Atmospheric Levels of All Three Greenhouse Gases Hit Record High (theguardian.com) 143
Atmospheric levels of all three greenhouse gases have reached record highs, according to a study by the World Meteorological Organization, which scientists say means the world is "heading in the wrong direction." From a report: The WMO found there was the biggest year-on-year jump in methane concentrations in 2020 and 2021 since systematic measurements began almost 40 years ago. Methane levels have risen rapidly in recent years, puzzling scientists. Some blamed it on an increase in fracking in the US but this came into doubt as industrial emissions were not showing a similarly sharp rise.
Now the theory is that the methane rise could be caused by activities of microbes in wetlands, rice paddies and the guts of ruminants. Rising temperatures have caused the ideal conditions for microbial methane production, as they enjoy warm, damp areas. Carbon dioxide levels are also soaring, with the jump from 2020 to 2021 larger than the annual growth rate over the past decade. Measurements from WMO's global atmosphere watch network stations show these levels continue to rise. These greenhouse gases cause global heating, with the warming effect rising by 50% between 1990 and 2021. Carbon dioxide comprised about 80% of this increase. According to the WMO, carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million, methane was 1908 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide was 334.5 ppb. These are respectively 149%, 262% and 124% of pre-industrial levels.
Now the theory is that the methane rise could be caused by activities of microbes in wetlands, rice paddies and the guts of ruminants. Rising temperatures have caused the ideal conditions for microbial methane production, as they enjoy warm, damp areas. Carbon dioxide levels are also soaring, with the jump from 2020 to 2021 larger than the annual growth rate over the past decade. Measurements from WMO's global atmosphere watch network stations show these levels continue to rise. These greenhouse gases cause global heating, with the warming effect rising by 50% between 1990 and 2021. Carbon dioxide comprised about 80% of this increase. According to the WMO, carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million, methane was 1908 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide was 334.5 ppb. These are respectively 149%, 262% and 124% of pre-industrial levels.
Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"But, but, it's just solar activity causing global warming!", "But, but, the WEF, Soros, and Gates want you eating bugs and you will own nothing and like it citizen!", "All a plot by the lizard people to subjugate us by limiting the power we use by mining God's Divine Black Blood from the ground!", "It's all a hoax, they aren't measuring the temperate correctly using calibrated mercury thermometers!!"
Does that cover most of the common ones these dumb fucks use?
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Does that cover most of the common ones these dumb fucks use?
I've got a new one for you: "It's aliens"!!!
Ever seen the 1996 Charlie Sheen SF movie called "The Arrival"? Apparently aliens 'like it hot'.
Now let's hope some crackpots don't take me seriously...
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Does that cover most of the common ones these dumb fucks use?
No. You forgot:
* "By 1990 we will be in a new ice age"
* "By 2010 children in Europe won't know what snow looks like"
* "By 2015, the sea will have risen by 5 feet, killing bazillions"
* "A new report says redheads might one day be extinct. It turns out the genes for red hair and pale skin were nourished over centuries in the cloudy weather of Scotland and Ireland. When climate change brings an end to cool mist, the climate for red hair will also disappear."
* "Rising seas could obliterate nations"
* "Sci
Re:Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed, I missed morons who pick random headlines and pretend that said bad predictions or headlines invalidate an enormous body of science and evidence. Good catch!
"You know, this one guy predicted we'd all burn to death in 2012 from climate warming, so I guess that proves it's all bunk!"
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Lol, partisan beliefs that's rich. I'm not partisan at all, I'm a gun toting (moderately, not like you crazy sacks of shit) anti-illegal-immigration person that the right wing fruitcakes have driven to vote down the line D (even for PenisHead, Mark Kelly) because the only alternative is conspiracy theory bullshit.
Science isn't partisan, and it's not even super complicated science. At this point if you don't think humans are the main contributing driver to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere w
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By the current standards of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan is a democrat and John Wayne is a pinko commie.
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I'm glad my disdain is palatable, otherwise it might be palpable. You all like to argue against caricatures. Just because I "believe" (actually, am able to recognize the obvious) AGW is real doesn't mean I think we should all throw away our cars. We need to make concrete moves to combat it with a reasonable plan to get off fossil fuels with as little pain as possible.
