# Climate Change



## Dr Jon (Jun 4, 2013)

I thought it would be useful to have a thread dedicated to Climate Change and to log CC milestones, as I reckon we're going to be seeing more and more of these over the coming years.

I'll start the ball rolling with North Pole above freezing


> It’s happened. An early-season Scandinavian heatwave has pushed above freezing temperatures all the way into the central Arctic.
> 
> A powerful atmospheric blocking pattern that spawned record 80+ degree temperatures in Scandinavia this weekend has elongated, stretching all the way into the central Arctic. As the bulge increased in amplitude, it brought warmer air with it. Temperatures at the North Pole over the past week ranged from 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, we are seeing temps around 33 degrees, a range of ‘warmth’ usually reserved for mid summer.


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## Dr Jon (Jun 5, 2013)

Edward Davey speech: Climate Change, Acting on the Science


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## ferrelhadley (Jun 5, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> I thought it would be useful to have a thread dedicated to Climate Change and to log CC milestones, as I reckon we're going to be seeing more and more of these over the coming years.
> 
> I'll start the ball rolling with North Pole above freezing


 
Its only really been the Barent Sea, Scandanavia has been on a heat wave but the areas around the Bearing and Greenland have been unusually cold.

















Something wicked the way of the Arctic Archipelago comes though. 15 motherless centigrade may be on the cards if these models hold out. Though it looks a rather unstable system, so much warm air that far north in early June.


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## Dr Jon (Jun 6, 2013)

German floods


> Rescuers used helicopters to pluck families from rooftops in the southern German town of Deggendorf on Wednesday as the Danube flood crisis continues.
> Meanwhile more than 30,000 people in the eastern city of Halle have been told to leave their homes after rivers reached their highest level in 400 years.
> Floodwater is also threatening parts of Austria and the Czech Republic.


 
Record floods continue in North and Central Europe

Floods Threaten Central European Businesses

Record rainfall in Little Rock, Hanover, Melbourne


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## MikeMcc (Jun 6, 2013)

CO2 concentration about to break the 400ppm level, we've already had a few individual measurements above that level, but we're certain to see the monthly and annual figures go through it this year.  The May figure for Mauna Loa is 399.89ppm.

http://co2now.org/


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## Dr Jon (Jun 6, 2013)

Stu Ostro's PDF is interesting and ongoing.


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## Dr Jon (Jun 10, 2013)

410,000 Square Kilometres of Sea Ice Lost in Two Days


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## Dr Jon (Jun 14, 2013)

Up to half of all birds threatened by climate change


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## ferrelhadley (Jun 20, 2013)

The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming 

Not featuring Michelle Bachmans 'natural product of nature' line.


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## Dr Jon (Jun 24, 2013)

I see that the Colorado Wildfires are still burning and that thousands are dead from extreme flooding in Uttarakhand. Both remind me of this recent post by Paul Beckwith:


> *What can you do?*
> 
> Go talk to your politicians and friends about climate change and the need to slash fossil fuel emissions. Immediately. Cut and paste my comments above and post them on facebook, send them to newspapers, and educate yourself on the science behind all the above linkages. Leave my name on or take it off and plagiarize all you want, just get this knowledge out there...


 
Climate Commission report: 80% of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground


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## Dr Jon (Jun 25, 2013)

Just seen this:
Arctic Heatwave Sizzles Northeastern Europe With 92 Degree Temperatures, Mangled Jet Stream Hosts Record Canadian Floods, and the Persistent Arctic Cyclone is Coring Through the North Pole


> Any one of these extreme weather events — a heatwave in Arctic Europe, immense floods never before seen in Canada, and an anomalous storm coring through the thickest sea ice — would be evidence that human caused climate change has radically altered the weather. Instead, we have all three occurring over the span of as many days. It is a pace of extreme events that is both troubling and astounding. And each has been affected by the sea ice loss, ocean, ice sheet, and atmospheric warming, loss of summer snow cover, and extreme changes to the circum-polar Jet Stream brought about by human caused climate change


 
Hansen's dice are rolling


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## Dr Jon (Jun 28, 2013)

62 Years of Global Warming in 13 Seconds


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## Dr Jon (Jun 28, 2013)

Why Climate Change Policy is in a Mess and How to Fix it



Potty weather in the US:
Record-Breaking Heat Engulfs the West
(thanks to xraymike79)


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## ferrelhadley (Jul 10, 2013)




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## Dr Jon (Jul 13, 2013)

The Sleeping Climate Giant


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jul 13, 2013)

Forget that shit. The new thing is global cooling.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387098,00.asp

http://www.almanac.com/sunspotupdate

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/


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## Yossarian (Jul 13, 2013)

From the first link:

_With temperatures rising worldwide due to global warming, though, maybe a cooling-off period is exactly what the planet needs. But for any hoping a weak solar cycle could provide a way to offset climate change, you can forget it. As Pesnell points out, "These are two independent effects. The solar signal will go up for awhile, but it's not an offset because if you just wait a couple of years, the sun will come back. They don't cancel each other out."_


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jul 13, 2013)

Yossarian said:


> From the first link:
> 
> _With temperatures rising worldwide due to global warming, though, maybe a cooling-off period is exactly what the planet needs. But for any hoping a weak solar cycle could provide a way to offset climate change, you can forget it. As Pesnell points out, "These are two independent effects. The solar signal will go up for awhile, but it's not an offset because if you just wait a couple of years, the sun will come back. They don't cancel each other out."_


I'm glad to see you read that article.


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jul 13, 2013)

I read somewhere that current human contribution to atmospheric carbon, is about 5% of the total.


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## fogbat (Jul 13, 2013)

I read somewhere that wee tiny people called Borrowers live in our houses.


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## MikeMcc (Jul 14, 2013)

Johnny Canuck3 said:


> I read somewhere that current human contribution to atmospheric carbon, is about 5% of the total.


You read something that was wrong then...

It's pretty demonstrable that humans contributed pretty much all of the excess CO2 - A simple analysis of the quantities burnt (takes less than 2 sides of A4 paper and not even O-level maths..), O2 depletion, isotope analysis, etc.


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## Dr Jon (Jul 14, 2013)

Melt Puddles, Distant Open Water Visible at North Pole Camera 2






Arctic melt hits food security in bitter taste of life on a hotter planet

Climate change is happening too quickly for species to adapt
- I suspect that this includes us!


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## Bernie Gunther (Jul 14, 2013)

MikeMcc said:


> You read something that was wrong then...
> 
> It's pretty demonstrable that humans contributed pretty much all of the excess CO2 - A simple analysis of the quantities burnt (takes less than 2 sides of A4 paper and not even O-level maths..), O2 depletion, isotope analysis, etc.


 
Key word here being _"excess"_

One favourite disinformation tactic used by professional pathological liars in the PR industry to deceive the public about human CO2 emissions, is to count the natural CO2 emissions, but not count the natural take-up of CO2 that balances them out.

Then they compare anthropogenic emissions with the resulting huge, but in this context meaningless, number and dishonestly claim that human CO2 emissions are insignificant.

See e.g. http://grist.org/climate-energy/natural-emissions-dwarf-human-emissions/


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## Dr Jon (Jul 15, 2013)

Massive ice sheets melting at rate of 300bn tonnes a year


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## Dr Jon (Jul 19, 2013)

North Pole Web Camera 2 Adrift in Large, Expanding Melt Pool


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## Miss Caphat (Jul 19, 2013)

fuck.


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## Dr Jon (Jul 20, 2013)

Unsurprisingly, publications like the Torygraph, the Economist and others pushing the "business as usual" agenda, are downplaying and trivialising this news.


An extraordinary - and worrying - insight into the mind of Owen Paterson

Watch thou for the fuckwit!


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## Dr Jon (Jul 22, 2013)

thanks to robertscribbler


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## ferrelhadley (Jul 23, 2013)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...mate-scientist-and-how-we-should-deal-with-it




> Michael Mann sued for defamation last year.  The National Review moved that scientific fact is elusive and amounts to opinion and attempted to have the suit thrown out of court.  On July the 22, the judge denied their motion, and he did so in such a way that suggested that he considers Michael Mann's case to be pretty strong.





> In general, the decision suggests that there is a reasonable chance that Mann can show the "Defendants disregarded the falsity of their statements and did so with reckless disregard." The ruling notes that the organizations have called for Mann's investigation multiple times; "if anyone should have been aware of the accuracy (or findings that the work of Plaintiff is sound), it would be the [National Review] Defendants." Thus, continued attacks on Mann may be construed as a reckless disregard for the truth.


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## Dr Jon (Jul 23, 2013)

I saw that story on scribbler's blog:
DC Superior Court Finds Indication of ‘Actual Malice’ in Climate Change Deniers’ Repeated Attacks on Michael Mann


> The evidence that temperatures were rocketing higher at an unprecedented rate would mean that certain agencies — primarily fossil fuel special interest groups — would bear the brunt of responsibility for any damages caused by rapid warming. And rather than live up to this responsibility by using current assets to rapidly transition to other, less polluting, energy sources and to work to mitigate the damage, they instead decided to attack the messenger — Michael Mann.





> As climate scientist Jennifer Francis noted last week during her Congressional testimony — the climate science misleaders are a big part of the problem inherent to human caused global warming and climate change. They have prevented us from understanding the threat and, thus far, have considerably slowed our efforts in response.


The greed and criminal stupidity of the denialist/crapitalist vermin is beyond contempt.


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## MikeMcc (Jul 24, 2013)

New study suggests economic cost of arctic methane release could be nearly £40 trillion!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23432769


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## Dr Jon (Jul 24, 2013)

Potential die-off event trivialised as a matter of economic impact.


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## ferrelhadley (Jul 24, 2013)

I have a degree of skepticism about these near term arctic clatherate release stories. There seems to be to be some big gaps in it. The methane in under over 50 m of water and beneath permafrost. That takes a huge huge amount of energy to warm up and melt, yet the story is that the recent changes in sea ice cover have sent a pulse of warming deep enough and warm enough to do melt a permafrost cap. While that part of the ocean gets cold enough to freeze for about 8 months of the year. 

I have not seen one bit of evidence that these are new methane sources and not just long term seeps that have only just been discovered. Over 100 years and 1000 years this is likely to be a huge source of new carbon, but I am not convinced we are seeing something that is new and dangerous happening right now.


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## ferrelhadley (Jul 25, 2013)

This methane thing is just a number pulled out of Shakhovas arse and fed into an _economic_ model.

Gavin Schmidt on twitter has been pouring some very cold water on this.



> *Gavin Schmidt* ‏@ClimateOfGavin11h​@cwhope Wow. "Highly possible at any time" Shakhova. I could not disagree more. Paleo provides *no* evidence for this level of sensitivity




Id strongly advice people not to go out on a limb defending this study. If anything give it a boot.


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## Maggot (Jul 25, 2013)

The North Pole is now a swimming pool. If that's not worrying, I don't know what is. 

http://www.livescience.com/38347-north-pole-ice-melt-lake.html


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## Dr Jon (Jul 25, 2013)

Large, Troubling Methane Pulse Coincides With Arctic Heatwave, Tundra Fires


> These first methane burps are a warning for us to act now, before our capacity to act is seriously degraded and before events start to spiral beyond the point of rational control. We have had other warnings which we have, so far, mostly ignored. And though the responses by the Obama Administration and World Bank to de-fund new coal plants are encouraging, we should redouble our efforts now, lest we enter an age of bitter regret as the consequences of our carbon emission form a trap that is difficult or impossible to escape.


I am left wondering what, if anything, we can do that would be able to prevent a large-scale release?
I'm thinking of both the "momentum" of change in the climate system and the time it would take for governments to agree to act - even if their corporate puppeteers would let them.


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## xes (Jul 25, 2013)

Don't think there is anything to do to stop the release of natural gasses in natural ways. (other than drill them and tap the resource, not that I'm suggesting anything)


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## MikeMcc (Jul 25, 2013)

ferrelhadley said:


> This methane thing is just a number pulled out of Shakhovas arse and fed into an _economic_ model.
> 
> Gavin Schmidt on twitter has been pouring some very cold water on this.
> 
> ...


There's been a post put up at Carbon Brief too:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/201...pulse-we-find-disagreement-amongst-scientists


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## ferrelhadley (Jul 31, 2013)

Climate Change DO THE MATH!


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 6, 2013)

Do people here believe that we are past the point of return in regards to  climate change? Is it possible that the ship can be turned around, or are we all fucked?


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## Dr Jon (Aug 6, 2013)

cynicaleconomy said:


> Do people here believe that we are past the point of return in regards to climate change? Is it possible that the ship can be turned around, or are we all fucked?


I think we're well past the point of return to a stable climate. Warming lags GHG emissions due to inertia in the climate system. We're already committed to at least 2° of warming, even if we stopped GHG emissions yesterday. So far we have had only 0.8° of warming.

Don't worry


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> I think we're well past the point of return to a stable climate. Warming lags GHG emissions due to inertia in the climate system. We're already committed to at least 2° of warming, even if we stopped GHG emissions yesterday. So far we have had only 0.8° of warming.
> 
> Don't worry


 
What would happen if we were to start taking carbon out of the atmosphere by artificial carbon sinks (if such a thing exists)? Would it be possible to reverse any of the damage, or are the changes to the climate system irreversible?


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## 8ball (Aug 7, 2013)

We are all doomed.  Life is meaningless.  Everything dies.


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## Dr Jon (Aug 7, 2013)

cynicaleconomy said:


> What would happen if we were to start taking carbon out of the atmosphere by artificial carbon sinks (if such a thing exists)? Would it be possible to reverse any of the damage, or are the changes to the climate system irreversible?


The questions there are what technology does it use / how do we power it / do we have the resources to build it.
There are already self-replicating, solar-powered, carbon-sinks.  They're called trees.  We just have to stop cutting them down and using the land for ourselves.



8ball said:


> We are all doomed. Life is meaningless. Everything dies.


Life is far from meaningless.
2/3


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## 8ball (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Life is far from meaningless.


 
That's just the prozac talking.


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## Dr Jon (Aug 7, 2013)

8ball said:


> That's just the prozac talking.


Do they still make that shit?
I thought it had been so thoroughly discredited it was no longer prescribed..?


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## 8ball (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Do they still make that shit?
> I thought it had been so thoroughly discredited it was no longer prescribed..?


 
Yup, tonnes and tonnes of the stuff and lots and lots of very similar drugs.

They can have their uses tbf.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> The questions there are what technology does it use / how do we power it / do we have the resources to build it.
> There are already self-replicating, solar-powered, carbon-sinks. They're called trees. We just have to stop cutting them down and using the land for ourselves.


 
Is this ever going to happen though, realistically? It seems to me that it is pretty much impossible (politically, not technologically) to organise the the preservation of natural carbon sinks such as trees whilst a capitalist economy exists, and the global economy isn't going to fundamentally change any time soon. Certainly not before it's too late for the climate. Artificial sinks might be the quickest and most pragmatic solution to the problem as far as the politics/economics are concerned.

Could you direct me to some more information on these self-replicating sinks you mentioned?


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## Dr Jon (Aug 7, 2013)

8ball said:


> Yup, tonnes and tonnes of the stuff and lots and lots of very similar drugs.


Christ. A planet full of screwed-up people...


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## Dr Jon (Aug 7, 2013)

cynicaleconomy said:


> Could you direct me to some more information on these self-replicating sinks you mentioned?


Er, sure...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Er, sure...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees


 
I asked about artificial carbon sinks, so assumed your response of "there are already self-replicating, solar-powered, carbon-sinks" related to my question. Didn't realise you were being facetious, but cheers anyway.


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## 8ball (Aug 7, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Christ. A planet full of screwed-up people...


 
Misery is a growth industry.


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## Dr Jon (Aug 9, 2013)

> Carbon dioxide has an approximate thirty-year time lag between its release into the atmosphere and its corresponding affect on average global temperature. Even if we stop all emissions today – keeping it at 400 ppm – we still have nearly thirty years of warming and climatic changes to undergo.
> 
> And right now, nothing that we are currently observing matches up with any of the models that we have – a stark acknowledgement that this historical moment we find ourselves in exists largely beyond our ability to comprehend it let alone predict its movement.
> 
> ...


From: The Time Lag of Irreversible Change


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 9, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> we have to completely dismantle the industrial economy, we have to do it soon, and really, we should have done it yesterday.


 
See this is the sort of shit that makes me ask about artificial carbon sinks, because they are pretty much the only way to practically combat the rise of CO2. Dismantle the industrial economy? Doing that would probably kill off just as many people as climate change itself. It's not exactly a solution, is it?


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## Dr Jon (Aug 10, 2013)

A global reforestation program might help, but that's something which ought to have been started decades ago. We're still slashing and burning our way to a bottleneck event if not extinction.

