual consumer preference. Now, there may be other reasons why such drastic action is a bad idea, but lack of efficacy is not one.

So if we think switching to electric is going to help address climate change, we absolutely should take steps to incentivize that rather than rely on the body of consumers to make "moral" consumption choices in the market. The market already has a specific incentive structure in place for individual actions. We can - and should, in time of crisis - change that incentive structure.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 12:13:32 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 04:01:41 AMPeople have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Yes we have agency, but the impact of individual consumer agency is trivial compared to the impact of government action (driving market action, driving individual action at scale).

For argument's sake let's assume the adoption of electric vehicles is a useful action:

1. Prior to the availability of consumer electric vehicles, consumers had zero ability to make a choice to drive them. Obviously.

2. The development of consumer grade EVs has absolutely benefitted from government subsidies. Even in terms of pursuing shareholder value, government action (and potential government action) has been a massive influence - "we expect government regulation in key markets will incentivize EVs and penalize CEVs, therefore the EV market will likely grow. We should get in on that market and make sure we're competitive."

3. Once EVs were more widely available we can compare uptake in markets where government incentivizes their use (direct financial incentives/disincentives, infrastructure support, signals about future penalties for CEVs) vs those where they do not. I'm pretty sure the evidence shows that uptake is much bigger in areas where there's clear government action to encourage that uptake.

The same is broadly true when it comes to the adoption of solar/ wind/ hydro/ nuclear vs burning gas/ coal for electricity.

QuoteMuch time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

While this is true, I think that people will embrace the inconvenient on a much larger scale if it's rendered less inconvenient while the alternatives are made much more inconvenient in turn.

Relying on volunteerism in the face of massive but seemingly remote danger is ineffective.

QuoteMy suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.

But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.

Sure, that's fair.

Conversely, to continually focus on the need for individual morality based actions while eschewing concerted government action smacks of being ineffective.

... and given that the actual climate will respond to the effectiveness/ ineffectiveness of our measures while it doesn't respond to hypocrisy (or the absence thereof), I think we should focus on what is most likely to be effective.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on April 17, 2023, 01:02:55 PM
I think just on Jake's Exxon point that there's also been leaks from BP and Shell - that they were not just aware of climate change before it was commonly understood (before the first UN conference on it for example), but were doing models of no action v mitigation in the 70s and 80s. I can't find the article but we are currently broadly on the no action path - I think that was BP and they didn't take the mitigation actions in the 70s or 80s when looking at that.

Oil and gas companies did, however, fund climate skeptic think tanks and PR firms for the last 40-50 years.

They may not be solely responsible but I think there is a case that they're not a million miles from the tobacco companies or the Sacklers in terms of knowing more, earlier and actively trying to move attention away.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on April 17, 2023, 02:35:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AMCustomers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation
How about a bunch of concerned citizens taking the government to court over failing to legislate against climate change, and thereby putting the population at risk? And winning, forcing the government into policy it is afraid to make?

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 17, 2023, 04:41:29 PM
Quote from: Maladict on April 17, 2023, 02:35:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 02:00:31 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 01:01:54 AMCustomers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation
How about a bunch of concerned citizens taking the government to court over failing to legislate against climate change, and thereby putting the population at risk? And winning, forcing the government into policy it is afraid to make?




That supports Jacob's point.  It is government action that is required.

Also people need to take Diamond's theories and observations with a large grain of salt.  He has been heavily criticized by Anthropologists for making claims not supported by the evidence or just plain being wrong.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 04:57:45 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 12:13:32 PM... and given that the actual climate will respond to the effectiveness/ ineffectiveness of our measures while it doesn't respond to hypocrisy (or the absence thereof), I think we should focus on what is most likely to be effective.

Neither does the climate respond to our heaping all the blame on oil companies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 05:10:04 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 04:57:45 PMNeither does the climate respond to our heaping all the blame on oil companies.

No doubt.

But it might respond to actions that disincentivizes the the use of fossil fuels on industry- and nation- wide bases.

... and holding oil companies responsible for their malfeance may be an effective part of such disincentives; much more so than repeating "you know you could decide to by an electrical stove if you really cared."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 05:14:32 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 05:10:04 PM... and holding oil companies responsible for their malfeance may be an effective part of such disincentives; much more so than repeating "you know you could decide to by an electrical stove if you really cared."

I don't know what this means.  It kinda sounds like heaping the blame on oil companies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Larch on April 17, 2023, 06:51:14 PM
Yi, are you doing this pro bono or are you on Exxon's payroll? You could make a small fortune out of it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 17, 2023, 07:41:54 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 17, 2023, 06:51:14 PMYi, are you doing this pro bono or are you on Exxon's payroll? You could make a small fortune out of it.

:blink:

I don't think that's at all fair and misrepresents his position.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 08:28:35 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 05:14:32 PMI don't know what this means.  It kinda sounds like heaping the blame on oil companies.

Is your focus on "not heaping the blame on oil companies" because:

1) ... you don't think they actually did anything blameworthy?

2) ... you think that while they did do blameworhty stuff, the significance pales in comparison to individuals not making every effort to personally cut their carbon footprint as consumers?

3) ... because while they may or may not have done blameworthy things that doesn't matter. What matters is what we do next to deal with this crisis?

4) ... some other reason (I'd like to understand)?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 08:38:28 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 08:28:35 PMIs your focus on "not heaping the blame on oil companies" because:

1) ... you don't think they actually did anything blameworthy?

2) ... you think that while they did do blameworhty stuff, the significance pales in comparison to individuals not making every effort to personally cut their carbon footprint as consumers?

3) ... because while they may or may not have done blameworthy things that doesn't matter. What matters is what we do next to deal with this crisis?

4) ... some other reason (I'd like to understand)?

Because I object to the political left's agenda to demonize for profit business.

Because I think it is a logical fallacy assign all the blame for climate change to big oil when at the very least it is a two part process: one actor to drill and pump oil and another to burn it.  It whitewashes the consumer and could lead to the thinking that if big oil (or small oil for that matter) is sufficiently punished climate change will be magically solved.

At some point the great unwashed masses will have to experience pain, shortage, inconvenience and higher cost in order to fix climate change.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 17, 2023, 08:45:50 PM
Seems to me both the addict and the pusher bear some responsibility.  And attaching some level of opprobrium to the pusher is not equivalent to a broad condemnation of all for profit business enterprise.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on April 17, 2023, 08:48:59 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 08:38:28 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 17, 2023, 08:28:35 PMIs your focus on "not heaping the blame on oil companies" because:

1) ... you don't think they actually did anything blameworthy?

2) ... you think that while they did do blameworhty stuff, the significance pales in comparison to individuals not making every effort to personally cut their carbon footprint as consumers?

3) ... because while they may or may not have done blameworthy things that doesn't matter. What matters is what we do next to deal with this crisis?

4) ... some other reason (I'd like to understand)?

Because I object to the political left's agenda to demonize for profit business.

Because I think it is a logical fallacy assign all the blame for climate change to big oil when at the very least it is a two part process: one actor to drill and pump oil and another to burn it.  It whitewashes the consumer and could lead to the thinking that if big oil (or small oil for that matter) is sufficiently punished climate change will be magically solved.

At some point the great unwashed masses will have to experience pain, shortage, inconvenience and higher cost in order to fix climate change.

It's not an attempt, it's a cold statement of fact.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 08:56:09 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 17, 2023, 08:48:59 PMIt's not an attempt, it's a cold statement of fact.

By amazing coincidence, so is my position.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 11:50:05 PM
You keep saying placing all blame on big business. I think we've all been explicit numerous times that nobody is saying its all their fault and that blame is shared.

However it is beyond doubt they take a huge amount of the responsibility for climate change from various angles  and are in a powerful position to act to tackle it if they could just think long term.

You need to look beyond ideology here.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 12:10:08 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 11:50:05 PMYou keep saying placing all blame on big business. I think we've all been explicit numerous times that nobody is saying its all their fault and that blame is shared.

However it is beyond doubt they take a huge amount of the responsibility for climate change from various angles  and are in a powerful position to act to tackle it if they could just think long term.

You need to look beyond ideology here.
I was responding to Syt's cartoon originally.  I didn't catch a lot of shared blame from that cartoon.

I don't see how oil companies are in any kind of special position to tackle climate change other than ceasing operations.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 02:39:34 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 12:10:08 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 17, 2023, 11:50:05 PMYou keep saying placing all blame on big business. I think we've all been explicit numerous times that nobody is saying its all their fault and that blame is shared.

However it is beyond doubt they take a huge amount of the responsibility for climate change from various angles  and are in a powerful position to act to tackle it if they could just think long term.

You need to look beyond ideology here.
I was responding to Syt's cartoon originally.  I didn't catch a lot of shared blame from that cartoon.

I don't see how oil companies are in any kind of special position to tackle climate change other than ceasing operations.

It is possible to talk about one topic without mentioning that other topics exist.

And the fossil fuel companies are amazingly well placed to pivot their operations. They're already doing this to some extent, albeit a lot more green washing than actual action.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 03:08:53 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 02:39:34 AMIt is possible to talk about one topic without mentioning that other topics exist.

This is classic arguing in the alternative.  You say no one is saying place all the blame on oil companies.  I point out someone who by appearances does place all blame on the oil companies.  Then you say that doesn't matter.

QuoteAnd the fossil fuel companies are amazingly well placed to pivot their operations. They're already doing this to some extent, albeit a lot more green washing than actual action.

I didn't see the advantages they have the first time you made the assertion, and I don't see the advantages now that you've repeated the assertion.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 04:00:15 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 03:08:53 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 02:39:34 AMIt is possible to talk about one topic without mentioning that other topics exist.

This is classic arguing in the alternative.  You say no one is saying place all the blame on oil companies.  I point out someone who by appearances does place all blame on the oil companies.  Then you say that doesn't matter.

:blink:
Thats not what anyone has said at all.
You said the comic is placing all the blame on the oil companies.
I pointed out you can talk about how something is a problem without that meaning you believe its the only problem.

QuoteI didn't see the advantages they have the first time you made the assertion, and I don't see the advantages now that you've repeated the assertion.
The continuance of civilization some would argue is a quite nice advantage.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 04:12:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 04:00:15 AM:blink:
Thats not what anyone has said at all.
You said the comic is placing all the blame on the oil companies.
I pointed out you can talk about how something is a problem without that meaning you believe its the only problem.
Fair enough.  I see the cartoon as blaming only the oil companies.  I'm happy to agree to disagree on that.

QuoteThe continuance of civilization some would argue is a quite nice advantage.

I meant the advantages oil companies have in switching to something that mitigates climate change.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 05:21:40 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 04:12:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 18, 2023, 04:00:15 AM:blink:
Thats not what anyone has said at all.
You said the comic is placing all the blame on the oil companies.
I pointed out you can talk about how something is a problem without that meaning you believe its the only problem.
Fair enough.  I see the cartoon as blaming only the oil companies.  I'm happy to agree to disagree on that.

QuoteThe continuance of civilization some would argue is a quite nice advantage.

I meant the advantages oil companies have in switching to something that mitigates climate change.

Civilization is quite a necessity for having customers and long term profits.
Plus all the people running the company live on Earth.
And then there's politics turning against them- they can either go with it or continue their rear guard fighting.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 18, 2023, 05:37:11 AM
Let me try this way. What did you mean when you said "the fossil fuel companies are amazingly well placed to pivot their operations."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 18, 2023, 09:59:21 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 17, 2023, 08:38:28 PMBecause I object to the political left's agenda to demonize for profit business.

I don't know if you consider me on the political left, but let me go on record here: I'm in a for profit business. I spend most of my time at work looking at ways to increase profits. I do not demonize for profit business. I'm a big fan of profit, even if my politics tend to prefer a higher degree of redistribution of than you prefer.

QuoteBecause I think it is a logical fallacy assign all the blame for climate change to big oil when at the very least it is a two part process: one actor to drill and pump oil and another to burn it.  It whitewashes the consumer and could lead to the thinking that if big oil (or small oil for that matter) is sufficiently punished climate change will be magically solved.

I do not subscribe to that logical fallacy. I KNOW that punishing the oil industry will not magically solve climate change whatever degree that "punishment" takes.

Now, I do think that some kind of effective action on climate change could look like "punishment" to big oil - and feel like it for its investors - but I'm not particularly interested in it as punishment, only in terms of how effective it is in combating climate change.

Separate from that... I do think that the big oil - that is Exxon, BP, Shell and potentially others - have engaged in active malfeance on this. They identified the risk of climate change early (good) and used this to poison the well as much as possible by creating the climate change denialist movement (terrible) and continue with business as usual (which got us to where we are, so not good). That's a fact as far as I'm concerned, and pointing that out is not "heaping blame on oil companies" as I understand the phrase (but maybe you disagree?).

Now IF punishing big oil companies for this malfeance does help address global climate change (perhaps because the "punishment" drives a bigger shift away from fossil fuels) then I think it's great. But if the punishment has no such consequence, then I'm fairly neutral about it.

Note: I don't believe there's a magical result that will automatically solve things by "punishing" the relevant oil companies. The important part is the solution, not the "punishment".

Note 2: Insofar as "punishment" is relevant, it should be applied to specific oil companies (and their successors) not the industry as a whole. If you and BB start an oil exploration and drilling company tomorrow, you should not be punished for Exxon, BP, and Shell's actions 50 years ago.

Note 3: The important thing is taking action that addresses climate change, and if that harms big oil companies in some way that's perfectly fine. But harming big oil is not the priority.

QuoteAt some point the great unwashed masses will have to experience pain, shortage, inconvenience and higher cost in order to fix climate change.

Very likely, yes. But this is unlikely to happen through independent consumer choices, moral hectoring or not. It'll require concerted government action (action that is rendered less likely through big oil and oil billionaires funding politicians opposed to addressing climate change in any way, especially in the US).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 02:36:36 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 18, 2023, 09:59:21 AMSeparate from that... I do think that the big oil - that is Exxon, BP, Shell and potentially others - have engaged in active malfeance on this. They identified the risk of climate change early (good) and used this to poison the well as much as possible by creating the climate change denialist movement (terrible) and continue with business as usual (which got us to where we are, so not good). That's a fact as far as I'm concerned, and pointing that out is not "heaping blame on oil companies" as I understand the phrase (but maybe you disagree?).

Now IF punishing big oil companies for this malfeance does help address global climate change (perhaps because the "punishment" drives a bigger shift away from fossil fuels) then I think it's great. But if the punishment has no such consequence, then I'm fairly neutral about it.

OK, so I don't have all the answers here, but your post doesn't sit well with me (as a matter of public policy, not personal animosity).

The first definition I could find for malfeasance was

Quotewrongdoing or misconduct especially by a public official

In taking steps to minimize or downplay the risk of climate change were oil companies engaged in "wrongdoing"?  By funding lobby groups was that "misconduct"?

I don't think it is.

You seem to perhaps take a more broader view of malfeasance - perhaps "conduct that is harmful to the planet"?

But the problem is we live in a democracy and people are free to support or oppose different public policies even if you (and I!) might they they're objectively horrible. 

Just to think of something you and might find common ground on - I think US "open carry" gun laws are terrible.  The idea people can just walk around with AR-15s strapped to their back in urban areas is just asking for trouble and directly lead to increased gun deaths.

But nevertheless I wouldn't say that gun companies, or the NRA, who support such policies, are engaged in "malfeasance", and wouldn't want them to be punished without there being something more.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 18, 2023, 02:55:09 PM
Opened the back door this morning and the very first thing I saw was a dying bumblebee at my feet, it expired within a few moment before my eyes.

Now there isn't any arable land for good many fields around, it's all mainly pasture/meadows here, so what might have killed it, a virus, maybe some anti-insect treatment used by a local garden owner?

What ever the cause a reminder of the massive toll insect life is suffering in our 'modern' world, not just climate change but environmental disaster is  overtaking us. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:04:32 PM
I don't immediately see how it would be a responsibility of Big Fossil to push for other forms of energy. Was there a direct legal requirement to do so? Otherwise it sounds like something that would harm shareholder value, not increase it.

Determining environmental protection laws and regulations that enhance society's ability to develop in a sustainable manner seems like a government responsibility. That the wolves have taken steps to stop or delay a Sheep Protection Act cannot reasonably be held against them I don't think. Governments were aware of the climate problem many decades ago and often did nothing or indeed actively suppressed nuclear power. In democratic countries the people will have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party.

Now have Big Fossil acted in ways that are quite harmful to society? My impression is yes. But if that in itself is cause for punishment then many organizations of all kinds (companies, churches, political parties etc etc) will have to be punished. I think such a principle would be unsound.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 18, 2023, 03:13:47 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:04:32 PMI don't immediately see how it would be a responsibility of Big Fossil to push for other forms of energy. Was there a direct legal requirement to do so? Otherwise it sounds like something that would harm shareholder value, not increase it.

Determining environmental protection laws and regulations that enhance society's ability to develop in a sustainable manner seems like a government responsibility. That the wolves have taken steps to stop or delay a Sheep Protection Act cannot reasonably be held against them I don't think. Governments were aware of the climate problem many decades ago and often did nothing or indeed actively suppressed nuclear power. In democratic countries the people will have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party.

Now have Big Fossil acted in ways that are quite harmful to society? My impression is yes. But if that in itself is cause for punishment then many organizations of all kinds (companies, churches, political parties etc etc) will have to be punished. I think such a principle would be unsound.

The comparison with the tobacco companies is fairly compelling.  They knew, as late as the 70s, that what they were doing would create climate warming.  Their predictions in the 70s were very accurate.  With that knowledge they engaged in a purposeful campaign of disinformation to undermine independent scientists who were starting to raise warnings about the issue.

There are a number of ways that fact pattern can be fit into a class action law suit for damages.  Damages, which I might add, which would make the successful suits against tobacco look miniscule by comparison.

The one small silver lining here is that anyone on the right who still advocates for self regulation will be laughed out of the room.  Well, at least a room full of sane people.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:16:59 PM
If purposeful disinformation to further a harmful agenda is cause for punishment then many many organizations are up for punishment.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 18, 2023, 03:33:30 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:16:59 PMIf purposeful disinformation to further a harmful agenda is cause for punishment then many many organizations are up for punishment.

Yes, there have been many successful law suits in that regard.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on April 18, 2023, 04:04:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:16:59 PMIf purposeful disinformation to further a harmful agenda is cause for punishment then many many organizations are up for punishment.

Indeed. But it is a civil offense so they have to be sued I believe. That takes some doing to successfully sue a large and powerful organization.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 19, 2023, 03:27:02 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:04:32 PMI don't immediately see how it would be a responsibility of Big Fossil to push for other forms of energy. Was there a direct legal requirement to do so? Otherwise it sounds like something that would harm shareholder value, not increase it.

Determining environmental protection laws and regulations that enhance society's ability to develop in a sustainable manner seems like a government responsibility. That the wolves have taken steps to stop or delay a Sheep Protection Act cannot reasonably be held against them I don't think. Governments were aware of the climate problem many decades ago and often did nothing or indeed actively suppressed nuclear power. In democratic countries the people will have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party.

Now have Big Fossil acted in ways that are quite harmful to society? My impression is yes. But if that in itself is cause for punishment then many organizations of all kinds (companies, churches, political parties etc etc) will have to be punished. I think such a principle would be unsound.

See also: Nestle. They've seen the writing on the wall as far as their core junk food business goes and are trying to diversify towards nutrition, health, and wellness.
There's a very good argument that they no doubt recognise themselves given all the green washing that pivoting away from fossil fuels and towards green energy is how the major oil companies survive beyond the short term.

Nobody wants to 'punish' companies. I don't know where this is coming from.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 09:55:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2023, 03:27:02 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:04:32 PMI don't immediately see how it would be a responsibility of Big Fossil to push for other forms of energy. Was there a direct legal requirement to do so? Otherwise it sounds like something that would harm shareholder value, not increase it.

Determining environmental protection laws and regulations that enhance society's ability to develop in a sustainable manner seems like a government responsibility. That the wolves have taken steps to stop or delay a Sheep Protection Act cannot reasonably be held against them I don't think. Governments were aware of the climate problem many decades ago and often did nothing or indeed actively suppressed nuclear power. In democratic countries the people will have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party.

Now have Big Fossil acted in ways that are quite harmful to society? My impression is yes. But if that in itself is cause for punishment then many organizations of all kinds (companies, churches, political parties etc etc) will have to be punished. I think such a principle would be unsound.

See also: Nestle. They've seen the writing on the wall as far as their core junk food business goes and are trying to diversify towards nutrition, health, and wellness.
There's a very good argument that they no doubt recognise themselves given all the green washing that pivoting away from fossil fuels and towards green energy is how the major oil companies survive beyond the short term.

Nobody wants to 'punish' companies. I don't know where this is coming from.

Awards of punitive damages for acts of intentional deceit are punishment - it's in the name  :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on April 27, 2023, 12:13:51 PM
Looks like the drought in the Horn of Africa is one of the worst ever - with a failed harvest and farm animals dying in large numbers as well. It is also - apparently - very clear that this drought is driven by humean created climate change.

So... we'll probably see more of this, with significant areas potentially becoming unable to support the populations that live there. I expect that as the people become unable to survive in their home countries they'll try to move elsewhere... so I guess we're looking at a period of mass migration in the upcoming decades.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on April 27, 2023, 12:21:18 PM
This seems inevitable and we are making no real preparations for it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 27, 2023, 12:56:20 PM
Yes, bad times afoot. Sadly the worst hit countries will also be amongst the poorest to begin with.
There's a lot that can potentially be done to mitigate things, especially with advancing technology, but they won't be able to afford it themselves.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on April 27, 2023, 01:23:12 PM
It's not all doom and gloom. Sen. Johnson (R-Wisconsin) points out the bright side: climate change will be positive for his home state.

https://www.newsweek.com/ron-johnson-says-climate-change-beneficial-1796937
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on April 27, 2023, 05:29:18 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 27, 2023, 12:13:51 PMLooks like the drought in the Horn of Africa is one of the worst ever - with a failed harvest and farm animals dying in large numbers as well. It is also - apparently - very clear that this drought is driven by humean created climate change.

So... we'll probably see more of this, with significant areas potentially becoming unable to support the populations that live there. I expect that as the people become unable to survive in their home countries they'll try to move elsewhere... so I guess we're looking at a period of mass migration in the upcoming decades.

Yes, I've been following this for a while and it's heartbreaking, they're now entering their 5th year of drought.

Also it's affecting the wider region including much of Northern Kenya and causing a lot of deadly violence between pastoralist forced to keep moving and local agriculturalists.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on April 28, 2023, 02:08:14 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 27, 2023, 01:23:12 PMIt's not all doom and gloom. Sen. Johnson (R-Wisconsin) points out the bright side: climate change will be positive for his home state.

https://www.newsweek.com/ron-johnson-says-climate-change-beneficial-1796937

Ah, so he's volunteering it as a New Somalia :cheers:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on May 23, 2023, 04:07:52 PM
Saving whales to store more carbon (https://www-lapresse-ca.translate.goog/actualites/environnement/2023-05-23/en-un-coup-d-oeil/sauver-les-baleines-pour-stocker-plus-de-carbone.php?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp)

Translated from a French text.
Original text here (https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/environnement/2023-05-23/en-un-coup-d-oeil/sauver-les-baleines-pour-stocker-plus-de-carbone.php)


Quote33 tons of CO 2

In 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published an analysis recalling the importance of protecting whales in order to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere. The analysis was based on a study unveiled in 2014 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment . A team of scientists, including Quebec biologist Lyne Morissette, then indicated that a large whale sequesters an average of 33 tons of CO 2 . This is, so to speak, stored in the ocean for thousands of years, since when it dies, a whale sinks to the seabed.

As many as 1000 trees
The IMF analysis recalls that a tree stores an average of 48 kg of CO 2 per year. A single whale would therefore make it possible to sequester as much CO 2 as 1000 trees, specify the IMF experts. There will never be as many whales in the oceans as there are trees on the Earth's surface, but "protecting whales could make a significant contribution to carbon sequestration, as the current population of the largest whales does not is a small fraction of what it once was," the IMF adds.

Declining populations
The whales likely to store as much carbon are the large baleen whales, such as the blue whale, the humpback whale, the right whale, as well as the sperm whale, which is however part of the toothed whale family. Several species of large whales have declined dramatically over the past century. It is estimated that they lost an average of 66% of their population during this period. It's even worse for the blue whale, reduced to 1% of its historic population. In addition to their ability to store carbon, large cetaceans also play an essential role in regulating marine ecosystems. They help maintain phytoplankton stocks, which are largely responsible for the oceans' ability to capture huge quantities of CO 2 .

Nine key animal species
A recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change indicates that by protecting six animal species and promoting the expansion of three others, we could remove 6.4 billion tonnes of CO 2 from the atmosphere each year, or equivalent to 17% of emissions in 2022. To achieve this, the populations of reef sharks, gray wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, muskoxen and marine fish would have to be maintained at their current levels. also help to increase the populations of African forest elephants, American bison and whales in the southern hemisphere.
36.8 billion tons

In 2022, global CO 2 emissions from fossil fuels amounted to 36.8 billion tonnes

Saving whales to save the planet from a future extinction event... I've seen this in a movie before... ;)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on June 05, 2023, 02:49:22 PM
Massive and early forest fires in BC and Canada this year.

Apparently one BC forest fire is covering as much land as all th fires of 2022 put together (https://globalnews.ca/news/9743231/bc-wildfire-update-june-2/).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on June 05, 2023, 08:39:32 PM
Yeah. Smoke in the air all the way down in Montreal today. Everything had this orange hue.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 05, 2023, 08:46:51 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on June 05, 2023, 08:39:32 PMYeah. Smoke in the air all the way down in Montreal today. Everything had this orange hue.
I remember the peat moss fire & forest fire over here a few years ago, it was awful.

Hope it's not too bad.  Not like this, I hope:  (Chibougamau)
 (https://i.redd.it/e7quguexs94b1.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 05, 2023, 08:48:40 PM
I was wondering why we had a red moon last night.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 05, 2023, 10:32:05 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 05, 2023, 08:48:40 PMI was wondering why we had a red moon last night.
Red is different.  That's the forces of Vega preparing for an attack.  ;)
(Duque will understand, Oex too, not so sure about anyone else :P )

https://youtu.be/FRpAcdzJUdA?t=26



Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on June 06, 2023, 08:50:06 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 05, 2023, 10:32:05 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 05, 2023, 08:48:40 PMI was wondering why we had a red moon last night.
Red is different.  That's the forces of Vega preparing for an attack.  ;)
(Duque will understand, Oex too, not so sure about anyone else :P )

https://youtu.be/FRpAcdzJUdA?t=26
:thumbsup:

That's harsh for Goupil Gris.  :D

Should have added a trigger warning for the Ségolènes around here  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 06, 2023, 01:16:43 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on June 06, 2023, 08:50:06 AMThat's harsh for Goupil Gris.
These kids, they know nothing. :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 06, 2023, 04:11:20 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/06/too-late-now-to-save-arctic-summer-ice-climate-scientists-find

QuoteToo late now to save Arctic summer ice, climate scientists find

Ice-free summers inevitable even with sharp emissions cuts and likely to result in more extreme heatwaves and floods
Damian Carrington E
Tue 6 Jun 2023 16.00 BST
Last modified on Tue 6 Jun 2023 16.32 BST

It is now too late to save summer Arctic sea ice, research has shown, and scientists say preparations need to be made for the increased extreme weather across the northern hemisphere that is likely to occur as a result.

Analysis shows that even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced, the Arctic will be ice-free in September in coming decades. The study also shows that if emissions decline slowly or continue to rise, the first ice-free summer could be in the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous projections.

The research shows that 90% of the melting is the result of human-caused global heating, with natural factors accounting for the rest.

Since satellite records began in 1979, summer Arctic ice has shrunk by 13% a decade, in one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum at the end of summer, in September, and in 2021 it was at its second lowest extent on record.

"Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice," said Prof Dirk Notz, of the University of Hamburg, Germany, who was part of the study team. "As scientists, we've been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades. This is now the first major component of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn't listen to our warnings.

"This brings another warning bell, that the kind of projections that we've made for other components of the Earth system will start unfolding in the decades to come."

Other climate scientists said in 2022 that the world was on the brink of multiple disastrous tipping points.

Prof Seung-Ki Min, of Pohang University, South Korea, who led the new study, said: "The most important impact for human society will be the increase in weather extremes that we are experiencing now, such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods. We need to reduce CO2 emissions more ambitiously and also prepare to adapt to this faster Arctic warming and its impacts on human society and ecosystems."

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the Arctic would not lose its summer ice if emissions were cut sharply and global temperature rises were limited to 2C. But the new research, published in the journal Nature Communications, projects the loss of summer sea ice in the 2050s in the low emissions scenario.

The IPCC report concluded that the Arctic would lose its summer ice in the 2040s in intermediate and high emissions scenarios, but the new research advances that by a decade into the 2030s.