More nuclear power, a slow but acceptable rate of regulatory change to discourage coal especially and then natural gas. Investment in solar an
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Once upon a time, we didnt have Operating Systems.
Code managed hardware on it's own. Fine for single app at a time stuff.
Then we starting working on systems that would support multiple direct users and multiple running apps.
The coordination of the hardware access prompted a need for an Operating System.
Government's rise was not as principled, but it has lead to the ability, to some extent, for the competing elements of society to have some kind of "Operating System" like coordination.
So, your desire for a
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Re: Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:2)
Hahahahahaha, scientists⦠get a fat cheque⦠hahahahahahahahHahahahBahHahHaha
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Company executives that benefit from denying climate issues make enough as individuals to make Fauci's earnings look like nothing.
Not to mention that Anthony Fauci doesnt seem to have a dog in this fight. So, that scores as a non-sequitur.
beelsebob made an accurate point, the scientists that are claiming climate issues make nothing compared to Anthony Fauci, who makes nothing compared to the executives I named above.
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Oh, I think the list is more like
Global warming isn't happening.
The global warming, that isn't happening, ended in 1996.
The global warming, that isn't happening, is caused by carbon dioxide from volcanoes.
The global warming, which isn't happening, is not caused by carbon dioxide but by solar output (never mind that we have direct satellite measurements of solar output back to 1978).
The global warming, which isn't happening, is caused by "natural cycles" which are never specified.
On the other side of the arg
one of those is not like the others (Score:2)
That one is actually endorsed and claimed to be a good thing by many "green" people around where I live. And nope before you tells me I am a dumb denier : look in my post history : I have fumed against denier for the best part of the decade, and fumed against my country dropping nuclear energy. But simply a lot of people in Germany are proponent of "drop the meat" and many of them are clamoring for poli
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I don't know why people consider this insightful.
The important question is not so much whether CO2 levels are rising (they are). And its not whether this will have a warming effect. The evidence is that it will - though observational studies suggest a fairly modest one.
The important questions for those who are seriously alarmed about this, and urge action based on their alarm are:
1) Whose emissions are rising? And what are the prospects for the largest and fastest growing emitters to either stop rising,
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Hugo Chávez reaching out from the grave?
Re:Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:5, Informative)
If cold weather in America is proof to you that climate change is a fraud then you don't understand the basic math behind an "average". The average temperature on the planet has risen, but it has not risen uniformly. The climate is a complex thing and moving some prevailing wind patterns around can mean that there will be record cold snaps in some places even though the average temperature world-wide has gone up. It can also mean more severe hurricanes, or that the "once in a century floods" happen more often.
It takes a massive amount of energy for the average temperature of the planet to go up even half a degree (F or C). Massive. Realize that the average temperature normally does not even change much at all between winter and summer; you can be shivering in Ohio while others are sweltering in Melbourne. So this massive influx of energy is going to cause climate effects, it would be nonsense to suggest that it won't do anything noticeable. It would also be nonsense to claim that this massive influx of energy is normal and that it happens all the time.
It's the politics, not science (Score:4, Insightful)
If cold weather in America is proof to you that climate change is a fraud then you don't understand the basic math behind an "average".
During the recent hurricane, Don Lemon got into an argument with Jamie Rohme, the director of NOAA, Lemon saying "Something is causing them to intensify", against Rohme's responses of "I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event. On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse, but to link it to any one event, I would caution against that."
It's not the science or any armchair analogy or explanation that's the problem, it's the politics behind climate change that I object to.
Everything is now linked to climate change. Big hurricane? Climate change. Fewer hurricanes in recent years? Climate change. Colder than average temps? Warmer than average temps? Low water levels in Lake Meade?
Political parties are using climate change as the Big Scare to push their agendas, on every front. The "inflation reduction act" was essentially the "green new deal" and high gas prices are part of the plan to make everyone purchase SUVs.
According to the alarmists, we have to take every action possible starting right now, without regard to whether those resources spent give us the best return on investment, or even hurt rather than help.
The IPCC has laid out a 200-year plan to combat climate change that makes a lot of sense. It notes that we would have to spend 10% of today's world GDP every year to have any real effect(*), but that GDP is rising exponentially, so if we wait 2 doublings we would only need to spend 2.5% of world GDP. Psychologically speaking, that level of expenditure is about what people are comfortable with.