I don't think the author was seriously expecting the industrial economy to be dismantled, though it seems to be doing a good job of falling apart all by itself right now - despite the spin from the illusionists of high finance.


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## Dr Jon (Aug 13, 2013)

Arctic News said:
			
		

> The video below is a visualization of the Arctic Death Spiral showing the evolution of the volume of sea-ice over time from 1979 to July 2013. The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is staggering. Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 80% and is accelerating faster than scientists believed it would, or even could melt.




ETA:


> Sea-level “lock in” is happening 10 times faster than sea-level rise itself, but thanks to the long time lag, it’s even more invisible.


link


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## Dr Jon (Aug 20, 2013)

Ugo Bardi said:
			
		

> The above is a very simple and effective image. In a single and easy to read graph, it completely debunks the legend that "global warming has stopped." Decadal averages remove the short term yearly noise and show the hot truth.
> 
> If there is any justice in the world, this image should go viral, but - as it always happens - it is the wrong meme that goes viral; the one that says that global warming has stopped.
> 
> Maybe the readers of this blog would try to give a "viral push" to this image? See if you can share it to your friends, to your social networks and the like. Let's see if we can move things a little bit....


link


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## Dr Jon (Aug 25, 2013)

from:
Climate Change Alarm is Needed and Climate Scientists Aren’t Sounding it Loud Enough


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## ferrelhadley (Aug 28, 2013)

New science reafirms that the ENSO is playing a role is suppressing surface temperatures.
http://www.nature.com/news/tropical-ocean-key-to-global-warming-hiatus-1.13620



> “The equatorial Pacific cooling turns out to be strong enough to offset the general rise in temperature induced by anthropogenic greenhouse gases,” says Shang-Ping Xie, a climate modeller at Scripps and co-author of the study, which is published today in_Nature_1. Just as importantly, he says, the model helps to explain regional trends that seem to defy the global warming hiatus, including record-breaking heat in the United States last year, and the continued decline of Arctic sea ice.


This cooling is in part caused by stronger winds across that region that pull waters from the cold Humboldt current to the surface. The net energy being added to the ocean atmosphere system is likely to be about the same as before but more colder water from the deeps is being pulled up to be warmed.


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## Dr Jon (Sep 10, 2013)

Just spotted Australia rips up climate-change policies


Meanwhile, in Russia






> the Amur and its tributaries have swollen to between 5 and 20 miles in width devouring both forest lands and cities alike




ETA
just spotted Warmest August on Record at South Pole 
(via Colorado Bob)


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## MikeMcc (Sep 11, 2013)

To early to tell for sure, but Cryosat are saying it could be a new record low for arctic sea-ice volume.  Given that the extent increased by 30-35% (not the 60% that David Rose lied about in the Fail), that must mean that the ice is extraordinarily thin.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/O...g_Planet_Symposium_2013/New_dimensions_on_ice


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## ferrelhadley (Sep 12, 2013)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24067928



> Over the last 14 months there has been a five-fold increase in reported landslides in the UK, scientists say.
> 
> The British Geological Survey (BGS) has over 16,000 records of landscapes, used to compare variations over time.
> 
> ...


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## Dr Jon (Sep 18, 2013)

> climate conditions are “dangerous” now


link (pdf)  (via Arctic News)


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## Wilson (Sep 18, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> link (pdf)  (via Arctic News)



don't look too good does it.


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## Dr Jon (Sep 18, 2013)

No.
What we are seeing now is exactly what scientists were warning of at least as long ago as 2005, when Siberian permafrost melt was first observed. 
The loss of Arctic sea ice is reckoned to be yet another falling domino in a cascade of non-linear change, likely having very serious consequences.


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## Wilson (Sep 21, 2013)

Yeah, that Arctic News blog seems to be saying that we're all going to die really quite soon as runaway change is upon us.


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## Dr Jon (Sep 21, 2013)

Ah, you mean this?







Not good, certainly.




			
				Arctic News said:
			
		

> The absolute priority is that the world’s public and politicians are told about the rapidly increasing rate of carbon dioxide concentrations in the air which will cause a runaway Greenhouse Event, both in the media and in social media. The gravity of the situation needs to be accepted and all nations agree to co-operate to solve the problem.



But in the Excuse:
What climate change? Fewer people than EVER believe the world is really warming up
and the Indy:
He called climate change ‘crap’ – now Australia’s new Prime Minister abolishes watchdog 

Greed, ignorance and stupidity on steroids...


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## Bernie Gunther (Sep 22, 2013)

From back in Jan, but still worth bearing in mind given the imminent release of the first parts of AR5 and the disinformation shitstorm that will doubtless try to drown and/or distort its message.



> A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate "counter movement" to undermine the science of global warming, _The Independent_ has learnt.
> 
> The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.
> 
> ...


 http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html


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## Wilson (Sep 23, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Ah, you mean this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yeah, I thought this bit was kind of worrying -


> The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040.


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## Dr Jon (Sep 23, 2013)

Hmmm, yes.
That could be kind of awkward...

Never mind.  Keep on shopping and all will be fine!


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## Bernie Gunther (Sep 27, 2013)

IPCC - AR5 - Summary for Policymakers is now downloadable.

http://www.climatechange2013.org/

I've extracted the headlines below.



> Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
> 
> Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence).
> 
> ...


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## Dr Jon (Oct 3, 2013)

Just spotted this gadget in the Graun:
Climate change: how hot will it get in my lifetime? - interactive

and

Top scientist Sir Mark Walport urges climate change deniers to give in



			
				Sir Mark Walport said:
			
		

> This is not something on which human beings can vote, it’s not your opinion that matters, it is actually the truth of it, there is a correct answer.
> While there are many questions we can vote on, this is not one.


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## Dr Jon (Oct 8, 2013)

http://lasthours.org


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## Dr Jon (Oct 17, 2013)

Just spotted this online introductory course at realclimate.org:

Global Warming: The Science of Climate Change

Starts Oct 21st 2013 for 8 weeks.


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## Yuwipi Woman (Oct 22, 2013)

http://lasthours.org/

The author (Thom Hartmann) has an e-book on Climate Change for free on Amazon and B&N.  Its only about 65 pages and seems to be decent source for educating people who aren't on board yet.


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## Dr Jon (Oct 24, 2013)

> The rate of climate change clearly has gone beyond linear, as indicated by the presence of myriad self-reinforcing feedback loops, and now threatens our species with extinction in the near term. Anthropologist Louise Leakey ponders our near-term demise in her 5 July 2013 assessment at Huffington Post. In the face of near-term human extinction, most Americans view the threat as distant and irrelevant, as illustrated by a 22 April 2013 article in the Washington Post based on poll results that echo the long-held sentiment that elected officials should be focused on the industrial economy, not faraway minor nuisances such as climate change.
> 
> This presentation brings attention to recent forecasts and positive feedbacks. Sources of forecasts include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Global Carbon Project, and the Copenhagen Diagnosis. None of these forecasts include selfreinforcing feedback loops, 23 of which have been triggered. Nor do these forecasts include economic collapse, the single phenomenon that might prevent our early demise, according to Tim Garrett's (2011) paper in Climatic Change, "Are there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?"


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## Dr Jon (Oct 27, 2013)

link


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## Dr Jon (Nov 3, 2013)

2nd (leaked) instalment of AR5 from the IPCC:

_Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability_

ETA
Panel warns of risks to food supply from climate change


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## MikeMcc (Nov 4, 2013)

BBC are reporting on a paper that suggests that we might finally be starting to slow the rate of emissions.  A long time coming, with a long way to go and a few caveats:

It seems to be driven primarily by the Chinese drive towards renewables and the US Shale Gas expansion.  Neither are garanteed to continue in the long term.  It's still a faint glimmer of improvement.

BBC report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24742770

and the abstract of the original paper:
http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report


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## redsquirrel (Nov 7, 2013)

Abbott and co not even pretending to take climate change seriously down here.


> Australia will have no government minister at the main United Nations climate negotiations next week, for the first time since the Kyoto accord in 1997.


http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-change-talks-no-minister-represent-australia


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## Yuwipi Woman (Nov 7, 2013)

redsquirrel said:


> Abbott and co not even pretending to take climate change seriously down here.
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-change-talks-no-minister-represent-australia


 
If you look at a map of what the world would look like if all the polar ice melted, it would seem that Australia has more to worry about than some other places.


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## Dr Jon (Nov 15, 2013)

Climate Scientists Warn Of More Super-Typhoons
2013 Likely To Be One Of The Hottest Years Ever As Warming Trend Continues
Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half
Horrific amounts of methane over Laptev Sea 

This methane business is a worry.


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## Yuwipi Woman (Nov 22, 2013)

90 Corporations are responsible for almost 2/3 of global emissions:

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-emissions-climate-change?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2


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## teqniq (Nov 26, 2013)

Understanding Warsaw: Capitalism, Climate Change and Neocolonialism


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## Dr Jon (Nov 26, 2013)

Chris Hedges said:
			
		

> With the folly of the human race—and perhaps its unconscious lust for self-annihilation—on display at the U.N. Climate Talks in Warsaw, it is easy to succumb to despair. The world’s elite, it is painfully clear, will do little to halt the accelerating destruction of the ecosystem and eventually the human species. We have, through our ingenuity and hubris, unleashed the next great mass extinction on the planet. And I suspect the reason we have never discovered signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is because extraterrestrial societies that achieved similar levels of technological development also destroyed themselves. There are probably more wreckages of advanced civilizations, cursed by poisoned ecosystems, floating through the universe than we imagine.



Shielding A Flickering Flame

Also see:
Refugees of Climate Change
The Climate Disaster Bubbling in the Arctic (via xraymike79)


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## Quartz (Nov 26, 2013)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> If you look at a map of what the world would look like if all the polar ice melted, it would seem that Australia has more to worry about than some other places.



On the contrary: its central desert would become a very fertile shallow sea.


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## 2hats (Nov 26, 2013)

Quartz said:


> On the contrary: its central desert would become a very fertile shallow sea.



More likely a lake. Which might become more inhospitable as minerals are concentrated through many evaporation cycles as average temperatures climb.

Estimates (a rise of some 60-odd metres) suggest that there is sufficient ice to devastate the coastal zones where the bulk of the population and industry are (degree of inundation illustrated in this NatGeo article and a somewhat more useful interactive map to explore here).


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## Dr Jon (Dec 5, 2013)

James Hansen and Colleagues Offer Evidence for a Disruptive Call to Action


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## Quartz (Dec 5, 2013)

2hats said:


> Estimates (a rise of some 60-odd metres) suggest that there is sufficient ice to devastate the coastal zones where the bulk of the population and industry are (degree of inundation illustrated in this NatGeo article and a somewhat more useful interactive map to explore here).



Given the reported expected sea level rises, perversely that map will make people think, "Why bother? Very little land indeed will be lost." Plug in a rise of 2m and see.


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## Dr Jon (Dec 10, 2013)

Climate Science Predictions Prove Too Conservative


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## Tankus (Dec 10, 2013)

Back in the days when climate change was global warming
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

No doubt it'll have another badge in the next decade

Too many variables for a reliable model perhaps ....?

Too many of us anyway....


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## gentlegreen (Dec 10, 2013)

"too" or "to" ?

Tankus


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## Sasaferrato (Dec 11, 2013)

The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.

The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong. What do you expect when the major body is chaired by a railway engineer with a large income from carbon trading?


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## Sasaferrato (Dec 11, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> I saw that story on scribbler's blog:
> DC Superior Court Finds Indication of ‘Actual Malice’ in Climate Change Deniers’ Repeated Attacks on Michael Mann
> 
> 
> The greed and criminal stupidity of the denialist/crapitalist vermin is beyond contempt.



The gullibility and naivety of the believers is breathtaking.

Please note, when the phrase '... in x years' is used, it is an absolute indicator that the event has happened before.


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## Crispy (Dec 11, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.


Whereas if you read the actual scientific papers and reports, rather than 2nd hand accounts in the mass media, you'll find much more detailed nuanced phrases. There is uncertainty, but it is quantified uncertainty, with upper and lower bounds.


Sasaferrato said:


> The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong.


Also Known As Science. And as the years go by, the models and predictions are indeed refined and altered. But the trend is always upward, even at the lowest bounds of uncertainty.


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## Quartz (Dec 11, 2013)

It was bad when done to Lomborg and it's still bad when done to Mann.


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## Dr Jon (Dec 12, 2013)

Climate: another harassed scientist fights back 


> Just as Michael Mann did, Monnett fought back and the battle is now over with a settlement in which BOEM has agreed to pay Monnett a compensation and to to remove the letter of reprimand he had received from them.


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## teqniq (Dec 13, 2013)

Snow in St Catherine's in the South Sinai



and



> KarenCNN: Incredible. RT @AmrElGabry: For the first time in 112 years, it snows in Cairo http://t.co/k738tbZvpW


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## MikeMcc (Dec 13, 2013)

Tankus said:


> Back in the days when climate change was global warming
> http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
> 
> No doubt it'll have another badge in the next decade
> ...


 Here's a small hint, the IPCC was formed in 1988, guess what the CC bit stands for...?  In a hundred years, or a thousand years, they may well be wondering what snowfalls were in the UK.  We have a lot of warming still waiting to hit us, no matter what we do.

Global waming is a facet of climate change, the phrases have been used interchangeably for decades.  There has never been a transition of discussing global warming to discussing climate change.  It's a strawman.

And what do you understand about modelling?  Not much it seems.  GCMs are well developed studies of the known mechanisms.  Each has it's limitations, particularly in the parameterization of small scale phenomenon (for instance the effects of the mountain ranges in the UK which have a profound effect but are contained within one 5 deg x 5 deg area).  There are areas of study that will improve the models, particularly dealing with particulate aerosols and the flow characteristics of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers.  To imply that there are too many variables to be able to generate realistic models is patently ridiculous.  Try reading up on GCMs, specifically how they break up the system into manageable portions and then link those components together to see how they interact.  They then hindcast the models to check that they accurately recreate historical data.  But no, your reaction is 'Too many variables for a reliable model perhaps'.  So the work of hundreds of research scientists, modellers, programmers, statistians, the product of thousands of hours of research, programming, refining, etc is written off because you don't like it...


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## MikeMcc (Dec 13, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.
> The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong. What do you expect when the major body is chaired by a railway engineer with a large income from carbon trading?


As it is in ANY scientific study.  The drive is to refine the experiment to minimise the uncertainty.  The recent IPCC reported an uncertainty of less than 5% that there is a potential natural cause.  It doesn't say how much less than 5% that is, it could be considerably less.  A p-test of 95% is the gold standard for effective truth in the matter (unless someone brings out the Nobel worthy dis-proving piece of evidence).
That railway engineer (his university qualification and first job) has also spent many years in the energy industry.  He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering, and a PHD in Industrial Engineering and Economics.  When it was suggested that he was raking it in KPMG did a review, the findings of which were:



> "No evidence was found that indicated personal financial benefits accruing to Dr Pachauri from his various advisory roles that would have led to a conflict of interest". The report explains its objectives and methodology and states that "Work done by us was as considered necessary at that point in time" and that it is based on the information provided by TERI, Pachauri and Pachauri's tax counsel. In a caveat the review explains that its scope was "significantly different from an audit and cannot be relied on to provide the same level of assurance as an audit". Examined payments made by private sector companies and found that payments amounting to $326,399 were made to TERI itself, not to Pachauri.  He had received only his annual salary from TERI, amounting to £45,000 a year, plus a maximum of about £2,174 from outside earnings. He received no payment for chairing the IPCC.


Wikipedia

Now the Telegraph has had to fork out £100k and make a public apology for these lies, have you got that sort of cash? Nice try for an Ad Hom attack and a strawman...


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## Sasaferrato (Dec 16, 2013)

MikeMcc said:


> As it is in ANY scientific study.  The drive is to refine the experiment to minimise the uncertainty.  The recent IPCC reported an uncertainty of less than 5% that there is a potential natural cause.  It doesn't say how much less than 5% that is, it could be considerably less.  A p-test of 95% is the gold standard for effective truth in the matter (unless someone brings out the Nobel worthy dis-proving piece of evidence).
> That railway engineer (his university qualification and first job) has also spent many years in the energy industry.  He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering, and a PHD in Industrial Engineering and Economics.  When it was suggested that he was raking it in KPMG did a review, the findings of which were:
> 
> Wikipedia
> ...




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25383373 More ice, not less.

I really love to see the wriggling that goes on when the facts don't support half-baked theories.

A lot of people making a very good living from the 'climate change' industry.

Oh, btw, remember the first graphs put out, the ones that conveniently forgot the last warm period?

In the past 50 millennia, we have had very hot weather, and an ice age. How curious that the were not related to 'anthropogenic climate change'. 

Also by the way, none of the 'extra' qualifications make a railway engineer a climatologist.