In the study, the scientists first established how much rising greenhouse gases have contributed to ice melting compared with natural factors such as variation in the sun's intensity and emissions from volcanoes. "Humans really are to blame for almost all the loss of Arctic sea ice we have been observing," Notz said.

The scientists used this information to model future melting and found that the models underestimated the pace of melting compared with observations of ice in the Arctic from 1979 to 2019.

Calibrating the models to be consistent with the observations led to the projections of faster melting and an ice-free summer even in the low emissions scenario. In the intermediate and high emissions scenarios, August and October also become ice-free by about 2080, the study found.

It is not possible to pinpoint a particular year for the first ice-free summer because of natural variability in the climate system.

Faster melting of Arctic sea ice leads to a vicious circle of more heating, because the dark ocean exposed as ice melts absorbs more heat from the sun. The result is faster warming in the Arctic, and scientists have increasing evidence that this is weakening the jet stream and leading to more extreme weather events in North America, Europe and Asia.

The searing heatwave in the Pacific north-west of America in 2021 and the catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2022 are the type of events that may be increasing in likelihood because of a weaker jet stream.

Min said faster Arctic heating also accelerated the melting of the Greenland ice cap, driving up sea level, and the melting of permafrost regions, releasing more greenhouse gases. Polar bears and other wildlife in the Arctic and the Indigenous people of the region all rely on sea ice.

Prof Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, who was not part of the study team, said: "The key message is that we are pretty much destined to lose the Arctic's sea ice cover in late summer. The question is: when will this occur?

"Over the past decade, there has not been much of a downward trend in September sea ice, which reflects the natural variability in the system. This hiatus will not last, but it shows the difficulties in making predictions. About a decade ago, I mused that the Arctic might lose its summer sea ice by 2030. That may have been an overly aggressive statement. While from the present study 2030 is still in the running, I'm going with sometime in the 2040s – that's still not very far away."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on June 06, 2023, 04:41:49 PM
And current status in Europe at the start of summer (I've no idea why the boundaries are what they are):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx8Rh11WAAEjogj?format=png&name=small)
(https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/mapserver/legends/cdinx_v3_homepage.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 06, 2023, 04:57:41 PM
Quite amazing after how wet winter and early spring was.

I miss proper winters :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on June 06, 2023, 05:37:58 PM
Today NYC area has been covered with smog that smelled of burning wood, reportedly from Canadian wildfires.  When you look out the window, it almost looks like 1980 out there.  Canada delivered to libertarians something that the Supreme Court hasn't managed to, yet.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 06, 2023, 05:41:41 PM
This region is very far away from where I live.  I don't feel the effect of any of these fires where I am, I'm lucky.  People living 45 minutes east of here have received some smoke from the North shore fires.

This is from the Abitibi fires, some pictures taken from the cities.  The Premier has announced that one small village of 36 souls will be left to fend for itself if the fire reach it, because there's not enough people on the ground to cover all the infrastructures + the village.  Civil security says it's too soon to declare all hope lost for the village, they'll be fighting for as long as they can, but some cottages are already lost.  People have been evacuated, the roads have been closed, the firefighters are doing their best, but the lines are spread thin.

Reinforcements have come in from France, but Canada and the US have their own problems to deal with right now.  The Canadian government has sent in the army to help in some areas, some of the soldiers have trained on fire lances, other have helped evacuating.

  (https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/352350979_789045799471688_7270535589452900064_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=GVTvZV6WgBcAX9HKKBr&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=00_AfAxjqd_nUYIfD8qkkfasfC6cmxrGbmz6AOoPcDQxoHDQg&oe=6485805C)

(https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/351128879_1740593416337439_7483232782839374227_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=77PLT01vo0AAX8zBY8E&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=00_AfCBH9raifTVu_TVd7q_RgPcLBg44CxRA7p7pYcTBiauGg&oe=6484C9C6) 

(https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/351470756_1235317503769048_5516917621055078223_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=9R77OeXYqHsAX9JUvIr&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=00_AfD7Q6UnJu0CpL4Km4LjVhyWi0XChf0UpzRE3JUAaaTUhA&oe=6484D90B) 

(https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/347032308_644620103791962_1929566432996187564_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=axhSRMElXfkAX-UeXMd&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=00_AfC7aJL7_MBnOH38G_Mpwz2W4i5RcPo39AKyQgoH6asB3w&oe=6483C95D) 

(https://scontent.fymq2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/346858056_273244118715262_5150279410716927400_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=Lyl-2MzmyvUAX86b1zU&_nc_ht=scontent.fymq2-1.fna&oh=00_AfBsZVK3U6JXLVTCXo1pLxhOIDhk_YnqcEeIXywZQucQlw&oe=64852614) 



As is the case with every emergencies, wild conspiracy theories abound.

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada has pulled a Bolsonaro out of his hat and accused green terrorists of setting the forests on fire to promote their political agenda.
https://twitter.com/maximebernier/status/1665868581970608128

Ah.  The guy needs help.  He's starting to believe himself.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 06, 2023, 09:26:28 PM
Damn.  They've evacuated Chibougamau.

Never been there.  Heard about if from my dad, and other construction workers, there was lots of construction work there in the 70s apparently, with the boom in James Bay and Radisson, and the all the mining activity around.

It's part of Jamesie area (James Bay), North of Lac St-Jean, so it's pretty much to the north (people there will joke they're at the center of everything, not technically false :) ).

7500 people there have to move to closest city, 2h30 south of there.

French text (https://www.lequotidien.com/actualites/justice-et-faits-divers/2023/06/06/feux-de-foret-tous-les-citoyens-de-chibougamau-evacues-JEKWIMDLMZEGTBREJDUBL23QOY/)

Goddam fires.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 06, 2023, 10:29:31 PM
The name Malarctic seems a little redundant.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on June 07, 2023, 08:20:09 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 06, 2023, 04:41:49 PMAnd current status in Europe at the start of summer (I've no idea why the boundaries are what they are):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx8Rh11WAAEjogj?format=png&name=small)
(https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/mapserver/legends/cdinx_v3_homepage.png)

Lots of rain lately but as thunderstorms in Portugal, no soft English rains unfortunately.
Madeira broke some precipitation records as a matter of fact.

It's all the water after a very dry April and it causes floodings and mudslides but that's all that's available. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on June 07, 2023, 08:42:21 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 06, 2023, 10:29:31 PMThe name Malarctic seems a little redundant.

Good joke. Very old french name. Doesn't mean what it implies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on June 07, 2023, 10:12:52 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on June 07, 2023, 08:42:21 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 06, 2023, 10:29:31 PMThe name Malarctic seems a little redundant.

Good joke. Very old french name. Doesn't mean what it implies.

It doesn't sound redundent to me.  In English we have roughly the same thing: "bad cold."  ex: I am just recovering from a bad cold.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 07, 2023, 08:06:41 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 06, 2023, 10:29:31 PMThe name Malarctic seems a little redundant.
At the time when the Abitibi region was being surveyed and organized in 1907, the name Malartic was chosen for the geographic township and lake, following the pattern of assigning names of regiments and officers of General Montcalm's army.[5] It was named after Anne Joseph Hippolyte de Maurès, Comte de Malartic, aide de camp to Montcalm.[1]

Source: Wikipedia.




One of the big ones, the one near Chibougamau.
Impressive, yet frightening.  The nearby Cree community has refused to evacuate.

(https://i.redd.it/voici-%C3%A0-quoi-ressemble-les-feux-de-for%C3%AAt-qui-menacent-v0-e74sqap1co4b1.jpg?s=23ceb518ac53784da03db4f9cb167e929a5dd6d4)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 09, 2023, 05:08:33 PM
We have lost one battle.  But have we lost the war?
World has lost battle to stop glaciers melting and sea level rising, UN meteorological chief says (https://news.sky.com/story/world-has-lost-battle-to-stop-glaciers-melting-and-sea-level-rising-un-meteorological-chief-says-12898899)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 16, 2023, 10:48:03 AM
Hottest Early June averaged across the world since records began, something like 1.69C above the long term average; we've fuck it up, this our only home.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on June 16, 2023, 11:35:08 AM
CO2 emissions are still increasing each year, we have yet to reach first base on resolving the problem.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on June 16, 2023, 11:40:36 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 16, 2023, 11:35:08 AMCO2 emissions are still increasing each year, we have yet to reach first base on resolving the problem.


That's the frustrating part about climate deniers.  I mean you can argue all you want about what steps to take - but atmospheric CO2 is steadily increasing and has for decades.  There's no doubt the cause is anthropomorphic.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 16, 2023, 05:28:27 PM
Some promising signs from Turkmenistan in promising to sort out its methane. I believe thats the place with the giant eternal leak which puts it 3rd in the world.
Forget co2 for a moment, sorting out methane would be a huge win that sees quick results as it breaks down in the atmosphere within a decade or two.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 16, 2023, 05:57:28 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 16, 2023, 11:40:36 AMThere's no doubt the cause is anthropomorphic.
And we know oil is a big cause of that...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 21, 2023, 08:57:32 AM
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/170D8/production/_130142449_mediaitem130142448.jpg.webp)

From this article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65948544
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 22, 2023, 09:37:42 AM
Just broke my two person teapot that I've been using for years, 3-4 of those with a busted lid; so what's the least climate damaging way of disposing of it?

I think I should just bury it in the garden's soil here, as opposed to putting it in the bin, for it to be transported to landfill, it is after all, an entirely benign material?

And it might give a future archaeologist a 'thrill', perhaps a seen as a votive offering to all of the animal* bones in the garden?


* pets, though I think most of them will entirely decay given the soil conditions here.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on June 22, 2023, 09:40:23 AM
 :rolleyes: Just throw it out. Why leave unpleasant surprises to the next owner?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on June 22, 2023, 09:47:36 AM
Quote from: mongers on June 22, 2023, 09:37:42 AMJust broke my two person teapot that I've been using for years, 3-4 of those with a busted lid; so what's the least climate damaging way of disposing of it?

I think I should just bury it in the garden's soil here, as opposed to putting it in the bin, for it to be transported to landfill, it is after all, an entirely benign material?

Seems the Holy Spirit has already guided you towards good works (yes, toss it in the midden). :thumbsup: 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 22, 2023, 11:33:35 AM
Quote from: mongers on June 22, 2023, 09:37:42 AMJust broke my two person teapot that I've been using for years, 3-4 of those with a busted lid; so what's the least climate damaging way of disposing of it?

I think I should just bury it in the garden's soil here, as opposed to putting it in the bin, for it to be transported to landfill, it is after all, an entirely benign material?

And it might give a future archaeologist a 'thrill', perhaps a seen as a votive offering to all of the animal* bones in the garden?


* pets, though I think most of them will entirely decay given the soil conditions here.

My lovely old one had it's spout broken off. I repurposed it as a plant pot. Planted mint in it and it can look quite cool with some bits growing inside.


And shame on you for not crafting stone sarcophogae for your pets.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 22, 2023, 12:17:48 PM
Quote from: mongers on June 22, 2023, 09:37:42 AMAnd it might give a future archaeologist a 'thrill', perhaps a seen as a votive offering to all of the animal* bones in the garden?
This.  Leave it for future archeologist, from a distant planet, post apocalypse to interpret what you meant by that offering.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on June 23, 2023, 01:12:42 AM
The round swelling of the teapot body and a very suggestive spout; clearly something to do with a fertility cult  :cool:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on June 23, 2023, 07:41:43 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 23, 2023, 01:12:42 AMThe round swelling of the teapot body and a very suggestive spout; clearly something to do with a fertility cult  :cool:

:D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on June 23, 2023, 11:01:27 AM
 :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 26, 2023, 01:14:29 PM
Such an interesting idea.  What could go wrong, really?

EU looks into blocking out the sun as climate efforts falter (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-26/eu-looks-into-blocking-out-the-sun-as-climate-efforts-falter?leadSource=reddit_wall)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on June 26, 2023, 01:16:57 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUgRc3uX0AAR-p8?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on June 26, 2023, 02:08:56 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 26, 2023, 01:14:29 PMSuch an interesting idea.  What could go wrong, really?

EU looks into blocking out the sun as climate efforts falter (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-26/eu-looks-into-blocking-out-the-sun-as-climate-efforts-falter?leadSource=reddit_wall)

The spreading particles in the atmosphere shit - no way. That's the start of a disaster movie. Literally snowpiercers plot. Really don't think we know enough to even try that.

Space born satellite swarms to reduce the sun's rays however... That does seem like a good thing to shoot for to me.
It's no substitute for actually reducing greenhouse gases, and runs the risk of making people think they can slack off there. Lots of other issues with high co2 than just global warming.
But I don't see the problem with doing this as it is by nature easily reversible if there is a unforseen consequence.
Nice to see actual attention, no matter how small, being turned to it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on June 26, 2023, 04:48:21 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 26, 2023, 02:08:56 PMThe spreading particles in the atmosphere shit - no way. That's the start of a disaster movie. Literally snowpiercers plot. Really don't think we know enough to even try that.
Yep.  I was thinking of that movie too. :)


Quote from: Josquius on June 26, 2023, 02:08:56 PMSpace born satellite swarms to reduce the sun's rays however... That does seem like a good thing to shoot for to me.
It's no substitute for actually reducing greenhouse gases, and runs the risk of making people think they can slack off there. Lots of other issues with high co2 than just global warming.
But I don't see the problem with doing this as it is by nature easily reversible if there is a unforseen consequence.
Nice to see actual attention, no matter how small, being turned to it.

It's going to be run by a crazy AI that decides it needs to use humans as a source of energy.  I think I've seen this too in a movie before. ;)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 13, 2023, 12:01:05 PM
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-scientists-freaking-out-about-surging-temperatures-heat-record-climate-change/

QuoteScientists are freaking out about surging temperatures. Why aren't politicians?
Western leaders' attention is focused elsewhere as 'unprecedented' heat warms oceans and land.


Europe and America are — quite literally — in hot water, but transatlantic attention is focused elsewhere.

For months, scientists have been sounding the alarm over unusual upswings in land and ocean temperatures.

The beginning of July marked the planet's hottest week in recorded history. Last month was the warmest-ever June. The arrival of a strong El Niño is likely to push global temperatures even higher, whipping up extreme weather worldwide.

Meanwhile, the seas are heating up and temperatures in the North Atlantic in particular are "off the charts," as European scientists put it.

Taken together, "it is a good demonstration of the fact that we are in uncharted territory," said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU's Copernicus climate change monitoring service.

Yet leaders and lawmakers on either side of the ocean remain mostly preoccupied with the war in Ukraine and its economic fallout.

As catastrophic flooding hit Vermont and Turkey and brutal heat swept across Southern Europe and multiple U.S. states this week, political attention remained firmly on the NATO summit taking place in Lithuania.

While NATO leaders identified climate change as "a defining challenge with a profound impact on Allied security," they did so only near the end of Tuesday's joint communiqué, with more words devoted to tackling threats linked to cybersecurity or space.

Buontempo was reluctant to criticize leaders, but he said: "Mine is a plea to all politicians to look at the facts, to look at the data we have, and react to those."

Oceans heating up

Earth is already 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than in the preindustrial era. The developing El Niño, a naturally occurring weather phenomenon in the Pacific, is expected to exacerbate this man-made warming trend.

The World Meteorological Organization has warned that this El Niño — which comes after the planet spent three years under the influence of La Niña, the cooling phase of the Pacific cycle — is set to "push global temperatures into uncharted territory."

El Niño's full effect won't take hold until later this year, however, and isn't to blame for the temperature anomalies in the Atlantic. 

"We're seeing these high temperatures in the North Atlantic despite the fact that El Niño hasn't really got going yet," Michael Sparrow, head of the WMO's climate research division, told reporters this week.

While the warming is particularly pronounced in the Northeastern Atlantic, global sea surface temperatures have been hitting record highs for the past three months.

In June, a marine heat wave warmed waters around the British Isles to more than 5 degrees Celsius above normal; some coastal areas of Florida are currently surrounded by what one expert called "bathtub water" of more than 30C.   

It's not fully clear what's fueling these spikes, although scientists are certain that man-made climate change plays a leading role. Copernicus says a mix of global warming trends and "unusual" atmospheric circulation is driving the marine anomalies.

Scientists also point to the sharp reduction in pollution from shipping since 2020, when strict rules came into effect to protect human and environmental health.

Those have led to a 10 percent drop in emissions of sulfur dioxide, which has a cooling effect — giving a slight boost to global warming. A recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that this contributes the equivalent of two years' worth of global emissions.

Climate scientists have also identified an unusual absence of Saharan dust — which tends to reflect the sun's warming rays — over the Atlantic in recent months.

Smashed heat records
 
Oceans absorb most of the warming humans have produced, but the heat doesn't all stay there.

"When the oceans are particularly warm, it means they warm the atmosphere considerably as well," Sparrow said.

The planet's hottest-ever week was July 3 to 9, the WMO said Monday, citing Copernicus data.

Besides the current high ocean temperatures and the broader warming trend, two additional factors likely helped raise the world's average daily temperature to a record 17.2C last week.

Changes to the polar jet stream pattern, which some scientists believe is linked to climate change, are increasingly trapping high-pressure systems bringing hot and dry conditions. Such blocking highs have helped fuel Canada's devastating wildfires, for example.

Then there's the 2022 undersea volcanic eruption in Tonga. While above-ground volcanoes can spew cooling sulfur into the stratosphere, a recent study found last year's eruption sent massive amounts of water vapor skyward — likely having a slight warming effect.

Ripple effects

The higher the global average temperature, the more intense and frequent dangerous heat waves become. Italian meteorologists have warned that the country could break the European heat record of 48.8C this week.

Extreme heat can be dangerous by itself — a study this week found that more than 60,000 Europeans died due to heat last summer — and can have devastating consequences for ecosystems, which may affect food security.

This summer, because of the abnormally warm waters, Florida's corals are at an unprecedented risk of bleaching events, an existential threat to reefs.

Marine heat waves also threaten fisheries and, by extension, humans and animals that rely on them for food.

Mexico's government said last month that hundreds of birds found starved to death were victims of the developing El Niño, whose warming effect can drive fish into deeper, cooler waters where seabirds can't get to.

Higher land and ocean temperatures contribute to ice loss at the poles, which accelerates global warming as dark seawater absorbs more radiation than white ice sheets. Scientists are particularly concerned about the record low in Antarctic sea ice this year.

They also set the stage for more extreme weather in Europe and around the globe.

"The North Atlantic is one of the key drivers of extreme weather in Europe, and also on the other side of the Atlantic," said Omar Baddour, head of the WMO's climate monitoring division. The warm waters could fuel strong hurricanes or extreme rainfall, he added.

With all this scientific data out there, Buontempo says society and politics must now make use of it.

"We have data that tell us what is the climate of today, and what is likely to be the climate of tomorrow, and it would be unwise not to use that information," he said. "Ask any business leader — if you know something about the future, use it. It would be stupid not to."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 13, 2023, 12:03:54 PM
Well politics and reality have been unhooked from each other for awhile. Sure it would be stupid to ignore a problem that will likely kill and impoverish many people...but that stupidity is politically popular.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 13, 2023, 10:08:38 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 13, 2023, 12:03:54 PMWell politics and reality have been unhooked from each other for awhile. Sure it would be stupid to ignore a problem that will likely kill and impoverish many people...but that stupidity is politically popular.
Yeah, it's not like politicians have been listening to scientists for a while now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 14, 2023, 02:59:57 AM
The death of the kelp fields in the north sea is particularly worrying to me. Within my life time the kelp was still considered a pest for boats and now its mostly gone.
Seems like something where we could take solid action to fix it too...but aren't.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 14, 2023, 03:14:10 AM
The widespread anti-vax and anti-restrictions nonsense during the pandemic has pretty much killed all my hopes for a political/societal solution, heck, even mitigation, to climate change.

Why? Because it showed the unbelievable lengths the human mind can go to convince itself that maintaining of habits and comforts is fine and the right logical and moral choice. An entire ethos grown out of people's unwillingness to temporarily adapt new ways and to dismiss the fears which were raised by the calls for these changes.

Wrapping so-called solutions into the wrapper or prestige and indulgence papers (like EVs) can only go so far. Either science finds a way which will make non-pollution the comfortable and profitable way, or we are screwed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 14, 2023, 03:44:54 AM
Well, there's the lovely fact that Europe is warming up twice as fast as other continents: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137867

Oh, and: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/07/14/heat-waves-the-uk-isn-t-ready-for-the-extreme-temperatures-that-are-coming/d54d316a-21fd-11ee-8994-4b2d0b694a34_story.html

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/2QOQDFBB7UI65CMUJMWQW2KKGQ.jpg&w=1200)

QuoteThe UK Isn't Ready for the Heat That's Coming

The world is getting hot. Last month was the planet's hottest June on record, according to an analysis from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, with substantially higher-than-usual temperatures recorded on land and sea. The highest average daily global temperature was reached on Monday, July 3, smashing a record held since 2016. A new highest-ever was reached the next day, then broken yet again two days later.

Considering we're only in very early El Nino, a naturally occurring warming weather pattern, we can expect more heat records to come
. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has warned that the recent spate of broken records is a sign that "climate change is out of control."

Indeed, we are racing toward the 1.5C warming target set in Paris in 2015. As the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) made clear at the end of last year, there's still "no credible pathway to 1.5C in place." Ideally we never get to that point, and we must take radical, urgent action to limit warming as much as possible. But we also need to start adapting to the world that lies beyond 1.5C.

This means leaders must start thinking about sustainable cooling, which has so far been a blind spot in net-zero strategies and in the UN's sustainable development goals. A new study, published in Nature Sustainability, took a look at how going to 2C from 1.5C of warming would affect cooling demand, and found stark lessons for us all.

The paper looked at increases in "cooling degree days," a widely used indicator to examine warming and quantify the demand for cooling. CDDs are calculated by comparing the mean daily outdoor temperature with a standard temperature, in this case 18C. A day with a mean outdoor temperature of 28C, for example, has 10 CDDs. The more CDDs, the hotter the place.

The countries with the largest absolute increase in cooling demand between 1.5C and 2C are the ones that are already really hot — Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and Mali. There will be huge implications for human health and livelihoods in these regions that are already bearing the brunt of climate change and lack the resources needed to adapt. That's a climate justice issue: As of 2021, Africa had contributed just 2.8% of the world's cumulative CO2 emissions. Yet heat will be a huge barrier to its development. A 2022 study found that extreme heat has already suppressed economic growth by more than 5% a year in tropical countries such as Mali.

But that doesn't mean developed nations are insulated from the heat. The research also found that the UK, Ireland and Switzerland will face the highest relative increases in uncomfortably hot days, excluding extreme events such as heat waves. With life and architecture in these countries traditionally steered toward staying warm, a huge adaptation challenge lies ahead as people will increasingly need to keep cool.

Last year's heat waves across Europe really brought home how ill-prepared we are for hot days. A paper, published on Monday, revealed that more than 61,000 heat-related deaths occurred in Europe between May 30 and Sept. 4, 2022. When the mercury in the UK breached 40C for the first time in July 2022, the London Fire Brigade had their busiest day since World War II.

Though heat planning has advanced since 2003's devastating summer, it's clearly not kept pace with climate change, and plenty of infrastructural issues remain, such as the proliferation of overheating houses and care homes.

"Our concern is that the go-to solution will be air conditioning," says Radhika Khosla, co-author of the CDD paper and an associate professor at the University of Oxford's Smith School. As I've written before, air conditioning is a disaster for the planet, containing coolants with more global warming potential than CO2 and drawing on precious energy resources which — in fossil-fuel reliant grids — only leads to a vicious cycle of more warming and more air-conditioning demand.

Better options are more passive solutions, some of which have been used in traditional architecture for a long time, such as artificial or natural shade, building features such as wind catchers and solar chimneys to create sufficient ventilation, and new innovations including ultra-reflective paint. "If we do use air conditioning," Khosla tells me, "it's important that the units are of the most efficient standard and powered by renewable energy, in combination with passive and low energy options."

But those interventions will take time to roll out, and the problem is that sustainable cooling hasn't really been widely discussed yet. Much of the focus in the UK's net-zero strategy has been on decarbonizing heat. Though the heat and building strategy does acknowledge the "potential future demand of cooling," it doesn't lay out any associated policies. Meanwhile, on the global stage, demand for cooling doesn't appear in the UN's 2030 sustainable development agenda, its 17 goals or 169 targets. Considering the established links between heat and its negative impacts on well-being and economies, that's a major oversight.

The good news is that the tide appears to be turning. On July 3, the Environmental Audit Committee opened an inquiry into UK heat resilience and adaptation strategies. The UNEP also hopes to make cooling a priority at COP28, launching a Global Cooling Stocktake Report alongside developing a Global Cooling Pledge with conference host the United Arab Emirates.

It's reassuring to see focus shifting toward sustainable cooling, but there's no time to waste. In many countries, the heat is already here.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• The Corporate Bankruptcy Wave Will Get Even Uglier: Chris Bryant

• A 'Made in Germany' Solution to a Climate-Crisis Problem: Javier Blas

• Meet the $4 Billion AI Superstars That Google Lost: Parmy Olson

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion


Austria (and esp. Vienna) is in a similar situation. We've had a week of 32-36° weather, got a breather (28) yesterday, and from today till end of next week we're back to 30-34° daily highs. Nights rarely go under 20°, and my building's courtyard is generally storing between 2 to 4 extra degrees over night, so even overnight cooling off is limited. Plus, those brick walls are really good at storing the heat once they've warmed up - usually takes a while to cool off when the heat breaks. Might be 20° outside, and I'm still at 26 or so inside, going down by 1 per day. Since I can't reasonably install cooling in this old timey place (these box windows are nice, but suck at keeping heat out, or installing a cheap mobile unit, and I can't install a "proper" split one with an outside unit because of a) needs approval from the building board/all owners and b) noise concerns. I'm on the lookout for an affordable place with better insulation/energy efficiency and a bit more greenery (and cooling, tbh).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 14, 2023, 07:13:28 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 14, 2023, 03:14:10 AMThe widespread anti-vax and anti-restrictions nonsense during the pandemic has pretty much killed all my hopes for a political/societal solution, heck, even mitigation, to climate change.

Why? Because it showed the unbelievable lengths the human mind can go to convince itself that maintaining of habits and comforts is fine and the right logical and moral choice. An entire ethos grown out of people's unwillingness to temporarily adapt new ways and to dismiss the fears which were raised by the calls for these changes.

Wrapping so-called solutions into the wrapper or prestige and indulgence papers (like EVs) can only go so far. Either science finds a way which will make non-pollution the comfortable and profitable way, or we are screwed.

Tamas, sadly I'm pretty much on the same page as you here. :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 14, 2023, 07:18:02 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 14, 2023, 03:44:54 AMAustria (and esp. Vienna) is in a similar situation. We've had a week of 32-36° weather, got a breather (28) yesterday, and from today till end of next week we're back to 30-34° daily highs. Nights rarely go under 20°, and my building's courtyard is generally storing between 2 to 4 extra degrees over night, so even overnight cooling off is limited. Plus, those brick walls are really good at storing the heat once they've warmed up - usually takes a while to cool off when the heat breaks. Might be 20° outside, and I'm still at 26 or so inside, going down by 1 per day. Since I can't reasonably install cooling in this old timey place (these box windows are nice, but suck at keeping heat out, or installing a cheap mobile unit, and I can't install a "proper" split one with an outside unit because of a) needs approval from the building board/all owners and b) noise concerns. I'm on the lookout for an affordable place with better insulation/energy efficiency and a bit more greenery (and cooling, tbh).

Yes adapting to climate change will necessity for many people if they want to be less uncomfortable now and in the future.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 14, 2023, 07:22:03 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 14, 2023, 03:14:10 AMThe widespread anti-vax and anti-restrictions nonsense during the pandemic has pretty much killed all my hopes for a political/societal solution, heck, even mitigation, to climate change.

Why? Because it showed the unbelievable lengths the human mind can go to convince itself that maintaining of habits and comforts is fine and the right logical and moral choice. An entire ethos grown out of people's unwillingness to temporarily adapt new ways and to dismiss the fears which were raised by the calls for these changes.

Wrapping so-called solutions into the wrapper or prestige and indulgence papers (like EVs) can only go so far. Either science finds a way which will make non-pollution the comfortable and profitable way, or we are screwed.

The trends are positive. The rate of change is speeding up a lot.
The problem is less in convincing people of the benefits of change, we should be able to do that, and rather more in reactionary knee jerk stuff that actively wants to make things worse for the purpose of owning teh libs or whatever.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 08:32:54 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 14, 2023, 03:14:10 AMThe widespread anti-vax and anti-restrictions nonsense during the pandemic has pretty much killed all my hopes for a political/societal solution, heck, even mitigation, to climate change.
I have totally the opposite view. We shouldn't allow a very small but very vocal minority shape our view of society or humanity. In the UK less than 10% of people had a negative opinion of the vaccines (about 5% actively anti-vax). The vast majority of people complied with (and supported) restrictions without being compelled to - it didn't rely on security forces being out on the streets. People complied because they thought it was the right thing to do and because of social peer pressure.

