Arctic Warming Is Happening Faster Than Described, Analysis Shows (nytimes.com) 58
The rapid warming of the Arctic, a definitive sign of climate change, is occurring even faster than previously described, researchers in Finland said Thursday. From a report: Over the past four decades the region has been heating up four times faster than the global average, not the commonly reported two to three times. And some parts of the region, notably the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia, are warming up to seven times faster, they said. The result is faster melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which leads to greater sea-level rise. But it also affects atmospheric circulation in North America and elsewhere, with impacts on weather like extreme rainfall and heat waves, although some of the impacts are a subject of debate among scientists.
While scientists have long known that average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing faster than the rest of the planet, the rate has been a source of confusion. Studies and news accounts have estimated it is two to three times faster than the global average. Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, said he and his colleagues decided to look at the issue in the summer of 2020, when intense heat waves in the Siberian Arctic drew a lot of attention. The new findings are bolstered by those of another recent study, led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which found similar rates of warming, although over a different time span.
While scientists have long known that average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing faster than the rest of the planet, the rate has been a source of confusion. Studies and news accounts have estimated it is two to three times faster than the global average. Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, said he and his colleagues decided to look at the issue in the summer of 2020, when intense heat waves in the Siberian Arctic drew a lot of attention. The new findings are bolstered by those of another recent study, led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which found similar rates of warming, although over a different time span.
Thanks for the correction. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And to that end, there's a *significant* business opportunity here sending old oil tankers full of Greenland glacier water to be sold to communities in the Gobi, Sahara, and Norte Americano deserts.
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And how does a tanker get to Gobi? Or even Sahara? I mean: Sahara, you could imagine a harbour with a water terminal and a pipeline, but Gobi?
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Pipelines longer than that from shipping terminals to refineries have been build for the oil industry, it's not that hard. But I was thinking more of a bottling plant at the harbor, with some treatment first, sold at a premium by the gallon or by the tanker truck.
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An oil or gas pipeline usually burns its own transport medium to drive turbines for the transport. :D
For water that is difficult.
And: watering the Gobi makes not really much sense
But I was thinking more of a bottling plant at the harbor, with some treatment first, sold at a premium by the gallon
Sooner or later we will have this with water from Moon and Mars.
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Asimov pointed out it's easier to get water from Saturn- no need to do the initial boost to orbit, it's already neatly organized into rings of various mineral content for the taking.
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Would perhaps be an interesting "product" to sell, too.
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Why do the oil tankers need to be old? You mean like on one last trip before they are scrapped?
California is (or was) a natural desert. People flocked there while the gold and rain was good and then stuck around to build computers, or something. I'm skipping over a lot of detail in the middle, don't dwell on it. Now that the wet period is fading again there's not enough water for the much larger population. California needs desalination to keep from running out of water. When the rain comes back in so
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Old because they need to be PanamaMax or smaller.
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And idiots will be like: hur dur, Death Valley had the biggest flood in a 1000 year. We're all going to see more rain now.
Re:Thanks for the correction. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no one will win. If the Arctic unfreezes all that methane now locked in tundra regions will thaw. It is called a feed forward effect. And that is only one of the effects. The droughts in Europe are getting worse, not better. The droughts in the Mid-East are getting worse. South and Central America are also under drought. There's a similar story in Africa. Guess we cannot count on those regions for growing more plants.
And of course the American Southwest: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu... [unl.edu]
So to put it bluntly, you are wrong.
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Your examples don't prove Savory's theories wrong. Did they try his process and fail? Right now the common practice is to have the animals in one place, the plants in another, and neither move over long periods. Savory says that these need to rotate so the animal hooves can grind nutrients and seeds into the soil. Then when the animals are gone the plants can thrive. Plowing and spreading fertilizers are substitutes for natural processes. We likely missed something, and there may not be an adequate ar
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Hey Einstein:
No rain means no plants.
No rain means no cows.
And no rain means no (plants+cows).
BTW: No mixture of crackpot theories and/or unproven technologies have "solved" anything.
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Why not just watch the video? It's explained how that works in the video. Of all the things to claim is a failure in the process it should not be the one main issue addressed in the presentation. I'd explain it here but I'd just be repeating what is in the video, and the video will answer whatever you think is the next wrong part. If you are still not convinced then bring that to the TED Talk forum, not here. I'm trying to help, if it's not your style then offer something better instead of just saying
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If the place is already turning to desert then there's not much to lose in trying.
You lose the water you need to prevent the "turning desert" to become a desert.
Why not going back to your atomic rants? Because your last posts showed again: you are just an idiot.
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Didn't you learn yet? I'm trolling you. Don't feed the trolls, it only encourages them.
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Do remember that the drop-dead lines for AGW are temps rather lower than pre-ice-age normal temps. Which we've been dealing with for a very long time (not "human" we, but animals/plants in general).