'In a caveat the review explains that its scope was "significantly different from an audit and cannot be relied on to provide the same level of assurance as an audit".' Very reassuring.


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## Sasaferrato (Dec 16, 2013)

Crispy said:


> Whereas if you read the actual scientific papers and reports, rather than 2nd hand accounts in the mass media, you'll find much more detailed nuanced phrases. There is uncertainty, but it is quantified uncertainty, with upper and lower bounds.
> 
> Also Known As Science. And as the years go by, the models and predictions are indeed refined and altered. But the trend is always upward, even at the lowest bounds of uncertainty.



Or on the other hand, what is known colloquially as a 'bag of bollocks'.

You lot's faith in this very uncertain process is touching, or touched.


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## Crispy (Dec 16, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> Or on the other hand, what is known colloquially as a 'bag of bollocks'


Have you got a reasoned argument, or just derision? Because while there have been well-reasoned arguments against the anthropegenic climate change theory, they have been mostly turned around or defused (as is represented by the narrowing confidence figures in the IPCC reports)


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## gentlegreen (Dec 16, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> faith


I think this is possibly the linguistic nub of your issue with the scientific consensus.


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## Dr Jon (Dec 16, 2013)

Meanwhile, a US Navy Climate Model Shows Zero Sea Ice By Summer 2016:


> The high resolution Regional Arctic Systems Model (RASM) constructed by US Navy Scientist Professor Wieslaw Maslowski shows the potential for the Arctic to be ice free come 2016 +/- 3 years.
> ...
> Dr. Peter Wadhams, a world renown sea ice expert who has spent about 30 years monitoring the state of sea ice aboard British Navy submarines has projected that the Arctic could reach an ice-free state by the end of summer during 2015 or 2016.
> Another climate expert, Dr. Carlos Duarte, head of the Ocean Institute at the University of Australia, has projected that the Arctic will reach an ice free state by 2015.


link



Sasaferrato said:


> More ice, not less.


Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?




			
				Colorado Bob said:
			
		

> In 2013, enough fossil fuels were burned so that carbon pollution level hit
> the milestone of 400 parts per million. Scientist confirmed, again, that this is
> bad news for most of the residents of planet earth, with many plants and animals
> facing extinction. This carbon pollution trapped enough heat to help fuel heat
> ...


link

Earth has its Warmest November in Recorded History


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## MikeMcc (Dec 17, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25383373 More ice, not less.
> 
> I really love to see the wriggling that goes on when the facts don't support half-baked theories.
> 
> ...


There has never been two consecutive record braking years in terms of arctic ice, area, extent or volume.  The trend is still decidedly downward.




http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordp...e_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png for the larger image.  So whose facts and wooly theories were these?

And what first graphs and what warm period?  More precision and less arm waving please.

Re ice-ages that wonderfully well understood phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles triggered those.  By the way, were still in an ice-age, but were are in an inter-glacial period too.  Of course, they wouldn't be related to AGW because we weren't pumping huge volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere then, so that's another straw man.  If the present climate relied purely on Milankovich cycles we would be cooling at the moment...

Nor does recycling old denier memes make you a climatologist either, nor a good debater.

Despite the caveat, it's still more evidence that the deniers have.


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## gentlegreen (Dec 17, 2013)

How many thousands of people in the air at any one time. ?
They'll never give that up.
They'll be gasifying coal before we know it - or liquifying gas.

Unless some pandemic gets us all due to the aforementioned travel.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 19, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> In the past 50 millennia, we have had very hot weather, and an ice age. How curious that the were not related to 'anthropogenic climate change'.


When the earth was slightly warmer than today, about 8000 years ago, the northern hemisphere summer was about 3 million km closer to the sun than today. The region around 60N exeperianced about 40 watts per square meter more solar energy during June, July. When the climate was cooler, before 12 000 years ago, we had been set into a glacial phase (around 100 000 years ago) with low latitude glaciation significantly increasing the global albedo and reducing the net energy we could absorb. It was only when the orbital alignments created enough energy to (over thousands of years) melt back the NH summer snow and ice fields, slowly reducing albedo, warming the planet and releasing CO2 from the oceans.


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## Quartz (Dec 20, 2013)

MikeMcc said:


> Re ice-ages that wonderfully well understood phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles triggered those.



I thought it was the transit of Antarctica across the South Pole.


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## Bernie Gunther (Dec 21, 2013)

Interested to see that the Reddit science forum has banned Krazy Klimate Konspiracy theories.


> The answer was found in the form of proactive moderation. About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers. When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn’t a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum.


 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/19/newspapers-ban-climate-deniers-reddit-science

I think that's fair enough if a forum is explicitly there for discussions of peer-reviewed science. I think it's a bit harder to argue in the case of general public discussion though.


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## Dr Jon (Dec 21, 2013)

Bernie Gunther said:


> I think that's fair enough if a forum is explicitly there for discussions of peer-reviewed science. I think it's a bit harder to argue in the case of general public discussion though.


Yeah.  Better to have puppets like Lawson and Monckton make idiots of themselves in public, where we can see the hand of vested interests at work, than let them cause further distraction by bleating about censorship.


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## teqniq (Dec 21, 2013)

Not like we didn't already know just perhaps not the extent....

Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change



> Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.
> 
> The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.


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## Bernie Gunther (Dec 21, 2013)

Dr Jon said:


> Yeah.  Better to have puppets like Lawson and Monckton make idiots of themselves in public, where we can see the hand of vested interests at work, than let them cause further distraction by bleating about censorship.



Well, it'd be nice if the media at least classified stuff clearly as peer-reviewed science as distinct from e.g. crazy climate conspiracy theory.

It's not like that's hard to do. It's just basic journalistic competence to verify that the story is legit, which in the case of science ultimately means checking that there's a peer-reviewed source.

Trouble is, crazy climate conspiracy theory makes for lurid headlines that sell papers and it resonates with various other reactionary themes that appeal strongly to the sort of people who also like Jeremy Clarkson, hate cyclists and think nuLabour are socialists etc.


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## fredfelt (Dec 21, 2013)

Sasaferrato said:


> ...
> A lot of people making a very good living from the 'climate change' industry.
> ...



You really think that public money awarded to research is reason enough to distrust the science?  

You really believe that this money, which is awarded in an accountable and open way, obfuscates the subject more than the the billions of dollars funnelled to lobby groups by big business?  The very same lobby groups which started out to cast doubt on any links between smoking and cancer?


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## Bernie Gunther (Dec 22, 2013)

> Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.
> 
> The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.


 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change

This seems to be the actual paper being cited: http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing Delay - Climatic Change.ashx


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## Dr Jon (Dec 24, 2013)

I just noticed another study by the same author, showing that 75% of the income of denialist organizations now comes from unidentifiable sources.
Not just the Koch Brothers


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## Bernie Gunther (Dec 24, 2013)

They put the funding though something called the Donors Trust to anonymise it these days.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Current model estimates are getting it wrong.



Spoiler



Temperature rises resulting from unchecked climate change will be at the severe end of those projected, according to a new scientific study.

The scientist leading the research said that unless emissions of greenhouse gases were cut, the planet would heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100, twice the level the world's governments deem dangerous.

The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change.

Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, who led the new work, said: "This study breaks new ground twice: first by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favour of the higher and more damaging estimates."

"4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," Sherwood told the Guardian. "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet", with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

But is not that itself scaremongering? The Greenland ice sheet will take ten thousand years to melt. It's losing ~200 cubic km per year (measurements vary) and there's 2,850,000 cubic km of ice. That works out at over 10,000 years. Long after we've exhausted CO2-generating fuels - which will only last us another century or two - and long enough for normal CO2 levels to be restored.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> But is not that itself scaremongering? The Greenland ice sheet will take ten thousand years to melt.


Did you pull that out your arse?

Historically ice sheets have melted in a broadly sigmoidal fashion, even when the global warming forced by orbital variation was around 0.1C per century the melt rate eventually peaked out at something like 20 m over 500 years. 



> Meltwater pulse 1A was an instance in the sea level rise of about 20 m in less than 500 years,[1] perhaps just 200 years.[2] The meltwater event occurred in a period of rapid climate change when the Holocene glacial retreat was going on during the end of the last ice age. Several researchers have narrowed the period of the pulse to between 13,000 and 14,600 years ago.[3]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A

These are non linear processes, for example Jakobshaven has been accelerating since 1997. Other major outlet glaciers are beginign to show signs of accelerating. Petermann has seen its sea ice buttress beginning to break up. This is the huge ice shelf of deep sea ice that is a huge friction break on Petermanns outflow. But there have been two gigantic calving events, breaking huge parts of this break. Once they are gone Petermann will speed up, increasing its outflow. Other non linear feedbacks will be the loss of summer sea ice increasing temperature, pushing the melt season further north and later.






Other non linear feedbacks include things like as the surface melt accelerates the water accumulates at the base of the glacier reducing friction. And the loss of summer sea ice will rapidly increase temperatures in the far north. 


In the Antarctic things are much worse, there the two giant outlet glaciers of the EAIS, PIG and Thwaits are both melting back to 'lips', geological features that break their outflow. 

These are the moderate responses to current warming. 

Dont worry about all this 'sciencey' stuff. Stick to intuition and wild arsed guesses.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

ferrelhadley said:


> Did you pull that out your arse?



No, I did the calculation. Figures are available from Wikipedia and elsewhere. Even the worst melt figure of 239 cu. km per year works out at over 11K years. The more recent figure of 195 cu. km / year gives us over 14K years. Are you suggesting my calculation is incorrect? But you know what, even if I'm out by a factor of 10, to allow for the non-linear factor, and the Greenland ice sheet takes a mere 1000 years to melt, it's still well beyond the fossil fuel threshold.

Don't worry about all this maths stuff; stick to scaremongering.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> No, I did the calculation.


So you did pull it out your arse. 


> Are you suggesting my calculation is incorrect?


Clearly you are too stupid to understand my last post.  





> it's still well beyond the fossil fuel threshold.


What are you gibbering about. 


> Don't worry about all this maths stuff;


You have done some primary school level arithmetic. How thick are you that you think you can boast about that. Ice sheet melt is *observed *to be _sigmoidal_. 













Showing us all you can use times tables does not in any way invalidate the actual scientists making actual predictions. 








Still chuckling at someone trying to patronise people because they can do their times tables.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

ferrelhadley said:


> Ice sheet melt is *observed *to be _sigmoidal_.



I'm well aware of what sigmoidal means. But how many years of measurement of the Greenland ice sheet have there been? Not enough to make that judgement of the GIS. I'll also note your post-glacial sea rise chart shows next to no rise for the latter part of the Holocene Maximum, when it was as warm as it is now for an extended period.



> Showing us all you can use times tables does not in any way invalidate the actual scientists making actual predictions.



Predictions. Lovely things, predictions; very convenient too, especially over long timescales. So they can't be proved or disproved.

Don't put me down as a Daily Mail-esque denier of global warming. It's plain as a pikestaff that it's happening.  But reactions like yours do you poor service and put you firmly in the Chicken Little category.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> I'm well aware of what sigmoidal means.





> , even if I'm out by a factor of 10,





> But how many years of measurement of the Greenland ice sheet have there been? Not enough to make that judgement of the GIS.


Do you believe a) the sea level has been rising about 30cm a century and no one has noticed or b) that the Greenland ice sheet has been melting but none of the water reaching the ocean. 


> I'll also note your post-glacial sea rise chart shows next to no rise for the latter part of the Holocene Maximum, when it was as warm as it is now for an extended period.














> Predictions. Lovely things, predictions; very convenient too





> It's losing ~200 cubic km per year (measurements vary) and there's 2,850,000 cubic km of ice. That works out at over 10,000 years.







> Don't put me down as a Daily Mail-esque denier


No, you can do multiplication. That makes you a world expert on glaciers and ice sheets. Not a world expert, *the *world expert.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

Over to you then: how long will it take the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt?


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> Over to you then: how long will it take the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt?


I leave that for professional scientists studying the ice. I am not vain enough to imagine some arithmetic would make me such a person.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

So you refuse to state that my primary-school calculation is wrong, having denigrated it earlier? Put up or shut up.

Again, don't get me wrong: climate change is real. But idiotic posts like your attack on me do not help.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> So you refuse to state that my primary-school calculation is wrong,


It is wrong.


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## Quartz (Dec 31, 2013)

So give a figure.


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## ferrelhadley (Dec 31, 2013)

Quartz said:


> So give a figure.


Bigger than yours. 

As I have explained in easy to understand words, the ice sheets collapse is sigmoidal, (some of) the physical reasons for this have been laid out. Other reasons include that as the ice melts it drops in altitude, dropping altitude brings the ice surface to warmer air. c. 1C per 100meters. And ice sheets are warm at the surface due to accumulation of geothermal heat, so as water penetrates into the depths it can (i.e. has been seen too) remain liquid adding further lubrication deep within the ice sheet.


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## Bob_the_lost (Jan 3, 2014)

From a brief google there is some contention on the matter. Some people stick to the linear calculations whilst others point out that there are significant non linear effects that can throw it all out of whack. A paper by James Hansen includes this line: "An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway."

Bluntly we don't know and I don't have the time or background to know which time frame is more accurate, centuries or millennia.

What is obvious is that no reputable scientists are putting a hard date on when all the ice might be gone by, as it's too hard to tell.


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## free spirit (Jan 3, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> Still chuckling at someone trying to patronise people because they can do their times tables.


worth pointing out that the IPCC figure was specifically for thermal expansion only, it did not include any contribution from ice melt because there was such wide disagreement at the time about the likely rate of ice melt, as the latest data was demonstrating rapidly increasing speeds of glacier flow / ice melt that confounded previous conservative assumptions.

Data since then has pretty much confirmed that the later more worrying results seem to be painting the most likely picture of what's going to happen.

eta - IIRC


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## free spirit (Jan 3, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Over to you then: how long will it take the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt?


what level of temperature rise are you envisaging with this scenario?

If we're talking about 3-4 degrees rise by 2100, and probably at least another 3-4 after that due to thermal inertia alone, assuming that the current trend continues of the area around greenland and the north pole warming significantly more rapidly, then I'd estimate it at being largely ice free within low hundreds of years.

This isn't about the ice melting in situe as such, more about the sea ice breaking off, and increasing amounts of meltwater lubricating the base of the glaciers so they essentially float above the surface and slide off the mountains increasingly rapidly and out to sea to melt away.

Of course there is always the chance that it will melt so fast it will dilute the sea water to the point where it ends the north atlantic conveyor warm ocean current, at which point all bets would be off... that's what started the last European ice age (well, meltwater flooding in from the great lakes area from the melted North American ice shelf of the previous ice age).


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## Bob_the_lost (Jan 3, 2014)

free spirit said:


> what level of temperature rise are you envisaging with this scenario?
> 
> If we're talking about 3-4 degrees rise by 2100, and probably at least another 3-4 after that due to thermal inertia alone, assuming that the current trend continues of the area around greenland and the north pole warming significantly more rapidly, then I'd estimate it at being largely ice free within low hundreds of years.
> 
> ...


Doesn't Greenland have mountains around the majority of it's coast lines, which would slow or stop a lot of the movement of intact Glaciers to the sea?


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## ferrelhadley (Jan 3, 2014)

Bob_the_lost said:


> Doesn't Greenland have mountains around the majority of it's coast lines, which would slow or stop a lot of the movement of intact Glaciers to the sea?


This is why 'outlet glaciers' are so important. Glaciers like Jackobshavn, Petermann, Humboldt and the Russell glacier. This is where the ice is able to force itself between hills and into the sea. The ice sheet itself is 3km high at the top so acts like a 3km high blob of ultra viscous fluid. If you can imagine how water or mercury hold a shape because of the surface tension of a droplet*, well an ice sheet can hold a shape because it is so stiff it flows very slowly, but many features are only about 50 meters or less, so all that pressure from behind can push the ice over the hills and into the ocean. The problems are that the surface friction slows the rate of this flow. But the faster the glacier moves the more momentum it has behind it to over come the friction, the more surface melt penetrates deep into the glacier the more water that gets to the ground level and can lubricate the movement and as said up thread, the more than the sea ice buttresses collapse, as is happening to Petermann, the less friction is around to hold back a surge of movement.






The lowball estimate is 30cm per century from Greenland. No one really seems to know the high ball estimate. It may be a meter or more. We just have no real grip on what is happening in the Arctic ocean and how soon we will see that ice free for the 24 hour sun of June July. Also there is a fear of giant lakes of water building up deep inside the ice sheet and suddenly releasing pushing huge amounts of ice out with it. 20 years ago we modelled ice sheets as giant, static blobs of ice that took a thousand years to melt. Now we know they are very dynamic temperamental beasts who may have a few nasty tricks up their sleeve.