I'd also separate out scientific/technological and social. The vaccine was a technological solution to covid, lockdowns and restrictions and changes to behaviour were social - and I saw some writers criticise the idea of looking for a technological solution or pinning our hopes on that, as opposed to more permament social changes. I think you see it in the Guardian on those weight loss drugs and also actually on cooling - in much of Europe we need cooling as much as we need heating and it's slightly insane that it's still seen as an indulgence/luxury in many places.

But I'm still broadl on the technological side - including for energy transition. We broadly know what we need to do - but it will cost about 3% of GDP over the next few decades. From a European perspective as well we don't matter very much (leaving loss and damage aside which we absolutely should support). Whether or not the world is able to meet the goals we've set is largely going to be answered in China which is about four times EU (plus UK) emissions - even on a per capita basis China is higher than Europe. But also India which is just set to overtake the EU (plus UK). I think China is serious on its goals and the other big question is can India grow without the type of emissions increases that China's seen. But Europe is not that relevant on the emissions picture and we're not a centre of green energy technology or manufacturing.

In Europe - this is the EU only as it's in writing or constitutions there but also applies to the UK - the biggest thing we need to do is get rid of the self-imposed debt rules that make it impossible to meet our net zero targets, far less work on adaptation. And we should support loss and damage funds to help the rest of the world (and pay for historic European emissions) - though I get that's a bigger ask politically:
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ii3MzBj4xOtg/v1/pidjEfPlU1QWZop3vfGKsrX.ke8XuWirGYh1PKgEw44kE/-1x-1.png)

Worth noting that in both the EU and UK the installation of renewables is only just about recovered back to the levels it was at in 2010-ish before we wasted a decade fetishising austerity. We were in Europe installing over 25 GW of solar capacity a year by 2010-11 (and it was on an upward trend), by the middle of the 2010s it was under 5 GW because of ruinous debt politics.

Edit: I think on climate and on a lot else - in Europe everything runs through the massive amount of self-harm we chose to do in the 2010s through austerity.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 09:38:14 AM
But what happens to your analysis when you factor in N. America?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 09:49:13 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 09:38:14 AMBut what happens to your analysis when you factor in N. America?
North America and Europe combined are still lower than China.

China's emissions are about double the US and Canada. We need to do our bit and as countries that industrialised and became rich early we need to support loss and damage funds. Globally America is essential on the financing side especially - and probably on the end use products. Our role is the supporting cast and while we need to get to net zero a lot of what we need to be doing is supporting China, India and poorer countries.

But in terms of where the really important decisions are being made - and, at this point, where the hubs of green energy technology and manufacturing are - the key decisions will be made in Beijing and Delhi, not Brussels and DC. We need to do our bit but we are not that important and nothing we do will be as significant as if China is able to meet its ambitious targets (and currently China is annually installing more solar capacity than all of Europe combined) and whether India is able to basically skip the carbon intensive route to growth and move directly to a low carbon model because the worst possible news would be that its emissions follow China's path. I think our discourse and understanding on climate is still very 90s, 00s when we could have shaped what energy transition and the path to net zero looked like. But we didn't - and now, hopefully, China and India will.

Unless somewhere in the West develops a solution that can remove carbon from the atmosphere in vast quantities (and it might).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on July 14, 2023, 10:01:05 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 09:49:13 AMBut in terms of where the really important decisions are being made - and, at this point, where the hubs of green energy technology and manufacturing are - the key decisions will be made in Beijing and Delhi, not Brussels and DC.

Yeah.

I'm not a fan of the constant demoralization some engage in but I understand the deep spiritual need it fulfills. Sin should never be condoned, nor tolerated, because your neighbor's sin is not a private matter, God's wrath is implacable and hits everyone equally if it is left unchecked and not repented of.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 11:04:37 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 09:49:13 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 09:38:14 AMBut what happens to your analysis when you factor in N. America?
North America and Europe combined are still lower than China.

China's emissions are about double the US and Canada. We need to do our bit and as countries that industrialised and became rich early we need to support loss and damage funds. Globally America is essential on the financing side especially - and probably on the end use products. Our role is the supporting cast and while we need to get to net zero a lot of what we need to be doing is supporting China, India and poorer countries.

But in terms of where the really important decisions are being made - and, at this point, where the hubs of green energy technology and manufacturing are - the key decisions will be made in Beijing and Delhi, not Brussels and DC. We need to do our bit but we are not that important and nothing we do will be as significant as if China is able to meet its ambitious targets (and currently China is annually installing more solar capacity than all of Europe combined) and whether India is able to basically skip the carbon intensive route to growth and move directly to a low carbon model because the worst possible news would be that its emissions follow China's path. I think our discourse and understanding on climate is still very 90s, 00s when we could have shaped what energy transition and the path to net zero looked like. But we didn't - and now, hopefully, China and India will.

Unless somewhere in the West develops a solution that can remove carbon from the atmosphere in vast quantities (and it might).

I was thinking more in terms of the reaction against vaccines and experts explaining best practices. 

There is a real danger that progress that has been made will be reversed if the GOP gains real power.  The nonsense we see in Red State legislating against efforts to move away from fossil fuels will be amped up.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 14, 2023, 11:20:22 AM
I think it's a mistake to tack on the anti-vaxxers and their ilk into a debate about climate policy, Covid-19 just brought out the '10% anti-science nut-job' into the open.

Going back to Tamas's other point, I see it as most politicians and most people will walk hand in hand into this climate and environmental catastrophe because they're not willing to make significant changes to our behaviours, life in the West is just too comfortable.   
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 11:33:46 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 11:04:37 AMI was thinking more in terms of the reaction against vaccines and experts explaining best practices. 
Again it's a bigger majority but I think it is really important that we remember they are a minority. Even in the US I think it's about 20-25% (though obviously they have power and influence because of their outsize base in the GOP).

But of the unvaccinated generally, the largest groups in the US are minorities - which I think has more to do with needs, ability (or understanding that you are able) to access care and whether or not there's effective public health messaging in and for those communities. I think it is seductively easy to focus on vaccines just as a culture war or frothy politics issue - because for some it absolutely is. I think we could do with spending more time thinking about the larger groups who, for often material reasons, weren't vaccinated - if only because that is a larger group and if you think vaccines are good and save lives that matters.

I think it's similar with climate. I think the time and energy spent fulminating about rolling coal would probably be better spent thinking about and trying to address the needs of, say, an elderly person or someone who's self-employed in rural areas and relies on a car. Because there's a lot more of them and, I suspect, they're a bigger bedrock of net zero scepticism (in the US but globally too) - and it's justified, the energy transition will be disruptive for their lives and has the potential to make things more expensive for them.

QuoteThere is a real danger that progress that has been made will be reversed if the GOP gains real power.  The nonsense we see in Red State legislating against efforts to move away from fossil fuels will be amped up.
Sure - but at the same time Texas is becoming a hub for green energy in the US (while still being the largest emitter). The vast majority of IRA projects will end up being in red states too and I think the IRA is a transformative model.

Also I think the politics on this is changing. Climate and energy transition on their own terms I think will still have the GOP reversing things. I think the fact that green energy tech and manufacturing have been linked to national security and anti-China trade policies (and that, for want of a better phrase, there's now a green energy industrial complex) we'll see more focused on that. I think anti-China sentiment, protectionism and national security is a more durable political combo (and coalition) in the US in the way that previous climate messages haven't been (and a huge set of new factories and manufacturing jobs because of the IRA introduces a bigger constituency who will care).

It'll still piss off Europeans because it'll be all carrots - loads of subsidies and tax bungs, protectionist policies etc - and no sticks (the opposite of Europe's preferred approach :lol:), but from a climate/carbon perspective I think it'll be pretty transformative. For example, the IRA basically increases funding to renewable energy markets by about 50% and the US is already a big market.

This is also wherre I think globally, US financial power is key - they can just leverage more money than anyone else could ever hope to.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 14, 2023, 11:43:35 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 14, 2023, 11:20:22 AMI think it's a mistake to tack on the anti-vaxxers and their ilk into a debate about climate policy, Covid-19 just brought out the '10% anti-science nut-job' into the open.

Why is it a mistake, do you think?

I'm definitely seeing signs of active anti-environmentalism populism forming in North America - rolling coal, anti e-vehicle and bicycling sentiment, anti-15-minute-city sentiment, and the like. Maybe it won't get much traction, but the sentiment is definitely there.

QuoteGoing back to Tamas's other point, I see it as most politicians and most people will walk hand in hand into this climate and environmental catastrophe because they're not willing to make significant changes to our behaviours, life in the West is just too comfortable.   

Yeah, that's probably true.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 14, 2023, 11:59:33 AM
Selling people on potentially tough measures to lower CO2 output doesn't win votes (yet?), unfortunately.

Meanwhile, the view from Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/climate-heat-models-1.6905606

QuoteAfter Earth's hottest week on record, extreme weather surprises everyone — even climate scientists

We're in 'uncharted territory' with heat and extreme weather events models can't always predict

(https://i.imgur.com/jhHF34q.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on July 14, 2023, 01:04:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 14, 2023, 11:20:22 AMGoing back to Tamas's other point, I see it as most politicians and most people will walk hand in hand into this climate and environmental catastrophe because they're not willing to make significant changes to our behaviours, life in the West is just too comfortable.

You seem to need surprisingly little per capita GDP to still maintain modern civilization. Bangladesh has a per capita just a bit over 2000 dollars yet they have electricity and smartphones. For reference Canada has a per capita GDP of close to 53,000 this year. Sure you'll have to turn in your car for one of those thirdie scooters to match the overall lifestyle but it's surprising to me just how little money is needed per se to still be "modern". Their carbon footprint is comparatively excellent.

Of course if everyone in Canada took a hit to their quality of life which put them into the shoes of an average Bangladeshi I think they would consider it a massive catastrophe, on par with surviving the aftermath of a medium-sized global nuclear war.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 14, 2023, 02:43:18 PM
That's an interesting observation Legbiter. I wonder where the substantial differences are in both GDP and carbon emissions.

How much is purchasing power parity differences, how much is efficiencies from population density vs size of country, how much is heavy industry/ cultural production/ agriculture/ high tech/ etc, and so on
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on July 14, 2023, 03:24:45 PM
I'm not really interested in that kind of nerd stuff. I'm much more intrigued by how such a low GDP country still basically has everything we associate with modernity.  :hmm:  I googled average Bangladeshi lifestyle and found a Quora thread that had a couple of very patriotic posts describing life there.

What is the lifestyle for people living in Bangladesh? (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-lifestyle-for-people-living-in-Bangladesh)

One has an almost poetic description of life there.

QuoteIf you want to seek happiness with no condition applied, go visit our rural areas. The way of life has always been primitive and there exist no complications. The people in our village areas live by nature. They respect the nature. In return, they are taken cared by nature. This is a most divine transaction in the entire world. This is why you can even find the most primitive lifestyle here. People use farming tools just like their ancestors like. They prefer manual labor and natural resources instead of heavy machinery. This is why you will be amazed when you see any farmers plowing their beloved soil with the help of macho bulls. Or even you will see the village woman making foods in ovens fueled with chopped up woods.

Another has a pros and cons roundup.

QuoteLet's start with cons first.

Heavily populated country. if you plan to live in the capital but like quiet environment, don't even dare to live in Dhaka

Most people are extremely nosy. They will always have problem with your business.

There is dirt everywhere. You have to literally play Hopscotch in order to avoid spit, snot and what not!!

If you are a girl, you definitely can't avoid eve teasing in random street

Extreme traffic jam

Air pollution

No place for entertainment.

Now I am going to talk about pros.

If your workplace is near your house, you can avoid many points mentioned above.

People are usually happy with their lives. So they will be extremely welcoming and greet you with sincere hospitality

Neighbors are very helpful. So if you want to live alone, you often will be offered food or they will send food over to you once in a while.

You don't need to be from sophisticated or classy rich family to hire helping hand or chauffeur. You can easily get them within your financial limitation. In fact, even if people know how to drive, they choose chauffeur to drive. Both temporary or permanent helping hand is available as well.

You don't need to go for miles to get groceries. People roam around the blocks with vegetables on the van or over their heads all day long. Also almost in every block, there are small shops for necessary items and super shop like mini walmart.

Laundry shops, Tailor shops are around the corner as well.

If you are lucky, you may find pharmacy and doctor's chamber just beside your house. If not, you will 100% get them around the corner. Also hospitals are everywhere.

Even though there are public schools, but people from middle class can enroll their children to private schools as well. They don't need to be super rich for that.

If you can go outside of Dhaka, you can see the heavenly beauty of six seasons all around.

People usually are not alone. They are family oriented and often surrounded by friends.

At least labor seems very affordable. You basically pay room and board for domestic help. Day laborers are a buck or 2 per day it seems. 

Minus the modern motor vehicles, smart phones, electricity and the ubiquitous "eve teasing" they're pretty much describing 1890's Northern Europe. Except they have everything modern society has, even if by our standards they're at least 30 times poorer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 14, 2023, 03:59:33 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 14, 2023, 03:24:45 PMI'm not really interested in that kind of nerd stuff.

:lol:

QuoteI'm much more intrigued by how such a low GDP country still basically has everything we associate with modernity.  :hmm:  I googled average Bangladeshi lifestyle and found a Quora thread that had a couple of very patriotic posts describing life there.

...

Minus the modern motor vehicles, smart phones, electricity and the ubiquitous "eve teasing" they're pretty much describing 1890's Northern Europe. Except they have everything modern society has, even if by our standards they're at least 30 times poorer.

Yeah, it's kind of fascinating.

... I just can't help nerd out about it a bit :nerd:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 14, 2023, 05:33:04 PM
I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you plucked an average western European citizen and put them into an average Bangladeshi life, they would not find it "modern" to the standards they are used to.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 14, 2023, 09:20:32 PM
Modern standard of living is not cellphones, it's indoor plumbing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 14, 2023, 09:25:57 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 14, 2023, 09:20:32 PMModern standard of living is not cellphones, it's indoor plumbing.

Netflix and a toilet would keep most people happy :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 14, 2023, 09:38:32 PM
I would loosely theorise places like Bangladesh being able to maintain a lot of modernity out of such poverty is a product of a high density of low earners. Bangladesh has a very low unemployment rate.

Contrast to say Lagos where the population numbers are there but unemployment is high.

And then in small villages in Bangladesh you have neither the density or the employment level.

I can't really think of any examples where employment levels are good and population low. Official employment needs population in itself. Which suggests employment as key.

In Bangladesh There's enough people earning a wage through regular employment channels that there is a market to provide modern services.

Also worth noting in terms of ppp they're just in the region of 1/6 of first world nations rather than 1/50
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 15, 2023, 08:27:07 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 14, 2023, 09:25:57 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 14, 2023, 09:20:32 PMModern standard of living is not cellphones, it's indoor plumbing.

Netflix and a toilet would keep most people happy :P

That explains the drop in the birth rate
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 15, 2023, 10:24:00 AM
Middle class Englanders would freak out if they were dropped into the life of a middle class Hungarian, let alone a middle class Bangladeshi.

And on the earlier point of Sheilbh that people were disciplined with the pandemic - sure, but think of NIMBY-ism. People are fighting solar farms and windmills just to avoid slight worsening the background view when they are out fo ra hike.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 15, 2023, 10:41:37 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 14, 2023, 03:59:33 PMYeah, it's kind of fascinating.

... I just can't help nerd out about it a bit :nerd:
Yeah and there is theory about this. In general emissions is directly linked to economic growth, but developed countries are now decoupling. So to look at the UK, since 1990 GDP has by just over 50%, production based CO2 emissions have fallen by just under 50% and consumption based emissions have fallen by about 35% (all per capita). Mapping the UK onto a chart and the turning point was basically around £10-15k real GDP per head.

And for the UK and the rest of the West we broadly know what we need to do. There's five key drivers of carbon emissions: energy, transport, housing, industry and agriculture. For the first three we broadly already have the solutions (with a couple of exceptions like shipping or air travel, but that are relatively minor in the grand scheme). Industry and agriculture are more difficult. So to an extent we've already decoupled growth from emissions and we have solutions for a lot of current emissions and just need to do it.

But this is why I think the geography (and relative unimportance of the West) matters. Because all this focus on how do we decarbonise rich economies is sort of missing the point - we already, broadly, have a pretty good idea. The challenge is how do we decarbonise development, because we just don't know and India's the big hope and most important test case on this. Similarly on industry, for example, over 50% of the world's steel is made in China - my guess is that the development of zero carbon steel will also happen in China.

I am dubious that any approach that is based on making lives of people less comfortable or making less/doing less is going to work. First of all because I don't think that is a sustainable project in a democratic society. But secondly because I don't see how scarcity ties in with the challenge of decarbonising growth - to an extent we've already seen some of this with the Russian invasion. Germany and some other EU countries suddenly became massive importers of the LNG which has effectively priced out many developing countries who have traditionally relied on LNG imports - like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Both are now suddenly competing with really rich Western countries because of a manmade scarcity - a consequence is that they are moving a bit back onto coal which is more locally available and where prices fluctuate less which obviously will have a big impact on their emissions.

I think on every front what we need is more, not less: more renewables, more EV charging points, more electricity grid, more funds to decarbonise hands etc. We still need to work out how to decarbonise development but more will also mean, hopefully, economies of scale that will reduce prices on zero carbon projects, enabling developing countries to have a look in - while reducing our consumption would just make those projects more expensive and for the already rich. I also think "more" is a better pitch in a democratic society than "less".

But how it all works and interacts and all the moving parts etc I find really interesting.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 15, 2023, 12:11:16 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 15, 2023, 08:27:07 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 14, 2023, 09:25:57 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 14, 2023, 09:20:32 PMModern standard of living is not cellphones, it's indoor plumbing.

Netflix and a toilet would keep most people happy :P

That explains the drop in the birth rate

Germans deserve love too :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 15, 2023, 05:58:39 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 14, 2023, 11:59:33 AMSelling people on potentially tough measures to lower CO2 output doesn't win votes (yet?), unfortunately.

Meanwhile, the view from Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/climate-heat-models-1.6905606

QuoteAfter Earth's hottest week on record, extreme weather surprises everyone — even climate scientists

We're in 'uncharted territory' with heat and extreme weather events models can't always predict

(https://i.imgur.com/jhHF34q.png)

And it's way worse. It was revealed today there's a over 1 million hectares fire in the Quebec's nordic north. Usually those are only fought when they get close to infrastructure (this one did).

(Maybe satellites had seen it)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2023, 07:50:47 PM
I wonder if there are a greater tha average number of fires in Siberia.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 17, 2023, 05:43:21 PM
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/164E0/production/_130406319_heatwave_in_southern_europe_monday_17_jul_640-nc.png.webp)

 :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 17, 2023, 05:59:13 PM
Turns out that yes - Siberia is also experiencing an unprecedented heat-wave (https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/asia/heat-wave-siberia-climate-intl/index.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CSiberia%20is%20one%20of%20the,World%20Meteorological%20Organization%2C%20told%20CNN.). I'd assume there are massive fires there as well, but perhaps less covered in the West because Russia doesn't want to talk about it, and because the smoke impact stays in Russia and Central Asia.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 17, 2023, 06:41:33 PM
Portugal has been spared by the heat wave, for now, due to the Atlantic influence.
Hot, but still within normal temperatures for the season.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 18, 2023, 03:00:55 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/qvFjmPcf/image.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 18, 2023, 05:53:02 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 18, 2023, 03:00:55 AM(https://i.postimg.cc/qvFjmPcf/image.png)
:lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 06:50:40 PM
Has any of you come across any credible writing on the potential impact from the heatwave on crops? Are we looking at droughts and potential food scarcity next year because of this?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 19, 2023, 07:26:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 06:50:40 PMHas any of you come across any credible writing on the potential impact from the heatwave on crops? Are we looking at droughts and potential food scarcity next year because of this?

I've not looked, though common sense suggest it'll be important, and not just the heatwaves, the flooding/storms/cyclones are trashing established agricultural practices across Asia, I know the recent flooding in Indian has hit rice farmers amongst others very badly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 10:14:59 PM
So we are probably looking at both famines in more vulnerable countries and increased food insecurity in the West in the next few years.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on July 19, 2023, 10:31:25 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 06:50:40 PMHas any of you come across any credible writing on the potential impact from the heatwave on crops? Are we looking at droughts and potential food scarcity next year because of this?

Not so much the current heatwave, but 90% of Georgia's peach crop was wiped out by weather.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/georgia-peach-shortage/index.html
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 20, 2023, 06:36:28 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 10:14:59 PMSo we are probably looking at both famines in more vulnerable countries and increased food insecurity in the West in the next few years.

Yes we had that to some degree at the start of Covid, but just like PPE and vaccines, Western countries can just buy their way out of trouble.

Though that doesn't stopp poorer Westerners from having to cope with high food inflation and more importantly it constains food supplies in the 3rd world still further.

Also I have a feeling that, just like with the 1.5C being upon us already, food insecurity in the West will take hold very rapidly.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 20, 2023, 09:20:38 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 14, 2023, 10:01:05 AMI'm not a fan of the constant demoralization some engage in but I understand the deep spiritual need it fulfills.

Well it is part of our Christian heritage. It also neatly has an apocalyptical element.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 20, 2023, 10:01:24 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 20, 2023, 06:36:28 AMYes we had that to some degree at the start of Covid, but just like PPE and vaccines, Western countries can just buy their way out of trouble.

Though that doesn't stopp poorer Westerners from having to cope with high food inflation and more importantly it constains food supplies in the 3rd world still further.

Also I have a feeling that, just like with the 1.5C being upon us already, food insecurity in the West will take hold very rapidly.

Yeah. We already have a cost of living crisis. A (further) increase in the cost of food is only going to make it worse.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 20, 2023, 04:04:46 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 06:50:40 PMHas any of you come across any credible writing on the potential impact from the heatwave on crops? Are we looking at droughts and potential food scarcity next year because of this?
Depends where.

China has been buying a lot of lands everywhere in the world, including in the West, especially in places where you wouldn't think right now it's the best place to cultivate something.  50 years from now, it could be something else.

Once our own farms can't produce enough crops to feed ourselves and we need push a little further up north to get a proper climate, we'll hit some great wall.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 20, 2023, 04:35:59 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 19, 2023, 06:50:40 PMHas any of you come across any credible writing on the potential impact from the heatwave on crops? Are we looking at droughts and potential food scarcity next year because of this?

That was being considered about a decade ago - but all those bets are now off.  Remember when people thought that the arable areas would just shift North, well all that went out the window when it was realized the North is warming considerably faster.  Mitigation of the effects of climate change are expensive everywhere, but particularly in the North. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 21, 2023, 02:53:30 PM
Somewhat concerning:

QuoteMeasurements made on subglacial sediment from the Camp Century ice core in northwestern Greenland show that the location was ice free during the interglacial that occurred around 400,000 years ago. Christ et al. used luminescence dating and cosmogenic nuclide data to show that the sediment was deposited under ice-free conditions after having been exposed at the surface to sunlight fewer than 16,000 years earlier. The absence of ice at that location means that the Greenland Ice Sheet must have contributed more than 1.4 meters of sea-level equivalent to the high sea-level stand, when the average global air temperature was similar to what we will soon experience because of human-caused climate warming. —H. Jesse Smith

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4248

... if the study's conclusions are correct, it means we could see higher increases in sea levels sooner than most current models predict.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on July 21, 2023, 03:41:26 PM
Well, it's good news that Christ is working on this.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 21, 2023, 04:02:26 PM
Couple of bits from the FT Data team first on Arizona - and they note Phoenix is America's fastest growing city:
QuoteJohn Burn-Murdoch
@jburnmurdoch
NEW: 85 people in Arizona suffered severe burns from contact with pavements heated up to 180F (82C). 7 of them died. In total, 257 people had underlying cause of death listed as "exposure to excessive natural heat".

This is not a forecast for 50 years time, it's happening today.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1j08-IWIAUyb6O?format=jpg&name=small)

And secondly the shift of temperatures in cities round the world:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1kBurMWAAIkR6z?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 21, 2023, 05:58:18 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 21, 2023, 04:02:26 PMCouple of bits from the FT Data team first on Arizona - and they note Phoenix is America's fastest growing city:
QuoteJohn Burn-Murdoch
@jburnmurdoch
NEW: 85 people in Arizona suffered severe burns from contact with pavements heated up to 180F (82C). 7 of them died. In total, 257 people had underlying cause of death listed as "exposure to excessive natural heat".

This is not a forecast for 50 years time, it's happening today.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1j08-IWIAUyb6O?format=jpg&name=small)

And secondly the shift of temperatures in cities round the world:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1kBurMWAAIkR6z?format=jpg&name=small)

Let nature rip in them, well at least stop trying to make every other city street just a sterile concrete drain for cars and commuters.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 22, 2023, 03:16:02 PM
Days >30°C in Vienna since the 1870s:

(https://i.imgur.com/42l2OPc.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 22, 2023, 03:17:30 PM
Also, nights that didn't drop below 20°C.

(https://i.imgur.com/Q2MTCZd.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: DGuller on July 22, 2023, 03:48:12 PM
To be fair, not deny that the climate is warming, but these kinds of statistics literally leverage the increases in the mean temperature.  A small change in the mean can lead to a very large change in the exceedance probability (in this case, probability of exceeding 30 degrees).  A change in the variation of daily temperatures without a change the mean temperature can also lead to this kind of a pattern.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 22, 2023, 04:03:15 PM
Isn't that exactly the point though? And for many cities, the risk?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 22, 2023, 05:18:32 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 22, 2023, 04:03:15 PMIsn't that exactly the point though? And for many cities, the risk?

Well DG is looking at it from a statistical perspective and yours is from living a life viewpoint.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 23, 2023, 02:41:55 AM
Vienna is ill-equipped for hot days, it is like London in that respect. If it is just a few days a year then there is almost a sense of holiday, people take their ties off, knock off an hour early to have a beer etc etc. This is not feasible for 40 days a year  :(

Contrariwise, to comment on the 30% increase in hot days that England will experience by 2030 (or was it 2040?); Preston has had three oppressively hot days in the past five years, so a 30% increase is only 2 extra hot days per decade :flatcap
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 23, 2023, 04:35:08 AM
It's a combination of climate change and city planning - for a long time the city would renovate or create public spaces by largely just paving them over, with maybe a few trees cemented up to their trunks. Or remove roadside trees to make room for parking.

It's slowly starting to change, but it's gonna take a while. <_<
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 23, 2023, 05:36:55 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 23, 2023, 04:35:08 AMIt's a combination of climate change and city planning - for a long time the city would renovate or create public spaces by largely just paving them over, with maybe a few trees cemented up to their trunks. Or remove roadside trees to make room for parking.

It's slowly starting to change, but it's gonna take a while. <_<

;yes:

Turns out having streets cleared for convienience of cars and road/pavement sweepers was a very short-term policy: green those cities.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 23, 2023, 07:52:00 AM

(https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/EuropeHeatWaves_INTERACTIVE-Southern-Europes-heat-wave-to-continue-1689861960.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C770&quality=80)

QuoteAlready 11 days into its heatwave, Greece's national weather institute on Saturday warned reprieve was still days away, setting this up to be the longest hot spell the country has ever seen.

"According to the data, we will probably go through 16-17 days of a heatwave, which has never happened before in our country," Kostas Lagouvardos, director of research at the National Observatory, told ERT television Saturday.

The previous heatwave record in Greece was set in 1987 when scorching temperatures higher than 39C [102F] lasted for 11 days.

Full article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/22/greece-faces-its-hottest-july-weekend-in-50-years (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/22/greece-faces-its-hottest-july-weekend-in-50-years)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 23, 2023, 08:00:29 AM
Still not too hot in 'Atlantic' Portugal as in Bragança with 27°C.

21°C in Paris with a few showers now and then.  :showoff:

Should start to heat in Alentejo (south) by next week-end.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 23, 2023, 08:18:24 AM
Torrential rain for a week :/
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on July 23, 2023, 09:09:29 AM
If weather patterns change, places with increased rainfall are likely to be better off than those with morr and longer heatwaves.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on July 26, 2023, 01:36:44 AM
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/

QuoteLord Frost: Rising temperatures likely to be beneficial for Britain

Former Brexit negotiator's comments come as Conservative Party becomes engulfed in row about its net zero commitments

Rising temperatures "are likely to be beneficial" for Britain because seven times more people in the UK die from cold than from heat, Lord Frost has said.

The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had "more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures" since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.

He told the Lords it was the "rational thing" to "move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth".

Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by "investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge".

He said: "Now, I'm not sceptical about adaptation. I'm sceptical about mitigation."

His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.