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Were there huge cities on coastlines and global economies on that pre-ice-age?
Do you really believe it just magically changes all by itself and that dumping billions of tonnes of CO2 into the air every year has no effect whatsoever?
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Actually, I wonder why it hasn't had more severe effects by now.
That said, it should be remembered that AGW's projected effects are well within the range of temps that we've had over the last few million years. And if the effects of AGW continue as predicted, will warm the planet up to ALMOST the level of pre-Ice-Age norm for the planet. Remember, we're living in a period of very low temps now, and have been since humans evolved...
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That's not really correct. *Some* areas will see "Desertification", others will see vastly increased rainfall. Most will just see increased variability. Just about nobody will like any of these changes, because we're adapted to the current situation. (Well, actually to the situation of around a century ago. Human changes are based on historical expectations.)
E.g., the timing of the monsoons has already changed, but people keep expecting the older patterns to resume. They will, occasionally...but only o
Re:Thanks for the correction. (Score:5, Informative)
others will see vastly increased rainfall.
Simply said: NOPE! No idea where that stupid myth comes from.
Current situation is: the whole planet is in a drought. Partly since 10 years, partly even longer. Even "water rich countries" like Germany are in a really bad shape, water wise, atm.
If you would watch weather, you would know: basically all of the increased clouds and rain, are: over the oceans. Completely useless. Germany has water rich areas where the ground water level dropped over the last 15 years by 13 yards/14meters. Some of our dams, build up as water reservoirs (not as power plants) are running empty. The region in Thailand where I live only had a decent rain season 5 years ago. Before that: drought, and now: drought.
And common consensus amoung scientists is: if it gets even warmer, the rain will be even less. And more important, to dumbasses like you: we need snow in the mountains in winter, to have water in summer. Look at Rocky Mountains, the Alps, or the Himalaya. If it does not snow enough: no water in summer. And we already HAVE THIS SITUATION! Parkistan, Afganistan, India: hit by droughts. And extra strong melting in summer, leads to floods. So you have a damn flood and a drought same time. And you fucking morons think with a globally higher temperature this becomes better? Which damn school did teach you that? And how can you be so damn stupid and believe it?
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Current situation is: the whole planet is in a drought.
Right. Just gonna keep getting dryer till we all die of dehydration.
Give your head a shake man.
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Greenland is a relatively small contributor to that, though.
If Greenland smelts completely the estimates of sea level rises are between 7 and 14 yards.
Good luck with that.
Rigged! (Score:3, Funny)
Rigged! Fake news! CNN is putting up cardboard cutouts of starving polar bears to photo-bomb the lame-stream media with fake bear stories, so sad! There's plenty of polar bears around; they come to Mar-a-Lago all the time even; believe me! I just saw one an hour ago. Oh, wait, that was my mirror.
Standard response progression (Score:2)
No it isn't.
Well, it might be happening, but it's insignificant.
Well maybe it's a lot, but it's a normal climatic variation.
Ok, maybe it is unprecedented, but that doesn't mean the climate is changing.
Maybe the climate is changing, but it's not caused by people.
So we do have human-caused climate change, but it's too late to do anything. Why didn't anyone say anything while we still had time?
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There's a video of Jordan Peterson where he's asked about global warming. His answer was a story about how he was hired by the government to look into solutions. I guess he was called in as an expert on time management and social something or other. He talked about how he looked into what was coming out of the meetings and was appalled that the "priorities list" was a mile long. That's not a plan, that's just wishful thinking. A priorities list has priorities, as in one thing takes precedence over othe
Re:Standard response progression (Score:5, Insightful)
...The bill ended up getting passed by a tie breaking vote from the VP, all Democrats voted for it but no Republicans did. Maybe because the Republicans wanted corn ethanol subsidies instead of coal subsidies. Who knows because the deals were made behind closed doors and it's all he-said and she-said now, it's all assumptions on who wanted what but it's pretty clear that getting Democrat votes took priority over Republican votes.
No shit. The number of Republican votes for a Democratic climate bill will be zero, regardless of any possible action the Democrats could take. A Republican senator who voted for any Democratic climate bill, not matter how watered down, would be ejected from the Republican party.
Prioritizing things that are possible ahead of things that are not possible is simply common sense.
That's a messed up bill right there if it is supposed to be a "climate bill".
Yep. It's messed up because of the current hyper-polarized political climate, where the Republicans maintain a united bloc opposing anything the Democrats do.
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Yep. It's messed up because of the current hyper-polarized political climate, where the Republicans maintain a united bloc opposing anything the Democrats do.
So then the Democrats are supposed to pass a bill that pisses off half their voters because it subsidizes coal? Then they lose seats in the next election? And the Republicans are free to pass all the bills they want? Pleasing their voter base for all time? And Democrats lose control of the government forever? That sounds like a great plan.