In the meantime R&D on mitigation efforts will progress, making the solutions we do choose more cost effective, and coming up with solutions we hadn't thought of, I note that carbon capture was considered "not technically feasible" until about 2 years ago, when someone discovered a way to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere using electrolysis. That company is now making CO2 capture scrubbers for industrial flues (the captured CO2 can be sold to industry), and their solution works for the regular atmosphere as well.
The IPCC plan seems well thought out, has been vetted by experts, and seems far more palatable than any of the fevered emergency actions proposed by the current administration. It makes no sense whatsoever that the country (and world, really) should endure excess suffering over reduction efforts when we have a completely reasonable plan that avoids all the pain.
If your political view has alternate plans with numbers and proposals, I'd like to hear them,
This practice of "suddenly try everything that might help", without first completely proposing the action, identifying a measure for action success, studying the action looking for unexpected consequences, trying the action on a small scale to verify there are no unexpected consequences, and then rolling it out on a wide scale, has to stop. Ideas such as "everyone in The Netherlands shall reduce nitrate use by 40%" is shallow thinking. Rolling out these notional policy changes suddenly on a wide scale will have global catastrophic results.
The shotgun approach to fixing the climate won't work, we should use the plan that probably *will* work.
(*) Every year for 200 years, with no visible return for the first 30 years, and visible return rising exponentially each year after that. It's a complete fix in 200 years, and experts estimate that at the current rate of warming humans will be largely unaffected for at least 100 years and can start any time before then. As measured by economic productivity (farming, sea level rise, air quality, and so on).
Re: It's the politics, not science (Score:1)
Yes, we have to take every conceivable action right now *because* those actions give us the best return on investment. Not flooding huge amounts of the worlds cities, not making half the creatures on the planet extinct, not destabilising our food supply chain, not fucking up our water supply, not having to rebuild every few years because of massive storms etc⦠all of those things are what youâ(TM)re buying. Theyâ(TM)re worth *far* more than the total investment in stopping filling the
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...and high gas prices are part of the plan to make everyone purchase SUVs.
???
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Well, stronger hurricanes, or lack of hurricanes, or whatever, it is still "climate". Because climate is .. changing .. then it means it could be due to change, and over time this is more and more likely due to the change.
It's like getting old. Maybe the knees are hurting because I'm getting old, or maybe it's because of my playing rugbee too much a long time ago, or because I didn't pay back my loan to the mafia on time. But as a process of getting old it is not surprising that knees start to get a bit
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It's the ask: you must change the way you live, pay higher taxes, and subsidize these chosen industries (which, on the whole, are merely tax leeches and aren't providing any meaningful advancements or improvements). It's being used to push a whole bunch of non-scientific social agendas: eat less meat, eat more soy, eat bugs. Sorry, but that's a bridge too far, particularly given the biological impact those things have - which aren't being talked about at all, despite their devastating impact.
What I don't get is why we don't federally mandate that all cattle feed must contain a certain amount of seaweed to reduce the methane emissions from cattle. The cost would be negligible, and the reduction would be huge. 14.5% of global methane emissions comes from livestock. A small amount of Brominata seaweed could reduce emissions from cattle by as much as 82%.
But instead of doing something simple and effective, the environmental lobby keeps trying to convince people to eat less meat, which has all so
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There is a method to deal with methane that I heard in a talk by Stuart Strand in 2009. You add a few genes from methane eating bacterial to the US corn crop. The US corn crop filters the whole atmosphere every couple of years.
Record heat in Antarctica (Score:5, Informative)
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Wait, it appears from to the link you provided the temperature record for Antarctica only goes back to the 1960s. I thought they had a global temperature record that went back to the 1880s.
This is not a global temperature. This is Antarctica. Before November 1956, there was no permanent artificial structure at the pole, and practically no human presence in the interior of Antarctica.
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Again, people claim we have a global temperture record that goes back to the 1880s when by your own admission we do not.
It is true that there are not temperature stations in every square mile of the planet. If there was, I suppose you would point out that we don't have a station in every square inch?