After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.

In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would "make progress towards net zero" but "in a proportionate and pragmatic way", declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.

Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Lord Frost said that in the UK "more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs", but added: "Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.

"The Government Actuary's Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: 'It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.'

"Since the start of the millennium, a decline in deaths from cold temperature periods has more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperature over the same period."

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, accused Lord Frost of reading "Right-wing conspiracy theories" and making "denialist tropes".

Lord Callanan, the energy minister, said: "Adaptation and net zero in fact go hand-in-hand – achieving net zero actually requires adaptation. We have a huge opportunity to make the substantial net zero investments that are resilient to current and future climate change risks and doing so can, of course, prevent future higher costs.

"Let me, for the avoidance of any doubt, confirm that delivering net zero is of course vitally important to this Government."


Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 26, 2023, 01:44:07 AM
He's a stupid cockwomble. There are fruitflies that would make better peers.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 26, 2023, 05:42:13 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 26, 2023, 01:36:44 AMhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/

QuoteLord Frost: Rising temperatures likely to be beneficial for Britain

Former Brexit negotiator's comments come as Conservative Party becomes engulfed in row about its net zero commitments

Rising temperatures "are likely to be beneficial" for Britain because seven times more people in the UK die from cold than from heat, Lord Frost has said.

The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had "more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures" since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.

He told the Lords it was the "rational thing" to "move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth".

Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by "investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge".

He said: "Now, I'm not sceptical about adaptation. I'm sceptical about mitigation."

His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.

After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.

In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would "make progress towards net zero" but "in a proportionate and pragmatic way", declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.

Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Lord Frost said that in the UK "more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs", but added: "Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.

"The Government Actuary's Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: 'It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.'

"Since the start of the millennium, a decline in deaths from cold temperature periods has more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperature over the same period."

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, accused Lord Frost of reading "Right-wing conspiracy theories" and making "denialist tropes".

Lord Callanan, the energy minister, said: "Adaptation and net zero in fact go hand-in-hand – achieving net zero actually requires adaptation. We have a huge opportunity to make the substantial net zero investments that are resilient to current and future climate change risks and doing so can, of course, prevent future higher costs.

"Let me, for the avoidance of any doubt, confirm that delivering net zero is of course vitally important to this Government."


Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=I%27m+mr+cold&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:22e24a23,vid:fEbFfoBPfw4


He might want to read a recent article in the NY Times reporting on recently published research that the current warming his Island might shut down early then first estimated and perhaps by the end of this century.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 26, 2023, 08:12:28 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

QuoteIt often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we're defeated than that we can win

Stanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, "Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don't study such systems that it can't be done?" A significant percentage of the general public speaks of climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions often based on inaccurate or outdated or maybe no information; defeatism about what we can do to make a livable future. Maybe they just get their facts from other doom evangelists, who flourish on the internet, no matter how much reputable scientists demonstrate their errors.

They're surrendering in advance and inspiring others to do the same. If you announce that the outcome has already been decided and we've already lost, you strip away the motivation to participate – and of course if we do nothing we settle for the worst outcome. It often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we're defeated than that we can win. Warnings are a valuable thing, given with the sense that there's something we can do to prevent the anticipated outcome; prophesies assume the future is settled and there's nothing we can do. But the defeatists often describe a present they assert are locking in the worst outcomes.

One day this week, someone told me that she was "angry at people's refusal to acknowledge what's happening to the planet" and when I waved a couple of surveys at them showing that in 2023 "Nearly seven-in-ten Americans (69%) favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050" and in 2021 "three-quarters (75%) of adults in Great Britain said they were worried about the impact of climate change" they shifted to complaining about poor leadership and climate deniers. So far as I could tell, she wanted to be angry at obstacles, and if one was removed, she had others.

certainty and while it's obviously foolish to be certain we will win, somehow certainty we will lose isn't subject to the same judgments. That certainty seems to come in part from an assumption that change happens in predictable ways, so we can know the future, or that there are environmental but not social and technological tipping points. But, as the thinktank Carbon Tracker notes "The S-curve is a well-established phenomenon where a successful new technology reaches a certain catalytic tipping point (typically 5-10% market share), and then rapidly reaches a high market share (i.e. 50%+) within just a couple more years once past this tipping point. Solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries have all followed such learning curves. Each technology has declined in cost by over 90% in the past two decades. And so their growth has followed an S-curve model." Change is often not linear but exponential, or it's unpredictable, like an earthquake releasing centuries of tension. Big changes start small, and history is studded with surprises.

I don't know why so many people seem to think it's their job to spread discouragement, but it seems to be a muddle about the relationship between facts and feelings. I keep saying I respect despair as an emotion, but not as an analysis. You can feel absolutely devastated about the situation and not assume this predicts outcome; you can have your feelings and can still chase down facts from reliable sources, and the facts tell us that the general public is not the problem; the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests are; that we have the solutions, that we know what to do, and that the obstacles are political; that when we fight we sometimes win; and that we are deciding the future now.

I wonder sometimes if it's because people assume you can't be hopeful and heartbroken at the same time, and of course you can. In times when everything is fine hope is unnecessary. Hope is not happiness or confidence or inner peace; it's a commitment to search for possibilities. Feelings deserve full respect as feelings, but all they inform you about is you. History is full of people who continued to struggle in desperate and grim circumstances, and so is the news from Ukraine to the Philippines. Some lived to see those circumstances change because of that struggle. Maybe this is what Antonio Gramsci meant with his famous phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will". Some days I think that if we lose the climate battle, it'll be due in no small part to this defeatism among the comfortable in the global north, while people in frontline communities continue to fight like hell for survival. Which is why fighting defeatism is also climate work.

I've increasingly noticed doomerism and it is a big issue.
Whilst outright denial of climate change is quickly becoming a thing of the past doomerism is definitely taking over.
From the UK is only 1% of the world so no point doing anything (particularly popular with racists) , to telling individuals to act is just corporate propeganda as they're responsible (hence we should do nothing), through to everything is fucked so just enjoy the ride.
It's interesting how this comes from both very informed people who just have a negative outlook and ignorant people who grasp for something that gives them an excuse to do nothing.
I do think there's a good lesson here to be careful with the informed doomerism and to try to be optimistic and constantly look for solutions.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 26, 2023, 09:13:46 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 26, 2023, 01:36:44 AMhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/



Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

A Saturday morning cartoon villain who can only be defeated by (excessive) heat/warming.  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on July 26, 2023, 09:38:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 26, 2023, 08:12:28 AMI've increasingly noticed doomerism and it is a big issue.
Whilst outright denial of climate change is quickly becoming a thing of the past doomerism is definitely taking over.
From the UK is only 1% of the world so no point doing anything (particularly popular with racists) , to telling individuals to act is just corporate propeganda as they're responsible (hence we should do nothing), through to everything is fucked so just enjoy the ride.
It's interesting how this comes from both very informed people who just have a negative outlook and ignorant people who grasp for something that gives them an excuse to do nothing.
I do think there's a good lesson here to be careful with the informed doomerism and to try to be optimistic and constantly look for solutions.
I totally agree with that piece and I think it is a problem, not least because I think it's disempowering.

But the group I think of with doomerism is Just Stop Oil and I remember a similar piece of scientists in the BBC getting very annoyed about doomerism and rejecting it as false. It is not true, but that's not a challenge you often here to those types of activists.

It's partly why I take fears of post-truth or lies in public life with a pinch of salt because from what I can see most people are fine with them if they agree with the message/end result/if our side do it. There's JSO statements on climate (which are explicitly rejected by scientists working in the area) but that still get shared because even if they're not actually true, they are raising awareness which is good.

Or the Guardian article on the collapse of the Gulf Stream which I think it's been over 24 hours and they've made some changes, but it's still up on the site - despite having numerous scientists online saying it's wildly irresponsible and misleading.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 26, 2023, 03:07:43 PM
I do think there is a very Christian cultural tendency to see everything as the apocalypse and payment for our sins or something.

At the end of the day the sun will come up in the East and we will deal with whatever circumstances we have. Humans are very good at surviving. This problem will be solved someday. Eventually humans will be really good at managing the climate. It may suck for awhile but we don't really know the extent it will suck. No reason to panic about this than any of the other endless things that make human life stressful and challenging, especially if panicking means you descend into apathy and complacency.

If, on the other hand, panic leads you to action then panic away.

People who want to have children not doing so because they are panicking about the climate crisis makes me sad. If you care about the state of the world well you are the kind of person I want to be raising the next generation to deal with this issue.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on July 26, 2023, 09:26:59 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on July 26, 2023, 09:13:46 AM
Quote from: Syt on July 26, 2023, 01:36:44 AMhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/



Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

A Saturday morning cartoon villain who can only be defeated by (excessive) heat/warming.  :P

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 27, 2023, 12:18:03 AM
You stole my post :mad:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 27, 2023, 09:48:13 PM
This July looks set to be the hottest month ever recorded across the world.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 27, 2023, 09:55:40 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 27, 2023, 09:48:13 PMThis July looks set to be the hottest month ever recorded across the world.

I have a feeling that record will not stand long.

(https://i.imgflip.com/5etwts.jpg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on July 28, 2023, 02:02:04 AM
Quote from: GuardianStanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, "Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don't study such systems that it can't be done?" A significant percentage of the general public speaks of climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions often based on inaccurate or outdated or maybe no information; defeatism about what we can do to make a livable future. Maybe they just get their facts from other doom evangelists, who flourish on the internet, no matter how much reputable scientists demonstrate their errors.

Putting 100% renewables as the cure for climate change is just gaslighting. In the 80s and 90s Sweden used essentially 50% hydro and 50% nuclear, and got stable and cheap power. Obviously the safety and environmental problems of the system were dominated by hydro, but still reasonable and very good from a climate perspective. Electrical power is of course just one part of the energy sector, but a growing one with plans for electric car fleets, more use of electric industrial processes etc etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 03:56:45 AM
It's not just power generation, but also construction (concrete!) and animal agriculture.

Why aren't you all vegan yet?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:11:48 AM
Your soy isn't that environmentally friendly either. A major cause of deforestation, uses a ton of water and is bad for soil too

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/soy#:~:text=Soil%20erosion%2C%20degradation%2C%20and%20compaction&text=Because%20soy%20cultivation%20is%20highly,on%20many%20large%20soybean%20farms.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 04:23:44 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:11:48 AMYour soy isn't that environmentally friendly either. A major cause of deforestation, uses a ton of water and is bad for soil too

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/soy#:~:text=Soil%20erosion%2C%20degradation%2C%20and%20compaction&text=Because%20soy%20cultivation%20is%20highly,on%20many%20large%20soybean%20farms.

"My boss has three SUVs, so I'm justified in keeping mine."
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:32:19 AM
Just saying if you're  vegan to be smug it's misguided. You probably swear by almond milk too :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:01:28 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:32:19 AMJust saying if you're  vegan to be smug it's misguided. You probably swear by almond milk too :P
I don't like any kind of milk, whether it comes from a cow udder or a plant.

And yes, being vegan is one of the most effective ways you can be sustainable as an individual.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 05:22:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:01:28 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:32:19 AMJust saying if you're  vegan to be smug it's misguided. You probably swear by almond milk too :P
I don't like any kind of milk, whether it comes from a cow udder or a plant.

And yes, being vegan is one of the most effective ways you can be sustainable as an individual.

I don't believe I'd be able to sustain my person though. :sleep:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:27:53 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 05:22:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:01:28 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:32:19 AMJust saying if you're  vegan to be smug it's misguided. You probably swear by almond milk too :P
I don't like any kind of milk, whether it comes from a cow udder or a plant.

And yes, being vegan is one of the most effective ways you can be sustainable as an individual.

I don't believe I'd be able to sustain my person though. :sleep:

Are you a cat? Can you not live without fresh mice?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 05:33:21 AM
"How do you know someone is a Vegan?"

"Don't worry, they'll always make sure to tell you"


:P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:46:46 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 05:33:21 AM"How do you know someone is a Vegan?"

"Don't worry, they'll always make sure to tell you"


:P

You know what you're doing is monstrously wrong. You need to be smug and dismissive so you won't face the awful reality of what you're doing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 05:47:11 AM
Many western vegans can be annoying (see the above old joke :P ). I can respect a person who is a vegan due to religious precepts and i understand those who do it because they care about animal husbandry or their health (although many do it poorly and in actual detriment to their health). But the smug ones that do it to show off how much of a better person they are just get an eye roll.

And at least around my area the smug vegan type is a pernicious sign of affluence.  Not just because it's often expensive to be vegan, but because all their rich friends can buy the same toys they can. so one of the ways they show they're better then their peers is through being a vegan. " You might be as rich as me, but you don't have the moral fortitude to be a vegan, which proves I'm better then you"

I'm fat so I have other issues lol, but I'll enjoy my meat and die earlier but happier :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:48:00 AM
Watch this to the end if you dare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 05:48:16 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:46:46 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 05:33:21 AM"How do you know someone is a Vegan?"

"Don't worry, they'll always make sure to tell you"


:P

You know what you're doing is monstrously wrong. You need to be smug and dismissive so you won't face the awful reality of what you're doing.

:hug:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 05:56:50 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:27:53 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 05:22:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 05:01:28 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2023, 04:32:19 AMJust saying if you're  vegan to be smug it's misguided. You probably swear by almond milk too :P
I don't like any kind of milk, whether it comes from a cow udder or a plant.

And yes, being vegan is one of the most effective ways you can be sustainable as an individual.

I don't believe I'd be able to sustain my person though. :sleep:

Are you a cat? Can you not live without fresh mice?

I'd be so sad and depressed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 08:55:24 AM
I find veganism ignorant and highly offensive to plant life. Just because it is beyond our ability to understand how plants exactly function as living being does not mean they are an inferior form of life or that it is less traumatic for their version of a nervous system or soul to be chopped up and killed.

Who made vegans the arbiters of which form of life is above the other?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 28, 2023, 09:28:25 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 08:55:24 AMI find veganism ignorant and highly offensive to plant life. Just because it is beyond our ability to understand how plants exactly function as living being does not mean they are an inferior form of life or that it is less traumatic for their version of a nervous system or soul to be chopped up and killed.

Who made vegans the arbiters of which form of life is above the other?

Come on, that's so beneath you. You can insult better.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on July 28, 2023, 11:42:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 28, 2023, 02:02:04 AM
Quote from: GuardianStanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, "Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don't study such systems that it can't be done?" A significant percentage of the general public speaks of climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions often based on inaccurate or outdated or maybe no information; defeatism about what we can do to make a livable future. Maybe they just get their facts from other doom evangelists, who flourish on the internet, no matter how much reputable scientists demonstrate their errors.

Putting 100% renewables as the cure for climate change is just gaslighting. In the 80s and 90s Sweden used essentially 50% hydro and 50% nuclear, and got stable and cheap power. Obviously the safety and environmental problems of the system were dominated by hydro, but still reasonable and very good from a climate perspective. Electrical power is of course just one part of the energy sector, but a growing one with plans for electric car fleets, more use of electric industrial processes etc etc.


Yeah well most of us don't have access to hydro and are politically unable to build lots of nukes.

So renewables it is.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:07:07 AM
Has Hami finished with the virtue signalling, so we can get back to debating the topic? :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 29, 2023, 11:50:49 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 28, 2023, 11:42:58 PMYeah well most of us don't have access to hydro and are politically unable to build lots of nukes.

So renewables it is.

Ever heard of NIMBYism?  :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 29, 2023, 01:57:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:07:07 AMHas Hami finished with the virtue signalling, so we can get back to debating the topic? :unsure:

If telling people they should stop eating meat to save the planet is virtue signaling, isn't telling people to stop flying so much or driving so much also virtue signaling? :mellow:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 29, 2023, 02:14:41 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 29, 2023, 01:57:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:07:07 AMHas Hami finished with the virtue signalling, so we can get back to debating the topic? :unsure:

If telling people they should stop eating meat to save the planet is virtue signaling, isn't telling people to stop flying so much or driving so much also virtue signaling? :mellow:

Dont know, who does that here?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on July 29, 2023, 04:01:05 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 29, 2023, 01:57:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:07:07 AMHas Hami finished with the virtue signalling, so we can get back to debating the topic? :unsure:

If telling people they should stop eating meat to save the planet is virtue signaling, isn't telling people to stop flying so much or driving so much also virtue signaling? :mellow:
Flying and driving can create a lot problem globally.
Eating meat in itself is not so bad.  Globally, there's a lot of waste, so total meat production is divided by the number of individuals so that gets bad. There's also the way we produce meat.

If we were to eliminate fast food, it'd be much less worst.


Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 29, 2023, 05:15:49 PM
I don't know if eating local can be compatible with a vegan diet in most of the world.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 30, 2023, 01:19:37 AM
I definitely recall seeing some research that found limited meat diets could often be better for the planet - something about there being a lot of land not much good for anything, human or environmental, than livestock rearing.
Certainly the old idea of a garden pig seems to be just a free win environment wise (as much as I would be thoroughly incapable of ever doing this)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 30, 2023, 01:30:53 AM
Old garden/homestead pigs were smaller then the factory farm pigs used today, so actually feasible in a backyard enviroment. Though no longer legal so there's that :D

Cities should actually move towards changing bylaws for home husbandry. Many places still make it illegal to raise chickens for example. You can get around this by raising quail. Either are a great way to repurpose scraps, so less waste, provide eggs, and can be done way more humanly then battery farming for eggs.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 30, 2023, 01:36:32 AM
Battery farming is a new one to me.

 :wub:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on July 30, 2023, 01:45:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 30, 2023, 01:36:32 AMBattery farming is a new one to me.

 :wub:

:lol:

Chickens are evil so I feel less bad, but it's still not a good environment. Modern animal farming is... not great. Some animals have it better. Beef, lamb and goat are relatively ok if you get grass fed (not grass finished*).


*farmers and companies go hard on PR to charge more and placate people. Grass finished are basically feedlot animals who are feed hay for like a week or two before slaughter. Free range chickens aren't actually "free" to range. They're penned with to the outside in a few square feet coops.

To tie it back to the topic at hand more human methods to raise animals are more environmentally friendly, both in terms of land and water to raise fodder, but also require much less antibiotics which is good for the world.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 30, 2023, 03:04:05 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 29, 2023, 01:57:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:07:07 AMHas Hami finished with the virtue signalling, so we can get back to debating the topic? :unsure:

If telling people they should stop eating meat to save the planet is virtue signaling, isn't telling people to stop flying so much or driving so much also virtue signaling? :mellow:

Not eating meat has a massive impact on climate.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 30, 2023, 04:45:37 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 30, 2023, 03:04:05 AMNot eating meat has a massive impact on climate.

You do realize i'm on your side, don't you?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on July 30, 2023, 05:03:43 AM
Beef is the main climate killer. If we could just stop eating beef, eating chicken and even pork would not be such a big problem climate-wise.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 30, 2023, 05:14:58 AM
Quote from: Zanza on July 30, 2023, 05:03:43 AMBeef is the main climate killer. If we could just stop eating beef, eating chicken and even pork would not be such a big problem climate-wise.

I could do that.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 30, 2023, 06:29:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 30, 2023, 04:45:37 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 30, 2023, 03:04:05 AMNot eating meat has a massive impact on climate.

You do realize i'm on your side, don't you?

Ah fair enough!  :Embarrass:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:37:29 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 29, 2023, 05:15:49 PMI don't know if eating local can be compatible with a vegan diet in most of the world.

I tried for a number of months.  Totally local is impossible and so the carbon calculation needs to factor in transport.  In the end, I could not get enough protein into my weekly diet.

When I had my first meat, it felt great.

I still eat less meat than before.  But it's really the eggs and dairy I can't do without.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on July 31, 2023, 09:57:44 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:37:29 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 29, 2023, 05:15:49 PMI don't know if eating local can be compatible with a vegan diet in most of the world.

I tried for a number of months.  Totally local is impossible and so the carbon calculation needs to factor in transport.  In the end, I could not get enough protein into my weekly diet.

When I had my first meat, it felt great.

I still eat less meat than before.  But it's really the eggs and dairy I can't do without.



CC, Im pretty much on the same page as you, still eat a reasonable amount of dairy and cut back on a lot of meat a long time ago, but primarily because of taste rather than the environment.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on July 31, 2023, 11:53:16 AM
My main reason for cutting back on meat is its propensity for going bad.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on July 31, 2023, 02:23:21 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 31, 2023, 11:53:16 AMMy main reason for cutting back on meat is its propensity for going bad.

Almost all food has a propensity to go bad, and you don't want to eat the exceptions.  You should not buy more of any food than you can expect to consume before it spoils.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 02:50:55 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 31, 2023, 02:23:21 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 31, 2023, 11:53:16 AMMy main reason for cutting back on meat is its propensity for going bad.

Almost all food has a propensity to go bad, and you don't want to eat the exceptions.  You should not buy more of any food than you can expect to consume before it spoils.

Yeah, we are a long way away from the time we had to buy things in advance to store them because of limited availability in the store. 

Things work a lot better when buying things I know I want to prepare over the next day or two.  The added benefit of not having a crowded fridge is also worth while. 

The caveat is that we have a deep freeze with emergency food in case something prevents the constant flow of food at the store front.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 31, 2023, 03:17:21 PM
My GF is intolerant to soy and nightshade vegetables. Without dairy I think she would go very hungry.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 31, 2023, 03:57:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:37:29 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 29, 2023, 05:15:49 PMI don't know if eating local can be compatible with a vegan diet in most of the world.

I tried for a number of months.  Totally local is impossible and so the carbon calculation needs to factor in transport.  In the end, I could not get enough protein into my weekly diet.

When I had my first meat, it felt great.

I still eat less meat than before.  But it's really the eggs and dairy I can't do without.



Are you a bodybuilder? How much protein do you really need?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 04:14:27 PM
I am not a body builder, but I do work out.  That is not the issue.  From a young age, due to my size, I have needed to consume a largish amount of protein just to maintain a healthy diet.  On top of that I needed more protein because of the workout regime I had as a collegiate athlete.  But these days it's really just down to my size.  I need about 100 grams a day. Which is a real effort to derive from a strictly plant based diet.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on July 31, 2023, 04:19:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 04:14:27 PMI am not a body builder, but I do work out.  That is not the issue.  From a young age, due to my size, I have needed to consume a largish amount of protein just to maintain a healthy diet.  On top of that I needed more protein because of the workout regime I had as a collegiate athlete.  But these days it's really just down to my size.  I need about 100 grams a day. Which is a real effort to derive from a strictly plant based diet.




I asked ChatGPT to make you a vegan meal plan that gets you over 100 grams of protein. Behold!


Getting 100 grams of protein from vegan sources is absolutely doable, and there are numerous sources of plant-based protein to choose from. Here's a sample daily meal plan which helps to achieve this target:

**Breakfast:**
- Vegan protein shake (pea, rice, hemp, etc.): 20g
- A slice of whole grain toast with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter: 8g

**Mid-morning snack:**
- Handful of almonds (30g): 6g

**Lunch:**
- Tofu stir-fry with 200g tofu and various veggies: 20g
- 1 cup of cooked quinoa: 8g

**Afternoon snack:**
- Hummus (100g) with whole grain pita bread: 10g

**Dinner:**
- Lentil soup (2 cups): 18g
- Whole grain bread (2 slices): 7g

**Evening snack:**
- Chia pudding made with 2 tablespoons chia seeds and 1 cup of almond milk: 5g

This totals to approximately 102 grams of protein. This plan is quite balanced, but it's always good to switch up the foods you eat to ensure you're getting a wide range of nutrients. Other great sources of plant-based protein include seitan, tempeh, beans, seeds, nuts, and whole grains.

Remember that individual protein needs can vary depending on your weight, gender, age, and level of physical activity. Always consult with a healthcare provider or a registered dietitian to get personalized advice.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 04:38:20 PM
Interesting.  Thanks!  I will give it a try.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on July 31, 2023, 08:33:38 PM
 :yuk:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Hamilcar on August 01, 2023, 01:25:59 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 04:38:20 PMInteresting.  Thanks!  I will give it a try.

Please do!  :cool:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on August 01, 2023, 01:28:14 AM
Beans, nuts and lentils are all good protein sources and are what one uses to replace meat and dairy in a vegan diet.

For my family it turns out that our meat consumption is about a quarter of the UK average and that has happened without any plan to eschew meat; it is just that only about three meals per week have meat in them at all.
For dairy it is slightly different; I never drink milk but am addicted to cheese but also have high blood pressure; so I eat as little cheese as possible but frequently fail...it is far more addeictive than booze, cigarettes or ca=ffeine for me  :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on August 01, 2023, 01:33:15 AM
A more general point, i think it would be very easy for most Westerners to halve their animal protein and enjoy an improved diet and health benefits. Meat consumption of 80-120 kg per annum is a restrictive diet in my view, must get very repetitive.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 01, 2023, 01:39:51 AM
On this, always find the Our World in Data stats by country and type of meat interesting:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-type?country=CHN~USA~IND~ARG~PRT~ETH~JPN~BRA~OWID_WRL~ESP~DEU~GBR
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 01, 2023, 07:14:52 AM
This won't surprise anyone.  Canada officially has now had it worst wildfire season on record. And we are just at the beginning of August - historically the worst month for wildfires.

The wildfire season is getting longer and fires are burning longer as temperatures rise.

One of the problems we are starting to see is that the winters are no longer cold enough to put out hotspots that are deep underground, and so when temps rise again and new fuel is available those fires come back to life.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 01, 2023, 07:26:10 AM
Its a bummer that not even a place like Canada with all that cold and the blocked NW Passage can benefit from climate change. What a mess.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 01, 2023, 09:02:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on August 01, 2023, 07:26:10 AMIts a bummer that not even a place like Canada with all that cold and the blocked NW Passage can benefit from climate change. What a mess.

Yeah, it was not that long ago that some Canadian politicians were claiming Canada would be a beneficiary.  The reality is quite different.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on August 01, 2023, 09:23:36 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 01, 2023, 01:39:51 AMOn this, always find the Our World in Data stats by country and type of meat interesting:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-type?country=CHN~USA~IND~ARG~PRT~ETH~JPN~BRA~OWID_WRL~ESP~DEU~GBR

Interesting. Portugal number one for fish and seafood, ahead of Japan!

 :showoff:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 01, 2023, 09:44:42 AM
How many of the wildfires were started by humans? Cause that's always an issue in Europe.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 01, 2023, 10:25:10 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 31, 2023, 03:17:21 PMMy GF is intolerant to soy and nightshade vegetables. Without dairy I think she would go very hungry.
That's a weird thing to be bigoted against.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 01, 2023, 10:31:29 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 01, 2023, 09:44:42 AMHow many of the wildfires were started by humans? Cause that's always an issue in Europe.

The majority and the most destructive are caused by lightning strikes in remote areas.  The rest are caused by human activity, campfires not properly put out etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 01, 2023, 11:22:11 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 01, 2023, 10:31:29 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 01, 2023, 09:44:42 AMHow many of the wildfires were started by humans? Cause that's always an issue in Europe.

The majority and the most destructive are caused by lightning strikes in remote areas.  The rest are caused by human activity, campfires not properly put out etc.

Can't do much about lightning, but people taking care to not screw up their campfires would be a big plus.
At least it's not criminals putting the forests to the torch
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 06, 2023, 06:56:46 PM
Always find Helen Thompson interesting - if a little worrying (especially from a European perspective - although little bit of good news from Norway on that front, lucky country):
QuoteWhy net zero requires a reinvention of civilisation
Decarbonising our world was an unimaginable task even before the energy panic triggered by war
Helen Thompson
Sunday August 06 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Fossil fuel energy has been the material basis of modern civilisation. The Industrial Revolution was the start of an energy revolution that transformed how human beings could live. Today the four basic physical pillars of our society — ammonia, cement, plastics and steel — are largely produced using fossil fuels. So net zero requires reinventing modern civilisation. It requires transforming the energy basis of our way of life within less than three decades. There is no precedent in human history.

If that were not challenge enough, the net zero 2050 project is defined by a foundational tension: its target involves carbon emissions, not the realisation of an energy revolution. It was never specified how much of the work in achieving the emissions target should be done by the energy change and how much by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The other open question is: are oil, gas, and coal to be replaced as primary energy sources by electricity or by hydrogen or a combination of both when they require entirely different infrastructures?

When it was first legislated for in 2019, net zero constituted an act of faith in technological innovation. Take decarbonisation of electricity, the easiest part of net zero, where by far the most progress has been made. In Britain low-carbon sources generated less than a quarter of Britain's electricity in 2010; nine years later it was more than a half. But solar and wind power are intermittent generating technologies. Dispensing with other sources of electricity requires technological breakthroughs in storage. Yet nobody could then, or can now, know if and when they will be realised.