*It is not the same process but think of it as a way of imagining how a giant blob of ice with all that pressure can still hold itself back from just squirting into the ocean.

The WAIS on the other hand (the West Arctic Ice Sheet) (left side of this image)







Has few major geographic constraints, is often ground deep below sea level. It is showing deeply distrubing signs that its sea ice buttresses are "unzipping" all down the Antarctic Peninsula (the feature on the extreme left). The collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf for example and strong signs several other major buttressing ice shelfs are liable to go the same way over the coming couple of decades suggests that when the bigger ones go like Larsen C and the Wilkins Ice Shelf, the glacier flow from the Antarctic Peninsula could rapidly accelerate.

More over both the giant Pine Island and Thwaits Glaciers are thought to be approaching features that when crossed will see them accelerate.



> A major Antarctic glacier may have passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.
> 
> Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.
> 
> ...


http://www.newscientist.com/article...r-is-past-its-tipping-point.html#.Usb_xvRdXgw

Lots of room for worry and doubt. Lots of unanswered questions. 2 meters sea level rise over the next 100 years is a reasonable number, but that could be anything from 30 cm to pick a number. In all likely hood it is the hundred years after that (out to 2113-2213) when we will see the big big sea level rises (2m plus).


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 3, 2014)

The UAH team have come in with their figure for global temperature in 2013. An anomaly of +0.236C, fourth behind 1998, 2010 and 2005.

Caveat emptor: It is only one of the 4 many (and several other) datasets used for global temperature, one year tells us little to nothing about trends and the other results will likely be spread across the top 10 years. Notably though, the UAH and RSS tend to show el Nino years in a big way so for a neutral year to make the top 4 is interesting.


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## Dr Jon (Jan 11, 2014)

Just seen
Lack of research linking climate change and floods is a 'scandal'


> Questions about the link between flooding in the UK and climate change could be answered within two years, according to a leading scientist.
> 
> Prof Myles Allen from Oxford University said the only thing holding back the work was the lack of investment.


Of course there's been no investment.  Government prefers to deny there's any problem, especially when such an admission would kipper the property development "industry" in areas like the Thames valley.


Anybody want to buy an exclusive riverside development in Abingdon?


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## ferrelhadley (Jan 19, 2014)

There seems to have been a change in the ENSO forecasts. Last time I checked there was only a 44% chance of an el Nino. Now there seems to be some indications a strong one might be in the offing. But lots of caveats apply.


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## Dr Jon (Jan 19, 2014)

I guess we can expect a lot more of this:
Extreme Weather Wreaking Havoc on Food as Farmers Suffer


> “Extreme weather events are a massive risk to agriculture,” said Peter Kendall, president of the U.K. National Farmers Union, who raises 1,600 hectares (3,953 acres) of grain crops in Bedfordshire, England. “Farmers can adapt to gradual temperature increases, but extreme weather events have the potential to completely undermine production. It could be drought, it could be too much rain, it could be extreme heat at the wrong time. It’s the extreme that does the damage.”


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## ferrelhadley (Jan 22, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> The UAH team have come in with their figure for global temperature in 2013. An anomaly of +0.236C, fourth behind 1998, 2010 and 2005.
> 
> Caveat emptor: It is only one of the 4 many (and several other) datasets used for global temperature, one year tells us little to nothing about trends and the other results will likely be spread across the top 10 years. Notably though, the UAH and RSS tend to show el Nino years in a big way so for a neutral year to make the top 4 is interesting.


Noaa: 2013 tied for fourth-warmest year on record



> The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday released its global temperature figures for 2013. The average world temperature was 58.12F (14.52C) tying with 2003 for the fourth-warmest since 1880.
> 
> Nasa, which calculates records in a different manner, said Tuesday that 2013 was the seventh-warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.3F (14.6C).



Non el Nino year.


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## Dr Jon (Jan 27, 2014)

Polar Vortex Ripped in Half by Anomalous Jet Stream


> Average temperatures over a broad area of the north polar region are now in excess of 20 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) above daily norms for this time of year.


Ooooh crumbs!
We got a wibbly-wobbly polar vortex...


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 28, 2014)

Meanwhile in California
Current California Drought Is Driest In State’s History; Scientists Fear ‘Megadroughts’ On Their Way



> California is facing a severe water crisis, and experts fear it could get worse. Climatologists report that the 2013-2014 rainfall season is well on its way to becoming California’s driest period in more than 400 years. The country’s most populous state is entering its third year of record-low rainfall, and now scientists are raising the alarm that “megadroughts,” which haven’t been seen in hundreds of years, could be just around the corner.
> 
> In 2013, California received an average of just over 4 inches of rain. Downtown Los Angeles, which receives nearly 15 inches of rain during a normal year, only got 3.6 inches in 2013. It's currently California's driest period since it was granted statehood in 1850, and as a result, the Golden State is experiencing shrinking reservoirs, below-average snowfall and record-breaking low flows in several rivers and streams.
> 
> ...


Caveat Emptor: no single event can be blamed on climate, this may be natural variability and this does not affect your statutory right to say its all sunspots. 

But this could be quite a serious problem looming.


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## Quartz (Jan 28, 2014)

Can we give them some of ours?


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## ferrelhadley (Jan 28, 2014)




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## teqniq (Jan 29, 2014)

Taken from FB but posted by local news outlet who have also posted this on their site

Winter Weather Threatens Northwest Florida


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## Dr Jon (Jan 31, 2014)

Prince of Wales hits out at climate change deniers... labelling them the 'headless chicken brigade'

I'd call them the 'malevolent fuckwit faction', but guess the future monarch has to be polite?


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## gentlegreen (Jan 31, 2014)

He's a weird mixture of contradictions though.
And surely the deniers describe the scientific concensus as the chicken Littles and thereby headless chickens. ?

He's hardly the best ally - shades of a British Al Gore ...


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## Dr Jon (Jan 31, 2014)

gentlegreen said:


> He's a weird mixture of contradictions though.
> And surely the deniers describe the scientific concensus as the chicken Littles and thereby headless chickens. ?
> 
> He's hardly the best ally - shades of a British Al Gore ...


A mascot that the old folks will rally behind, I suspect.


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## ferrelhadley (Jan 31, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Prince of Wales hits out at climate change deniers... labelling them the 'headless chicken brigade'
> 
> I'd call them the 'malevolent fuckwit faction', but guess the future monarch has to be polite?


He can fuck right off.


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## gentlegreen (Jan 31, 2014)

*‘It is baffling, I must say, that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything - until, that is, it comes to climate science,’ he said.*

*‘All of a sudden, and with a barrage of sheer intimidation, we are told by powerful groups of deniers that the scientists are wrong and we must abandon all our faith in so much overwhelming scientific evidence.*

*So he disagrees when it comes to homoeopathy but accepts the evidence about climate change.*


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## Dr Jon (Jan 31, 2014)

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about his crystal weaving superstitions.
Good point.


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## Bernie Gunther (Jan 31, 2014)

Can't really have a lot of respect for the opinions of a man who thinks he's a tampon.


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## Dr Jon (Jan 31, 2014)

Yeah, forget about him - there are better things to worry about.


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 2, 2014)

.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 2, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Just seen
> Lack of research linking climate change and floods is a 'scandal'
> 
> Of course there's been no investment.  Government prefers to deny there's any problem, especially when such an admission would kipper the property development "industry" in areas like the Thames valley.
> ...





> Flooding may have shot up the political agenda but that hasn't stopped local planning authorities driving through housing developments in areas at severe risk of flooding.


 link


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## Bernie Gunther (Feb 2, 2014)

Climate change apart, the government are actively making the problem worse.

http://www.monbiot.com/2014/01/13/drowning-in-money/


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## Dr Jon (Feb 3, 2014)

Talking of Government fuckwittery, I see that the USG is cutting funding to GHG monitoring, presumably in the belief that if people don't have this information, they can't complain about it...


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## MikeMcc (Feb 3, 2014)

I see Tamino is back in fine form with some excellent analyses of temperature trend and arctic sea ice loss.  The temperature trend article is especially surprising:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/


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## Dr Jon (Feb 7, 2014)

Google Earth interface for CRUTEM4 land temperature data


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## teqniq (Feb 9, 2014)

Why global water shortages pose threat of terror and war



> From California to the Middle East, huge areas of the world are drying up and a billion people have no access to safe drinking water. US intelligence is warning of the dangers of shrinking resources and experts say the world is 'standing on a precipice'...


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## Dr Jon (Feb 9, 2014)

CO2 growth highest on record 


> Despite many promises, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) continue to grow.


Call me a cynic, but I suspect this is one reason why funding for GHG monitoring is being cut...


ETA
Good editorial in the Graun.


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## free spirit (Feb 11, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> CO2 growth highest on record
> 
> Call me a cynic, but I suspect this is one reason why funding for GHG monitoring is being cut...


pretty shocking that we're still getting Co2 growth records, but that blog article and its graphs are a complete load of shite. You can't just go applying 3rd and 4th order polynomials to a graph for no good reason, then gasping in horror at the rate of the rise it shows a few years down the line - the line is a meaningless extrapolation.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 11, 2014)

free spirit said:


> pretty shocking that we're still getting Co2 growth records, but that blog article and its graphs are a complete load of shite. You can't just go applying 3rd and 4th order polynomials to a graph for no good reason, then gasping in horror at the rate of the rise it shows a few years down the line - the line is a meaningless extrapolation.






			
				that blog article said:
			
		

> While many welcomed the warning contained in the graph, some argued against using higher-order polynomial trendlines. So, for those who don't feel comfortable with a 4th-order polynomial trendline, the graph below adds both a linear trendline and a 3rd-order polynomial trendline.



The increase in CO₂ is not linear though:





source

Support CO2 and O2 Measurements at Scripps!


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 13, 2014)




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## Dr Jon (Feb 13, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> *snip*


That whole series is worth watching.


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## TheHoodedClaw (Feb 18, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> That whole series is worth watching.



Yes, it really is. Look at one of the institutions that some of the researchers are from: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They are funded to do all sorts of things, and much of it isn't all that nice, nuclear weapon theory etc. It's a lab that isn't exactly a bunch of commie tree-huggers  and yet they are worried too, taking a long view for national security. (Edit: probably not the individual scientists, the institution)


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## TheHoodedClaw (Feb 18, 2014)

This one is the most alarming:


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## Dr Jon (Feb 21, 2014)

Typical cheapskate Tory:
George Osborne wants climate change tackled as cheaply as possible


> The chancellor told the modernisers that he accepts the need to tackle climate change but does not want to harm economic growth in the process.


Economic growth _causes_ climate change you tosser.


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## Left (Feb 21, 2014)

Why are people not screaming about this? Why is this not the biggest scandal in human history? If things continue as they are, human extinction is not just likely, it's inevitable within a few hundred years at the most. If we stop all emissions now we still face mass extinctions, millions of deaths, much of the world becoming uninhabitable, thousands or millions of years of unstable climate. Why are the deniers not total social pariahs? It's basic fucking physics and has been understood, and warned about, for nearly 150 years. What a fucking pathetic selfish bunch of apes we are. Maybe we deserve what's coming, but the rest of the planet doesn't. Fuck.


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## gentlegreen (Feb 21, 2014)

Presumably this is the next mass extinction event - albeit a whimper rather than a bang.
Plant life mops up the CO2 and lays it down as fossil fuels all over again and some small creature evolves into our replacement.


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 22, 2014)

Left said:


> If things continue as they are, human extinction is not just likely, it's inevitable within a few hundred years at the most.


Human extinction from climate change is extremely unlikely.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 23, 2014)

We're losing 200 species per day. 
What makes you think we're so different?


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## Left (Feb 23, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> Human extinction from climate change is extremely unlikely.



If warming gets above 2°C we don't know what could happen. With warming of 4-6°C human extinction is a real possibility. It becomes a certainty if emissions are not reduced in the next 50 years.


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 23, 2014)

Left said:


> If warming gets above 2°C we don't know what could happen. With warming of 4-6°C human extinction is a real possibility. It becomes a certainty if emissions are not reduced in the next 50 years.


6 degrees may mean huge loss of life but I have never read anything indicating that it would result in extinction. I cannot think of any scenario for human extinction barring total Venus style runnaway and that is somewhere between extremely unlikely and impossible.

Mark Lynas 6 Degrees gives an over view of 6 degree world.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 23, 2014)

Three paths to near-term human extinction


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 23, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Three paths to near-term human extinction


McPherson is a clown.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 23, 2014)

Yeah, really funny


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 23, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Yeah, really funny


Lets see his peer reviewed work on the topic then, not this dog and pony show.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 23, 2014)

I believe that the figures he quotes are from peer-reviewed sources, some of which are listed here:

Scientists Consider Extinction


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 24, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> I believe that the figures he quotes are from peer-reviewed sources, some of which are listed here:
> 
> Scientists Consider Extinction


So none, just currying the rather bland rice of other peoples work.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

McPherson links to his references here.  He is not the only scientist talking about extinction:


> Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.


link


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 24, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> McPherson links to his references here.


Anyone can whip up a nice story and stick some links on. Does he have any peer reviewed papers confirming his view? Anything that says we are headed to extinction. Because from what I understand is that up to 10C there will be enough space for humans to survive. I am not arguing for 10 billion living with iPads and SUVs at 10C but that extinction is not on the cards in any peer reviewed sources.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> from what I understand is that up to 10C there will be enough space for humans to survive


Do you have a peer-revieved source for this?


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## free spirit (Feb 24, 2014)

complete load of shite



> We’re humans, and therefore animals. Like all life, we’re special. Like all organisms, we’re susceptible to overshoot. Like all organisms, we will experience population decline after overshoot.



We're the only animal we have any evidence of that has the capability to innovate technologically to anything like the degree we can, so yes we're a special case.

We also have the capacity to be extremely wasteful, which is our current state, but also to then innovate to become extremely efficient in our resources use, which isn't a situation that applies to most other 'overshoot' situations.


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## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

free spirit said:


> We're the only animal we have any evidence of that has the capability to innovate technologically to anything like the degree we can, so yes we're a special case.


We were all now supposed to be living in a world where electricity was too cheap to meter, robots did all the work and humans a lived a life of leisure, went on holiday to the Moon, etc.

Don't believe the hype.


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## ferrelhadley (Feb 24, 2014)

Overshoot means you have too large a population to be sustainable not that you are going extinct. Europe before the great famine may be seen as in overshoot, they had no capacity to absorb changes in climate so when the summers turned wetter they starved as there were too many mouths and not enough grain.

Extinction means dropping below a sustainable breeding population. In the early 70s there was a lot of concern about a Venus runaway but since then it has not appeared in models. You have to dial up the Polar regions until they get massively hotter than the current tropics. That did not happen in the Paleocene Thermal Optimum. If you cannot show me the model showing that kind  of temperature range from the high latitudes in either the paleoclimate or the GCMs then you have nothing to base your extinction claim on.

Its not up to others to show that papers refuting these these temperature ranges exist in paleo or models.


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## free spirit (Feb 24, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> We were all now supposed to be living in a world where electricity was too cheap to meter, robots did all the work and humans a lived a life of leisure, went on holiday to the Moon, etc.
> 
> Don't believe the hype.


I don't, which is why I don't fall for this sort of illconceived bollocks.


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## free spirit (Feb 24, 2014)

As people have managed to survive for millenia living in all sorts of extreme environments from the sahara desert to the arctic, I really can't see any possible way in which climate change even of the realistic maximum 6-8 degrees indicated by the historic record could ever result in the complete extinction of the human race.

It almost certainly would result in large areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable, but by no means all of it, with huge areas that are currently uninhabitable likely to become much more suitable for living on - eg the siberian tundra, alaska etc.



> 55 million years ago, global temperatures rose 6°C over a period of 20,000 years or less. Like climate change today, scientists think that an increase in greenhouse gases caused this rapid warming.  This was possibly due to a catastrophic release of frozen methane deposits - like carbon dioxide, methane is a greenhouse gas.





> In the mid Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, the distribution of fossil plants, and large herbivorous dinosaurs, suggests sub-tropical conditions extended to Alaska and Antarctica and there were no polar ice caps.  The planet was warmer than today - scientists have estimated it was 6 – 8°C warmer. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were about 5 times higher than today.


National history museum

Climate change is on track to be a huge slow burning global catastrophy, but talking of it as being a significant extinction risk for the human race itself frankly only serves to discredit the person making that point, and unfortunately the wider scientific community and ideas they are identified with - ie it serves to discredit mainstream climate science in the same way that previous stupid predictions have done.


----------



## Tankus (Feb 24, 2014)

http://www.principia-scientific.org...as-his-courtroom-climate-capers-collapse.html
Great hockey sticks   .... Batmann


----------



## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

Er...