Luckily scientists have found clever ways to interpolate the data over the globe. Different methods are used by different teams. All provide consistent results. Sanity checks are done to observe the impact of dropping coverage over further areas or halving the number of stations. Again, consistent result are produced.
It is
Re:Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:4, Interesting)
>it takes a massive amount of energy for the average temperature of the planet to go up even half a degree
Yeah. Just to reinforce this, raising the average temperature of *just* the atmosphere 1C (not even including the ground or oceans) requires more than 5x10^18kJ of energy (5.15x10^18 kg of air on Earth, times a heat capacity of ~1 kJ/kgK for dry air - humidity raises that number)
That's about 9x our entire annual energy consumption of ~160,000TWh. And that's just for the air - the ground and oceans are going to suck up orders of magnitude more more energy than that. Water has about 4.2x the specific heat as air, and 300x the total mass on Earth, so raising the oceans 1C takes roughly 1200x as much energy as the atmosphere. Call it so call it about 11,000 years worth of our total current energy output. And we still haven't considered the ground, which is vastly deeper than the oceans but gets complicated with internal heat flows from the core.
Which all sounds kind of like such unattainably huge amounts of energy that we shouldn't worry about it, except that every one watt-hour of energy produced from fossil fuels produces enough CO2 to reflect an additional million watts-hours (ballpark) of escaping thermal energy back down to Earth over the course of the decades it will spend in the atmosphere.
Re:Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't talking about temperature in America. I mentioned South Pole temperatures.
Not sure what you're looking at. Antarctica continues to warm [lbl.gov]. The Australia BOM has last winter at 0.85C warmer than average [bom.gov.au]
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Whether or not your claim is true about the temperatures, it is still just one data point out of many. It is not a vital link in a long chain of inferences that then causes the chain to unravel. If it is not (hypothetically) data that shows climate change is happening, it does not automatically become data that shows climate change is not happening.
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and every indication suggests the northern hemisphere is going to be absolutely clobbered this winter
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Here I sit in the northern hemisphere, where we set records for temperatures through October until literally four days ago. Most of North America is under drought conditions, some of which are record setting in their own right.
On average at this time we should have had 6 inches of rain month-to-date. We currently are sitting at 1.64 inches, almost all of it in the last 5 days.
I hope you are correct - we could definitely use the snow pack in the mountains. But I fear you are
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Most of North America is under drought conditions, some of which are record setting in their own right.
Here in Winnipeg we just surpassed the wettest year on record. There have actually been quite a few wettest years on record over the time records have been kept. I don't read too much into any of them.
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Here in Winnipeg we just surpassed the wettest year on record.
On average, precipitation is expected to increase in high-latitude regions.
For your particular region though, "Climate change predictions suggest we will see warmer and wetter winters and longer, warmer and drier summers. Precipitation is likely to vary more from year to year. Extreme weather, such as heat waves, droughts, floods and intense storms, will likely become more common." - https://www.gov.mb.ca/climatea... [gov.mb.ca]
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You must have stolen the rain from the wet coast. Actually if you look at the jet stream over the summer and fall, it is basically what happened. Here (Fraser Valley), between July 8th and last week, normal close to 300 mm, this year, 10 mm. Beautiful weather if you ignore the dying trees, extreme water restrictions in places etc.
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Oh, we had drought along with 49.5C (in the interior, low 40's here) temperatures, a one in 10,000 year event. After months of the soil baking, or burning, we got the heavy rain with soil that couldn't absorb the rain. The last week or so, the rain has happened slower so no flooding yet, we'll see with tomorrows and Mondays storms.
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All of the climate models I have seen, as a result of the large Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption and moisture injection into the stratosphere in January, indicate it's going to be an extremely cold winter throughout the northern latitudes. That's been the historic pattern when the southern hemisphere sees weather as has been seen the past 10 months.
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Yes volcanoes affect the climate as well. But only for a relatively short while of a few years.
Was reading about 536, IIRC. Perhaps the worst period in history. 18 months of dark followed by the bubonic plague. 100 million dead when the world population was 200 million. Likely cause volcanoes.
Thing is we can't do much about volcanoes, but we can adjust our fossil fuel consumption and it could be another 1500 years before a really bad volcano.