The Conservative government's commitment — made by Boris Johnson in 2022 — to build eight large nuclear plants at the rate of one a year as well as small modular reactors, even though they are extremely expensive and require formidable planning, reflects the failure of wind and solar to deliver enough electricity without those storage breakthroughs. As the Commons science, innovation and technology committee warned Rishi Sunak in a report last month on nuclear power, "targets are not a strategy".

In practice, it is electrification that has largely won out over hydrogen in replacing oil in transport, gas in heating buildings and both in industrial production. The electric grid must soon do much more work than it is now doing. Yet UK electricity generation has been largely falling for the past decade.

In light of the scale of the undertaking, it is extraordinary that the net zero legislation passed through parliament with so little contest in the dying days of Theresa May's government, when the country was still politically consumed with the question of whether the UK would actually leave the EU. Perhaps being seen to move forward on the climate crisis — an issue that commands widespread support at the level of principle — seemed simple in comparison with the Brexit impasse.

Net zero served another purpose for British politicians in 2019, as elsewhere in Europe: after a decade of economic stagnation and the shock of the Brexit referendum, it doubled as a growth strategy and an industrial reset for the country's former manufacturing heartlands. But while low-carbon-driven growth and reshoring jobs back from China may be realised in the US, it cannot be to the same degree for any European country. Unlike North America, Europe is a resource-poor continent. A reliable supply of the metals and minerals required for low-carbon infrastructure will depend on a geopolitical strategy to tackle growing resource nationalism in Latin America and Africa as well as China's dominance of metal processing and rare earth elements. The US Inflation Reduction Act passed last August further constrains what is possible in Europe because its protectionist provisions will pull low-carbon investment capital across the Atlantic and incentivise some metal-rich economies like Australia to strike bilateral deals with Washington.

The US also does not have to engage with the same level of fossil fuel energy costs as European countries because of its own supplies. In Europe the gas-price shock in the autumn of 2021, driven by surging Chinese demand, followed by further increases from Russia's invasion of Ukraine have made many voters more energy-anxious than they were when the net zero legislation was inaugurated. Since to be rich is to be energy-rich and to be poor is to be energy-poor, energy insecurity incites conflict over distribution.

The uncertainty inherent in net zero compounds the political problem. Whether mass car ownership can be recreated with electric as opposed to internal-combustion-engine vehicles is a known unknown. While the commitment made in 2020 to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will not affect less well-off voters since only the affluent buy new cars outright, ultra-low emission zones — albeit first introduced to combat air pollution — are another matter.

The reality that net zero is disruptive to the status quo is becoming clear. Underneath net zero — although not spelt out in 2019 — is a call for voters to adapt to a new energy world that is unlikely to replicate the fossil fuel one. Politicians accustomed to a world in which energy abundance could be taken for granted will be prone to panic in this novel one. The last time there was an energy-centric politics, in the 1970s, wartime memories were sufficiently strong that they could still appeal to a narrative of shared sacrifice. In the absence of any such sense of national purpose today, they can no longer speak this language with confidence.

Already there is a shift to saying aloud that fossil fuel energy security still counts: last week the prime minister announced that the government would grant new licences to drill for oil and gas In the North Sea. Soon some politicians will no doubt be tempted by the idea that it is better to protect voters at home who are fearful of net zero by paying for countries in Asia with large populations and lower living standards to decarbonise faster. But there is no reason to think these states will sacrifice their own energy security so that the UK can continue to use gas while waiting for another future to arrive.

In this respect, net zero was supposed to help contain geopolitical competition over fossil fuels, not to intensify it by creating an even sharper hierarchy of states who can rely on them. Whether net zero is challenged or not, politicians and voters will have to learn to live with a constant contest over energy. We are in a world of permanent energy politics.

Helen Thompson is professor of political economy at Cambridge University and co-presenter of the podcast These Times

Edit: And you overlay this onto the world and I'm just not sure I can see a meaningful route to strategic autonomy without secure, separate sources of the materials required (and the uranium and nuclear may be part of France's interest in Niger). It feels like another point where European ambition will clash with reality and while we may want to stay out of growing US-China competition, we'll probably have to pick as an export market for them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Razgovory on August 06, 2023, 09:06:34 PM
I thought Helen Thomas was dead.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 03:43:47 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 06, 2023, 06:56:46 PMThe other open question is: are oil, gas, and coal to be replaced as primary energy sources by electricity or by hydrogen or a combination of both when they require entirely different infrastructures?

Didn't read past this sentence. Hydrogen is only a viable source of energy if you live in Jupiter. Same goes for electricity. Neither are primary energy sources.

But I guess it is too much to expect a political economy professor to know that.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 03:49:44 AM
Hydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 04:11:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 03:49:44 AMHydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.
I agree on actual energy and personal vehicles - but the areas she flags of the choice between electrification and hydrogen are for transport (I think two of the big shipping companies have basically made opposite bets on this though), for heating buildings and for industrial production. My understanding is those are areas where people think hydrogen could play a role. Which means that it's not just electrification we need but significantly more generation and capacity than right now.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 04:20:52 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 04:11:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 03:49:44 AMHydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.
I agree on actual energy and personal vehicles - but the areas she flags of the choice between electrification and hydrogen are for transport (I think two of the big shipping companies have basically made opposite bets on this though), for heating buildings and for industrial production. My understanding is those are areas where people think hydrogen could play a role. Which means that it's not just electrification we need but significantly more generation and capacity than right now.

No idea on shipping. But its mostly rail I was thinking of. You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 07, 2023, 04:42:48 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 04:20:52 AMYou always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

I never see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need to do.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 04:54:20 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 04:20:52 AMNo idea on shipping. But its mostly rail I was thinking of. You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.
So weirdly I was just looking at the Guardian and they have a piece on shipping because there's the first entirely hydrogen powered ferry:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/full-clean-ahead-can-shipping-finally-steer-away-from-fossil-fuels

Although I swear I read a story that was a bit broader than that (and it might have been one shipping company going all in on bio-fuels and the other on hydrogen - I feel like it was Maers and someone else) but it might be a helpful solution for the container ships (initially dual fuel) because you don't need to re-engineer them that much.

I mainly see it as an excuse not to electrify in domestic vehicles when my understanding is we're just nowhere near that yet - but that it could be really helpful in the large scale transport. Similarly, it could have a role in large industrial processes and poossibly heating, especially district heating, but I think on those we are largely electrifying instead.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 07, 2023, 05:02:30 AM
Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce. So you'll burn your dirtier coal to get your electricity to make your hydrogen so that you burn less fossil fuels :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on August 07, 2023, 05:37:48 AM
The idea is to use excess wind energy to make hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen during periods of low wind to balance the grid. Hydrogen can also be used to power vehicles, with water as the exhaust, though you do have to be careful as it is pretty explosive.

The problem is that this is expensive, at least at the moment. several times more expensive than electric vehicles.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 06:11:21 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on August 07, 2023, 05:37:48 AMThe idea is to use excess wind energy to make hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen during periods of low wind to balance the grid. Hydrogen can also be used to power vehicles, with water as the exhaust, though you do have to be careful as it is pretty explosive.

The problem is that this is expensive, at least at the moment. several times more expensive than electric vehicles.
Yeah - I'm dubious on its use for generating power for the grid. But the other benefit from a transport perspective, for example, is that my understanding is that it's lighter than the equivalent battery power (at this point) which I think could make it more attractive for shipping or possibly aviation (both about 2% of global emissions).

Similarly there's no way it'd be useful for heating individual homes - but in countries with district heating schemes or for big commercial buildings my understanding is it would be viable (and wouldn't necessarily involve as much changes to people's homes). Not sure about the rest of the world but in the UK heating accounts for about a third of our emissions - it's comparable to domestic vehicles, so not insignificant. Globally energy use in buildings is about 15% which is equivalent to all transport emissions, but I'm not sure how much of that is heating. I think it could have a role there, but again the policy preference has been electricity and batteries.

From a European perspective I think there's a possible particular worry there because we don't have the materials or manufacturers of batteries. There are definitely areas where electrification is the answer, there are other areas where I think there are options but we are choosing electrification and - from a European perspective - I think that poses the risk of increasing our dependence which I'm not sure is being though through by policymakers. Especially because I suspect we'll end up repeating the pre-2022 mistake of relying on America for our security and China for our energy infrastructure, which I'm not sure is wise.

Also it's the bit that I think is really missing in how energy transition is talked about that it often seems like it's replacing our current energy usage with electricity but I don't think it's always explained that that means generating vastly more electricity than we currently do. The Climate Change Committee in the UK have said that in our economy alone we need to double electricity generation in the next 25 years. At the minute we're only on track to produce more electricity than we currently consume in 2030. Luckily we are masters in rapidly and cheaply building vast amounts of new infrastructure :ph34r:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 06:14:33 AM
In Sweden, and maybe other places, rather than home boilers a lot of places get their heat from municipal boilers.
I wonder whether the UK has to look more in this direction again- as much as the government actually doing something is a hard battle that needs to be fought.


Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 07, 2023, 04:42:48 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 04:20:52 AMYou always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

I never see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need to do.
Maybe you're just not interested in railway and home electrification? It crops up quite a bit.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 06:22:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 06:14:33 AMIn Sweden, and maybe other places, rather than home boilers a lot of places get their heat from municipal boilers.
I wonder whether the UK has to look more in this direction again- as much as the government actually doing something is a hard battle that needs to be fought.
I think most new urban developments are built to have district heating schemes (I worked on a few district heating contracts at one point - but can't remember any details :lol:). I think there's been lots of talk about renovation of existing estates onto district heating schemes for decarbonisation if only because it's more energy efficient - but I think it's expensive for housing associations, councils etc.

When I was buying a new flat the contract had points around district heating and, from memory, it would be standard individual central heating when you bought. But it was designed to move to district heating and it was something the housing association would notify and you'd all be transitioned onto the new district heating.

As you say I think it's quite common elsewhere.

QuoteMaybe you're just not interested in railway and home electrification? It crops up quite a bit.
Yeah I can't see it being of much use on railways. Railways seem perfect for electrification because they are a fixed grid already so you just need to electrify that.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 07, 2023, 06:38:16 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 07, 2023, 04:42:48 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 04:20:52 AMYou always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

I never see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need to do.

You also didn't know who The Weeknd is.

@ Jos, In Canada we see a lot of talk of developing hydrogen.  It's too early to tell if it is just a political maneuver to appease fossil fuel producers (a lot of the talk is coming out of Alberta and BC) or it is a good faith attempt to develop the tech.

Thompson's article seems to indicate both might be needed.  But, at least in this country with access to ample Hydro, the main reason she cites does not exist.

That might mean we can develop a hydrogen industry for export, but that would mean investing much more than we are now in order to capture those foreign markets and that would require a leap of faith that they will ever exist to create the demand.

On the whole I think all the talk is, as you have said, an excuse to avoid putting in the needed changes to fully electrify.  As an illustration, Alberta has made a controversial decision to put the development of solar and wind on hold to "study" the storage issue.  :blink:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on August 07, 2023, 06:41:13 AM
Ugh, my friends who live(d) in blocks where there is what you call district heating, were not a fan. I am sure its more economic but having your heating on/off based on some authority's timetable can be decidedly un-fun.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 07, 2023, 07:01:04 AM
What is district heating?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 07:11:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 07, 2023, 07:01:04 AMWhat is district heating?
Basically a heating network across multiple buildings, particularly blocks of flats or an entire neighbourhood of terraced housing. Traditionally there's basically a central boiler normally burning fossil fuels or bio-fuel. But you can move them to lower or zero carbon energy and the infrastructure is alreading place to distribute the heat and it can be linked with cooling systems to capture the heat they generate. They're only really relevant in urban areas - but as well as climate changes we are an increasingly urbanising world so.

There's very low uptake in the UK. Most of our big estates weren't built in that way (but I think there's quite a lot of variation as it was largely post-war council housing and I think some councils were enthusiastic adopters and others, not). But, I think now most new developments in cities are built with the intent of eventually moving to district heating - so they have the right plumbing just not the actual central boiler bit. But they're very common elsewhere - I think especially in Scandinavia.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 07, 2023, 07:35:40 AM
Yeah it's standard in Sweden. Never experienced any trouble with it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AM
If we really want to tackle housing emissions, we need to find a way to improve insulation in older buildings.

I recently moved to a new flat. Even with 45 degrees C outside, I can get room temperature to 25 C if I want to, throughout the day. And the system is working less time than my poor A/C did last summer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 07, 2023, 08:18:25 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AMIf we really want to tackle housing emissions, we need to find a way to improve insulation in older buildings.

I recently moved to a new flat. Even with 45 degrees C outside, I can get room temperature to 25 C if I want to, throughout the day. And the system is working less time than my poor A/C did last summer.

There's that too.
A huge issue in the UK though. So many cowboys looking to make money ripping off various schemes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 08:50:40 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AMIf we really want to tackle housing emissions, we need to find a way to improve insulation in older buildings.

I recently moved to a new flat. Even with 45 degrees C outside, I can get room temperature to 25 C if I want to, throughout the day. And the system is working less time than my poor A/C did last summer.
Ideally both - my general view on net zero is, to nick that film's title, that we need to be doing everything everywhere all at once. Including investing the R&D side as well as the stuff we can do now.

QuoteThere's that too.
A huge issue in the UK though. So many cowboys looking to make money ripping off various schemes.
Yeah - although there's also just practical issues. We have older housing stock than most of Europe because of the war. For exampe, my flat is in a pre-WW1 building which means it has solid walls. So most insulation options basically will eat into the floor area. We've got lots more housing stock with solid walls so cavity insulation isn't a possibility and losing 6-10cm of your floor space along the walls is not an attractive option.

I've spent a lot of time trying to research the one that would be best while also taking up least space and it's difficult. The options I've found are all pretty Grand Designs and very expensive too (very much a long term plan :lol: :ph34r:). Although I had a general panic having moved into my own flat and being responsible for it. Because in the long run I intend to do all the things that will help de-carbonise it - heat pump, new central heating system to make that more efficient, move everything to electric where my supplier's all renewable, new windows, insulation etc. Obviously that all adds up and will basically take maybe 10+ years of saving :bleeding: But I basically spent a few days spinning out over whether I should do any decorating given that it's livable or just focus on saving to do all that stuff :blush:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 07, 2023, 10:54:49 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 07, 2023, 07:11:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 07, 2023, 07:01:04 AMWhat is district heating?
Basically a heating network across multiple buildings, particularly blocks of flats or an entire neighbourhood of terraced housing. Traditionally there's basically a central boiler normally burning fossil fuels or bio-fuel. But you can move them to lower or zero carbon energy and the infrastructure is alreading place to distribute the heat and it can be linked with cooling systems to capture the heat they generate. They're only really relevant in urban areas - but as well as climate changes we are an increasingly urbanising world so.

There's very low uptake in the UK. Most of our big estates weren't built in that way (but I think there's quite a lot of variation as it was largely post-war council housing and I think some councils were enthusiastic adopters and others, not). But, I think now most new developments in cities are built with the intent of eventually moving to district heating - so they have the right plumbing just not the actual central boiler bit. But they're very common elsewhere - I think especially in Scandinavia.

Thanks  :)

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on August 07, 2023, 09:01:13 PM
Socialized heating?

It will never fly in Trumperica.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 07, 2023, 09:29:31 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 07, 2023, 09:01:13 PMSocialized heating?

It will never fly in Trumperica.

One furnace for a couple adjacent high rises or low rises, no one would notice.

One furnace for a row of town houses: communism.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 08, 2023, 03:46:11 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AMEven with 45 degrees C outside

 :blink:

You serious? Hope its a dry 45 degrees C.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 08, 2023, 05:05:56 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 08, 2023, 03:46:11 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AMEven with 45 degrees C outside

 :blink:

You serious? Hope its a dry 45 degrees C.

Iberia is really suffering, Portugal is in flames.

Also didn't a Texan city hit it's all time record of 44.4C yesterday?

Missed the city's name, Maybe El Paso ??
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 08, 2023, 10:57:01 PM
Finally raining here but only for a couple of days. I am afraid it's too little too late for a number of trees.  There is going to be a large expense removing all that dead wood from the urban/forest interface.

I am not sure what climate zone we are in now, but it sure isn't the temperate rainforest it once was.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 09, 2023, 01:34:57 AM
Quote from: mongers on August 08, 2023, 05:05:56 PMAlso didn't a Texan city hit it's all time record of 44.4C yesterday?

Missed the city's name, Maybe El Paso ??

Sure enough.

But El Paso is a weird place in Texas:

1. It was founded in 1680 by the Spanish and wasn't part of Texas in any meaningful sense until after the Mexican-American War. It took no part in the Texas Revolution nor was it part of the Republic of Texas as it was in the disputed zone between Texas and Mexico. It was just on this side of Rio Grande so we ended up with it.

2. It is 800 km from the nearest other Texas city, San Antonio.

3. It is in another time zone from the rest of Texas.

4. It is over 80% Hispanic.

So despite being a massive city of 900,000 people most Texans kind of forget it exists. It is very culturally and geographically distant from the other big cities in the state. It might as well be its own state, the state of El Paso.

So that is to say that things happening in El Paso aren't really talked about much over my way, so this is the first I have heard of their particular heat wave. The whole city could vanish and it might take a day or two for the rest of Texas to notice.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 09, 2023, 02:07:39 AM
Marty Robbins didn't forget about it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on August 09, 2023, 02:44:15 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 08, 2023, 03:46:11 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 07, 2023, 08:00:39 AMEven with 45 degrees C outside

 :blink:

You serious? Hope its a dry 45 degrees C.

It is.

Though at those temperatures some of the air cooling evaporative systems at work fail, and you get high temps with high humidity, which makes physical labour almost impossible.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 09, 2023, 08:45:18 AM
It's 15C here.  We could split that heat wave in two, it'll still be livable.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 09, 2023, 09:58:27 AM
Hydroelectric dam burst in Norway at Braskereidfoss (160 km NE of Oslo) due to storm and excessive rainfall.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on August 09, 2023, 10:02:44 AM
Quote from: mongers on August 08, 2023, 05:05:56 PMIberia is really suffering, Portugal is in flames.


Well, not all Portugal obviously, but it's in bad enough e.g Odemira.

(https://scontent-cdg4-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/366248924_332314159129683_5337289509410574323_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=RicLggoWFq4AX-HkoOB&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-3.xx&oh=00_AfAcJtBLjwn0rjXaVhOpUxRBheIHrhqJLLHOzsZ_cdfFQg&oe=64D81940)

(https://scontent-cdg4-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/365687817_331863932508039_3221808698083832456_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=4tiTz71mawYAX-d8myY&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-3.xx&oh=00_AfB7aGpLYix3idVYDRy0w7WOAYD1IHRs9JpFTWrTqJStfg&oe=64D7A5B6)

Couple days ago.

Unsurprisingly, Alentejo is hellish.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 09, 2023, 10:30:39 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 09, 2023, 02:07:39 AMMarty Robbins didn't forget about it.

Yeah and what does he do?

He hides out in the badlands of New Mexico! Because even it is more hospitable to human habitation than West Texas.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 11, 2023, 02:01:35 AM
So... Hawaii...
Do people in the US much care or is it one of those things like northern Ireland over here where being across the water makes it sort of not count?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 11, 2023, 04:18:49 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 11, 2023, 02:01:35 AMSo... Hawaii...
Do people in the US much care or is it one of those things like northern Ireland over here where being across the water makes it sort of not count?

I care a little less than some random area because Maui is very posh.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 11, 2023, 11:21:22 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 11, 2023, 04:18:49 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 11, 2023, 02:01:35 AMSo... Hawaii...
Do people in the US much care or is it one of those things like northern Ireland over here where being across the water makes it sort of not count?

I care a little less than some random area because Maui is very posh.

This disaster seems to have been a literal perfect storm of factors including some climate change effects, just so happens this time it hit a more affluent population as compared to the norm, that is C.C. devastating more marginal societies in the 3rd world.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 11, 2023, 01:17:41 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 11, 2023, 11:21:22 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 11, 2023, 04:18:49 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 11, 2023, 02:01:35 AMSo... Hawaii...
Do people in the US much care or is it one of those things like northern Ireland over here where being across the water makes it sort of not count?

I care a little less than some random area because Maui is very posh.

This disaster seems to have been a literal perfect storm of factors including some climate change effects, just so happens this time it hit a more affluent population as compared to the norm, that is C.C. devastating more marginal societies in the 3rd world.


That might be part of it, but I think a bigger part is that the US and Canada view that Island as a literal paradise.  To see that devastated is significant. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 13, 2023, 11:50:07 AM
This is part of the sustainable future :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-66470327 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-66470327)

No doubt it won't materialise in the UK in any meaningful way, no doubt the battery docks will be NIMY'd away as dangerous sites of possible explosions.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 14, 2023, 07:02:30 AM
An example of why I think the key is China and India - and a rare example of the hopeful hockey stick graph :lol: Currently China is installing more renewable capacity than the US, EU and India combined - but we need India (and then Africa) on a similar trajectory:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3ap8Qxa0AAQopq?format=jpg&name=small)

Obviously at the same time there are also record numbers of new coal plants in China. But both are true.

Edit: Incidentally that uptick in Indian solar is hopeful but needs to shoot up as if we're to have a hope of hitting targets India needs to develop and grow their economy (with all the energy that'll require) without using fossil fuels the way Europe, North America and China did. Which is something new.

Separately I thought this was interesting given the recent hydrogen chat. It also reminds me of a bit by Sky's economics correspondent Ed Conway, who has a new book out called Material World that looks really good, on polyhalite. It's basically a type of salt that is incredibly useful in making (organic) fertiliser. But only started mining recently because no-one really had a use for it until they're trying to decarbonise (and make organic) fertiliser manufacturing - and now there's a mine in the UK, under the North Sea, which is expanding to the deepest mine in Europe for it.

It goes to my view that energy transition and moving to net zero is going to require a lot of production and possibly more extraction than even a fossil fuel based world, we just don't necessarily know what we're going to need because we haven't needed it before :lol: I also slightly wonder if part of what's happening in the world is we're moving from a slightly immaterial world to one where stuff is really important - access to, extraction, production, distribution etc...:hmm:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/prospectors-hit-the-gas-in-the-hunt-for-white-hydrogen
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 10:16:39 AM
Yeah it is amazing. Things have gone so much better than anybody ten years ago could have predicted for wind and solar. That is why I have a hard time not being optimistic. My expectations for how much progress we made has been blown away. Can that keep happening?

But it still isn't anywhere near enough.

The next key is energy storage. That is blowing up here in Texas, I hope it goes that way elsewhere.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 14, 2023, 10:48:44 AM
India worries me.
China has the whole marginally lawful-evil thing going on. They think long term. They care about China and nobody else but China happens to be on planet Earth so...have to think of the whole thing.

India however... with the rise in the religious right there and their whole anti-science cyclical-time schtick... They're going to be the problem.

Africa I'm not too concerned about given they've previously shown with their adoption of mobile phones and skipping land-line tech that small scale local generation is very much up their alley rather than big centralised power plants, which does lend itself very nicely to solar and wind.
Africa is a problem in other ways- the population growth level in Nigeria is just depressing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 10:53:45 AM
We have to make it cheaper and better and then India will adopt it. I think we are on our way, it isn't like India isn't adopting wind and solar. They are just behind the curve.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 14, 2023, 10:59:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 10:53:45 AMWe have to make it cheaper and better and then India will adopt it. I think we are on our way, it isn't like India isn't adopting wind and solar. They are just behind the curve.
They are. But they're also deepening their level of stupid-evil.
I worry they could go the way of the religious right in the US and not just be uncaring about climate change but actively in favour of it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 14, 2023, 11:00:40 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 10:16:39 AMYeah it is amazing. Things have gone so much better than anybody ten years ago could have predicted for wind and solar. That is why I have a hard time not being optimistic. My expectations for how much progress we made has been blown away. Can that keep happening?

But it still isn't anywhere near enough.
Yeah.

The climate is deteriorating, we are seeing the impact more often and more severely - and it is accelerating. At the same time progress on what we need to do is now happening faster than expected and accelerating - again renewables are being installed at vast pace in China but also elsewhere like South Africa (and globally at a pace that is growing fast enough to hit our targets). Both are true at once and are accelerating. I think we're in the tension between those two realities.

I'd slightly quibble on anywhere near enough - it depends what we're trying to achieve and how we assess. I think 1.5 degrees is impossible until we're able to remove carbon. But, from my understanding based on current policies and programs, we've still got a relatively good chance of 2 degrees as stable (again until we're abe to remove carbon - and acknowledging that if that's the new stable temperature then the extremes will be higher) - which is not the position we were in a few years ago and as we do more our chances improve.

But I think it's one of the reasons India is key because the one thing that would blow all that out the water is if India grows in the way China did. It's similar with Africa - the population projections won't happen because fertility rates are declining quite fast. But regardless if we cant work out a way for India and Africa to urbanise and generate power in a low carbon way then we're looking at significantly above 2 degrees.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 11:32:52 AM
Eventually pulling carbon out of the atmosphere will be a central pillar in our climate maintenance efforts.

It is kind of dystopian but controlling the climate will soon be a major issue of international policy. The Anthropocene is indeed here.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 14, 2023, 12:22:27 PM
My wife makes fun of me for listening to door-to-door salesmen and the like.  I always invariably tell them to (politely) go away after they make their pitch.

But there was a guy last week that had me intrigued.

Apparently this company will install solar panels on your roof at their expense.  You then sign a contract to buy power from them at a rate modestly less than you're paying now for 10 years.  After 10 years the contract is concluded and you own the solar panels.

Anyone ever heard of such a scheme?  Any thoughts?

COmpany is called Fluent Solar.  Googling does confirm it's a legit company, serves 13 states plus Alberta.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 14, 2023, 12:35:56 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 14, 2023, 12:22:27 PMMy wife makes fun of me for listening to door-to-door salesmen and the like.  I always invariably tell them to (politely) go away after they make their pitch.

But there was a guy last week that had me intrigued.

Apparently this company will install solar panels on your roof at their expense.  You then sign a contract to buy power from them at a rate modestly less than you're paying now for 10 years.  After 10 years the contract is concluded and you own the solar panels.

Anyone ever heard of such a scheme?  Any thoughts?

COmpany is called Fluent Solar.  Googling does confirm it's a legit company, serves 13 states plus Alberta.

This seems to be a work around for the high initial cost of installation.  But look carefully at the math.  You might be better off incurring the initial cost of installation yourself rather than paying their rates over time.  They might be comparable to what you are paying now but the benefit of solar panels is after installation you get free energy. 

Also, think about it like a car lease.  In the bad old days, before those agreements became more heavily regulated, there were all kinds of hidden costs hidden in the small print that you would incur both during at the end of the contract. 

For example, look carefully at what you must do to maintain the panels during those 10 years.  The contract likely specifies that they do the maintenance work.  And that is where there is a lot of opportunity for abuse (and them growing their profit margin).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 01:03:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 14, 2023, 12:22:27 PMMy wife makes fun of me for listening to door-to-door salesmen and the like.  I always invariably tell them to (politely) go away after they make their pitch.

But there was a guy last week that had me intrigued.

Apparently this company will install solar panels on your roof at their expense.  You then sign a contract to buy power from them at a rate modestly less than you're paying now for 10 years.  After 10 years the contract is concluded and you own the solar panels.

Anyone ever heard of such a scheme?  Any thoughts?

COmpany is called Fluent Solar.  Googling does confirm it's a legit company, serves 13 states plus Alberta.

Interesting. Only 10 years? Nice.

I mean they are going to be getting a better deal than you would if you just bought the solar panels and had them installed BUT you will be paying less than if you didn't get them at all. So that's kind of an interesting proposition if you don't have the cash to just have panels installed.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 14, 2023, 01:18:52 PM
I have no idea to be honest, but if they're in a position where their main obstacle to company growth is growing their install base then it's possible that it's actually a legit proposal.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 14, 2023, 01:22:48 PM
Yeah I mean obviously the company is doing this to make a profit.  But also yes - if the contract price is indeed less than what we are already paying then it's kind of free money to us too.

I've wanted to go solar for a long time, but the return on investment always seemed fairly far out in the future.  I see 9-12 years quoted for panels to pay for themselves.

BUt yes - it's important to check the fine print for sure, and to confirm what the electricity price really would be.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 14, 2023, 01:41:17 PM
Rather than carbon removal which I can't see going anywhere at scale for a while i would see limited solar shields having a role in future climate management.

The co2 of course has negative effects beyond merely the warming so this is no substitute for just not pumping the shit out. But satellites that block some sunlight are perfectly within modern capabilities unlike large-scale carbon capture.

I could see potentially interesting times with this if Russia manages to maintain itself beyond it's current suicide attempt and their profiting from higher temperatures vs those who want us brought back to 20th century norms.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 15, 2023, 01:06:59 AM
This is somewhat encouraging news.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-kids-win-climate-trial/index.html
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 15, 2023, 06:32:22 AM
Quote from: Maladict on August 15, 2023, 01:06:59 AMThis is somewhat encouraging news.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-kids-win-climate-trial/index.html

Can lawsuits really save the world/Us ?