> John O'Sullivan is leader of a group of activists who deny that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has any global warming affect. In the beginning of 2010, they published a book Slaying the Sky Dragon," in which they claim increased carbon dioxide emission is actually good for us.
> 
> O'Sullivan has been promoting this book and himself, his other writings, his fascade company called Principia Scientific International, and soliciting public donations through false professional and academic credentials. He is falsely claiming to be a lawyer who has "successfully litigated for more than 13 years in New York and Federal 2nd District courts," a member of the American Bar Association, a legal consultant employed by the British Columbia law firm Pearlman Lindholm, and a science journalist with more than 150 major articles published worldwide including in _National Review_ and _Forbes magazines_. None of those claims are true.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 24, 2014)

Tankus said:


> www.principia-scientific


Jesus do you swim with human sewage or what! That lot effectively deny the existence of a greenhouse effect. They are pretty much banned from WUWT for being weapon grade stupid. You got any tit bits from answersingenesis.org?


----------



## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> weapon grade stupid


----------



## Tankus (Feb 24, 2014)

Only that Mann is trying to prevent "discovery" on his original , and er somewhat controversial study data in the court case..... Which are ....apparently the equivalent of the dead sea scrolls for the anthropomorphic faithful ....


----------



## Bob_the_lost (Feb 24, 2014)

Or to take a Denialist's view on it: That story is pure shit.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/...aught-in-a-quote-fabrication-fib/#more-103640
When even the echo chamber says it's wrong you might want to consider that it might, just, perhaps, be incorrect.


----------



## Dr Jon (Feb 24, 2014)

Tornadoes in the Snow. Yeah, This is All Normal

http://climatecrocks.com/2014/02/22/tornadoes-in-the-snow-yeah-this-is-all-normal/


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 24, 2014)

Tankus said:


> Which are ....apparently the equivalent of the dead sea scrolls for the *anthropomorphic *faithful ....


Worshippers of Thor.


----------



## Left (Feb 25, 2014)

Tankus said:


> http://www.principia-scientific.org...as-his-courtroom-climate-capers-collapse.html
> Great hockey sticks   .... Batmann



Come out with it, what is your position? Is it:

1. Climate change is not occurring
2. Climate change is occurring but not caused by humans
3. Something else

Very few denialists seem to pick one of those and stick with it, they switch positions depending on what's most convenient.


----------



## gentlegreen (Feb 25, 2014)

I know this is a huge detour, but I'm struggling to find a clear explanation of where the carbon was on the early earth and the processes whereby it ended up in the biosphere.


----------



## Tankus (Feb 25, 2014)

climate change 


Left said:


> Come out with it, what is your position? Is it:
> 
> 1. Climate change is not occurring
> 2. Climate change is occurring but not caused by humans
> ...


Climate change has always happened and will continue to do so with or without out us  .....


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## Dr Jon (Feb 25, 2014)

IPCC said:
			
		

> Human activities—primarily burning of fossil fuels and changes in land cover—are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents or properties of the surface that absorb or scatter radiant energy. The WGI contribution to the TAR—_Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis_—found, "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Future changes in climate are expected to include additional warming, changes in precipitation patterns and amounts, sea-level rise, and changes in the frequency and intensity of some extreme events.


link

also see


----------



## free spirit (Feb 25, 2014)

gentlegreen said:


> I know this is a huge detour, but I'm struggling to find a clear explanation of where the carbon was on the early earth and the processes whereby it ended up in the biosphere.


the air mostly, then absorbed by plants, then over millions of years (hundreds of millions of years) much of that plant meterial decomposed, formed into peat, or similar, then was either sucked into the earth at techtonic faults, or buried by volcanic eruptions, or similar to form pockets of fossil fuels deep beneath the ground.

We're now intent on reversing this process and taking this carbon from these deep geological carbon sinks, then adding it back into the active carbon cycle.


----------



## Andrew Hertford (Feb 25, 2014)

Tankus said:


> climate change
> 
> Climate change has always happened and will continue to do so with or without out us  .....



Well of course, but man made CO2 emissions are currently tipping the balance towards dangerous warming. It's difficult to see how anyone could dispute that.


----------



## Left (Feb 26, 2014)

Tankus said:


> climate change
> 
> Climate change has always happened and will continue to do so with or without out us  .....



So do you deny the greenhouse effect? Do you believe in the laws of thermodynamics?


----------



## gentlegreen (Feb 26, 2014)

free spirit said:


> the air mostly, then absorbed by plants, then over millions of years (hundreds of millions of years) much of that plant meterial decomposed, formed into peat, or similar, then was either sucked into the earth at techtonic faults, or buried by volcanic eruptions, or similar to form pockets of fossil fuels deep beneath the ground.
> 
> We're now intent on reversing this process and taking this carbon from these deep geological carbon sinks, then adding it back into the active carbon cycle.



I meant even earlier - when it was a ball of volcanic nastiness - were there carbide minerals ?
Or was it all in the form of CO2 and CO in the unbreathable atmosphere ?


----------



## free spirit (Feb 26, 2014)

gentlegreen said:


> I meant even earlier - when it was a ball of volcanic nastiness - were there carbide minerals ?
> Or was it all in the form of CO2 and CO in the unbreathable atmosphere ?


erm pass.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 26, 2014)

In terms of the early Earth, going back past the Cambrian and into deep deep time: it was in the atmosphere and badly needed.








We needed a huge greenhouse effect to keep the Earth warm enough for liquid water. But this was a precarious existence as twice something drew down too much CO2 and hence the Huronian and the Cryogenian ice ages. The balance is in part kept by rock weathering. The warmer it is the more it rains the more CO2 forms carbonic acid and reacts with rock to weather it and become sequestered in the ocean floor as calcium carbonate. 






When the earth became covered in ice the rock weathering stopped and the slow build up (we are talking tens-hundred millions of years) of CO2 got to the point where it could over come a white albedo all the way to near the equator and you got huge weathering and thick layers of calcium carbonate called cap carbonate 







This is a picture by Paul Hoffman who is credited with most of the work on Snowball Earth (Budyko a famous Soviet climate modeller had indicated this was possible in around 69, his work inspired the work on nuclear winter).

We know there has been water on the Earth for nearly 4 billion years, whether a CO2/CH4 greenhouse world was enough to keep the Earth with liquid water back into the deepest of time, we still dont know. Lots and lots of questions. But after the Cambrian explosion biology began playing its part sequestering CO2, but over 10s of millions of years, rock weathering\vulcanisity is still the dominant mechanism. The rise of rooting plants on earth may have helped trigger an ice age by making more rock available for weathering and during hyperthermals the ocean become euxenic so there is little break down of dead biomatter on the ocean surface, this is now thought to act as a mechanism for carbon sequestering during hyperthermals that helps bring the CO2 back in balance. But when some of that biomatter is buried it gets deep enough that the kerogen (basically loads of dead stuff) get heated and cracked into shorter chain hydrocrabons such as bitumen, crude oil and eventually gasses like methane. When these migrate through the rock and become trapped in geological features like you get.....








4.5 billion years so there is some skipping over various details.


----------



## Quartz (Feb 26, 2014)

The sun significantly being dimmer is only a hypothesis. Also worthy of note is that the Moon was a fuck of a lot closer which meant that the day (rotation period of the Earth) was much shorter and tides were much higher and the Moon was possibly close enough to induce noticeable tides in the crust itself, possibly encouraging volcanism and thus release of CO2.

Then there is the Late Heavy Bombardment when lots of comets hit the Earth, bringing water and methane ices.

Unfortunately, very little is known about the Hadean eon.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 26, 2014)

Quartz said:


> The sun significantly being dimmer is only a hypothesis.


Away and dont talk pish.

Basic stellar evolution tells us that stars get brighter as they age. Multiple lines of evidence over millions of catalogued stars, it is a function of the density* of the core.






As a main sequence star burns hydrogen to helium, the helium is more dense so the density of the core increases, increasing the burn rate of the star.


----------



## Quartz (Feb 26, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> Away and dont talk pish.



Hence the word _significantly_. I also forbore from mentioning that the Earth may have been closer to the Sun.

Actually, I should have used _insolation_ instead.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 26, 2014)

Planetary migration is extremely unlikely to have had a big impact from around 3.5 billion years ago to 0.5 billion when the Cambrian Radiation got underway.


----------



## Quartz (Feb 27, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> Planetary migration is extremely unlikely to have had a big impact from around 3.5 billion years ago to 0.5 billion when the Cambrian Radiation got underway.



Agreed, but I was talking about the Hadean eon.


----------



## Dr Jon (Feb 27, 2014)

Science academies explain global warming reality

Climate Change: Evidence & Causes


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Mar 11, 2014)

> On Monday night, Senate Democrats are hosting a rare pajama party of sorts, conducting an all-night “talkathon” on climate change – minus the pajamas, and definitely minus some of their colleagues.
> 
> Twenty-eight Democrats and two left-leaning Independents, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his top lieutenants, are scheduled to speak in shifts until about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The event is not a filibuster, nor is it related to any legislation. The intent is to urge a divided Congress and nation to “wake up” on this issue.



http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Dec...rming-all-nighter-Why-4-Dems-will-be-no-shows

You'll notice that they really haven't put their money where their mouth is with actual legislation.


----------



## free spirit (Mar 11, 2014)

cue jokes about defeating global warming with nowt but hot air


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Mar 12, 2014)

free spirit said:


> cue jokes about defeating global warming with nowt but hot air



The really sad thing is that these are the people who've gotten the message.  There's at least an equal number of climate deniers on the other side.


----------



## Dr Jon (Mar 15, 2014)

CO2, Earth’s Global Thermostat, Dials Up to Record 401.6 ppm Daily Value on March 12


----------



## ferrelhadley (Mar 17, 2014)

California drought.


----------



## Dr Jon (Mar 18, 2014)

I see that the entire Greenland ice sheet is going now.

ETA
What We Know


> The What We Know initiative is dedicated to ensuring that three “R’s” of climate change communicated to the public.
> 
> The first is Reality — 97% of climate experts have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening.
> The second is Risk — that the reality of climate change means that there are climate change impacts we can expect, but we also must consider what might happen, especially the small, but real, chance that we may face abrupt changes with massively disruptive impacts.
> ...






> Latest CO2 Reading
> 401.34 ppm
> March 17, 2014
> 
> ...


----------



## Dr Jon (Mar 21, 2014)

New research published by team from UEA:
Future heat waves pose threat to global food supply

ETA





> At the moment, a large part of Russia is experiencing temperature anomalies at the highest end of the scale, i.e. more than 36°F (20°C) warmer than average past records.


20°C!


link

and in the Graun:
The climate change deniers have won


> David Cameron, who once promised that if you voted blue you would go green, now appoints Owen Paterson, a man who is not just ignorant of environmental science but proud of his ignorance, as his environment secretary. George Osborne, who once promised that his Treasury would be "at the heart of this historic fight against climate change", now gives billions in tax concessions to the oil and gas industry, cuts the funds for onshore wind farms and strips the Green Investment Bank of the ability to borrow and lend



Watch thou for the fuckwit!


----------



## ferrelhadley (Mar 25, 2014)




----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 8, 2014)

We should give up trying to save the world from climate change says James Lovelock.

More of this sort of thing?









Or maybe some floating fields?


----------



## CNT36 (Apr 9, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> We should give up trying to save the world from climate change says James Lovelock.
> 
> More of this sort of thing?
> 
> ...


I'm sure there is someone ready and waiting to build them - http://www.newscientist.com/article...ng-spun-into-corporate-gain.html#.U0U0YahdUnY


----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 9, 2014)

Without doubt


----------



## ferrelhadley (Apr 12, 2014)

China Cuts in Coal Use May Mean World Emissions Peak Before 2020 



> Global greenhouse-gas emissions may peak before 2020 if China achieves a plan to drastically cut its coal use, reducing carbon production equivalent to Australian and Canadian output combined, Greenpeace says.
> 
> Twelve of 34 Chinese provinces have set targets that would lower consumption of the fuel by 655 million metric tons by the end of the decade, the environmental campaign group said today. That would reduce CO2 emissions by 1,300 million tons by 2020, according to Li Shuo, a policy officer at Greenpeace.


Believable? Perhaps not. But they do have a growing political problem with pollution.


----------



## free spirit (Apr 13, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> China Cuts in Coal Use May Mean World Emissions Peak Before 2020
> 
> Believable? Perhaps not. But they do have a growing political problem with pollution.


yes, but unfortunately it appears that all that happens is that the price of coal drops so much that everyone else starts burning it more, us included.


----------



## DownwardDog (Apr 13, 2014)

free spirit said:


> yes, but unfortunately it appears that all that happens is that the price of coal drops so much that everyone else starts burning it more, us included.



It's pretty obvious that humans are going to burn every scrap of coal, oil and gas we can extract from the Earth's crust. Any plan that assumes anything different is probably going to be bollocks.


----------



## free spirit (Apr 13, 2014)

DownwardDog said:


> It's pretty obvious that humans are going to burn every scrap of coal, oil and gas we can extract from the Earth's crust. Any plan that assumes anything different is probably going to be bollocks.


if we rely on free market mechanisms then yes, everytime coal consumption drops the price will drop and it will then undercut the replacement forcing it out of business.

Coal use needs to be capped globally, with the amount allowed to be mined each year being cut year by year, anything less and any gains in one country will just be offset by more coal burning elsewhere.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Apr 13, 2014)

free spirit said:


> yes, but unfortunately it appears that all that happens is that the price of coal drops so much that everyone else starts burning it more, us included.


We do not have the capacity to burn much more coal as we are closing many of our plants to meet the Large Combustion Plant Directive. 
With the exception of the US, I cannot think of many places where coal has been displaced due to cost. If the price of coal drops, it may become more affordable for some economies, but there is little else driving a big expansion of coal. If the EU and China are reducing their carbon per $ GDP then there will be a big pressure from them to price carbon, making their more carbon efficient economies pay. 

I am not blown away by the likely hood of China following through on this, but if they do then they will have a strong incentive to push for a stronger, more binding global treaty. 

We are obviously rather late in the day but maybe its a bit of good news.


----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 13, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> We do not have the capacity to burn much more coal as we are closing many of our plants to meet the Large Combustion Plant Directive the Tories are closing the last of our pits.


Corrected for you.
link


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Apr 13, 2014)

DownwardDog said:


> It's pretty obvious that humans are going to burn every scrap of coal, oil and gas we can extract from the Earth's crust. Any plan that assumes anything different is probably going to be bollocks.



I couldn't quite bring myself to hit 'like' here, but I have to say I think you're probably correct nonetheless. At least while we are subject to capitalism or anything like it.

(To deal in advance with the obvious objections, the Soviet Union and China would definitely count as 'anything like it' in my mind - see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism)


----------



## Quartz (Apr 14, 2014)

Bernie Gunther said:


> At least while we are subject to capitalism or anything like it.



Actually, capitalism offers a way forward as, under capitalism, at some point it will become uneconomic to use fossil fuels and more economic to use something else. Further, capitalism offers huge incentives to finding economic replacements.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Apr 14, 2014)

The other one has bells on it.


----------



## Awesome Wells (Apr 15, 2014)

As I understand it there is a certain amount (2%?) of warming that is inevitable, another similar amount is due by the end of the century unless something is done. 

What is the best book on this subject? Preferably aimed at the layman. Thanks.


----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 15, 2014)

Try "What we know" from AAAS as a starting point.


----------



## Quartz (Apr 15, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> I am not blown away by the likely hood of China following through on this, but if they do then they will have a strong incentive to push for a stronger, more binding global treaty.



After China it will be India and Indonesia and all the other poor places. Each will experience pollution in their turn and eventually clean up. And, I hope, in a few hundred years, it will be seen as a step in humanity's development and there will be wonder at what all the fuss was about.


----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 16, 2014)

I just watched Thom Hartmann interview Guy McPherson, who makes the following points:

there's a 40 year lag between emission and temperature rise

the 0.8° rise we see today is due to emissions up to ~ 1974
since then, we've emitted more GHGs than the total for the previous 236 years
the temperature rise for that little lot is already in the pipeline

we ain't seen nothin yet
link


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Apr 16, 2014)

There's at least a little good news today:



> In May, we reported that the world's greenhouse gas emissions rose to record levels in 2011, rising 3.2%, because China's jumped a treacherous 9.3%.
> 
> But there's a positive side to the story. Emissions in the US and EU dropped, 1.7% and 1.9% respectively. The warm winter helped, and the sluggish economy was certainly a factor, but the biggest change was the drop in coal use in favor of natural gas.
> 
> ...



http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23803

This is the important bit:



> *Since 2006, the US has reduced carbon emissions more than any country or region, falling 7.7%*, says the IEA. This is equal to taking 84 million passenger vehicles off the road, and is primarily attributable to using less coal.



(their bold, not mine).


----------



## Dr Jon (Apr 16, 2014)

One small step.
What we really need is a giant leap.