Re: Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:2)
Instabilities in the polar vortex (both strong and weak changes) at either of both poles is potentially a symptom of a global transition to a new climate equilibrium.
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In this case, it was likely caused by the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption.
It kind of goes without saying that if things are unstable, they'll eventually stabilize a bit more.
Tachyon emissions perhaps? (Score:2)
An event of 2022 is the cause for something seen in 2019. That's an amazing volcano and needs to be studied!
Here's an example of stability. When you turn on an electric stove the resistance is low and thus given an applied voltage it can source a higher current. When the stove element reaches a higher temperature the resistance increases and only a small current may enter the element. It reaches an equilibrium where it can not be heated past a point without applying a larger voltage or a change in its exter
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See any problems with that? I suggest you read at least the summaries of the work of appropriately credentialed scientists on these topics.
Otherwise you come off as being a bit of a bumpkin:
"It was friggin' cold here yesterday, so obviously global warming and climate change are crap. I'm not an expert, but frozen fingers don't lie."
Weather vs Climate (Score:2)
It's almost like large events within the planet..
The key there is "events". Single events are weather, climate is the average of the weather. It is entirely possible for there to be outlier weather events in any year that go against the trend of the climate.
Just like single hot weather events, like the record 40C temperature in London this summer, are not indications that the climate is warming, a single cold weather event is not evidence that the climate is cooling. To understand the climate you need to look at averages and trends. For example, 6 of
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Twenty years? Try almost 50. It's been happening globally since the 1970s as regular state-run agricultural programs. The town I'm in now, almost washed away entirely due to cloud seeding.
Re:Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Let's get these points out of the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol, nobody takes you guys seriously or gives a fuck what you think anymore. Shouldn't you be out watching voting drop boxes dressed like Wile E Coyote or some shit? Also, funny how a few idiots speak about global warming and they suddenly represent the whole idea, but Q makes up nonsense or Das Orange Fuhrer claims he was cheated and you idiots credulously buy it hook line and sinker.
"It's ridiculous that digging up fossil fuels and burning them leads to increased CO2 rates, but I totally believe George Soros and Hillary Clinton conspired to cheat in the 2020 election by using mules and shit, and also Hillary Clinton is a pedo and baby blood drinker."
And I'm not even being hyperbolic, half of you dumb sacks of shit believe that.
Can't even read their own source. (Score:2)
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We win again! (Score:3, Insightful)
We are the BEAST and MOST SUCCESSFUL at destroying our biosphere! Take that people that want the human race to have a future!
In other news, there are still morons that claim this is not real. Or that it is not a problem. Or that it is not their fault and hence they can continue with business as usual.
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We already know that eliminating all human contribution to global warming will not undo the damage. Tipping-points are like that.
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We already know that eliminating all human contribution to global warming will not undo the damage. Tipping-points are like that.
Maybe it won't undo the damage, but we can stop the bleeding. In the zero emissions scenarios, there is almost no further warming [easterbrook.ca]. Why is this? You need to look at both Climate Sensitivity and Carbon sensitivity.
It turns out that the two forms of inertia roughly balance out. The thermal inertia of the oceans slows the rate of warming (thus leading to further warming after we stop emitting), while the carbon cycle inertia accelerates it (leading to reduced warming once we stop emitting!). Our naive view
Nature can Undo it Given Time (Score:2)
We already know that eliminating all human contribution to global warming will not undo the damage.
We do? Based on what? We have to stop making things worse first and we have a ways to go to achieve even that. However, I have not seen evidence that the level of CO2 will not reduce back down to what it was before we started burning fossil fuels if we can just stop pumping GHG into the atmosphere. There are plenty of mechanisms to remove GHGs from the atmosphere the problem is that they are being overwhelmed by our rate of producing more.
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My understanding is that processes are slow on a human timeline. 1000 years is one number thrown around. More rain equals more weathering, takes time.
There's also the chance that things like the melting permafrost releasing carbon and methane will keep happening for a while even if we become carbon neutral.
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My understanding is that processes are slow on a human timeline. 1000 years is one number thrown around. More rain equals more weathering, takes time.