Maybe we should ask some of Languish's esteemed contributors? :D
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 15, 2023, 08:07:17 AM
Quote from: mongers on August 15, 2023, 06:32:22 AM
Quote from: Maladict on August 15, 2023, 01:06:59 AMThis is somewhat encouraging news.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-kids-win-climate-trial/index.html

Can lawsuits really save the world/Us ?

Maybe we should ask some of Languish's esteemed contributors? :D

That's how things finally started to get moving here. The court ordered the government to do more against climate change for the sake of future generations.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 15, 2023, 10:38:17 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 01:03:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 14, 2023, 12:22:27 PMMy wife makes fun of me for listening to door-to-door salesmen and the like.  I always invariably tell them to (politely) go away after they make their pitch.

But there was a guy last week that had me intrigued.

Apparently this company will install solar panels on your roof at their expense.  You then sign a contract to buy power from them at a rate modestly less than you're paying now for 10 years.  After 10 years the contract is concluded and you own the solar panels.

Anyone ever heard of such a scheme?  Any thoughts?

COmpany is called Fluent Solar.  Googling does confirm it's a legit company, serves 13 states plus Alberta.

Interesting. Only 10 years? Nice.

I mean they are going to be getting a better deal than you would if you just bought the solar panels and had them installed BUT you will be paying less than if you didn't get them at all. So that's kind of an interesting proposition if you don't have the cash to just have panels installed.

So sat down with a sales guy.  It's not 100% what the door-to-door guy described, but close.

You do in fact own the panels.  You take out a loan.  You then make payments to the company.  Those payments are balanced out over the year, since it's expected that in the summer you'll be making net contributions to the energy grid, but in the winter making net withdrawals.  The payments do figure out to be 10-20% less than what we pay on average for power.  Loan can be paid out at any time without penalty.

I dunno - sounds like a decent deal.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AM
I'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on August 15, 2023, 02:46:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 14, 2023, 10:16:39 AMYeah it is amazing. Things have gone so much better than anybody ten years ago could have predicted for wind and solar. That is why I have a hard time not being optimistic. My expectations for how much progress we made has been blown away. Can that keep happening?

But it still isn't anywhere near enough.

The next key is energy storage. That is blowing up here in Texas, I hope it goes that way elsewhere.

It's a pity LK-99 seems to be bogus. That sort of thing could've made superconducting magnetic energy storage a reality.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 15, 2023, 02:48:55 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on August 15, 2023, 02:46:16 PMIt's a pity LK-99 seems to be bogus. That sort of thing could've made superconducting magnetic energy storage a reality.

Yeah. That was disappointing. Not surprising it turned out to be bogus but yeah that would have been a game changer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 15, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
I indirectly made my part for climate change.

I convinced my dad's girlfriend to buy a hybrid vehicle for a replacement to her aging Cadillac.

She didn't want to hear anything about it before, and obviously dad was against it.
She didn't want to buy from outside of town, figuring she'd have to constantly go to the garage out of town, and it took me a while, lots of trips to be finally able to buy it (worst sales service ever), but I got her a Toyota Rav4 Hybrid.

Since she does not drive in the city and my dad can't drive anymore, her most extensive trips are 80km away in each direction a few times a year, when she drives herself.  Most of the time, she just goes shopping into town, so she runs mostly on the battery.  Any extensive trip to Quebec city or elsewhere, I'm taking my car to drive them, so I figured the hybrid was perfect. :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 15, 2023, 09:32:20 PM
Yellowknife is now threatened by wild fires, with part of the city on evacuation alert.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-premier-update-wildfires-1.6937511
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 16, 2023, 09:48:48 AM
Tim worked as an encyclopedia salesman in the Deep South. It was all on the up and up.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:27:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

May not have happened in your situation, but the door to door sales people who start with the line "we are in the neighourhood doing another project" are normally the scammers.

There is no cost savings if a legitimate contractor is merely in the neighbourhood. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 10:35:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:27:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

May not have happened in your situation, but the door to door sales people who start with the line "we are in the neighourhood doing another project" are normally the scammers.

There is no cost savings if a legitimate contractor is merely in the neighbourhood. 

Um you sure?

"We are mowing lawns in the area and wanted to know if you wanted your lawn mowed" say a bunch of dirty looking dudes with lawnmowers. I mean what are they doing to do? Mow my lawn while secretly planting fast growing grass?

In any case yes there is no cost savings. They are just selling their shit while they happen to be around. In fact with the solar door to door guy we ended up going with one of his competitors in the end but that got the process started.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 10:43:28 AM
Only door to door I've had are fibre internet.

Also charity fundraisers and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Edit: Althoygh, via my upstairs neighbour there's a handyman doing some work on the garden - who also does next door and the cafe down the road. Met him today and I recognise him. But when I asked who he was or how do we get in touch to arrange, she explained he's just "in the community" and we ask when we see him :lol:

Honestly didn't know that sort of thing existed in London - thought it was a countryside thing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:46:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 10:35:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:27:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

May not have happened in your situation, but the door to door sales people who start with the line "we are in the neighourhood doing another project" are normally the scammers.

There is no cost savings if a legitimate contractor is merely in the neighbourhood. 

Um you sure?

"We are mowing lawns in the area and wanted to know if you wanted your lawn mowed" say a bunch of dirty looking dudes with lawnmowers. I mean what are they doing to do? Mow my lawn while secretly planting fast growing grass?

In any case yes there is no cost savings. They are just selling their shit while they happen to be around. In fact with the solar door to door guy we ended up going with one of his competitors in the end but that got the process started.

Um, yes. 

It is the red flag that the BBB warns everyone about.

Cute that you shifted the goal posts from home improvement to mowing a lawn.  One requires estimation, the buying of the materials needs, often some prefab, etc.  The other I did as an 8 year old pushing my dad's lawnmower around the neighbourhood.  I hope you are able to see the distinction there.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:47:12 AM
A Texan who doesn't enjoying mowing his own lawn? King of the Hill has lead me astray :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on August 16, 2023, 10:47:26 AM
I turn back all door to door sales person, I operate on a I'll call you don't call me basis. I'm courteous to most of them except the lying assholes that pretend that they have a mandate from the government to inspect the entire neighborhood. Those I chase a way cursing their descendant for 12 generations.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:48:32 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 10:43:28 AMOnly door to door I've had are fibre internet.

Also charity fundraisers and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Edit: Althoygh, via my upstairs neighbour there's a handyman doing some work on the garden - who also does next door and the cafe down the road. Met him today and I recognise him. But when I asked who he was or how do we get in touch to arrange, she explained he's just "in the community" and we ask when we see him :lol:

Honestly didn't know that sort of thing existed in London - thought it was a countryside thing.

Is your neighbour keeping a hobo hostage for cheap labour? :unsure:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:49:40 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:46:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 10:35:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:27:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

May not have happened in your situation, but the door to door sales people who start with the line "we are in the neighourhood doing another project" are normally the scammers.

There is no cost savings if a legitimate contractor is merely in the neighbourhood. 

Um you sure?

"We are mowing lawns in the area and wanted to know if you wanted your lawn mowed" say a bunch of dirty looking dudes with lawnmowers. I mean what are they doing to do? Mow my lawn while secretly planting fast growing grass?

In any case yes there is no cost savings. They are just selling their shit while they happen to be around. In fact with the solar door to door guy we ended up going with one of his competitors in the end but that got the process started.

Um, yes. 

It is the red flag that the BBB warns everyone about.

Cute that you shifted the goal posts from home improvement to mowing a lawn.  One requires estimation, the buying of the materials needs, often some prefab, etc.  The other I did as an 8 year old pushing my dad's lawnmower around the neighbourhood.  I hope you are able to see the distinction there.

Ummm you are aware that there are grown up lawn care companies. They come with big boy estimates and invoices too.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:51:25 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on August 16, 2023, 10:47:26 AMI turn back all door to door sales person, I operate on a I'll call you don't call me basis. I'm courteous to most of them except the lying assholes that pretend that they have a mandate from the government to inspect the entire neighborhood. Those I chase a way cursing their descendant for 12 generations.

The big fraud ones in this are are driveway repaving. See news report warnings every few years.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 10:54:52 AM
Quote from: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:48:32 AMIs your neighbour keeping a hobo hostage for cheap labour? :unsure:
Unclear - and I'm not going to pry.

But she's right, I met him for the first time today and he absolutely is someone I see out and about in the community and have seen doing next door's garden and doing some work for the cafe. So far he's done a great job of clearing mess in the garden, clearing away garden waste (it is complex trying to get rid of garden waste in my borough) and is trimming the front hedge soon....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:01:23 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

So hey - tell me about your experience with solar panels!


As for door-to-door sales... I am very aware of the issue of scams.  But going door-to-door is a legit sales strategy (albeit annoying).  As mentioned, everything seems to check out with this company.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:03:22 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:46:22 AMUm, yes. 

It is the red flag that the BBB warns everyone about.

Cute that you shifted the goal posts from home improvement to mowing a lawn.  One requires estimation, the buying of the materials needs, often some prefab, etc.  The other I did as an 8 year old pushing my dad's lawnmower around the neighbourhood.  I hope you are able to see the distinction there.

Well what kind of work do you think normally goes on in a suburban neighborhood? It is going to be tree trimming, lawn treatments, cleaning your gutters, and that sort of thing. I was making a statement generally about door to door sales people in my area.

I think it is a little ridiculous that door to door selling is some kind of significant red flag. Sure all sales and advertising of any sort should be treated with healthy skepticism. In a world where you are constantly bombarded with bullshit email scams and robocalls, actually having humans taking the time to talk to you in person definitely puts them at a higher level of legitimacy that what I normally see.

In any case whatever they offer, you can easily check online about how good the deal is and check their reviews.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:08:43 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:01:23 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

So hey - tell me about your experience with solar panels!


As for door-to-door sales... I am very aware of the issue of scams.  But going door-to-door is a legit sales strategy (albeit annoying).  As mentioned, everything seems to check out with this company.

I have had a very good experience. They have been producing at a high level for three years with no maintenance or issues and have paid very little in energy costs. Fortunately our electricity coop has a net metering program so we get credits during the day we can use at night.

In Texas the electricity provider doesn't have to do shit for you so we are lucky in that respect, though they are legally able to change the deal anytime they want. Fortunately, they are a socialist cooperative so we members have to approve it first and fat chance of that happening.

You should check to see how your electricity provider handles solar panels if you haven't already.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:11:48 AM
Quote from: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:47:12 AMA Texan who doesn't enjoying mowing his own lawn? King of the Hill has lead me astray :(

I fucking hate mowing the lawn. I have softened on doing other yard work. I will clean gutters and pull weeds and all that but I will do just about anything to get out of mowing the lawn.

It is too damn hot four months out of the year for one thing. And when it isn't, it is just really inefficient. It might take me all day to get the lawn mowed and the edges trimmed. The dudes I hire do the whole thing in less than an hour.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 11:20:29 AM
Quote from: HVC on August 16, 2023, 10:49:40 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:46:22 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 10:35:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 10:27:12 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

May not have happened in your situation, but the door to door sales people who start with the line "we are in the neighourhood doing another project" are normally the scammers.

There is no cost savings if a legitimate contractor is merely in the neighbourhood. 

Um you sure?

"We are mowing lawns in the area and wanted to know if you wanted your lawn mowed" say a bunch of dirty looking dudes with lawnmowers. I mean what are they doing to do? Mow my lawn while secretly planting fast growing grass?

In any case yes there is no cost savings. They are just selling their shit while they happen to be around. In fact with the solar door to door guy we ended up going with one of his competitors in the end but that got the process started.

Um, yes. 

It is the red flag that the BBB warns everyone about.

Cute that you shifted the goal posts from home improvement to mowing a lawn.  One requires estimation, the buying of the materials needs, often some prefab, etc.  The other I did as an 8 year old pushing my dad's lawnmower around the neighbourhood.  I hope you are able to see the distinction there.

Ummm you are aware that there are grown up lawn care companies. They come with big boy estimates and invoices too.

Sure, but I have never actually had one of those companies drop by my front door and say, hey we were just in the neighourhood.  Those people are on a schedule because they are actual legit businesses.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:21:09 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:08:43 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:01:23 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 09:32:24 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 15, 2023, 11:25:47 AMI'd be suspicious of why they're reliant on door to door salesmen. That always puts me instantly on the defence.
But worth checking out and seeing their competitors too. If at least for the fun of them trying to con you with illegal small print.

To be fair I also purchased my solar panels via door to door sales. But that is pretty common in home improvement work around here. Whenever some company is doing a project in the neighborhood they will see if any of the neighbors want something similar done so long as they are in the area.

So hey - tell me about your experience with solar panels!


As for door-to-door sales... I am very aware of the issue of scams.  But going door-to-door is a legit sales strategy (albeit annoying).  As mentioned, everything seems to check out with this company.

I have had a very good experience. They have been producing at a high level for three years with no maintenance or issues and have paid very little in energy costs. Fortunately our electricity coop has a net metering program so we get credits during the day we can use at night.

In Texas the electricity provider doesn't have to do shit for you so we are lucky in that respect, though they are legally able to change the deal anytime they want. Fortunately, they are a socialist cooperative so we members have to approve it first and fat chance of that happening.

You should check to see how your electricity provider handles solar panels if you haven't already.

Alberta energy market is deregulated, and generation and distribution are separate.  You're able to choose from several differen generation companies.  You are also able to sell excess electricty back to the grid (from things like solar panels).

As mentioned it's anticipated we would be net consumers of electricty during winter (not so much sunlight, plus potential for snow cover on the panels), while being net contributors during the summer.

Now you ever know things could change.  Our provincial government just announced a fairly inexplicable freeze on any large-scale wind or solar projects for six months (anything about 5 MW, so home panels are unaffected).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:24:47 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:21:09 AMNow you ever know things could change.  Our provincial government just announced a fairly inexplicable freeze on any large-scale wind or solar projects for six months (anything about 5 MW, so home panels are unaffected).

Doesn't sound very deregulated. I suspect they are concerned about reliability, which is the last bastion of the anti-renewables forces.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:58:32 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 11:24:47 AM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:21:09 AMNow you ever know things could change.  Our provincial government just announced a fairly inexplicable freeze on any large-scale wind or solar projects for six months (anything about 5 MW, so home panels are unaffected).

Doesn't sound very deregulated. I suspect they are concerned about reliability, which is the last bastion of the anti-renewables forces.


Well look let me be clear - I think this freeze is stupid.

BUt we've long had a requirement to get approval for large power projects - be it coal, natural gas, oil - or renewables.  I don't think that makes it not deregulated.

Or maybe you just have to remember that in most other provinces the Government just 100% owns power generation.  Probably by accident of geography and history, in that Alberta lacks any significant hydro power resources, but has ample hydrocarbons, we've been much more open to the pricate market.  If I recall correctly our big energy deregulation push in the 1990s was inspired by Texas?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 12:04:40 PM
Also separating generation and distribution sounds very sensible to me and just good anti-trust regulations, assuming it's a private market. Although I feel like distribution is probably a natural monopoly in countries with old school grid systems? :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 01:26:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:58:32 AMIf I recall correctly our big energy deregulation push in the 1990s was inspired by Texas?

California. They did it first. We copied them.

Big projects in Texas do not have to be approved by the government if they are in the de-regulated area, because they provide their own financing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 02:16:41 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 01:26:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 11:58:32 AMIf I recall correctly our big energy deregulation push in the 1990s was inspired by Texas?

California. They did it first. We copied them.

Big projects in Texas do not have to be approved by the government if they are in the de-regulated area, because they provide their own financing.

At all?  No environmental regulation or anything?  You can just go ahead and build a big coal-fired plant?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 05:39:18 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 16, 2023, 02:16:41 PMAt all?  No environmental regulation or anything?  You can just go ahead and build a big coal-fired plant?

Yes you can!

But we have no coal resources (well ok there are some but of very low quality) in Texas and the coal plants that did exist only came into existence due to Federal subsidies during the 1970s energy crisis. They are money losers here.

Also Federal environmental regulations still apply so investors are doubly unlikely to invest in them.

Heck investors are hesitant to build new gas combine plants just because they are expensive and they are paranoid about environmental regulations on those, despite the potential for being profitable in the long run.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 16, 2023, 06:05:40 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 12:04:40 PMAlso separating generation and distribution sounds very sensible to me and just good anti-trust regulations, assuming it's a private market. Although I feel like distribution is probably a natural monopoly in countries with old school grid systems? :hmm:

We combine it but it is all heavily regulated, including the rates that can be charged.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 16, 2023, 06:35:00 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2023, 12:04:40 PMAlso separating generation and distribution sounds very sensible to me and just good anti-trust regulations, assuming it's a private market. Although I feel like distribution is probably a natural monopoly in countries with old school grid systems? :hmm:

The grids are monopolies. You get to pick the company that is selling you electricity though.

Well I don't since I live in a socialist co-op but those people living in the deregulated area do.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on August 16, 2023, 07:15:35 PM
I pick nothing and I think that's wonderful because I am not interested in having another American company sucking up the few wealth we have.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 16, 2023, 07:53:22 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/9lOedtH.png)


While we've seen one of the worst summers in years for our neck of the woods, Europe's been cooking.

I can see who's been stealing our heat.

Not cool guys, not cool at all.  It's often 13-14C during the night and the morning over here.  A half split would be satisfying.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Rex Francorum on August 17, 2023, 03:03:49 AM
Nah, I am fine with our colder nights and days.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 17, 2023, 03:23:30 AM
Not looking forward to this. Been 30+ in Vienna since Tuesday. For the inner city, add 1 or 2 degrees during the day, and 3 or 4 during the night.

(https://i.postimg.cc/mgQD8vQX/image.png)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Iormlund on August 17, 2023, 07:19:08 AM
Heh. I'd kill for those temperatures.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 17, 2023, 07:31:41 AM
Horrific.
Those wide boulevards too....
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 17, 2023, 07:50:10 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 17, 2023, 07:31:41 AMHorrific.
Those wide boulevards too....

The "wide boulevards" I live in.

(https://www.stadtbekannt.at/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Josefstadt-Lenaugasse-c-STADTBEKANNT-Zohmann.jpg)

The city created a heat vulnerability map. I live in one of the 0.8+ areas.

(https://i.postimg.cc/C110LgyK/image.png)

And the forecast for peripheral Vienna and Inner City. Note the differences especially at night.

(https://i.postimg.cc/dVPJRpCW/image.png)

For my building, which is part of a very densely built up area, I can add another 2 or so degrees in out courtyard during the night.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 17, 2023, 08:34:15 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 17, 2023, 07:50:10 AM
Quote from: Josquius on August 17, 2023, 07:31:41 AMHorrific.
Those wide boulevards too....

The "wide boulevards" I live in.


The city created a heat vulnerability map. I live in one of the 0.8+ areas.

And the forecast for peripheral Vienna and Inner City. Note the differences especially at night.

For my building, which is part of a very densely built up area, I can add another 2 or so degrees in out courtyard during the night.

Yeah, I've intentionally allowed a lot of bushes and a couple of small trees to grow in the garden and it makes a noticable difference to the daytime peaks and seems to take the edge of the night time temperatures.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 17, 2023, 11:55:44 AM
This has been the summer from hell. Worse than 2011. I thought last year was bad.

40 consecutive days over 100F/38C and no rain. A new Austin record! Fun.

Fortunately it is El Nino so we should be absolutely drenched this winter.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 17, 2023, 12:26:44 PM
Quote from: Rex Francorum on August 17, 2023, 03:03:49 AMNah, I am fine with our colder nights and days.
There are limits...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 17, 2023, 12:34:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2023, 11:55:44 AM40 consecutive days over 100F/38C and no rain. A new Austin record! Fun.

:bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 17, 2023, 01:21:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 17, 2023, 11:55:44 AMThis has been the summer from hell. Worse than 2011. I thought last year was bad.

40 consecutive days over 100F/38C and no rain. A new Austin record! Fun.

Fortunately it is El Nino so we should be absolutely drenched this winter.
Reminds me of last summer.  That was unlivable.

Fortunately, I have plans to buy a central heat pump and a supplemental one for keeping my second floor cold.

I'm just waiting on Hydro-Quebec to launch to new program that gives supplemental grants to buy it.  I should get a few thousand dollars more.

They also give up to 22 000$ in grant if you buy a heat accumulator, but I'm totally not sure it's worth the expense.  From all the preliminary reports I'm getting, this is something that would cost around 30k$.  I'm gonna need 50 years to get my money back with our energy costs here.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 17, 2023, 04:17:22 PM
No comment yet from BB with Yellowknife in the NWT.

Meanwhile 'the world' continues to burn.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on August 17, 2023, 05:50:40 PM
@Syt

There is a ReMax office 2km from well conditioned house if you can negotiate something with the owners.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on August 17, 2023, 06:50:20 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 17, 2023, 04:17:22 PMNo comment yet from BB with Yellowknife in the NWT.

Meanwhile 'the world' continues to burn.
Sad to see our northern parts burning like that. :(
Northern Quebec, now northern Canada. Fuck.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on August 17, 2023, 09:21:39 PM
Quote from: mongers on August 17, 2023, 04:17:22 PMNo comment yet from BB with Yellowknife in the NWT.

Meanwhile 'the world' continues to burn.

Not sure what you want me to say.  Never lived in NWT.  Despite what you think Yellowknife is over a thousand miles from Whitehorse (capital of Yukon).  Because of the "colour" name a lot of Canadians get them confused.

It's a damn shame, that's for sure.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 18, 2023, 12:55:10 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/water-scarcity-map-solutions/

QuoteHere's where water is running out in the world — and why

A growing population and rising temperatures will strain the world's freshwater supplies over the next 30 years, jeopardizing available water for drinking, bathing and growing food, according to new research.

An analysis of newly released data from the World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that by 2050 an additional billion people will be living in arid areas and regions with high water stress, where at least 40 percent of the renewable water supply is consumed each year. Two-fifths of the world's population — 3.3 billion people in total — currently live in such areas.

(https://i.postimg.cc/sxT6ZHvm/image.png)

Water stress is a measure of how much demand there is for an area's available water supply. A higher score means more people are competing for water.

WRI used a global hydrological model to estimate how renewable water sources — such as rivers and lakes, which are replenished through precipitation — might change under future climate change scenarios. According to their analysis, the Middle East and North Africa regions have the highest level of water stress in the world. Climate change is shifting traditional precipitation patterns, making the regions drier and reducing their already scarce water supplies. Population growth and industrial use of water are expected to increase demand.

Here are a few areas experiencing water scarcity around the world.

(https://i.postimg.cc/VNXKFkJd/image.png)

Five of the six most water-stressed countries are in the Middle East and North Africa.

South Asia is the most densely populated region experiencing water stress. As the population continues to grow, water demand will continue to increase.

Half of Spain's land area is used for agriculture, but droughts and searing temperatures have led to crop failures. Reservoir levels in the northeast region of Catalonia are so low that some municipalities are trucking in water to make sure residents have enough for daily life.

Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, California and Idaho are using more water than they receive each year, depleting groundwater reserves to support farming and industrial use.

(https://i.postimg.cc/MGw7qbGp/image.png)

With climate change, "water challenges are only going to become more frequent and more intense," said Heather Cooley, director of research for the Pacific Institute. "That needs to motivate us to begin preparing and implementing projects."

The WRI analysis accounts for surface water, but not groundwater stores that are tapped when lakes, rivers and reservoirs run dry. This means the new estimates may underestimate risk. Many rural areas use groundwater for drinking water and farmers worldwide rely on it for irrigation. But groundwater often replenishes much more slowly than surface water.

"We're not identifying when that groundwater is at risk of running out," said Samantha Kuzma, the Aqueduct data lead at the World Resources Institute. Countries might be adapting to scarce surface water by tapping underground reserves, but "it doesn't mean they'll be able to adapt in the future."

Only half of 1 percent of the world's water supply is fresh water in liquid form. The rest is saltwater or frozen into glaciers.

Water is used to manufacture goods, extract minerals and produce energy, but its biggest use, globally, is for food production.

Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water use each year, and is deeply affected by changes in precipitation. Even if a region is getting the same average amount of rain and snow, droughts and floods have become more common. Rain may not arrive for some time — then arrive all at once — instead of falling more evenly across a growing season. That makes it difficult for farmers to rely on rainfall to water crops and increases the need for water storage and irrigation.

"Just looking at the averages doesn't tell the whole story," said Matthew Rodell, the deputy director of Earth Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's much more useful and easier to live with if the water all comes regularly and without these extremes. But more and more, that's not the case."

Drought-prone but wealthy areas are generally able to manage water stress. A complicated series of agreements governs the water use in the Colorado River Basin, where water is stored and managed through dams and reservoirs. Even during droughts, residents in major cities in the Southwest have reliable tap water.

If surface water is in short supply, people often turn to groundwater, which can be rapidly depleted. In India, nearly 60 percent of the population makes a living from farming. For decades, the government supported farmers by subsidizing the cost of diesel to run water pumps and tractors and by purchasing wheat and rice at an artificially high price. Water demand to irrigate rice and wheat fields is contributing to groundwater depletion in the northern region of Punjab.

"There's nothing to connect the actual scarcity of water to the farmers' use of water," said Charles Iceland, the director of Freshwater Initiatives with WRI's Food, Land, and Water Program.

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZrnqgvF/image.png)

"More people demand more water, but also each person demands more water as they get wealthier," Iceland said. "So as you get wealthier, you move from a more grain and vegetable-oriented diet to a more meat-oriented diet."

Growing and feeding a cow to create one pound of beef requires as much as 1,800 gallons of water, by some estimates. Calorie-for-calorie, that's almost eight times as much water as vegetables and 20 times as much water as cereals like wheat and corn.

Water-intensive crops like sugar cane and cotton could also drive demand in sub-Saharan Africa, where water use is expected to double over the next 20 years. Many areas still lack infrastructure to reliably deliver water for irrigation. As those pipelines are built, more farmers will have access to water, which will further strain surface water supplies. Inefficient water use and unsustainable management could lower gross domestic product in the region by 6 percent, according to WRI.

Where we farm is also a factor. "In some cases, we make ridiculous decisions in terms of where we grow crops," Rodell said. One Saudi company is growing alfalfa in the Arizona desert, pulling from the area's groundwater supplies. That alfalfa is then shipped overseas to feed cattle in Saudi Arabia, where industrial-scale farming of forage crops has been banned to conserve the nation's water.

Water is also integral to mining lithium and other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy infrastructure. These critical minerals are often found in arid places like Chile, which is already water-stressed and is projected to use 20 percent more water by 2050, according to WRI.

(https://i.postimg.cc/c4Q7jbsb/image.png)

How we can limit water scarcity

"There are lots of things we can do and need to do," Cooley said.

Since farming accounts for the most water use globally, experts say that micro-sprinklers and drip irrigation instead of flood irrigation are an important solution.

A price on water would also encourage efficiency. It's important for the poorest people to have enough water to drink and use in their households, says Iceland, "but above those humanitarian amounts, you have to really price water in a way that will make sure that it's used in the most economical ways possible."

Cities can develop infrastructure to capture and reuse stormwater runoff, repair leaks in municipal water systems and encourage water efficiency. In Nevada, the Las Vegas Valley Water District created a grass replacement program and fined water waste, which reduced the area's total water use by 26 billion gallons per year from 2002 to 2021, even as the area's population grew by 750,000 residents. Nationwide, more efficient appliances have reduced per capita household water use since 1980.

Food choices can have a big impact, too. Raising livestock for meat and dairy takes much more water than growing vegetables and grains, so reducing meat and dairy consumption can decrease individual water footprints. Reducing food waste could also help reduce water use. In the United States, more than a third of food ends up in the landfill. The biggest single contributor to food waste is throwing away food at home.

"People need to recognize and understand the importance of water," Cooley said. In many places, people can turn on a tap and water is just there, she said, so "we've taken it for granted. We've undervalued it. And that has to change."

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on August 18, 2023, 04:17:58 AM
Time to close off the Med and turn it into a lake.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 18, 2023, 08:15:01 AM
Yellowknife is being evacuated!
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 18, 2023, 08:42:55 AM
And West Kelowna is being evacuated.

I hope Zoupa is ok
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 18, 2023, 08:49:54 AM
It seems like Western Canada is going to be particularly hard hit by climate change. Or at least it is in this particular phase. This winter looks to be freakishly warm for them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 18, 2023, 09:02:53 AM
Quote from: Valmy on August 18, 2023, 08:49:54 AMIt seems like Western Canada is going to be particularly hard hit by climate change. Or at least it is in this particular phase. This winter looks to be freakishly warm for them.