The Democrats deserve to lose for forcing this partisan divide. They have the majority so they can break this partisan cycle at any time by showing they can agree to
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Maybe you could have put more in your comment than "you are wrong" and at least give an hint on how to improve my understanding of American politics. That would have been infinitely more helpful for everyone reading your comment. This is a public forum, so please enlighten not just me but the rest of the class too. I'm sure your lesson will get someone else to say you are wrong. It would be helpful to have detail on where the disagreement lies as opposed to a string of replies that begin and end with "y
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Didn't the "nuclear option" go into effect about that time? Democrat majority in both house, Obama in the White House. Left the Republicans with no real power to stop any bill, so it makes their votes redundant if the Democrats vote as a bloc. The Republicans made the Democrats own every bill 100%. With bipartisan votes the Democrats take credit if it works and blame the Republicans if it goes bad. If the Republicans step out then the Democrat can't blame the Republicans on anything. Then they wait fo
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Maybe you could have put more in your comment than "you are wrong" and at least give an hint on how to improve my understanding of American politics.
When people are as ignorant as you apparently are, no, sorry, there's little use.
Possibly in your country things are different.
Re:Standard response progression (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes The Narcissist's Prayer
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Destablized Jet Stream (Score:4, Interesting)
The jet stream is both caused by the temperature differential on either side of it and functions as a barrier to the more temperate weather south of it. We have reduced the temperature differential enough that a destabilized jet stream sometimes breaks into one or more loops that close on themselves. When this happens, the eastern and western edges of these vortexes rapidly pump air into and out of the region normally kept separate by the jet stream. This naturally increases the average temperature of the region north of the jet stream. The second effect is the wandering of destabilized jet stream simply brings it over warmer terrain that it would not normally encompass. Both of these types of events have positive feedback on increasing the likelihood of these sorts events occurring again and are of course locked into the positive feedback loop noted in the article. At some point in the not too distant future, the jet stream as we know it will be gone, the weather of the northern-most part of the globe will be more mixed with the rest of the northern hemisphere weather, and our weather patterns will be radically different. Once this happens, warming at the north pole will be in lock-step with warming elsewhere in the northern hemisphere.
Re:Destablized Jet Stream (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Destablized Jet Stream (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always found the analogy of currents within warming water or air currents over flames helpful. The more heat, the more active they become. Also, saying "the earth's temperature will be 1deg C warmer" is not as impactful as "the earth's atmosphere increased in energy by 5 Zetta joules (or about 10 times the entire annual energy use of the human race), and that's not including sea/land warming"... Alternatively "a 1deg C increase means that the air above the 1m^2 square you're standing in increased by 10MJ, or the energy in five car batteries."
Gambled and lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Some climate denialists claimed that their opposition to climate action was out of fear of overestimated climate change effects. The correct response to that is, what if the effects are being underestimated instead? And now here we are.
Too bad about the habitability of quite likely the only habitable planet that will ever be within humanity's reach...at least some boomers got rich I guess?
Re:Gambled and lost (Score:4, Insightful)
at least some boomers got rich I guess?
Yes, and they will not be around to see the worse impacts. I know many old people who have been denying climate change for years, some still do. The ones who believe things are happening are coming up with excuses on why they still drive (and buy) their large "US Made" Pickup Trucks that get something like 10 miles per gallon (~5 km/liter).
I wish US gas prices would get and stay at the level they are in Europe, then they will wise up. In the recent price hikes, I saw many people stopped driving these large vehicles. But now the prices have declined by something like 20%, these large Trucks are being seen again.
I would not hold my breath expecting the US (and China) to do something real about Climate Change. Yes I know about the new US bill, but in reality it will have little impact.
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Some climate denialists claimed that their opposition to climate action was out of fear of overestimated climate change effects. The correct response to that is, what if the effects are being underestimated instead? And now here we are.
Too bad about the habitability of quite likely the only habitable planet that will ever be within humanity's reach...at least some boomers got rich I guess?
Maybe if we'd taken it seriously - pushed for nuclear power and a Manhattan Project for carbon sequestration - we'd have done better.
Instead, one group pretended that yelling at the other group to go back to the stone age was the only solution. It payed political dividends, but did nothing to solve the problem.
It's a systems problem, not a morality play.
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Then you need to make a better argument if it can be dismissed so easily. Demonstrate to them how solutions bring them benefits, and how lowering human caused CO2 emissions is separate from the natural carbon cycle that existed for millions of years. What benefits can there be? If we lower petroleum consumption then we won't get sucked into foreign oil wars. We'd have lower car maintenance costs from sulfur and other natural contaminants in our fuels. Cleaner air, cleaner water. Energy independence fr
I want to see more extreme effects (Score:2)
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I like kids.
That's why I don't have any.
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I don't have kids either.