CO2 would initially drop quite quickly if we moved to zero emissions as this figure indicates [wp.com]. The red line in that figure shows CO2 concentrations if we moved suddenly to zero emissions. We may expect to drop CO2 levels by ~20% by the end of the century if we move to net-zero emissions.
It won't return near to preindustrial levels, but it will drop. The reason is that a significant fraction (roughly half) of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans, but this also takes time. We can think of this as
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There is a risk, but my understanding is that this is not expected to dominate. There is still time to put the genie back in the bottle.
We are already over several tipping points. And while there is time to prevent the worst, there is no apparent will to do so. Hence things will continue to get worse. When the real scale of this will become apparent and undeniable, it will be far too late.
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We already know that eliminating all human contribution to global warming will not undo the damage.
We do? Based on what? We have to stop making things worse first and we have a ways to go to achieve even that. However, I have not seen evidence that the level of CO2 will not reduce back down to what it was before we started burning fossil fuels if we can just stop pumping GHG into the atmosphere. There are plenty of mechanisms to remove GHGs from the atmosphere the problem is that they are being overwhelmed by our rate of producing more.
Well, simple: You have not even the least clue of how climate works. Removing all that CO2 will not reverse the changes it has caused. If you actually bothered to find anything out, you would know that.
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Removing all that CO2 will not reverse the changes it has caused.
Based on what? Your say-so? Removing the CO2 will reduce the amount of heat trapped by the atmosphere causing temperatures to fall, more ice to form increasing albedo and causing more cooling i.e. a complete reverse of the process we are now seeing. What processes are irreversible? Yes, there are some changes that will longer to reverse than others, like reforming and/or thickening of ice sheets, but I've not seen any clear evidence that this will not happen given time.
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We are the BEAST and MOST SUCCESSFUL at destroying our biosphere! Take that people that want the human race to have a future!
Actshually, cyanobacteria that converted the Earth's CO2 atmosphere to an O2 atmosphere were the most successful at destroying the biosphere. Almost everything alive at that point died from exposure to bacterial shit (O2).
So, sadly, alas, humans are not even the best at that. Humans are turning out to be a total failure. Maybe we are the best at being failures. Hurray?
Lawyerly (Score:2)
Too bad it has gone partisian. (Score:3)
While I drive an Electric Car, and my previous car was a hybrid, and I try to do things that are in general better for the envrionment, I am not net 0. Because there are things I need to do to properly function in my society that are good for the envrionment.
The same issues is with companies, they just can't stop burning carbon, and often many of the regulations that are proposed are too difficult for the companies to implement, however at the same time there is political pressure that they push to keep things the same thus making it harder and harder for them to do the right things in any sort of good time fame.
Sure saying to close that Coal Power Plant is unwise, however politics had taken that unwise action as an excuse to build more Coal Power Plants, which make it even more difficult to close down, because they are new and modern.
The Parisian winner take all Politics. Will either push to Close All The Coal Power Plants, or Just create more Coal Power Pants. Things like expanding the energy infrastructure for new power plants to be made to use different material, which is better for the envrionment, while keeping the existing Coal Infrastructure and modernizing it until it is no longer practical, and allow for a gradual decline of that particular source of energy as better cheaper sources will now be available.
We still need Coal and Oil.... However we should really make sure we focus on diversifying our energy demands to include more clean sources as well. Until we have clean infrastructure that can stand on its own. And we will still probably want Coal and Oil, but less for Infrastructure needs, but for smaller individual needs.
Coal Fired Pizza is key to a good NY Style pizza, Oil to run your classic cars, and other engines where Battery Electric isn't practical.
Re:Too bad it has gone partisian. (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with most of that but from the people that study this from a market perspective:
We don't have enough copper. [msn.com]
Building Lithium based batteries takes Lithium which has tripled in price in the past year. [barrons.com] It will become more valuable now that economic adversaries are the biggest refiners and miners and are going after holdings to increase their hold on that position. [fdiintelligence.com]
While we have new, more powerful wind turbines being produced we still have NIMBY to contend with, especially offshore. [ocnjdaily.com]
Oh, and Solar Panel production is again dominated by those who flood markets and undercut others. [energysage.com] In the top 10 listed, only two companies are outside of China.