Yes and the bigger problem is we now have long periods without rain.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on August 18, 2023, 09:42:16 PM
And also...California is about to be hit by a hurricane.  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 18, 2023, 11:07:02 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on August 18, 2023, 09:42:16 PMAnd also...California is about to be hit by a hurricane.  :)

First since the 1930s.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 05:41:37 AM
The patients at the hospital in my community of North Vancouver have been moved to other regional hospitals to make room for patients that need to be evacuated from Yellowknife.

If Kelowna hospital needs to be evacuated there is going to be a space crunch.  That is the biggest facility in the southern interior of BC.  Short term medical facilities will need to be created.  That is doable but expensive.

All of which is to say, the mitigation costs of climate change are going to be massive.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 19, 2023, 10:09:05 AM
Lions Gate Hospital?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 10:11:47 AM
Quote from: Jacob on August 19, 2023, 10:09:05 AMLions Gate Hospital?

Yes

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on August 19, 2023, 10:26:33 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 05:41:37 AMAll of which is to say, the mitigation costs of climate change are going to be massive.

Well glad we didn't harm our economic growth by looking for alternative fuels thirty or forty years ago then. We are going to need all that money.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 12:50:43 PM
 :lol:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: grumbler on August 19, 2023, 01:18:33 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 19, 2023, 10:26:33 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 05:41:37 AMAll of which is to say, the mitigation costs of climate change are going to be massive.

Well glad we didn't harm our economic growth by looking for alternative fuels thirty or forty years ago then. We are going to need all that money.

Sometimes there's more money to be made in ameliorating a problem than in fixing it or avoiding it.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on August 19, 2023, 02:00:07 PM
We're smoked in but not evacuated. It's mostly raging about 10 km north of us. The winds have been kind to us so far.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 03:27:02 PM
Hope the winds continue to be kind  :)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 19, 2023, 04:06:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 03:27:02 PMHope the winds continue to be kind  :)

Yes I hope you, Zoupa and the rest of the crew here + family and friends aren't badly affect.

Didn't realise this Kelowna fire was in the far south of BC, just 100km from US border and I guess 100-200kms East of you. For some reason the BBC courage has been a bit vague lumping it into the Yellowknife* situation almost.

* must be 1,000kms + between them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 19, 2023, 04:58:42 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 19, 2023, 05:41:37 AMAll of which is to say, the mitigation costs of climate change are going to be massive.
Yes. The ones that struck me recently are French nuclear power plants having to reduce their operations because the river water used for cooling is too hot, or the wiring under roads in Sicily melting causing outages of electricity in cities during the heatwave earlier this year.

This is going to be a huge part of what we need to fix because we're operating outside the tolerance so much of our infrastructure is built around. As you say it'll be hugely expensive.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on August 22, 2023, 01:51:00 PM
European natural gas demands down significantly:

WSJ Article, Aug 21 2023 (https://archive.li/uifgI)

QuoteEurope's Gas-Guzzling Days Are Fading
In a reality check for natural-gas producers, volatile prices are prompting European homes and factories to go green faster than expected
By Carol Ryan

Last year's hottest gas market has cooled, and some of the change will stick.

Demand for natural gas in Europe hasn't bounced back despite lower prices. The region's TTF benchmark price is down 85% compared with a year ago, when Europe was rushing to fill its gas-storage facilities for winter after Russia cut off supply.

Prices have fallen partly because Europe's gas storage is already full. It hit a 90% capacity target last week, more than two months ahead of a schedule set last year by the European Union.

But underlying demand is also weak. According to think tank Bruegel's European natural gas demand tracker, use of gas in the first quarter of this year was 18% lower than the 2019-2021 average, and 19% below in the second quarter. The declines have accelerated from the 12% fall recorded last year.

Weaker economic growth is one reason why gas use hasn't recovered. Another may be that lower wholesale prices haven't been passed on to end users yet, according to Ben McWilliams, author of the Bruegel tracker.

Other factors will be more permanent, notably new technologies. The European Heat Pump Association said sales of heat pumps rose 39% in 2022. They are now installed in 16% of Europe's residential and commercial buildings, often replacing gas boilers. Heat pumps require electricity, which is often produced using gas, but this too is changing. Installations of new solar capacity rose a record 47% in 2022, and last year was the first time that renewable power generated more of Europe's electricity than natural gas.

One uncertainty for future gas demand is whether European industries such as chemicals and fertilizer manufacturing will return to normal. The International Energy Agency thinks that up to half of the decline in Europe's industrial gas demand last year was a result of production shutdowns. Certain companies whose business model traditionally relied on cheap Russian gas moved manufacturing to lower-cost regions such as the U.S., where gas costs roughly a quarter of the European spot price.

European gas prices will be volatile until more global liquefied natural gas supply arrives in 2025. The TTF jumped 5% on Monday because of worries about strikes at an Australian LNG terminal. Companies may be reluctant to restart their European factories until the region's energy costs are more predictable.

Before the Ukraine war, global demand for natural gas was expected to increase 18% between 2021 and 2030, according to estimates from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. This forecast has since been cut to 10%. Lower growth expectations reflect the sharp cutbacks in Europe as well as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which will supercharge America's shift to renewable energy.

None of this is ideal for the U.S. LNG players who are currently pouring billions of dollars into new production. Based on projects that have already secured funding, and those in the pipeline, U.S. LNG export capacity could double by the end of this decade, according to Wood Mackenzie estimates.

True, Europe needs plenty of LNG over the next few years to replace the shortfall left by Russian pipeline gas. But the faster the region weans itself off gas, the sooner exporters will need to find a new home for at least some of their cargoes.

The expectation is that countries still using a lot of coal in power generation, such as India and Pakistan, will eventually switch to natural gas to cut their carbon emissions—assuming prices come down enough to make that transition affordable. "The window of opportunity for natural gas is tightening all around the world, although coal-reliant markets in Asia provide growth prospects over the medium-term," says Gergely Molnar, energy analyst at IEA.
Buyers and sellers of natural gas took very different lessons from last year's record prices, and the fuel's reputation as a cheap, reliable form of energy took a hit. The pace of change in Europe's gas market raises the risk of a glut.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 22, 2023, 02:03:15 PM
That seems like very much a six of one, half dozen of the other story from a Euro perspective, given that a significant chunk of it appears to be further European de-industrialisation. Production shutting down or moving to markets with access to cheaper energy, lower growth and possible end of European industries that have high energy or resource requirements (like chemicals or fertiliser).

Not great, not terrible :ph34r:

Edit: Also the IRA impact. US steaming ahead with industrial policy supporting energy transition and relatively abundant, affordable energy - and Europe's considering  filing a complaint with the WTO :bleeding:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on August 23, 2023, 12:52:57 AM
27°C at 4 am in front of my apartment this morning. :cry:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on August 23, 2023, 04:32:03 AM
With windows opened at night, I can create an air flow, so no problems for now (trickier in studios unless there is a corridor window). Registered temperature was "only" 31°C, but it's higher in buildings, of course.

39°C in Bragança, but temperatures fall by 15-20°C at night, so the night is not the issue.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 28, 2023, 05:35:40 PM
In order to dig for more climate unfriendly lignite, the wind power generators in the back have to be demolished. So absurd that we keep this most destructive of all methods of power generation.

(https://taz.de/picture/6477402/624/33485152-1.jpeg)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zoupa on August 29, 2023, 01:03:51 PM
Can you explain why the anti nuclear movement in Germany was so much more popular than in France for example.

I have a conspiracy theory that it's all about Kremlin psyop.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on August 29, 2023, 01:41:19 PM
I don't know enough about France's discourse about nuclear power to make a meaningful comparison.

From what I know about the German debate (honestly not that much) which mainly happened already in the 70s and 80s, I am not aware of any particular Soviet/Russian influence. I feel seeing them behind everything is way overstating their level of competence.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on August 29, 2023, 01:45:14 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 29, 2023, 01:03:51 PMCan you explain why the anti nuclear movement in Germany was so much more popular than in France for example.

I have a conspiracy theory that it's all about Kremlin psyop.
The one Kremlin psyop I believe in :lol: I think a large part of it comes from the peace movement/anti-missile/anti-nuke movement in the 80s and I think there was probably some infiltration from Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on August 29, 2023, 02:16:50 PM
Seems pretty logical to me with France wanting to be a stand alone 3rd power being key to it's identity and Germany standing to be cleansed as the prime battlefield of WW3. Surely that has something to do with it?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on August 29, 2023, 02:30:56 PM
Quote from: Josquius on August 29, 2023, 02:16:50 PMSeems pretty logical to me with France wanting to be a stand alone 3rd power being key to it's identity and Germany standing to be cleansed as the prime battlefield of WW3. Surely that has something to do with it?

German nihilism since "wir sind toast anyway so let's burn coal"?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on August 29, 2023, 02:37:53 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on August 29, 2023, 01:45:14 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on August 29, 2023, 01:03:51 PMCan you explain why the anti nuclear movement in Germany was so much more popular than in France for example.

I have a conspiracy theory that it's all about Kremlin psyop.
The one Kremlin psyop I believe in :lol: I think a large part of it comes from the peace movement/anti-missile/anti-nuke movement in the 80s and I think there was probably some infiltration from Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies.

Yes my take also.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on September 08, 2023, 04:56:53 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/08/call-for-uk-ban-on-single-use-vapes-as-more-than-5m-discarded-each-week

QuoteFive million single-use vapes are being thrown away in the UK every week, a fourfold increase on 2022, research has found.

This amounts to eight vapes a second being discarded, with the lithium in the products enough to create 5,000 electric car batteries a year.

QuoteScott Butler, the executive director at Material Focus, said the "problem with single-use vapes has gotten further out of control" since the organisation published research last year. "Single-use vapes are a strong contender for being the most environmentally wasteful, damaging and dangerous consumer product ever made," he said.


Discarded vapes create environmental waste and pose a threat to public safety, because their lithium batteries can become flammable when crushed.

The potential cost of collecting and recycling vapes, according to Material Focus, is £200m, which the charity says should be paid for by vape producers, importers and retailers.

Sales of disposable vapes have soared to more than 360m annually in recent years, with the number of young women vaping every day in the UK more than tripling in the past year, government figures show. Paediatricians have said vaping is "fast becoming an epidemic among children", and called on the government to ban disposable vapes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 05:48:36 AM
They definitely need banning. Seems to be a huge overlap in their users and absolute cunts who don't know how to use a bin.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on September 08, 2023, 07:39:37 AM
Yeah ban them. What's the struggle?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 11, 2023, 08:23:53 PM
Dernay, the Eastern Libyan port city has been devastated by flooding, fears that hundreds may have been killed as whole neighbourhoods undermined and swept away.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 12, 2023, 03:07:18 PM
The floods did this to Derna:
(https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/33UZ22Q-highres-1694525777.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&quality=80)

Many hundreds of bodies so far recovered.

full article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/9/12/hundreds-of-bodies-uncovered-as-eastern-libya-devastated-by-floods (https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/9/12/hundreds-of-bodies-uncovered-as-eastern-libya-devastated-by-floods)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on September 12, 2023, 05:52:19 PM
What happened? Did a levy brake?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 12, 2023, 06:14:46 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on September 12, 2023, 05:52:19 PMWhat happened? Did a levy brake?
Yeah, two dams collapsed:
(https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/INTERACTIVE-Libya-Derna-floods-Storm-Daniel-1694506930.png?w=770&resize=770%2C769&quality=80)

Edit: And before and after satellite images:
https://x.com/BenDoBrown/status/1701704469166305776?s=20
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on September 12, 2023, 06:19:06 PM
Damn.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 12, 2023, 06:38:31 PM
This weeks seen the a natural disaster the Moroccan earthquake, a man-made/enhanced* climate disaster of the Libyan floods and the disaster made by one man, Putin's war against Ukraine.


The very strong storm/hurricane Daniel in the Western Mediterranean, hitting poorly maintained infrastructure in a war-torn county. 

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 12, 2023, 07:02:11 PM
I wonder if the Libyan dam breaks are more a function of a failure to maintain them.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 17, 2023, 07:20:46 AM
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/7205/production/_131098192_antarctic_sea_ice_extent-2023-09-14-nc.png.webp)

We're fucked.


Article here:
Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66724246)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 17, 2023, 08:49:50 AM
Sadly not especially big news either so won't be the big kick it should be.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 17, 2023, 12:14:59 PM
Yeah, as I understanding it a lot of the polar ice coverage is shrinking at a rate that implies noticably rising sea levels within our livetimes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on September 17, 2023, 12:25:22 PM
Maybe my 30-year mortgage on a house below sea level wasn't such a great investment after all.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 17, 2023, 02:10:42 PM
A usual denier tale is that it's all related to sunspot activity. Checking that for myself - the current cycle is expected to peak in 2025.

That this explains everything is obvious bollocks. But it is related to the precise timings of bad shit. We are in for a rough next few years. The big concern is things could get to such a level it pushes things over the top into run away warming rather than the more relatively gradual and manageable warming we've had up to now.

Quote from: Maladict on September 17, 2023, 12:25:22 PMMaybe my 30-year mortgage on a house below sea level wasn't such a great investment after all.
When I was young this seriously was the big reason I was skeptical of ever moving back to the Netherlands no matter how much I liked it. A worry which honestly has lessened for me as I got older. Though maybe it shouldn't have

I do wonder how things will go. Waterworld is of course silly but then so too are those who dismiss things as being fine and they'll just build higher dykes.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 17, 2023, 06:18:01 PM
Quote from: Maladict on September 17, 2023, 12:25:22 PMMaybe my 30-year mortgage on a house below sea level wasn't such a great investment after all.

 :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tonitrus on September 17, 2023, 07:08:09 PM
Perhaps my future 30-year mortgage should be in a house boat. :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 19, 2023, 02:45:16 AM
Sneaking under the radar in the science press here's some positive climate news.

BBC News - 'This could be the holy grail to replace palm oil' - research team
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-66842496


It seems minor and unimportant but when you really think about it this sort of development is Nobel prize level work for it's role in protecting the planet.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 02:54:15 PM
The Swedish National Audit Office has released a report that is very critical of the way post-2000 governments (left and right) have handled the electric power issue. Closing nuclear power plants for no rational reason without analyzing consequences, not acting for years after the necessity of big investments in the power grid became apparent, etc. The stable, cheap, and environmentally friendly hydro-nuclear power system of the 80s and 90s has been mismanaged and partly slaughtered leaving us with expensive and insecure power supply. I wonder what they would have made of Germany's Energiewende.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:29:31 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 02:54:15 PMI wonder what they would have made of Germany's Energiewende.
Probably similar criticism as the German national auditor reported in 2018, which was basically that it is poorly executed and causes distrust in the government. 
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 03:31:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:29:31 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 02:54:15 PMI wonder what they would have made of Germany's Energiewende.
Probably similar criticism as the German national auditor reported in 2018, which was basically that it is poorly executed and causes distrust in the government. 

Did the criticism have any effect?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:36:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 03:31:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:29:31 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 02:54:15 PMI wonder what they would have made of Germany's Energiewende.
Probably similar criticism as the German national auditor reported in 2018, which was basically that it is poorly executed and causes distrust in the government. 

Did the criticism have any effect?
Not sure, maybe in the details, but not in broad policy.

In general the national auditor here seems to be a Cassandra with little influence on politics. Is it different in Sweden?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 03:39:42 PM
Quote from: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:36:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 03:31:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:29:31 PM
Quote from: The Brain on September 19, 2023, 02:54:15 PMI wonder what they would have made of Germany's Energiewende.
Probably similar criticism as the German national auditor reported in 2018, which was basically that it is poorly executed and causes distrust in the government. 

Did the criticism have any effect?
Not sure, maybe in the details, but not in broad policy.

In general the national auditor here seems to be a Cassandra with little influence on politics. Is it different in Sweden?

No. My impression is that they tend to make very valid points which are then ignored.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on September 19, 2023, 03:43:10 PM
Same here
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2023, 04:23:29 PM
Here auditor reports make headlines and then are quickly forgotten.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 12:08:28 PM
Project drawdown: Table of solutions (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)

A list of solutions to the climate crisis, with numbers.  You can order them to see which solution will remove the most CO2 from the atmosphere.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on September 20, 2023, 12:12:58 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 12:08:28 PMProject drawdown: Table of solutions (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)

A list of solutions to the climate crisis, with numbers.  You can order them to see which solution will remove the most CO2 from the atmosphere.

Last time we had a non natural disaster decrease in global temperature was because of the mongol devastation and the reforestation that caused. So that's an option   :tinfoil:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 20, 2023, 12:32:42 PM
Well I've just had an automated telephone flood warning/alert for here:

QuoteFlood alert for Lower Avon and tributaries.

Can't say I'm that bothered, but unusually early for the season, helps that we've the best part of a million quids worth of active flood defences for only 10 properties.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 01:25:47 PM
Quote from: HVC on September 20, 2023, 12:12:58 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 12:08:28 PMProject drawdown: Table of solutions (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)
A list of solutions to the climate crisis, with numbers.  You can order them to see which solution will remove the most CO2 from the atmosphere.

Last time we had a non natural disaster decrease in global temperature was because of the mongol devastation and the reforestation that caused. So that's an option  :tinfoil:
Family Planning and EducationHealth and Education68.90


It's the politically correct name for genocide according to conservatives :P
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 20, 2023, 01:39:53 PM
The biggest way to reduce population growth is improving education for girls and developing countries becoming rich - no issue with that.

White rich people worrying about the poor and brown having too many kids don't have a great record. Don't want anything like say the sort of things done in Indira Gandhi's state of emergency. In Europe (I think especially in the UK) a lot of the environmental movement started in the 70s around conservationist and was broadly anti-human (brown, poor, unable to control themselves) and had lots of rather unsavoury links/ideological bedfellows. I think it's best left alone beyond: helping countries develop, educating girls and women and providing general support for (voluntary, non-quotaed) family planning measures - or just provide less intrusive forms like condoms.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 20, 2023, 01:53:45 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 12:08:28 PMProject drawdown: Table of solutions (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)

A list of solutions to the climate crisis, with numbers.  You can order them to see which solution will remove the most CO2 from the atmosphere.

Oh this is interesting. Great find.

Interesting to see Reduced Food Waste and Plant-Rich Diets near the top in poth scenarios... but there are a lot of interesting things with potentially significant impacts: Silvopasture, Clean Cooking, Methan Leak Management, Perennial Staple Crops, Insulation.

There are some that are interesting but I consider less likely to achieve: Rainforest Reforestation is a big one. Don't think Brazil and the relevant African countries are going to commit to it.

Some of them are fairly commonly discussed: Distributed Solar Photovoltaics, Utility-Scale Solar Voltaics, Onshore Wind Turbines, Alternate Refrigerants and the like.



Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on September 20, 2023, 01:55:35 PM
Quote from: Jacob on September 20, 2023, 01:53:45 PM
Quote from: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 12:08:28 PMProject drawdown: Table of solutions (https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)

A list of solutions to the climate crisis, with numbers.  You can order them to see which solution will remove the most CO2 from the atmosphere.

Oh this is interesting. Great find.

Interesting to see Reduced Food Waste and Plant-Rich Diets near the top in poth scenarios... but there are a lot of interesting things with potentially significant impacts: Silvopasture, Clean Cooking, Methane Leak Management, Perennial Staple Crops, Insulation.

There are some that are interesting but I consider less likely to achieve: Rainforest Reforestation is a big one. Don't think Brazil and the relevant African countries are going to commit to it.

Some of them are fairly commonly discussed: Distributed Solar Photovoltaics, Utility-Scale Solar Voltaics, Onshore Wind Turbines, Alternate Refrigerants and the like.




Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on September 20, 2023, 02:18:34 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 20, 2023, 01:39:53 PMI think it's best left alone beyond: helping countries develop, educating girls and women and providing general support for (voluntary, non-quotaed) family planning measures - or just provide less intrusive forms like condoms.
Yes, once girls and women get education and access to contraceptive measures, the rest just folllows by itself.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 21, 2023, 01:32:50 AM
Quote from: mongers on September 20, 2023, 12:32:42 PMWell I've just had an automated telephone flood warning/alert for here:

QuoteFlood alert for Lower Avon and tributaries.

Can't say I'm that bothered, but unusually early for the season, helps that we've the best part of a million quids worth of active flood defences for only 10 properties.


Meanwhile in the north...
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on September 29, 2023, 05:07:32 AM
September 2023 is the warmest September in Austria ever recorded, breaking a record from 1810.

So far, September had 22 days in Vienna of 25°C or more ("normal" average is 5). Today's forecast is 28°C, and the weather will likely continue into October. I assume I will be wearing shorts/t-shirt on my birthday next month (happened only once so far, and that was just a temperature spike between "normal" tempereatures a few years ago, not continued weather like this). Actually, September temperatures at the moment feels how July used to feel.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 29, 2023, 06:18:38 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 29, 2023, 05:07:32 AMSeptember 2023 is the warmest September in Austria ever recorded, breaking a record from 1810.

So far, September had 22 days in Vienna of 25°C or more ("normal" average is 5). Today's forecast is 28°C, and the weather will likely continue into October. I assume I will be wearing shorts/t-shirt on my birthday next month (happened only once so far, and that was just a temperature spike between "normal" tempereatures a few years ago, not continued weather like this). Actually, September temperatures at the moment feels how July used to feel.

Uncharted waters, we're all at sea, up shit creek without a paddle, rudderless, etc.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Duque de Bragança on September 29, 2023, 06:57:44 AM
I see temperatures over 30°C for Bragança this week-end, late summer in autumn, not exactly new but then September was not *that* hot. Of course, 20°C less at night (small city) so it's perfectly livable.

Paris will get almost 30°C this week-end, but then autumn really started as per the official date.

The North-West of France got a somewhat cool and rainy summer but it's hardly typical.

https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2023/09/29/la-france-connait-son-mois-de-septembre-le-plus-chaud-depuis-le-debut-des-mesures-selon-meteo-france_6191557_3244.html (https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2023/09/29/la-france-connait-son-mois-de-septembre-le-plus-chaud-depuis-le-debut-des-mesures-selon-meteo-france_6191557_3244.html)

Le Monde says France got the hottest september ever recorded.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on September 29, 2023, 09:09:03 AM
I know this is a disaster. Fucked up patterns for wildlife, crop yields affected, etc...

But I can't help but me most bothered by proper winters no longer being a thing :(
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on September 29, 2023, 03:32:10 PM
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14882/production/_131289048_globe.png.webp)

 :hmm:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on September 29, 2023, 03:41:40 PM
I know I keep on banging on about this and it's a big issue in the UK - but also more widely. Global renewables expansion is incredible - we're currently expanding at the rate we need to meet our global targets (and the pace is only likely to increase).

But we need to massively expand grid capacity and I think this bit is being ignored, perhaps because it's less obviously important to reaching net zero. Basically we need to double the rate of investment into the grid to keep pace and to electrify everything else and move the, roughly, 80% of emissions that don't come from power generation away from hydrocarbons:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7NUeC2WIAAuO61?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2023, 12:37:48 PM
On a similar theme of net zero actually being about building lots and lots of things, I thought this was interesting and shows why I think we need still more industrial strategy (and also the key success of solar, which basically means China):
(https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/afboOVqKnBFJAvkyJQlnrT-owQvSDRw5CbyKA8G0Yxexd1EgfU8dr5JgidWyq0Y2meBIX54PTU7E1vi5n9C9L626mXMl2BWX4x0coF3snncGOaeCEzyzyXb4umkJLsAgcjKkgKkNCuGAbJH80IPEn3NTweO4Be0uMy_pEu0u=s0-d-e1-ft#https://img.semafor.com/29f8a8739ac7470577bfa2d9a9744ddc2def474c-1106x840.png?w=1152&h=875&q=95&auto=format)
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 06, 2023, 10:21:20 PM
When did heat pumps become a climate change darling?  Seems like just yesterday we were talking about Europe switching to heat pumps to get out from under the Rooskis.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 06, 2023, 10:31:30 PM
I think they always have been - there was talk about them and subsidies for installing them before the Russian invasion. Not burning gas to heat your house has the twin benefit of being good for climate change and doesn't rely on Russia (or the Middle East etc).

It takes time to pay off but gas is still very expensive in Europe - since the invasion we're past the spike but prices were only marginally higher in Europe than the US, they're now four times higher.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 07, 2023, 01:26:41 AM
I've heard so many bad stories about heat pumps. Lots of people with friends who got them and regret it.
I suspect a chunk of this is culture war bollocks and there is no such friend.
Though they certainly do seem to have their disadvantages. They take a huge amount of space inside and out.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on October 07, 2023, 07:41:23 AM
My parents have a fairly expensive A/C unit that is sort of also like a small heat pump in the sense that it can heat. And while its too small to heat the entire house (which is quite big), it is most excellent at heating the living room and adjacent areas at ridiculously good efficiency.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on October 22, 2023, 06:07:36 AM
Saw an interesting statistic:

In 2004, it took a year to build one GW new solar capacity in the world. In 2010, a month. In 2015, a week. In 2023, less than a day to build one GW of solar capacity (about 390 GW planned for 2023).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: mongers on October 22, 2023, 06:23:25 AM
Quote from: Zanza on October 22, 2023, 06:07:36 AMSaw an interesting statistic:

In 2004, it took a year to build one GW new solar capacity in the world. In 2010, a month. In 2015, a week. In 2023, less than a day to build one GW of solar capacity (about 390 GW planned for 2023).

:cool:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 04:04:44 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

Terrible news.

Mitigation is going to cost a lot.  And if you own land in coastal areas, think about moving sooner rather than later.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 23, 2023, 04:29:03 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 04:04:44 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

Terrible news.

Mitigation is going to cost a lot.  And if you own land in coastal areas, think about moving sooner rather than later.

So... uhm... leave Vancouver?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on October 23, 2023, 04:34:26 PM
Time the buy property just off of the coast. Beachfront on the cheap.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 05:07:08 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 23, 2023, 04:29:03 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 04:04:44 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

Terrible news.

Mitigation is going to cost a lot.  And if you own land in coastal areas, think about moving sooner rather than later.

So... uhm... leave Vancouver?

It will be completely transformed.  Think about Richmond and most of the farmland bordering the Fraser River.  As an example the whole of the Matsqui plain will be under water.

According to the article scientists are now reassessing the time lines.  So the question now is when, not if.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on October 23, 2023, 05:11:50 PM
Yeah I went to one of those interactive maps. Richmond and Delta will be completely gone at a 5 m rise.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on October 23, 2023, 06:45:33 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 04:04:44 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

Terrible news.

Mitigation is going to cost a lot.  And if you own land in coastal areas, think about moving sooner rather than later.

The west Antarctic Ice Sheet discussed in the article last melted abruptly during the Eemian interglacial period (125,000 years ago) so it's likely to melt again as part of the cyclical nature of these things. But there's a big difference whether that takes place over 600 years or 6000. :hmm: Sea levels at the height of the last interglacial were 6-9m higher than today. 

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 24, 2023, 01:14:46 AM
So that's it then. Well fuck.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 08:54:49 AM
At least for coastal areas.  Now the race is to keep warming below 1.5 to avoid other catastrophic effects.

I'm not sure that will happen. We humans tend not to think beyond the near future.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 24, 2023, 09:04:49 AM
Just when I was coming around to "I really should have moved to Holland"

What time scale are we looking at here?
I wonder if we can react in time-  Muttered before but I do increasingly think solar-shields in space are the way to go in the future as even if we stopped emitting tomorrow things are already off kilter enough.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 09:08:50 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 24, 2023, 09:04:49 AMJust when I was coming around to "I really should have moved to Holland"

What time scale are we looking at here?
I wonder if we can react in time-  Muttered before but I do increasingly think solar-shields in space are the way to go in the future as even if we stopped emitting tomorrow things are already off kilter enough.



According to the article, the time scale is now being reassessed. Now that the collapse of the ice sheet is a certainty.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: viper37 on October 24, 2023, 11:18:48 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 23, 2023, 04:29:03 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 23, 2023, 04:04:44 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

Terrible news.

Mitigation is going to cost a lot.  And if you own land in coastal areas, think about moving sooner rather than later.

So... uhm... leave Vancouver?
Alberta is safer.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on October 24, 2023, 01:07:23 PM
Quote from: Maladict on October 24, 2023, 01:14:46 AMSo that's it then. Well fuck.

Antarctic ice melt traced to 10,000 years ago (http://edition.cnn.com/NATURE/9910/09/antarctic.meltdown/index.html)

Game was rigged from the start. :glare:
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on October 24, 2023, 01:56:17 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on October 24, 2023, 01:07:23 PM
Quote from: Maladict on October 24, 2023, 01:14:46 AMSo that's it then. Well fuck.

Antarctic ice melt traced to 10,000 years ago (http://edition.cnn.com/NATURE/9910/09/antarctic.meltdown/index.html)

Game was rigged from the start. :glare:


According to your article, from 1999, it was expected to take 7,000 years.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on October 24, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on October 24, 2023, 01:56:17 PMAccording to your article, from 1999, it was expected to take 7,000 years.