A 1000 mile journey starts with the 1st step: I suspect we need to quicken our pace.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Apr 16, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> One small step.
> What we really need is a giant leap.
> 
> A 1000 mile journey starts with the 1st step: I suspect we need to quicken our pace.



I agree.  Even if we keep cutting back at the current rate we're likely to blow past some very major tipping points if we don't pick up the pace.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Apr 17, 2014)

http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2014/0...in.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Denialst\liberatarian think tank loses case to maul through the personal communications of a famed climate scientist.


----------



## free spirit (Apr 18, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> We do not have the capacity to burn much more coal as we are closing many of our plants to meet the Large Combustion Plant Directive.
> With the exception of the US, I cannot think of many places where coal has been displaced due to cost. If the price of coal drops, it may become more affordable for some economies, but there is little else driving a big expansion of coal. If the EU and China are reducing their carbon per $ GDP then there will be a big pressure from them to price carbon, making their more carbon efficient economies pay.
> 
> I am not blown away by the likely hood of China following through on this, but if they do then they will have a strong incentive to push for a stronger, more binding global treaty.
> ...


both the UK and Germany had a major switch from gas to coal n 2012&13 due entirely to price rises in gas, and price reductions in coal caused by the glut in excess coal from the US, which in turn was caused by the glut of gas from fracking without any export capacity.

Most of Europe still has a huge capacity of coal plants that are operating on limited hours til 2016 that means they have the capacity to make a significant switch from gas back to coal if the coal price drops enough.

yes that capacity is reducing, but there's still huge capacity to replace gas with coal in the EU based on pricing, and we'll still have a significant capacity of coal plants even after 2016. 

On carbon pricing... it's a bollocks mechanism, completely useless in the face of a glut of coal as the price will just sink to a point where it actually is able to undercut gas regardless of the carbon pricing, unless the floor price is set so high as to make them uneconomic in the first place, in which case we may as well just legislate to gradually close them down / restrict operating hours instead.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Apr 18, 2014)

free spirit said:


> both the UK and Germany had a major switch from gas to coal n 2012&13 due entirely to price rises in gas


The Germans are shutting down their nuclear and the UK firms are running their coal stations with the remaining allotted burning under the European large combustion plant directive. 



> About 6.1 gigawatts of UK coal plant capacity is expected to shut down by 2015 due to the European Union's Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD). The LCPD requires plants to reduce sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter emissions. If plants choose not to comply, they can only operate for a further 20,000 hours - and must shut down for good by 2015.
> 
> The  map below shows which UK plants have closed since 2011, and are expected to close in the next decade (click on it to go to the interactive page).


http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/08/the-uk’s-power-plant-graveyards-what,-where,-and-why/


----------



## free spirit (Apr 18, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


> The Germans are shutting down their nuclear and the UK firms are running their coal stations with the remaining allotted burning under the European large combustion plant directive.
> 
> http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/08/the-uk’s-power-plant-graveyards-what,-where,-and-why/



The UK will retain approximately 16GW of coal generation capacity beyond 2018 according to Ofgem, the LCPD gave the plant operators the option of limited hours until 2016, or retrofitting scrubbers to clean up their emissions, so approx 16GW of capacity has chosen the latter option and will remain open under current plans.

How much coal is then burned depends on the load factor of the remaining plant, which in turn is essentially government by the cost of generation relative to other fuels. at 85% load factor, which is probably around the top end of what's possible, that level of plant could produce approx 120 TWh a year of electricity, which admittedly is 20TWh lower than 2012, but is nearly 20TWh higher than the lowest coal generation figures set in 2009 and 2010, before the impact of the gas price rise and coal price reduction was felt.

re Germany - yes they shut a lot of nuclear caparity, but that's not why they had a significant increase in coal generation. They had a 1.9TWh reduction in nuclear in 2013 vs a 1.9TWh increase in renewable generation, so the 2 offset each other almost exactly. They also had a 10.5TWh reduction in gas generation, which was a direct result of gas price increase and coal price reduction that also resulted in a 7.7TWh increase in electricity from coal.

or to put it another way, a 1.9TWh reduction in nuclear can't result in a 7.7TWh increase in coal generation.

ps this is a fast moving situation, so that blog is already out of date, eg Ferrybridge closed 1GW of capacity 2 weeks ago, not in 2015 as predicted on that blog and the linked pages.


----------



## teqniq (Apr 29, 2014)

Now That Solar Capacity Is Soaring—Koch Brothers Demand Tax on the Sun



> April 28, 2014  |
> U.S. Solar electric capacity has expanded explosively - 418% - from  2326 megawatts in 2010 to 12,057 MW in February 2014, an increase of 9,731 MW reports the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Solar has moved rapidly from a niche market to 1.13% of total U.S. capacity.  To stop the rapid growth of solar, which is threatening to break Americans from the death grip of fossil fuels, the Koch Brothers are demanding to tax the sun....


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 5, 2014)

New Research: East Antarctic at Risk of Unstoppable Melt  



> Part of the East Antarctic ice sheet may be less stable than anyone had realised, researchers based in Germany have found.
> 
> Writing in _Nature Climate Change_, two scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) say the melting of quite a small volume of ice on the East Antarctic shore could ultimately trigger a discharge of ice into the ocean which would result in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years ahead.http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2226.html
> 
> ...


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (May 5, 2014)

teqniq said:


> Now That Solar Capacity Is Soaring—Koch Brothers Demand Tax on the Sun



They're in for a world of hurt in the future and they know it.  You don't have to legislate against your competition, if you've got the clearly better option.  

Coal, one of their major products, is projected to increase in cost in the coming years.  Solar has continued to decline in cost (pro-rated over its lifetime) and reached parity with power generation with coal on both the east and west coasts last year.  The biggest obstacle for solar now is the initial cost of the install.  Solar is quickly becoming the clearly better option.


----------



## Quartz (May 5, 2014)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> They're in for a world of hurt in the future and they know it.



Really? Coal will still be needed for baseline load, and can be converted into oil for plastics.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (May 6, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Really? Coal will still be needed for baseline load, and can be converted into oil for plastics.



Coal isn't needed for a baseline load.  There's plenty of other options for that.  My utility has some coal-fired plants, but they've basically shut them down in favor of other options.  All of the new generation capacity they have planned is in renewables.

In any case, the new regulations coming out regarding coal-fired plants will further boost the cost of using coal for power generation.  They're either going to have to do expensive retrofits or scrap them.


----------



## Quartz (May 6, 2014)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> Coal isn't needed for a baseline load.  There's plenty of other options for that.



Unless you're willing to use nuclear power, which many are not, there are no alternatives in the medium term and longer. Gas and oil will become uneconomic within 50 years. IIRC there's coal for a few hundred years.

And then there's still plastics.


----------



## gentlegreen (May 6, 2014)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> Coal isn't needed for a baseline load.  There's plenty of other options for that.  My utility has some coal-fired plants, but they've basically shut them down in favor of other options.  All of the new generation capacity they have planned is in renewables.
> 
> In any case, the new regulations coming out regarding coal-fired plants will further boost the cost of using coal for power generation.  They're either going to have to do expensive retrofits or scrap them.


Or the right wing takes over everywhere and targets are scrapped for economic reasons. 
Australia has a dodgy PM at the moment and they're sitting on huge coal reserves.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (May 7, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Unless you're willing to use nuclear power, which many are not, there are no alternatives in the medium term and longer. Gas and oil will become uneconomic within 50 years. IIRC there's coal for a few hundred years.
> 
> And then there's still plastics.



You're certainly wedded to notion of using coal.  With the advances in battery technology coming online, its unlikely we'll have to rely on coal for a baseline in 50 years time.  We won't need a conventional baseline at all.  I've already seen studies for our local electric utility suggesting that it can be done now.

As for nukes, If I have to choose between coal and nuke, I'll take nuke.  Most people don't realize that coal produces radioactive materials too.  They're just more diffuse and released directly into the environment.  Its entirely possible that coal puts more radiation into the environment on the long-term, even factoring in accidents.

Not certain why you keep brining up plastics.  You can make plastic out of a lot of materials (corn and soy among them).  TBH, I'm not a fan of plastic.  We should limit its use to important industries that require it (medical and tech, etc.), rather than using it in _everything_.  We should start by limiting its use in food packaging and infant items.  It off-gases endocrine disrupters and shouldn't be in use for things put directly in the mouth.  (Not even BPA free.  In many cases it just off-gases different endocrine disrupters, sometimes in larger amounts.)


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (May 7, 2014)

Major US climate change report out today:



> The National Climate Assessment, an 840-page report, is the result of three years' work by more than 300 climate scientists and others. Information was gathered during meetings across the country, including in Nebraska.
> 
> The report acknowledges that a warming world has had benefits — some winter heating bills have been lessened, and farm yields have risen significantly. In the long term, though, according to the assessment, climate change's harm will outweigh the benefits.



http://www.omaha.com/article/201405...t-details-how-our-weather-is-already-changing


----------



## Quartz (May 7, 2014)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> You're certainly wedded to notion of using coal.



Actually no: I'd prefer to use nuclear power.



> With the advances in battery technology coming online, its unlikely we'll have to rely on coal for a baseline in 50 years time.  We won't need a conventional baseline at all.  I've already seen studies for our local electric utility suggesting that it can be done now.



Links, please? Remember that solar and wind and wave are not reliable.



> As for nukes, If I have to choose between coal and nuke, I'll take nuke.  Most people don't realize that coal produces radioactive materials too.  They're just more diffuse and released directly into the environment.  Its entirely possible that coal puts more radiation into the environment on the long-term, even factoring in accidents.



I agree entirely.



> TBH, I'm not a fan of plastic.



Neither am I but it's necessary for many manufactured goods.


----------



## gentlegreen (May 7, 2014)

Are there any figures available for total energy used by transporting food in plastic containers versus glass ?
Or rather Tetrapaks - I'm thinking back to the days when fruit juice was orange or pineal and it was in glass jars.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 7, 2014)

USDA issues Dust Bowl Warning


> US Department of Agriculture officials issued a warning Tuesday that conditions in the US Heartland were rapidly deteriorating along lines last seen during the infamous 1930s Dust Bowl as expectations for the US domestic winter wheat crop again fell after the USDA’s most recent agricultural tour



Not looking good.  Grain prices up 22% so far this year.


----------



## free spirit (May 7, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Actually no: I'd prefer to use nuclear power.
> 
> 
> 
> Links, please? Remember that solar and wind and wave are not reliable.


load of bollocks that.

very little in life is as reliable as the sun rising in the morning, wind blowing, rain falling, tides turning etc. when averaged over a period of time. You'll never see half the wind, solar, tidal, wave infrastructure being taken offline at the same time for emergency repairs as happened with the nuclear fleet a few years ago, robbing us of several GW of nuclear generating capacity for a significant period of time.

What you're probably referring to is that it's not dispatchable upon demand (or not very dispatchable anyway), but then again neither is nuclear, which suffers from the opposite problem of not being able to reduce output enough at night. Each is subject to periods of significantly reduced outputs as well, but these are relatively predictable, and allow for dispatchable but limited sources such as biomass, biogas, hydro, pump storage, and imports, and dynamic demand to be used as back up to cover these periods, plus coal and natural gas while these alternative sources are being built up.

What a lot of people are missing in this situation is that for the next 30 years or so at least, wind, solar, tidal etc etc have no need to power everything by themselves, the back up infrastructure is already in place, and over that period and for the long term renewables will become significantly cheaper than gas or nuclear generation, and will actually restrain the cost increases for both and prolongue the time period over which they remain relatively economically viable energy sources into the future. 

Long term only unabated coal has the capacity to provide sufficient power at a cheaper rate than renewables, but it would come at a terrible price in terms of the lives lost and made worse through the health impacts of such a policy from the air pollution it would mean. See China for an example of how bad that line of thinking can get.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 7, 2014)

Nobody seems to think about the massive investment required to connect intermittent renewables to the grid.
It's like building a whole new grid and still having to have backup for when renewables can't meet demand.

It would be much more sensible to spend limited resources plugging dependable Thorium generation into the existing grid and leave renewables for small-scale & local generation, which is what they're good at.


----------



## Quartz (May 7, 2014)

free spirit said:


> load of bollocks that.



Not bollocks.



> very little in life is as reliable as the sun rising in the morning, wind blowing, rain falling, tides turning etc. when averaged over a period of time..



Ah yes, _when averaged_. Pity about solar power not working at night and not so well when it's cloudy or raining or both. And wind power not working when there's no wind or having to be shut down when the wind is too high. And wave power not working when the sea is calm or frozen and where there is no sea. Until renewables solve the problem of baseline load for everywhere then we need something else, and nuclear and coal are it. Think of cities like Murmansk and Tromso.

You're right about China, though: the UK went through the same issue last century.


----------



## free spirit (May 8, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Not bollocks.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


nuclear's fucking useless in combination with renewables, and also incapable of supplying the worlds requirements without renewables, therefore it's part of the problem, not the solution.

and coal either kills people in significant numbers in direct proportion to the amount that's burned, and condemns us to runaway climate change, or it costs more than renewables.

You appear not to be getting it. Renewables do not have to cover the entire electricity supply at all times, we already have sufficient combined thermal, hydro, pumped storage etc to provide full back up for renewables as required, and will continue to be able to operate most of it for the next 30-40 years at least. Arguing against renewables is akin to saying you willfully want to pay for your energy in order to cause huge levels of unnecessary damage to the planet by just burning coal and gas (and maybe a bit of nuclear).

The choice is 

1 - High level mix of variable renewables, wind, solar, tidal, tidal stream, wave, backed up by biomass, biogas, hydro, pump storage, HVDC links to norway and iceland hydro and geothermal, and if needed gas and coal. 

Drax as a 4GW biomass plant would have the capacity to set the grid frequency for the rest of the plants to follow, other large thermal plant would be needed to be kept in reserve to black start the grid if needed, plus for back up.

Renewables costs are falling rapidly, will continue to fall rapidly, and will mostly be cheaper than nuclear, and gas generation before 2020.

2 - Nuclear plus a low level of renewables, all backed up by coal, gas and pump storage for morning and evening peaks that the nuclear can't cope with.

Nuclear is a far higher cost option than the industry had been making out, as was made clear by the rate promised to EDF to build a new plant, which is twice the current rate, and higher than the rates requested by the solar industry trade body by 2018, higher than the support for onshore wind etc. Uranium reserves at current concentrations are expected to be run down in the next decade or so, with the next most concentrated reserves being around 10% of the concentration, therefore requiring 10 x more energy to extract, and pretty much guaranteeing that the price of uranium will increase ten fold over the life of any new generation of nuclear plants without even accounting for the likely influence of speculators who could well force that price up significantly further.


So both options require high levels of thermal back up generation capacity (at current consumption patterns). One of them has seen projected costs increase dramatically over the last 10 years, and is likely to see running costs increase rapidly during it's lifetime, and is using up a finite resource that's likely to be unavailable in particularly useful concentrations by the end of any new plants life, so we'd simply be moving the problem forward a generation as well as leaving them with vast waste disposal costs to cover.

the other has seen continuous dramatic cost reductions for the last 4 decades, and is projected to see continued cost reductions as the industry expands and matures, will almost certainly be cheaper per kWh by the time first new nuclear plant starts generating, and uses an essentially infinite source of power, with components built to be recyclable at the end of their lifespan.

Both options are capable of providing a reliable electricity supply for the country for the next generation, Only one is likely to be able to sustain that beyond this generation of plant. Essentially we either switch to a mainly renewables based power supply now, or we do it in 30-40 years time when the nuclear plant close down.

so please do explain why you think nuclear is a sensible option to be considering?


----------



## free spirit (May 8, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Nobody seems to think about the massive investment required to connect intermittent renewables to the grid.
> It's like building a whole new grid and still having to have backup for when renewables can't meet demand.


we built dynorwig, probably the biggest engineering project ever to be undertaken in the UK in order to help absorb the expected nighttime over generation from the level of nuclear generation planned for in the 70s.

We've built massive gas pipeline across the country to connect up the LNG terminals at the deep sea ports necessary to bring LNG gas ashore to replace the north sea gas, which itself had a vast network of pipelines built across the country only a generation ago to bring it ashore to provide us with energy for a measly 30-40 years before most of it ran out.

What sort of madness would it be now to decide not to build the infrastructure needed to harness essentially unlimited sources of energy that can continue to provide power to the country down those lines for as long as the lines are standing (albeit with replacement generating plant needed every few decades)?



Dr Jon said:


> It would be much more sensible to spend limited resources plugging dependable Thorium generation into the existing grid and leave renewables for small-scale & local generation, which is what they're good at.