We can continue to go green or we do stupid things and make our economic and political adversaries stronger by betting the farm. My bet is to build a few more fission plants using new technology and then let things like Fusion and Hydrogen Fuel Cells/Production improve. Meanwhile, I'll invest a few grand and put Solar and LIFePo batteries in which will be good for 20 years, and no, I won't see an ROI anywhere close to the investment needed considering current utility rates. Or is that it, raises utility rates to say "hey, we can go green and save money?" That part is confusing to me because at least for me, other than being a good world person investing in Green doesn't make economic sense.
Fusion or Bust! (Score:2)
Let's face it 'renewables as usual' is not cutting it.
There has been a small increase in fusion research funding but then I found this:
http://large.stanford.edu/cour... [stanford.edu]
There was MORE funding just after the 70's oil embargo.
Here's the fusion funding meme: https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
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Let's face it 'renewables as usual' is not cutting it.
Fascinating.
It's like walking up to a house that's in construction and going, "Nope. Houses aren't gonna cut it. We need Sim City 2000 arcologies."
Fusion isn't a matter of money.
The dark secret of fusion, is that it may very well be impossible to create economical fusion. The universe the mass of an entire fucking star just to keep the center of it fusing. Money isn't what's holding that endeavor up. It's the slow progress of science trying to achieve something we don't even know can be done. This isn'
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Oh come on! There are billions of gravitationally-confined thermonuclear reactors all over! Just look up at the night sky. They're easy to build: pile up around 2 * 10^30 kg of hydrogen, and wait. Stand back, around 1.5 * 10^8 km should be a safe distance.
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... and it's 20 years away ...
Meanwhile, more fission reactors based on newer technology.
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they don't count water vapor? (Score:1)
which is by far and away the largest contributor to greenhouse heating.
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H2O does prevent heat escaping. but not when it is a gas. It is when it condenses to form clouds that it keeps heat in. Especially at night
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Wrong. Water vapor in itself is the biggest gaseous greenhouse contributor, by a very large margin. The effects of clouds are many and some scientists are even unsure whether they are a neat positive or negative. My guess is that it depends....
Hydrogen (Score:2)
We are going to worsen that by ramping up the production of hydrogen. The more the merrier. Hydrogen seeps through its reservoirs into the atmosphere where it reacts with other gases, worsening the greenhouse effect.
Boy this will get all the (Score:2)
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Yep, their emissions are what is causing the whole problem, damn them.
Methane 'super-emitters' on Earth spotted by space (Score:3)
From the article at https://www.space.com/emit-instrument-international-space-station-methane-super-emitters [space.com]:
EMIT has identified more than 50 methane super-emitters in its first few months of operation --- and that's not even its main job.
A powerful eye in the sky is helping scientists spy "super-emitters" of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
That observer is NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation instrument, or EMIT for short. EMIT has been mapping the chemical composition of dust throughout Earth's desert regions since being installed on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) in July, helping researchers understand how airborne dust affects climate.
That's the main goal of EMIT's mission. But it's making another, less expected contribution to climate studies as well, NASA officials announced on Tuesday (Oct. 25). The instrument is identifying huge plumes of heat-trapping methane gas around the world â" more than 50 of them already, in fact.
CO2 levels ... (Score:3)
Here is one data point that is surprising ...
Until 2012, mean levels for CO2 were below 400 ppm at Mauna Kea since records started ... ...
This year it is 421 ppm
So it is increasing at a rate of ~ 2 ppm per year ...
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Yup. Luckily for us the response is logarithmic, that's why they talk about doubling when discussing climate sensitivity. The reasons are well understood.
I thought it was cow farts..... (Score:2)
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If it is happening, does it matter who's fault it is? If a car is careening at me because it drifted across the road divide, should I just sit back and say "I'm not changing lanes because it's not my fault that I'm going to be hit by that car"?
People panic over the once-in-a-century events. Do we want to be passive about a once in every 120,000 years event?
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Re: Hm (Score:2)
The problem is that lecturing about a single hurricane being proof of climate change is a straw man. People lecture about the fact that the number of hurricanes and severity of hurricanes is following an upward trend that matches the predictions of climate change. Theyâ(TM)re not saying âoeFlorida got what on by a bad hurricane last month BECAUSE CLIMATE CHANGEâ theyâ(TM)re saying âoethat hurricane last month was likely more severe, and was more likely to occur because climate cha
Just follow the science (Score:2)
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Headline-statements.pdf
Note in particular the section:
Emission Pathways and System Transitions Consistent with 1.5°C Global Warming
"In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2
emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050."