Yes it'll take 2000 years to melt instead and raise sea levels by an extra 2 meters. I recommend googling the Eemian interglacial, how long it lasted and what conditions were like to see what the next 5000 years may look like before a new Ice Age comes.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 05:43:21 PM
Well, it figures that you are also a climate change denier.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Zanza on October 24, 2023, 05:55:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 08:54:49 AMAt least for coastal areas.  Now the race is to keep warming below 1.5 to avoid other catastrophic effects.
That's not really achieveable anymore, right? It will be more.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 05:57:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 24, 2023, 05:55:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 08:54:49 AMAt least for coastal areas.  Now the race is to keep warming below 1.5 to avoid other catastrophic effects.
That's not really achieveable anymore, right? It will be more.

It is theoretically feasible, which is why I keep using that number. But I agree it's not very practical anymore.

I just don't like thinking about what's going to happen when we go above 1.5.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on October 24, 2023, 10:41:30 PM
Wrll, from what I understand, even if we manage to turn things around in the next few years, climate would continue to worsen for quite a while before it improves due to the time delay between cause and effect.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Legbiter on October 24, 2023, 10:58:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 24, 2023, 05:43:21 PMWell, it figures that you are also a climate change denier.

You are a moron.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 24, 2023, 11:48:36 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 24, 2023, 10:41:30 PMWrll, from what I understand, even if we manage to turn things around in the next few years, climate would continue to worsen for quite a while before it improves due to the time delay between cause and effect.

Worse.
We could potentially have pushed things over a few tipping points which means even if humans stop all emissions tomorrow nature could take over with making sure some things become screwed.
1.5 is the number often repeated for this but it's an iffy measure we are already floating near.
Nonetheless we definitely have it in us to make things much much worse if we don't cut back a lot.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on October 25, 2023, 09:45:14 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 24, 2023, 11:48:36 PM
Quote from: Syt on October 24, 2023, 10:41:30 PMWrll, from what I understand, even if we manage to turn things around in the next few years, climate would continue to worsen for quite a while before it improves due to the time delay between cause and effect.

Worse.
We could potentially have pushed things over a few tipping points which means even if humans stop all emissions tomorrow nature could take over with making sure some things become screwed.
1.5 is the number often repeated for this but it's an iffy measure we are already floating near.
Nonetheless we definitely have it in us to make things much much worse if we don't cut back a lot.

This
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Grey Fox on October 25, 2023, 10:12:47 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 06, 2023, 10:21:20 PMWhen did heat pumps become a climate change darling?  Seems like just yesterday we were talking about Europe switching to heat pumps to get out from under the Rooskis.

I'm late but modern heat pump technology is quite efficient with energy use. 1:3.6 in the cheapest ones.

And, unlike what the English usually think, it really doesn't take much space.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on October 30, 2023, 07:15:50 PM
Interesting - latest version of Goldman Sachs' "cost curve" of decarbonisation:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9ppNV0bMAAcy_A?format=jpg&name=small)

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/infographics/carbonomics.html

Basically there's a few areas that have become more expensive - mainly transport - but most is falling in cost. So the cost to decarbonise 75% of the world economy is about $3 trillion pa, which is about half what it was just four years ago. We're now under 3% of global GDP to decarbonise that much of the world economy.

In addition the proportion under zero is basically cheaper to decarbonise than not (I think a lot of this is renewables given how cheap solar especially and also  wind have become compared to fossil fuels). That's likely to grow and in general is likely to get cheaper.

I feel like we spend a lot of time stressing about the 25% that's going to be difficult and expensive when we really could just be getting on with the rest.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on October 31, 2023, 04:37:28 AM
Nice to see good news getting attention.

I hope amongst that hard 25% to ignore we aren't including smashing the planning system so we can build wind (and houses) in the UK.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:26:33 AM
Some more hope

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/climate-change-report-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1._Uw.rMKX.GQkENExe6DGJ&smid=url-share
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 08:37:03 AM
What increasingly worries me tbh isn't global warming but the other dodgy effects of too much co2 in the atmosphere (and sea). The analogies of aquariums with imbalances and talk of coral die off et al.
Global warming... It does happen naturally. At nothing like the speed and scale of the current change. But it happens. And things are usually fine.
A carbon imbalalance though... Extinction level mass die off stuff.

Not to say climate change in itself isn't still a problem. We need to actually tackle it. But I am increasingly optimistic we should scrape through. On good days anyway
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:42:40 AM
Yes, and if the hopeful part of that article comes true, and CO2 levels dramatically drop because alternative energy sources become used exclusively or even predominantly, then the concerns of ocean acidification, etc. also decrease.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 09:02:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:42:40 AMYes, and if the hopeful part of that article comes true, and CO2 levels dramatically drop because alternative energy sources become used exclusively or even predominantly, then the concerns of ocean acidification, etc. also decrease.

The trouble there is that's CO2 emissions. Not levels.
CO2 takes a long time to cycle out of the atmosphere, hundreds of years- tangentially this is where the new focus on methane is great. It dissipates within a decade or so. They really need to stop that endless Turkmenistan leak.
I've seen some reckoning we could already be past the danger level on CO2 levels.
And CO2 scrubbing technology.... Heavily fantasy level stuff, a black hole that sucks in money best spent on reduction and provides cover for polluters.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on November 18, 2023, 09:04:22 AM
In a one-two punch warmer water holds less co2. So as the ocean warms more co2 gets into the atmosphere. But I guess as a bonus it reduces ocean acidification.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 18, 2023, 09:59:29 AM
It would make for a good mystery for future alien visitors. Finding a civilization that was close to being able to launch itself into space, but knowingly asphyxiated itself instead.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2023, 03:02:12 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 09:02:45 AMAnd CO2 scrubbing technology.... Heavily fantasy level stuff, a black hole that sucks in money best spent on reduction and provides cover for polluters.

Is there any evidence that forms the basis of this assertion, or is this an exercise in pure narrative construction?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 03:40:06 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2023, 03:02:12 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 09:02:45 AMAnd CO2 scrubbing technology.... Heavily fantasy level stuff, a black hole that sucks in money best spent on reduction and provides cover for polluters.

Is there any evidence that forms the basis of this assertion, or is this an exercise in pure narrative construction?

https://www.protocol.com/climate/carbon-dioxide-removal-cost-target

And this is a guy who is optimistic about its potential. I've heard scientists who haven't devoted their career to this stuff are far more scathing.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2023, 04:21:01 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 03:40:06 PMhttps://www.protocol.com/climate/carbon-dioxide-removal-cost-target

And this is a guy who is optimistic about its potential. I've heard scientists who haven't devoted their career to this stuff are far more scathing.

Have you heard other scientists say this is a hopeful technology which needs more work to get the costs down?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2023, 04:54:24 PM
Quote from: Maladict on November 18, 2023, 09:59:29 AMIt would make for a good mystery for future alien visitors. Finding a civilization that was close to being able to launch itself into space, but knowingly asphyxiated itself instead.

I think you can find planets like that in Stellaris IIRC.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 19, 2023, 05:25:32 PM
On positive signs - I'd expect this to be achieved every year from now on:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F--5EI6bIAA8CwX?format=jpg&name=small)

The key factor is China's transition.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 09:49:43 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 09:02:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:42:40 AMYes, and if the hopeful part of that article comes true, and CO2 levels dramatically drop because alternative energy sources become used exclusively or even predominantly, then the concerns of ocean acidification, etc. also decrease.

The trouble there is that's CO2 emissions. Not levels.
CO2 takes a long time to cycle out of the atmosphere, hundreds of years- tangentially this is where the new focus on methane is great. It dissipates within a decade or so. They really need to stop that endless Turkmenistan leak.
I've seen some reckoning we could already be past the danger level on CO2 levels.
And CO2 scrubbing technology.... Heavily fantasy level stuff, a black hole that sucks in money best spent on reduction and provides cover for polluters.

Please read the link I posted.  If the projections are accurate the earth won't go over 2C of warming.

There will still be negative consequences but not the complete disaster of going past that point.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 09:58:56 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 03:40:06 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2023, 03:02:12 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2023, 09:02:45 AMAnd CO2 scrubbing technology.... Heavily fantasy level stuff, a black hole that sucks in money best spent on reduction and provides cover for polluters.

Is there any evidence that forms the basis of this assertion, or is this an exercise in pure narrative construction?

https://www.protocol.com/climate/carbon-dioxide-removal-cost-target

And this is a guy who is optimistic about its potential. I've heard scientists who haven't devoted their career to this stuff are far more scathing.

This article is about mechanical carbon capture.  That may indeed be a dead end.  Biological carbon capture will likely be the way forward.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Maladict on November 20, 2023, 03:09:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 09:49:43 AMPlease read the link I posted.  If the projections are accurate the earth won't go over 2C of warming.

There will still be negative consequences but not the complete disaster of going past that point.

Today's UN report says we're heading towards 3C.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 03:24:10 PM
Quote from: Maladict on November 20, 2023, 03:09:54 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 09:49:43 AMPlease read the link I posted.  If the projections are accurate the earth won't go over 2C of warming.

There will still be negative consequences but not the complete disaster of going past that point.

Today's UN report says we're heading towards 3C.

Not quite.  It is consistent with the report to Congress I linked above.   The UN report says that if nothing changes we are heading toward 3C.   They put the chance of staying within 1.5C at 14% due to recent trends of moving toward greener sources of energy.  I forget the probability of staying within 2C but given recent trends there is still a good chance of staying within that limit.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 10:53:24 PM
Really interesting Guardian series on emissions and inequality (in particular on the growing gap within countries rather than between countries):
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2023/nov/20/the-great-carbon-divide-climate-chasm-rich-poor

Enjoyed this piece particularly:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/revealed-huge-climate-impact-of-the-middle-classes-carbon-divide
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on November 29, 2023, 06:09:52 PM
The UN is such a joke. It would be a significant challenge to find another person on tbe planet with more vested interest in maintaining global reliance on fossil fuels, and he is the president of COP  :D

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/29/cop28-president-denies-on-eve-of-summit-he-abused-his-position-to-sign-oil-deals
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on November 29, 2023, 06:25:40 PM
I have seen some criticism of this reporting. To an extent it always happens at COPs - though they're not always in the chair :lol:

But the criticism basically points out that on oil and gas Adnoc are basically focusing on gas and downstream projects - which is what you'd expect and is not entirely out of sync with energy transition. But also that Adnoc revenue is basically cross-subsidising Masdar which is the Emirati green energy company (and one of the biggest in the world):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GAAhnfLW4AAxVZf?format=png&name=small)

That's in billions - in energy terms Masdar have already done 20GW of renewables and are aiming for 100GW (for comparison that's about the size of the UK's entire energy mix).

Not sure how much to buy it or that it's not an issue but it certainly feels like the UAE is doing better as an oil producer than most (or than Western energy companies) at using the remaining income from hydrocarbons for the capital spend required for energy transition (while also aiming to ensure the UAE has a stronger economic basis post-energy transition).
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 30, 2023, 02:00:38 AM
Image if they'd do cop remotely... that's 70000 people that didn't have be moved by plane and didn't have to be put up in the mecca of decadence.
And these are the people that'll decide what the normal people, let's call them plebs, get to suffer through in the future.
Not credible
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Tamas on December 04, 2023, 08:14:17 PM
Shockingly unexpected reaction from the oil aristocrat COP president:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on December 05, 2023, 07:06:47 AM
Quote from: Tamas on December 04, 2023, 08:14:17 PMShockingly unexpected reaction from the oil aristocrat COP president:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Getting "phase down" of coal for the first time was one of the big achievements in COP26 - and I think the cause of the dramatic final session when China and India objected to "phase out".

I wonder if the same shift will apply here - maybe moving coal to "phase out" and getting fossil fules generally as "phase down". Getting coal to "phase out" would be a big deal.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 05, 2023, 07:52:09 AM
I'm not so sure that the semantics that are agreed to are all that important.  I'm also not sure what these conferences are all that important.

It seems to me that the shift to green energy is happening, despite what governments do and not because of active policies or politics.  There are some exceptions that prove the rule. I think that the anti-inflation act in the United States has done a lot of good, but I think that's really because most Americans on the right don't understand what the anti-inflation act really did and the GOP wasn't triggered.

Which is another way of saying that anything requires express government action, unlikely to succeed, and especially in the United States, where it really matters.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on December 05, 2023, 06:36:12 PM
A non issue but I found it mildly smile worthy and indicitve of the way things are going - a local double glazing company, not a big name or anything, just a small office near my parents house that has been there for three decades...
Formerly called x windows, is now x windows and flood defence.
Wonder if this is a one off or it's an industry wide trend.
Certainly I'm seeing a lot more talk about flood defence about - that being some rather than none.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on December 06, 2023, 01:42:25 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 05, 2023, 07:52:09 AMI'm not so sure that the semantics that are agreed to are all that important.  I'm also not sure what these conferences are all that important.
I think they're hugely important in driving change and getting commitments.

Loss and damage would not be on the agenda without the COPs which mean every state has the same voice - so Mauritius and Barbados can push issues that affect them. I think the scientific updates are really important (it's why I quite like the early signs that a similar model is being adopted in relation to AI). And it gets leaders to commit to new targets and pledges - which are broadly being met (and why they argue over wording).

But fundamentally I think they're the only tool we have of avoiding a tragedy of the commons situation because the Chinese, the US, the EU, the Indians are in one room negotiating their commitments and pledges.

QuoteIt seems to me that the shift to green energy is happening, despite what governments do and not because of active policies or politics.  There are some exceptions that prove the rule. I think that the anti-inflation act in the United States has done a lot of good, but I think that's really because most Americans on the right don't understand what the anti-inflation act really did and the GOP wasn't triggered.

Which is another way of saying that anything requires express government action, unlikely to succeed, and especially in the United States, where it really matters.
Yes, but... :lol:

China is responsible for more emissions than the US and Europe combined. In China they are currently doubling renewables capacity each year for the last few years and are building a huge advantage over green energy manufacturig etc. That is because the state and goverment action with concerted policies.

I also think being perceived as part of the competition with China and having an established multi-billion dollar industry capable of lobbying is going to be key to the politics of climate in the US. I think the geopolitics are impossible to disentangle, for the US. Basically this chart (which also acutely shows Europe's challenge):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbfUgeNXgAQpqJ0?format=jpg&name=medium)

I think the oil and gas part was a big part of America's power in the 20th century (and Russia's) - and they are aware they need to see a lot more US flags on the clean tech side too.

But also I think even if you just look at the West public policy is also a large part of what's driving private sector shifts. EV adoption is a key private sector shift - but China the EU and US all have policies on fuel economy targets, EV quotas and manufacturig subsidies - plus the US has purchase subsidies and Europe company car subsidies, and both have a policy on ICE phase out. The policy mix varies and there are different emphases. At a very broad level China has policies on most areas but they're less important or regionalised, Europe absolutely loves sticks (fuel economy targets and ICE phase out) while everything else is lower level or regional and America loves carrots (manufacturing and purchasing subsidies) while everything else is weaker or state level.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on December 08, 2023, 03:21:47 PM
Bbc doing another reaosons to be cheerful piece.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67627242.amp

Number 2 really intrigues me. I know unreliable generation and storage has been the big hurdle of renewables. Using millions of car batteries does sound like a wonderful Ingenius solution for this.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: garbon on December 13, 2023, 04:57:21 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/13/cop28-deal-significant-progress-tackle-climate-crisis

QuoteCop28 deal is significant progress for those who want to tackle the climate crisis

This headline seems odd as what is being reported doesn't sound like significant progress.

Or as this article relays:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/13/cop28-landmark-deal-agreed-to-transition-away-from-fossil-fuels
QuoteNearly 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit have agreed to a deal that, for the first time, calls on all nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.

After two weeks of at-times fractious negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, the agreement was quickly gavelled through by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, on Wednesday morning. He received an ovation from delegates and a hug from UN climate chief, Simon Stiell.

The agreement did not include an explicit commitment to phase out or phase down fossil fuels, as many countries, civil society groups and scientists had urged.

Instead, it reached a compromise that called on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems "in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science".

Al Jaber said the deal delivered a comprehensive response to a global stocktake of whether countries were living up to the landmark Paris climate agreement reached in 2015.

"We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5C (2.7F) [of global heating above preindustrial levels] in reach," he said. "It is a plan that is led by the science. It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus. We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever."

There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text, which was released to countries for consideration only four hours before it was passed.

The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response. Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen from Samoa, did not formally object to that decision and believed the deal had "many good elements", but she said "the process has failed us" and did not go far enough. She said the deal had a "litany of loopholes"

"We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support," she said.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on December 13, 2023, 04:58:40 AM
In itself its meh. Though things are inching forward Cop by Cop, and unrelated to what the politicians are saying change is happening.
Certainly its an improvement on what was being reported a few days ago, the refusal to reject fossil fuels at all.
But yes, pretty dumb fudged wording that seems very open to interpretation.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on December 13, 2023, 01:00:31 PM
Not super encouraging from my POV.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on December 14, 2023, 01:07:11 PM
Iirc in around 2020 the IPC said we had until about 2030 to dramatically decrease emissions to avoid going over 1.5C. Roughly 40% of that time interval has expired and the nations of the world have now agreed to a vague commitment to begin thinking about maybe reducing fossil fuel use. 

Not very promising.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on January 11, 2024, 01:32:44 AM
Interesting from the always excellent Hannah Ritchie (who has a book out!) - again emphasising the extent to which this is a Chinese story. IEA has revised capacity forecast of renewables in 2023 up by about a third, almost entirely in China:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDimT1eW4AAlpkq?format=jpg&name=small)

We're not quite on path to hit the 2030 target of tripling capacity - but we're not far off and so far growth is fairly consistently higher than expected, particularly in China. So I think the current forecast is we won't hit the target but, looking at the trend we will - not sure which will prevail:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDinW8gWMAAYb0G?format=png&name=small)


Part of the wider story is also that wind is struggling but solar is going great. Relatedly - incredible stat that Chinese rooftop solar is larger than entire countries' renewables secors :blink:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDfYvazbUAA5rbu?format=jpg&name=small)

She's from Our World in Data and launched a site with lots of relevant charts, which is very interesting.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on February 12, 2024, 07:21:41 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/04/how-do-you-stop-a-glacier-from-melting-simple-put-up-an-underwater-curtain

QuoteHow do you stop a glacier from melting? Simple – put up an underwater curtain
A 100km-long curtain moored to the Amundsen Sea bed in Antarctica could prevent catastrophic flooding elsewhere, say scientists

Scientists are working on an unusual plan to prevent Antarctic glaciers from melting. They want to build a set of giant underwater curtains in front of ice sheets to protect them from being eroded by warm sea water.

Ice in polar regions is now disappearing at record rates as global warming intensifies, and urgent action is needed to slow down this loss, the international group of �scientists has warned.

Their proposed solution is the construction of a 100km-long curtain that would be moored to the bed of the Amundsen Sea. It would rise by about 200 metres from the ocean floor and would partially restrict the inflow of relatively warm water that laps at the bases of coastal Antarctic glaciers and undermines them.

The Seabed Curtain project, if implemented, would be one of the biggest geo-engineering programmes ever undertaken. "It would be a giant project – but then we face a gigantic problem," glaciologist John Moore of Lapland University told the Observer last week

"The melting of glaciers in Antarctica would could trigger catastrophic flooding around the planet and result in hundreds of millions of people losing their homes. That will be incredibly bad for civilisation as we know it, so we need to do something."

A melting glacier
View image in fullscreen
Splinters of ice peel off the Perito Moreno glacier near the city of El Calafate in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, southern Argentina, in 2008. Photograph: Andres Forza/Reuters
The curtain proposed by Moore – who is working with scientists at the University of Cambridge and other �centres in the US – would stretch along the seabed opposite the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. These act as plugs that prevent the giant ice sheets behind them from sliding into the ocean.

Scientists warn that the loss of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers could be enough to raise sea levels round the world by three metres if they melted, a prospect now considered to be a real threat as global warming takes a grip of the region and causes sea temperatures to rise.

"Glaciers are affected by warmer air which melts their surfaces but they are also eroded at their bases by warm seawater," said Shaun Fitzgerald, director of the centre for climate repair at the University of Cambridge, one of the partners in the scheme. And as the oceans warm as the planet heats up due to climate change, the more intense is the erosion of ice at the bases of these glaciers."


Building a curtain that restricts the flow of warm water on to the Antarctic coast could slow the undermining of these glaciers and so reduce the risk of their catastrophic disappearance, say the scientists. They envisage building a series of seabed curtains and are set to begin research to pinpoint the best materials for their construction.

"We are not going to do this with a single sheet of fabric, and we are not looking at perfect, sealing membrane," added Fitzgerald.

One idea would be to use air as a barrier for protecting glaciers. A pipe – with holes drilled along it – would be laid down along the seabed and air pumped through it. The curtain of air bubbles that would rise from it might then be able to hold back the ingress of warm seawater.

Satellite image of Antarctica
Scientists discover hidden landscape 'frozen in time' under Antarctic ice
Read more
"We don't know if that will work since we are only at a very early stage in our work," added Fitzgerald.

"We need to study how salinity affects water flow and carry out all sorts of computer simulations and the testing of mathematical models. Then we will be ready for the first physical tests."

These tests are scheduled to be carried out on the River Cam later this year, when various models will be tested underwater.

"After that we will begin to work on a bigger scale," added Moore. "We might go to a fjord in Norway to build a prototype, for example.

"Certainly this is not going to be something that will be completed in a hurry. It will take many years. On the other hand, we do need to start planning now."


Geo engineering has a bad reputation of always creating unintended side effects and making things much worse.
Regardless I am increasingly tempted by this sort of thing. Geo engineering solutions that are relatively easy to remove if they don't work (unlike say the artificial volcanoes).
Wonder if we'll see this come to pass.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 13, 2024, 10:48:06 AM
Very little snow at Whistler, no snow pack on local mountains and fears of the resulting water shortage because there will be no snow melt to keep our water reservoirs full.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on February 13, 2024, 01:24:05 PM
Yeah it's going to be a nasty drought this year, it seems.

Now, if this was a city sim and I was playing Vancouver I'd start looking at the possibility of building more reservoirs to increase capacity - because the droughts are going to get worse and our population is likely to keep growing.

CC - do you have any idea what level(s) of government would have to get their shit together to start looking at upgrading regional water supply over the next decades?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Barrister on February 13, 2024, 01:33:13 PM
Don't you guys live at the mouth of the Fraser River?  Seems extremely unlikely you're run out of water.

Now things might be rough for agriculture - I know they're having to make some hard choices in southern Alberta about whose water rights might get cut - but it's not like the city won't have water.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 13, 2024, 01:52:28 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 13, 2024, 01:24:05 PMCC - do you have any idea what level(s) of government would have to get their shit together to start looking at upgrading regional water supply over the next decades?


It has been ongoing for at least 20 years.  There was a big delay in the upgrade of the Capilano system connection to the greater Vancouver system due to construction deficiencies (they had to tear out and redo a major section), but that was finally finished a couple of years ago.  There has been a planned further extension to tap the water reservoirs north of Coquitlam and Mission into the greater Vancouver system.  But that is now some serious money and time commitment.

We are definitely going to experience an extreme draught this year.  Expect watering restrictions and likely prohibitions to be imposed in the spring.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 13, 2024, 01:55:31 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 13, 2024, 01:33:13 PMDon't you guys live at the mouth of the Fraser River?  Seems extremely unlikely you're run out of water.

Now things might be rough for agriculture - I know they're having to make some hard choices in southern Alberta about whose water rights might get cut - but it's not like the city won't have water.

That has been considered but rejected as more costly than tapping into the existing water reservoirs in the region.

The problem is that the Fraser is also fed by snow run off.  If there is no snow, that also goes dry.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Jacob on February 13, 2024, 02:31:12 PM
Sounds like people are working on it, so that's good.

If people wanted to lend their political support to keeping this a priority, who are the relevant governments? The local mayors and their regional organization + the provincial government?
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on February 13, 2024, 03:53:51 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 13, 2024, 02:31:12 PMSounds like people are working on it, so that's good.

If people wanted to lend their political support to keeping this a priority, who are the relevant governments? The local mayors and their regional organization + the provincial government?

I think this is one that runs across local party lines.  Nobody has a position that water security is not a pressing need.

The main issue is funding - and so that really means the Feds.  Which Federal party is going to prioritize climate change mitigation the most is then probably the choice.  We are past the point of preventing adverse effects.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: HVC on February 17, 2024, 10:40:04 AM
Cummins fined $1.6 billion for using software to falsify emissions data on over 900,000 dodge Ram's from 2013 to 2023.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 09:10:25 AM
Surprising no one, this was Canada's warmest winter ever.

Edit- updated from the Globe

"Over that period, Canada was 5.2 C warmer than average, said Phillips. That's 1.1 degrees warmer than the previous record set in 2009-2010"

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Josquius on March 19, 2024, 10:28:36 AM
A positive mood from France that won't be stopping climate change but does tackle another big environmental problem

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/16/fast-fashion-french-bringing-shein-and-temu-to-heel-can-britain-follow-suit
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Syt on March 20, 2024, 01:18:57 AM
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z

QuoteClimate models can't explain 2023's huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.


When I took over as the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I've made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It's humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists' predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.

For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2 °C — a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed but, as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened.

For a start, prevalent global climate conditions one year ago would have suggested that a spell of record-setting warmth was unlikely. Early last year, the tropical Pacific Ocean was coming out of a three-year period of La Niña, a climate phenomenon associated with the relative cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Drawing on precedents when similar conditions prevailed at the beginning of a year, several climate scientists, including me, put the odds of 2023 turning out to be a record warm year at just one in five.

El Niño — the inverse of La Niña — causes the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to warm up. This weather pattern set in only in the second half of the year, and the current spell is milder than similar events in 1997–98 and 2015–16.

However, starting last March, sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean began to shoot up. By June, the extent of sea ice around Antarctica was by far the lowest on record. Compared with the average ice cover between 1981 and 2010, a patch of sea ice roughly the size of Alaska was missing. The observed temperature anomaly has not only been much larger than expected, but also started showing up several months before the onset of El Niño.

So, what might have caused this heat spike? Atmospheric greenhouse-gas levels have continued to rise, but the extra load since 2022 can account for further warming of only about 0.02 °C. Other theories put forward by climate scientists include fallout from the January 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption in Tonga, which had both cooling effects from aerosols and warming ones from stratospheric water vapour, and the ramping up of solar activity in the run-up to a predicted solar maximum. But these factors explain, at most, a few hundredths of a degree in warming (Schoeberl, M. R. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 50, e2023GL104634; 2023). Even after taking all plausible explanations into account, the divergence between expected and observed annual mean temperatures in 2023 remains about 0.2 °C — roughly the gap between the previous and current annual record.

There is one more factor that could be playing a part. In 2020, new regulations required the shipping industry to use cleaner fuels that reduce sulfur emissions. Sulfur compounds in the atmosphere are reflective and influence several properties of clouds, thereby having an overall cooling effect. Preliminary estimates of the impact of these rules show a negligible effect on global mean temperatures — a change of only a few hundredths of a degree. But reliable assessments of aerosol emissions rely on networks of mostly volunteer-driven efforts, and it could be a year or more before the full data from 2023 are available.

This is too long a wait. Better, more nimble data-collection systems are clearly needed. NASA's PACE mission, which launched in February, is a step in the right direction. In a few months, the satellite should start providing a global assessment of the composition of various aerosol particles in the atmosphere. The data will be invaluable for reducing the substantial aerosol-related uncertainty in climate models. Hindcasts, informed by new data, could also provide insights into last year's climate events.

But it seems unlikely that aerosol effects provide anything close to a full answer. In general, the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth's climate system. If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated. It could also mean that statistical inferences based on past events are less reliable than we thought, adding more uncertainty to seasonal predictions of droughts and rainfall patterns.

Much of the world's climate is driven by intricate, long-distance links — known as teleconnections — fuelled by sea and atmospheric currents. If their behaviour is in flux or markedly diverging from previous observations, we need to know about such changes in real time. We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly.

Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Valmy on March 20, 2024, 08:32:57 AM
Yeah I think it is temporary due to a combination of the factors listed in the article. But I guess we will see.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: crazy canuck on March 20, 2024, 08:56:42 AM
Quote from: Valmy on March 20, 2024, 08:32:57 AMYeah I think it is temporary due to a combination of the factors listed in the article. But I guess we will see.

But as the article makes clear, the factors identified do not account for the warming that was experienced. Something else is going on and that is why they need the data.
Title: Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread
Post by: Sheilbh on March 20, 2024, 04:15:51 PM
Perhaps relatedly, via Joe Wiesenthal of Bloomberg. Through some financial engineering, they managed to make Saudi Aramco ESG :lol: :bleeding: :ultra:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0wbXpyWIAA6ZR4?format=png&name=medium)

Edit: Incidentally this is part of the reason I'm a little dubious on the power of ESG etc to achieve anything v the state.