But one of your kids could be the one who is super smart, and gets the means (influence, power, money) to drive a defining change.
So follow your heart, and not your mind.
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What is Cited vs What Is Important (Score:2)
Ocean Currents ultimately are intrinsically related to weather, rainfall and snowfall around the world.
Disrupting the Gulfstream will have inevitable effects in all areas it touches.
Speaking of that, many people don't know that about 6000 years ago there was a thriving civilization in what is now the Sahara desert across North Africa.
Then the weather changed in a few decades. And now we have the biggest sandbox in the world.
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Large sections of north Africa were underwater in the past too. Scientists drive through the desert looking for certain formations that can only come from water flow. I recall a video where they talk about not stopping in time and driving right over some fossils or something, that destroyed some of what they were looking for. Geological forces apparently lifted this area out of the sea. Maybe that contributed to the change in African climate? It likely didn't help.
There's efforts to "re-green" the Saha
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Large sections of north Africa were underwater in the past too.
Strictly speaking: nope.
Scientists drive through the desert looking for certain formations that can only come from water flow.
That were violent currents, that occasionally happened during the ending of the last "ice age", when ice dams broke and absurd amounts of water flooded the landscape.
Hint: one of the biggest mountains on earth used to be the huge ice berg on top of north America, something like 3 miles, aka 5km high (Mount Everest is 8.8
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You really want to argue? Argue with NASA on Sahara sand landing in the Amazon and carrying nutrients for the plants.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/g... [nasa.gov]
How about looking things up before "correcting" anyone just to make sure. It took a few seconds to find that article. You are wrong on other points too but I don't care enough to correct you on everything.
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Yes, we can argue.
How often does that happen?
Oh, once every 10 years? Or was it 20 years.
It definitely is nothing the Amazonas area is depending or relying on.
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I wrote that if you want to argue then do it with NASA. You could start with reading the linked article to get answers to your questions. If that's not enough then maybe there's a phone number or something listed in the contact info.
Lets talk about solar-to-fuel (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of more reports on the problem perhaps we could get news about solutions. I found a news article about solar-to-fuel technology that can help lower CO2 emissions very quickly.
https://www.solarpaces.org/how... [solarpaces.org]
This can make aircraft zero carbon overnight. Because it is a thermo-chemical process any heat source that gets hot enough could be used. One option might be to combine this with a thermal energy storage system. Heat up a molten salt with an energy excess, like what tends to happen with wind and big slow thermal power plants, then draw off that heat to produce a steady flow of fuel. Kerosene is the product of this example but the same process can be used to produce any hydrocarbon from a natural gas substitute, which can be piped into peoples homes for cooking and heating using existing pipes, to asphalt, which can sequester carbon in paving materials. Even if there's some limitation to producing kerosene we can look to the US military that has standardized on a kerosene based fuel for fighter jets, helicopters, trucks, tanks, cooking stoves, heaters, stoves, and generators.
Why not use electric vehicles instead? Because even if the physics is in our favor on that, which it is not, then bringing a battery powered passenger airplane to market would take 30 years of building up the infrastructure to make enough batteries and satisfying all the safety requirements for new aircraft. Even if that can be shortened somehow we aren't going to see electric planes getting swapped out overnight because of the huge investment in existing aircraft. But with synthesized fuels we need only verify that the new fuel burns correctly in the existing engines and everything is carbon neutral as soon as the new fuel is poured in its tanks.
What about NOx, soot, VOCs, etc. that comes with burning stuff? Catalytic converters have been dealing with this very successfully for a long time now. Idiots "rolling coal" is done by defeating the emissions controls and is illegal in most states. We can still get that to zero carbon with the new fuels even if there's some other stuff in the exhaust. Or are we going to put a gun to their head to get them to buy an electric car? These idiots vote too, so passing laws making internal combustion engines illegal isn't necessarily an option. Offer a carbon neutral fuel for a price lower than petroleum and they'd be an idiot, and poorer, to buy the petroleum product.
What about biomass fuels? Do the math on the land area, water use, fertilizer use, and so on and you'll find solar-to-fuel is better, it is also a far more developed technology. We've been synthesizing hydrocarbons for a long time to make lubricants, the new parts here is getting the CO2 from the air and the heat from the sun. Getting heat from the sun is not new, we are just having people combine one old technology with another old technology then working out any bugs that show up. Getting CO2 out of the air isn't exactly new either, there's a number of options to try that exist already and some new ones in development. If there's an improvement on this in time then it can be incorporated into the fuel synthesis plants to improve the process for all vehicles that consume the fuel.
What about cost? Just wait for another energy price spike and the problem solves itself. Or, we can beat our heads on trying to get solar PV and batteries to make airplanes fly for less money. It looks like synthetic fuels will get there first, just let the technology develop.
I believe I covered the usual arguments against this technology. What did I miss?