"Pathways limiting global warming to
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If it's an imminent global crisis, then the people discussing it should treat it like that - not negotiate climate treaties that deliberately ignore vast 3rd world industrializing economies.
If there's literally a fire in the house, "fairness" doesn't come into the equation.
IPCC lost any shred of credibility in Tokyo.
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Why do some moderators rate such posts as the parent "Troll" or "Flamebait"?
The parent cites Wikipedia to show that "CO2 and warming events [seem] to happen every 120,000-140,000 years".
Then suggests that we may be due for another such event.
I don't see how anyone could moderate such a post "Troll" or "Flamebait" except on the basis that the moderator, personally, dislikes such facts. However disliking facts is completely futile.
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The scales of what is happening over the last 8000 years are overwhelmingly overshadowed by the events of larger cycles.
By your rationale, the northern hemisphere isn't approaching winter because this morning it warmed outside by a few degrees from sunrise to noon.
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So wait, you're saying that once we largely cleared the particulate pollution that had been endemic across the planet since the height of the industrial revolution the atmosphere started to ....suddenly warm again?
Almost as if something that was unnaturally cooling the climate was removed?
Like that?
Crazy!
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It's a little late in the season for cherry picking, but sure.
Here's another, with larger scales
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
If you carefully note the sliding time scales, you'll see that the spike we're in is basically the same as the last, and time wise right on schedule.
All those previous temperature spikes are from what, again? And how did that repeating cycle stop, only to be almost precisely replaced with the current spike ?
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The graph shows how CO2 and temperatures are related but today's CO2 level of ~415ppm is off the chart, so you'd have to be pretty stupid to think it's just going to be another one of those regular events.
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I don't see how anyone could moderate such a post "Troll" or "Flamebait" except on the basis that the moderator, personally, dislikes such facts. However disliking facts is completely futile.
It's not dislike. It's heresy. The faithful cannot sit idly by and permit the unbeliever to commit blasphemy without repercussions. Just be grateful they do not go all Salman Rushdie on them.
Jawhol, Mein Herr. It's their Guilt-Based religion: man has corrupted the Earth Mother, and man must pay for his sins. Literally pay, as things like Carbon Credits are the Green Faith's version of Indulgences.
Re: Hm (Score:3)
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Here's the question I have for denialists.
If you don't believe we have the science to predict the effects of raising the level of greenhouse gases, dramatically --
then how can you justify an experiment where you don't know the results?
Re: Hm (Score:2)
Something that occurred before human agrarian civilization and you're not at all worried, in fact you are trying to convince everyone to do nothing about it. Where is your survival instinct? I'm not on board riding with your death cult to hell.
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Another thing you can do to help reduce carbon emissions is to kill yourself for the greater good. If you REALLY believe that we only have a short time to solve the issue lead by example. Be the change that you desire. Even better: Sell all your possessions, send all your money to the IRS and then reduce carbon emissions by cancelling yourself. Show the world that you stand by your convictions and be an example to others.
You haven't thought this through.
If they all kill themselves, you'll still render the planet uninhabitable. So no amount of self sacrifice can possibly prevent your inevitability.
The only solution is to prevent your inevitability.
You're calling for your murder, not their suicide.
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Hell, they'll probably Carbon tax your decomposition.
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This is actually true, sadly.
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I'm reminded of my old Chemistry days and studying covalent bonds. This triggered my memory but it takes about 400Kj to break the bonds of one mole of CO2. So that's what about 400Kw?
Re: "Almost 40 years ago" (Score:2)
3,975 participants completed weekly SARS-CoV-2 testing for 17 consecutive weeks (from December 13, 2020 to April 10, 2021) in eight U.S. locations. Participants self-collected nasal swabs that were laboratory tested for SARS-CoV-2. If the tests came back positive, the specimens were further tested to determine the amount of detectable virus in the nose (i.e., viral load) and the number of days that participants tested positive (i.e., viral shedding). Participants were followed over time and the data were an