Thorium isn't going to be a reliable option for mass power generation on that scale until at least 2025-2030 even if some serious funding started going into it. It may have the potential to ramp up to being a significant player by the time that this new generation of plant is set to close down, but it can't possibly be built in time to plug the gap in the next 15-20 years.

And that's straight from the mouth of one of the only people in the UK to have ever actually worked on a working thorium plant, so I'll take his prognosis over yours.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 8, 2014)

Getting from Point A to Point B …..Quickly!!!!!


----------



## free spirit (May 8, 2014)

> Let’s also assume that in 20 years (in 2034) solar technology will be able to produce electricity as cheaply as wind.


erm try 2018, or likely earlier. small solar is already cheaper than small wind.

Arguing for thorium by arguing against renewables is fucking stupid. Thorium MSR is able to ramp up and down, it therefore can co-exist happily with renewables, so yes I agree that thorium could and should be a significant part of the energy mix by 2050, but what do you want to be happening in the meantime?

1GWp of solar PV was installed in the UK in just the first 3 months of this year vs no thorium, no uranium.

In spain Wind power is now the biggest single source of electricity generation.

renewables are delivering increasingly cheap low carbon renewable electricity now, not in 10 years time as for nuclear, or 20-30 years time as for Thorium. Climate change can't wait for either nuclear or thorium, only renewables can deliver on tackling the problem at any significant level now.


----------



## Quartz (May 8, 2014)

free spirit said:


> You appear not to be getting it. Renewables do not have to cover the entire electricity supply at all times,



Actually it's you that does not get it. The comment to which I was responding said that we have the technology to switch now - no nuclear, no fossil fuel. That is, using renewables 24/7. So I was pointing out that renewables cannot cope.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (May 8, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Links, please? Remember that solar and wind and wave are not reliable.



You're just bound and determined to make me work.  Here are a few studies showing that 100% renewables is possible.

US:  http://sourceable.net/100-per-cent-renewable-energy-viable-study/



> According to Jacobson, even if the United States only makes recourse to renewable energy methods which are available at present, it would still be “technically and economically feasible” for the nation to meet all of its power needs by 2050. - See more at: http://sourceable.net/100-per-cent-renewable-energy-viable-study/#sthash.zRBh1TnW.dpuf



Denmark:  http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/07/denmark-will-be-100-renewable-mid-century/

Canary Islands:  http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/05/spanish-island-powered-100-percent-renewable-energy/



> The possibilities of renewable energy are on display as El Hierro, the smallest of Spain’s Canary Islands, is set to become the world’s first land mass to be fully energy self-sufficient, when an 11.5 megawatt wind farm goes online late next month.
> 
> El Hierro, with a population of a little over 10,000, already has a water turbine that generates electricity, so it will be the first island to secure a steady supply of electricity by combining wind and water power, according to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Mail. The island has no connection to any outside electricity network.
> 
> The turbines will generate enough power to meet residential demand, as well as power the island’s water desalination plants. ...



Small place, but you have to start somewhere.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 8, 2014)




----------



## Quartz (May 8, 2014)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> Canary Islands:  http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/05/spanish-island-powered-100-percent-renewable-energy/



This one looks interesting. The others are just speculative puff.


----------



## free spirit (May 8, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Actually it's you that does not get it. The comment to which I was responding said that we have the technology to switch now - no nuclear, no fossil fuel. That is, using renewables 24/7. So I was pointing out that renewables cannot cope.


and the comment to which I was responding was this



> Until renewables solve the problem of baseline load for everywhere then we need something else, and nuclear and coal are it.


as I said, you don't get it, the problem is already solved, we have already built and are operating the back up plant required at least for the next 30-40 years or so, we just have to adjust the way we use it.

But if you had stuck to specifically questioning the statement about batteries providing all the back up capacity needed, then you would have had a point. I'd not agree with that specific element of Yuwipi women's post, although the batteries from electric vehicles do have the potential to provide a significant pool of short term back up capacity if the policy framework allows for it - ie to reduce the requirement for spinning reserve and allow for more reserve capacity to be kept as cold start reserve with eg 90 minute start up times. They also potentially have some use in assisting with balancing requirements at a transformer level to allow for greater levels of embeded generation / peaks in consumption... peak lopping in both directions essentially.


----------



## Quartz (May 8, 2014)

free spirit said:


> as I said, you don't get it, the problem is already solved,



I'm sorry, but I don't believe you.  AIUI renewables cannot currently reliably supply sufficient energy 24/7 everywhere. Are you seriously suggesting that renewables can reliably power somewhere like Murmansk? You know, with the sea frozen so no wave power, and it being dark 24 hours a day in winter being inside the Arctic Circle? Or how about Edinburgh for a couple of cloudy winter days? Sure solar's a great choice for Australia or Texas, but everywhere?


----------



## Dr Jon (May 8, 2014)

I think we need a separate "Energy Alternatives" thread for this


----------



## Dr Jon (May 8, 2014)

free spirit said:


> We've built massive gas pipeline across the country to connect up the LNG terminals at the deep sea ports necessary to bring LNG gas ashore to replace the north sea gas, which itself had a vast network of pipelines built across the country only a generation ago to bring it ashore to provide us with energy for a measly 30-40 years before after Thatcher sold most of it ran out.


Corrected for you.


----------



## free spirit (May 8, 2014)

Quartz said:


> I'm sorry, but I don't believe you.  AIUI renewables cannot currently reliably supply sufficient energy 24/7 everywhere. Are you seriously suggesting that renewables can reliably power somewhere like Murmansk? You know, with the sea frozen so no wave power, and it being dark 24 hours a day in winter being inside the Arctic Circle? Or how about Edinburgh for a couple of cloudy winter days? Sure solar's a great choice for Australia or Texas, but everywhere?


my argument has been pretty clearly spelled out in this thread, as I keep pointing out though, you appear not to get it.

renewables do not need to cover 100% of all power at all times, at least not within my lifetime. Renewables instead have the capacity to massively reduce our annual consumption of fossil fuels, massively reducing the climate change impact of our electricity consumption, and massively reducing the long term costs of that electricity vs either a high nuclear, or no nuclear or renewables grid mix scenario.

No other option has the ability to provide 100% of our electricity supply either, certainly nuclear can't go above about 50% without massive changes to our daily consumption patterns, and even then we'd not be able to get anything close to frances situation without new HVDC cables to places other than France or any other countries already acting to provide grid balancing to france. ie getting nuclear to anything like the French situation would require at least as much additional HVDC connections to the likes of Iceland, Norway etc, and changes to consumption patterns as a high renewables situation.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 8, 2014)

Can we move the energy discussion to a new thread?
Mods?


----------



## Quartz (May 9, 2014)

free spirit said:


> renewables do not need to cover 100% of all power at all times, at least not within my lifetime.



If you're to do away with fossil fuels and nuclear power, yes they do. 



> Renewables instead have the capacity to massively reduce our annual consumption of fossil fuels, massively reducing the climate change impact of our electricity consumption,



Very true, though reduction in pollution is a more easily visible result.



> and massively reducing the long term costs of that electricity vs either a high nuclear, or no nuclear or renewables grid mix scenario.



That remains to be seen.




> No other option has the ability to provide 100% of our electricity supply either, certainly nuclear can't go above about 50%



Nuclear power could easily produce 100% of the world's electricity requirements, let alone Britain's. Yes, new infrastructure would be needed, but it's also needed for renewables.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 12, 2014)

Just spotted Monster Kelvin Wave Is Barfing Heat Into The Atmosphere (via skeptical science)


> It seems reasonable to assume that water this warm and this amount of it, is going to dump a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and the resulting weather may not be very pretty for some people


Not just the weather either.  
The effect on agriculture & food production will likely be severe this time.


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (May 12, 2014)

Oh good, looks like West Antarctica glaciers have become destabilised http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...tabilized-big-sea-level-rise-all-but-certain/


----------



## Dr Jon (May 12, 2014)

Aye, scientists now warning of four-foot sea level rise, saying collapse of ice sheets is unstoppable:

oh shit


----------



## Crispy (May 12, 2014)

It is Oh Shit, but it's a centuries-long oh shit.
THerefore, not enough to change anyone's mind on fossil fuels


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (May 12, 2014)

Crispy said:


> It is Oh Shit, but it's a centuries-long oh shit.
> THerefore, not enough to change anyone's mind on fossil fuels



Not on it's own, no. It'll take something like a massive crop failure in the US to really shake things up. Dust Bowl II: Electric Boogaloo.


----------



## Dr Jon (May 14, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Aye, scientists now warning of four-foot sea level rise, saying collapse of ice sheets is unstoppable:


Er, make that ≥ 15 Feet 
Grim News From NASA: West Antarctica’s Entire Flank Collapsing Toward Southern Ocean, At Least 15 Feet of Sea Level Rise Already Locked-in Worldwide


----------



## Dr Jon (May 22, 2014)

Carbon budget blah-blah:


> We have to come to terms with two key facts:  practically speaking, there is no longer a "carbon budget" for burning fossil fuels while still achieving a two-degree Celsius (2°C) future; and the 2°C cap is now known to be dangerously too high
> ...
> former UK government advisor Professor Sir Robert Watson says the idea of a 2°C target "is largely out of the window”, International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol calls it "a nice Utopia", and international negotiations chief Christiana Figueres says we need "a miracle"



link

Also see:  Physical Limits to Food Security: Water and Climate


----------



## Dr Jon (May 29, 2014)

Peter Wadhams on sea ice: once it's gone, it's gone..


----------



## Dr Jon (Jun 10, 2014)

I see that the Indian Monsoon is unusually hesitant this year.
As temperatures climb into the upper 40's, power cuts have stopped fans and a/c units, leading to rioting in some places.



			
				forecast for the week ahead said:
			
		

> Abundant sunshine. High 46C




In other news, Russia is evacuating scientists from it's Arctic research station:


> 'The destruction of the ice has put at risk the station's further work and life of its staff,' said a statement by the Ministry of Natural Resources. 'It is extremely dangerous to leave the station in such a complicated ice situation'


----------



## Quartz (Jun 11, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Also see:  Physical Limits to Food Security: Water and Climate



That's decidedly chilling.


----------



## Dr Jon (Jun 11, 2014)

Quartz said:


> That's decidedly chilling.


Also see: *Peak Water*


----------



## Quartz (Jun 11, 2014)

TheHoodedClaw said:


> Oh good, looks like West Antarctica glaciers have become destabilised http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...tabilized-big-sea-level-rise-all-but-certain/



An update on this is that it's being melted from below by geothermal heat, not just warm ocean water. 

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/06/10/antarctic-glacier-melting/



> Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.
> 
> The geothermal heat contributed significantly to melting of the underside of the glacier, and it might be a key factor in allowing the ice sheet to slide, affecting the ice sheet’s stability and its contribution to future sea level rise.
> 
> The cause of the variable distribution of heat beneath the glacier is thought to be the movement of magma and associated volcanic activity arising from the rifting of the Earth’s crust beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.




I wonder if there's going to be a large eruption soon.


----------



## Crispy (Jun 11, 2014)

Quartz said:


> An update on this is that it's being melted from below by geothermal heat, not just warm ocean water.
> 
> http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/06/10/antarctic-glacier-melting/
> 
> I wonder if there's going to be a large eruption soon.



This exact scenario plays out in Kim Stanley Robinson's _Mars _books. Ok, he has actual volcanoes under the W.Antarctic ice sheet so the flood happens quickly for Drama, but it's a world-changing event if it happens. Many meters of sea level rise.


----------



## Dr Jon (Jul 3, 2014)

Prove that climate change is bollocks and win $30k
link

ETA
Just spotted this on Arctic News


----------



## Quartz (Jul 4, 2014)

Dr Jon said:


> Prove that climate change is bollocks and win $30k
> link



I don't think anyone doubts that the climate is changing. As they say, 'The only constant is change.'


----------



## joe_infinity (Aug 25, 2014)

It looks like there isnt anything particularly urgent to worry about after all:

*Global warming slowdown 'could last another decade'*
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28870988


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Aug 25, 2014)

joe_infinity said:


> It looks like there isn't anything particularly urgent to worry about after all:<snip>



How do you get to that conclusion from the content of the story? 

Maybe the impact is deferred a decade or two, if the mechanism described does what they think it does, but it's worse when it hits. 

So the urgency of the need to take mitigating action is not reduced at all.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Sep 13, 2014)

> US Industry and Energy Editor at the Financial Times, based in New York


*



			[URL='https://twitter.com/Ed_Crooks']Ed CrooksVerified account‏@Ed_Crooks
		
Click to expand...

**



@NaomiAKlein I mean that if that the only way we can save the climate is to end capitalism, many people would choose not to save the climate
		
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/Ed_Crooks/status/510862444869459969*[/URL]


----------



## ferrelhadley (Oct 6, 2014)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL061281/abstract?campaign=wolacceptedarticle



> With the extra-ordinary intensity of 170 kts, super-typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines in November 2013. This intensity is among the highest ever observed for tropical cyclones (TCs) globally, 35 kts well above the threshold of the existing highest category of 5. Though there is speculation to associate global warming with such intensity, existing research indicate that we have been in a warming hiatus period, with the hiatus attributed to the La Niña-like multi-decadal phenomenon. It is thus intriguing to understand why Haiyan can occur during hiatus. It is suggested that as the western Pacific manifestation of the La Niña-like phenomenon is to pile up warm subsurface water to the west, the western North Pacific experienced evident subsurface warming and created a very favorable ocean pre-condition for Haiyan. Together with its fast travelling speed, the air-sea flux supply was 158% as compared to normal for intensification.


*‘Category-6’* Supertyphoon Haiyan in Global Warming Hiatus: Contribution from Subsurface Ocean Warming†


----------



## teqniq (Nov 13, 2014)

I presume most people who are interested in this will have been aware of the deal between the U.S. and China to cut carbon emissions. Now, however the Repugs are vowing to fuck it all up.

US-China climate deal boosts global talks but Republicans vow to resist

Quelle surpise.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Nov 13, 2014)

Miami is fucked.


----------



## Quartz (Nov 13, 2014)

teqniq said:


> I presume most people who are interested in this will have been aware of the deal between the U.S. and China to cut carbon emissions. Now, however the Repugs are vowing to fuck it all up.



Given that the deal commits America to doing far more than China and sooner - i.e. is very much to China's shorter-term advantage - they're right to be angry as politicians defending their voters' interests. Remember that politicians are primarily concerned about the next electoral cycle, and maybe the one after.



> Under the deal, unveiled unexpectedly in Beijing early on Wednesday, China committed for the first time to cap its output of carbon pollution by 2030. Beijing also promised to increase its use of zero-emission energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to 20% by 2030.
> 
> The United States agreed to double the pace of the cuts in its emissions, reducing them to between 26% and 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.



However, Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election. And encouraging a lead in cleaner energy is very much to America's longer-term benefit. Fossil fuels are running out. In 50 years' time, someone may say, "You know, the real kickstart of the New American Age was Obama's agreement with China in 2014..."


----------



## ferrelhadley (Nov 17, 2014)

https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-sapiens-in-the-world-of-high-co2-concentration.html


----------



## MikeMcc (Nov 17, 2014)

Quartz said:


> Given that the deal commits America to doing far more than China and sooner - i.e. is very much to China's shorter-term advantage - they're right to be angry as politicians defending their voters' interests. Remember that politicians are primarily concerned about the next electoral cycle, and maybe the one after.
> 
> 
> 
> However, Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election. And encouraging a lead in cleaner energy is very much to America's longer-term benefit. Fossil fuels are running out. In 50 years' time, someone may say, "You know, the real kickstart of the New American Age was Obama's agreement with China in 2014..."


Actually it's the opposite.  America is already on track to achieve that target (even if that is primarily due to the fracking boom there), whereas the Chinese commitment is a lot tougher to achieve whilst still striving to grow their economy and improve conditions for their people.  SkS have a good article about this that has also been published in the Guardian.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/fact-check-china-pledged-bigger-climate-action-than-usa.html


----------



## Quartz (Nov 18, 2014)

MikeMcc said:


> Actually it's the opposite.  America is already on track to achieve that target (even if that is primarily due to the fracking boom there), whereas the Chinese commitment is a lot tougher to achieve whilst still striving to grow their economy and improve conditions for their people.



But China doesn't have to do anything now, nor reduce fossil fuel usage until 2030.


----------



## MikeMcc (Nov 18, 2014)

It does if want's to peak by then, a lot of the increase in energy generation has been by building a lot of fossil fuelled plant.  Chinas already impressive nuclear and renewable schemes will need to be increased still further in order to match the demand and start to decommission the fossil fuel plants.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Dec 1, 2014)




----------



## Bob_the_lost (Dec 1, 2014)

ferrelhadley said:


>



Dark stuff. Love it.


----------



## gentlegreen (Dec 2, 2014)

They couldn't afford to be so truthful in the USA.
All the gun nuts, preppers and private armies would start to mobilise and goodness know what else.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Dec 8, 2014)

California just had its worst drought in over 1200 years, as temperatures and risks rise 

In fact, there are at least three different mechanisms that are potentially relevant to the connection between the 2013/2014 California drought and human-caused climate change. 



> There is (1) the impact of climate change on the pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) off the west coast. One recent study suggests that climate change favors an SST pattern in the North Pacific that increases the incidence of the atmospheric circulation pattern responsible for the current drought.
> 
> Then there is (2) the marked decrease in Arctic Sea Ice due to global warming. Studies going back more than a decade show that reduced Arctic sea ice may also favor such an atmospheric circulation pattern. More recent work by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers provides independent support for that mechanism.
> 
> Finally, there is (3) the effect of global warming on soil moisture. All other things being equal, warming of soils leads to greater rates of evaporation and drying. This mechanism leads to worsened drought even if rainfall patterns are unchanged.



Russian heatwave of 2010, Sandy, the "storm factory" system we had last winter, the big European heat wave of 03, the Pakistan floods in around 2010.... there is a constant drum beat of once in 100\500\1000 year events. There will be and international news will bring things to our attention that we would other wise miss. But when we are headed for another near record hot year globally, it all does add up. 

This is not even "climate change" yet. This is about 0.45C above the temperatures in the mid 70s. Climate change will be when we start hitting 2 and 3C warmer. To put it into context: the change in global temperature between the last glacial (20 000 years ago) when Birmingham was covered by an ice sheet and the 1950-1970 average temperature was about 5-6C. The last time the Earth was at 400ppm CO2 levels, sea levels were about 20m higher. That is what we are baking into the system. Literly hundreds of years of rising sea levels and instability. 

Ho hum. More words and stuff.


----------



## Bob_the_lost (Dec 9, 2014)

In happier news, the Government has released another batch of the Green Deal Home Improvement fund! 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/green-deal-home-improvement-fund-details-announced

£30 Million will sort it all out.


----------



## free spirit (Dec 9, 2014)

Bob_the_lost said:


> In happier news, the Government has released another batch of the Green Deal Home Improvement fund!
> 
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/green-deal-home-improvement-fund-details-announced
> 
> £30 Million will sort it all out.


ridiculous policy designed to do nothing other than prop up their failing flagship green deal programme and disguise the massive drop in the rate of home insulation under this coalition.


----------



## coley (Dec 10, 2014)

Bob_the_lost said:


> In happier news, the Government has released another batch of the Green Deal Home Improvement fund!
> 
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/green-deal-home-improvement-fund-details-announced
> 
> £30 Million will sort it all out.


Do _*not*_ mention cavity wall insulation!


----------



## coley (Dec 10, 2014)

free spirit said:


> ridiculous policy designed to do nothing other than prop up their failing flagship green deal programme and disguise the massive drop in the rate of home insulation under this coalition.


Funny how the enthusiastic take up in the PV sector resulted in it being quickly reduced for domestic properties?
Had this daft idea,that following a nice warm summer lots of people would be receiving cheques rather than bills from the energy companies


----------



## ferrelhadley (Dec 21, 2014)

Major coral bleaching episode underway.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/19/major-coral-bleaching-pacific-may-worst-20-years


----------



## Quartz (Dec 21, 2014)

They can quickly recover, apparently:

http://www.livescience.com/28440-coral-reefs-can-regenerate.html

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/22/coral-barrier-reef-australia

A quick Google indicates that there is very little work on historic coral bleaching frequency.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 17, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2014-hottest-year-on-record/


----------



## MikeMcc (Feb 1, 2015)

New study shows that climate models don't over-estimate the warming from climate forcings.  No shocks, but it shows that internal variability can affect surface temperatures over shorter time scales, but these effects disappear over longer time scales.

Good discussion at the ATTP blog:

https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/models-dont-over-estimate-warming/


----------



## coley (Mar 2, 2015)

Capitalism,not concern for the future or the environment might be the road to staving off GW? Aye depressing, I know, but if it switches off FF big time, bring it on.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/even-at-10barrel-oil-cant-match-solar-on-cost-37540


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 17, 2015)

Last month was the warmest Feb on record ... 

http://www.reportingclimatescience....ruary-2015-was-second-warmest-after-1998.html

Top ten since records began all happened in the last 20 years.


----------



## teqniq (Mar 17, 2015)

We haven't really had anything you could really call winter here in South Wales this year. Couple of frosts and a few specks of snow, that's it.


----------



## coley (Mar 20, 2015)

teqniq said:


> We haven't really had anything you could really call winter here in South Wales this year. Couple of frosts and a few specks of snow, that's it.


Same here, not even a decent hard frost.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Mar 23, 2015)

Meanwhile climate denier Ted Cruz is running for president:



> *Beaumont, TX (CNN)* – Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions whether global warming is real, arguing that the "data are not supporting what the advocates are arguing."
> 
> "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," said Cruz.



http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/20/cruz-to-cnn-global-warming-not-supported-by-data/

How can we deal with climate change if the people in charge are scientific illiterates?


----------



## coley (Mar 24, 2015)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> Meanwhile climate denier Ted Cruz is running for president:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Aye, Obama for all his faults has good renewable credentials, the environment is screwed if wacko bird or any of his ilk get the job.
Be a shame really,as the US really seems to be 'getting it' as far as renewables are concerned.
Cruz and Abbot would get on like a house on fire.


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 30, 2015)

Hottest temperature on record for Antartica: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2944&cm_ven=tw-jm

The record was beaten twice this week.


----------



## ecky (Apr 9, 2015)

MikeMcc said:


> You read something that was wrong then...
> 
> It's pretty demonstrable that humans contributed pretty much all of the excess CO2 - A simple analysis of the quantities burnt (takes less than 2 sides of A4 paper and not even O-level maths..), O2 depletion, isotope analysis, etc.



Prove it or shut up


----------



## Signal 11 (Apr 10, 2015)

ecky said:


> Prove it or shut up


There is no need for anyone here to prove that. It's a scientific fact, not disputed by anyone except the wackiest of crackpots.

If you want to dispute it, the burden of proof is yours.


----------



## bi0boy (Nov 3, 2015)

Crispy said:


> It is Oh Shit, but it's a centuries-long oh shit.
> THerefore, not enough to change anyone's mind on fossil fuels



60 years in the latest study: Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica — that it’s inherently unstable


----------



## oneflewover (Dec 13, 2015)

COP21 climate change deal a 'huge step, says David Cameron - BBC News


> Welcoming the deal, Mr Cameron said Britain was "already leading the way in work to cut emissions and help less developed countries cut theirs".



Diesel power companies given big tax breaks under Osborne’s energy regime



> Wealthy investors to earn millions after £175m of National Grid contracts are awarded to dirty electricity generators



Once again Talk and Actions completely separate entities


----------



## coley (Dec 31, 2015)

Morecp


oneflewover said:


> COP21 climate change deal a 'huge step, says David Cameron - BBC News
> 
> 
> Diesel power companies given big tax breaks under Osborne’s energy regime
> ...


More  money channelled to the 1% at the expense of renewables! "greenest govt ever" like their endless comments re " hard working families" this lot don't even try to hide the fact they are taking the piss.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Dec 31, 2015)

Alpine Ski Resorts Hope Petting Zoos Will Make Up for Lack of Snow


fuck all snow in the alpine resorts. most lower slopes are snow free and not much expected anytime. the xmas time  brit skiiers had to make do with artificial snow and walks.

now the wealthy are having their keusure time affected....


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 20, 2016)

Climate change: 2015 'shattered' global temperature record by wide margin








Thats you fucking telt. Picking up pennies in front of the bulldozer.


----------



## MikeMcc (Jan 24, 2016)

Ars Technica have an excellent article on the need for data analysis and modification of temperature records, how it's done and the surprising result that the modifications actually REDUCE the observed trend.

Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data


----------



## bluescreen (Mar 14, 2016)

It gets worse. February broke all records. And the Arctic is hotting up more and faster than anywhere else.
February Smashes Earth's All-Time Global Heat Record by a Jaw-Dropping Margin | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog


----------



## ferrelhadley (Mar 15, 2016)

bluescreen said:


> It gets worse. February broke all records. And the Arctic is hotting up more and faster than anywhere else.
> February Smashes Earth's All-Time Global Heat Record by a Jaw-Dropping Margin | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog








February 2016 was one of the most stunning events we have seen in the climate system of the planet. The after effects of Tambora, the summer Arctic melt season of 2007, there will be a couple of others. But this is insane. Lots of people are saying "el Nino" and yes some of this was el Nino, but most of the heat seemed to be from the Northern continental land masses. 







The "cold blob" to the SE of Greenland is also very freaky. There is some evidence for a slow down in the North Atlantic Drift due to fresh water melt from Greenland. This is controversial but man, seriously its just wow. 

In modern records, the Northern Hemisphere has never had as many super intense storms as 2015. An incredible 21 category four or five tropical cyclones have formed in the Northern Hemisphere in 2015, shattering the record  of 18 set in 2004.

If Pali's timing wasn't bizarre enough, it reportedly set another record on Tuesday, when it moved closer to the equator than any other Northern Hemisphere cyclone on record.


Tropical Cyclone Winston is strongest ever to hit Fiji

South Africa remains in the grip of its worst drought in decades. Last Thursday the South African Weather Service announced that 2015 was the driest year on record and it shows no sign of abating. Those records date back to 1904.

Indonesia’s ongoing fires, the worst in its history, have been raging for the past six months, with no sign of relenting. They’ve pushed air quality to unprecedented unhealthy levels in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, while smoke has forced some schools to close, airlines to delay and cancel flights, and has left more than half a million Indonesians suffering from respiratory ailments. Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency called them a “crime against humanity of extraordinary proportions.”

Facing Mekong Drought, China to Release Water From Yunnan Dam
In response to a request from Vietnam, China is discharging water from a dam in Yunnan.

Australia gripped in endless summer as heat breaks records
The Bureau of Meteorology has said the abnormal conditions were affecting almost the entire country in early March, the month which marks the start of autumn

Northern hemisphere temperature breaches a terrifying milestone
Warming appears to have gone into overdrive, with the northern hemisphere going 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures for the first time, says Eric Holthaus

Another all time low for Arctic sea ice in February
U.S. data centre says February ice extent breaks record low in 2005






This stuff is just failing to register with people.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Mar 15, 2016)

> This stuff is just failing to register with people.



I actually received Christmas letters from people praising God for the unusually warm temperatures.


----------



## teqniq (Apr 22, 2016)

Nothing good, sorry folks

Study reveals greater climate impacts of 2C temperature rise

‘And then we wept': Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached


----------



## bluescreen (Apr 22, 2016)

Recommended reading:
Arctic Sea Ice Excellent blog with some very informed commenters

Arctic Sea Ice : Forum - Index
Posters really worth reading there include A-team, Andreas Muenchow, Andreas T, Crandles, Espen, Jim Hunt, Neven (obviously), Wipneus - actually, probably most people: it's a well-modded forum so there is little nonsense.

robertscribbler
Inclines to drama but well-researched and good for links and the quality of comments.


----------



## teqniq (Apr 25, 2016)




----------



## Crispy (Apr 25, 2016)

That's actually from 2013 - I can't imagine it's got better since.


----------



## NoXion (Apr 25, 2016)

Still waiting on those Offworld Colonies though.


----------



## teqniq (May 11, 2016)

World's carbon dioxide concentration teetering on the point of no return


----------



## bi0boy (May 11, 2016)

teqniq said:


> World's carbon dioxide concentration teetering on the point of no return



It's no more "no return" now than it was when it "teetered" at 390.


----------



## teqniq (May 11, 2016)

I am happy to accept that this is overblown hysteria or something along those lines but perhaps you would care to explain why.


----------



## 2hats (May 11, 2016)

bi0boy said:


> It's no more "no return" now than it was when it "teetered" at 390.


That statement could be interpreted several ways:

as (anthropogenic) climate change denial, or

as acceptance of anthropogenic climate change but equally consideration that through geoengineering we could also modify that which we have changed, and/or
as recognition that the current observations are a consequence of actions in the past (and current human activity has stored up consequences yet to come).
I'm with 2 and 3.


----------



## bi0boy (May 11, 2016)

I was just wondering what basis in fact there was for 400 being a point of no return. Not to mention teetering implies it could easily fall back. More a criticism of the Guardian headline writer I guess. 

But yes, the idea that any particular level of CO2 represents a no return point is obviously dodgy ground. It's quite conceivable that in 50-100 years we'll be merrily bringing the level down.


----------



## 2hats (May 11, 2016)

bi0boy said:


> It's quite conceivable that in 50-100 years we'll be merrily bringing the level down.



...and equally conceivable that it will be exponentially out of control.


----------



## bi0boy (May 11, 2016)

2hats said:


> ...and equally conceivable that it will be exponentially out of control.



Exactly, so there is no "point of no return".


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 12, 2016)

2hats said:


> ...and equally conceivable that it will be exponentially out of control.


There are two sources of CO2 that will be in play, human sourced and natural. Human sourced CO2 is mostly from fossil fuels and land use change. Land use change, aka deforstation is pretty limited (edited as a potential future source, there are only so many trees to knock down)and fossil fuels will peak by the economics of their geology without any new technologies or legal impediments to extraction\consumption. More over solar PV and onshore wind are beginning to compete with fossil fuels in the most adventitious locations. Given that once the cost of construction is paid off their costs will fall to very low levels in the coming decades, it is very very unlikely that human sourced CO2 will be rising at all by 2100.

In terms of natural sources most are pretty slow to react. Deep ocean clatherates are expected to only become a major source in centuries time, northern soils will be sources of CO2 but I have not seen anything to suggest they will be a source of some kind of runaway in the range of about 100 years. Ocean degassing is very slow. The only real runnaway source that is in shallow enough water is the controversial ideas of Semiletov and Shakova of giant clatherates already releasing methane in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, personally I am very dubious of this and the likes of world leading ocean chemist, David Archer has been critical.

With the exception of a handful of figures such as Peter Wadhams and James Hansen, almost every climate scientist and active physicist\astronomer\mathematician who blogs or communicates with the public on climate tend to downplay the "runaway" scenarios.

It would be my personal assessment that we will over shoot the 450ppm guardrail target, and thus likely over shoot the 2C target but by mid century technology will be acting as a very strong "pull" away from fossil fuels. We are now also likley "over the hump" in building public support for a political "push".


----------



## 2hats (May 12, 2016)

ferrelhadley said:


> tend to downplay the "runaway" scenarios.



Fair point. I should have written "not inconceivable".


----------



## oneflewover (May 13, 2016)

editor posted this in a separate thread, well worth a link here aswell.

Horizon, 2015-2016: 8. Ice Station Antarctica

Rising methane levels being the big risk, with perma frost melting (as mentioned in ferrelhadley post)


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 20, 2016)

India records its hottest day ever



> A city in India's Rajasthan state has broken the country's temperature records after registering 51C, the highest since records began, the weather office says.
> 
> The new record in Phalodi in the desert state comes amid a heatwave across India.
> 
> ...




April 2016: Earth's 12th Consecutive Warmest Month on Record



> Keeping a year-long string of record-warm months going, April 2016 was by far the planet's warmest April since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Wednesday. In the NOAA database, April 2016 came in a full 1.10°C (1.98°F) warmer than the 20th-century average for April of 13.7°C (56.7°F), as well as 0.28°C (0.50°F) above the previous record for April, set in 2010. This is a huge margin for breaking a monthly global temperature record, as they are typically broken by just a few hundredths of a degree. The only months with larger warm departures from average were March and February 2016 and December 2015. NASA also reported the warmest April in its database (1.11°C above the 1951-1980 average), and the margin it broke the previous record by--0.24°C--was the largest margin ever recorded to break the April record by. The seven warmest months in NASA's database, relative to average, have been the past seven months (with data going back to 1880); these are the only months in the database with readings of at least 1.0°C above average.


----------



## teqniq (Aug 19, 2016)

Yes folks it's one of those implied facepalm moments

Noah's Ark story is a 'fact' that disproves climate change, says Irish MP


----------



## ferrelhadley (Aug 21, 2016)

Some graphs
A huge storm ran through the thin, end of melt season ice in the Arctic. Pressure bottomed out at 966mb in the 16 of this month.






2016 will unlikely break 2012s records but in many of the datasets it will be a damn near run thing.

Among the many extreme events happening in the world over the past couple of weeks Louisiana has had a very serious flooding event and some truly epic rains, calculated at 1 in 1000 year events in places






Louisiana flood: Worst US disaster since Hurricane Sandy, Red Cross says
August 2016 extreme rain and floods along the Gulf Coast


You can see 3 tropical storms coming close to each other and begining to interact near southern Japan


Here is the daily global ocean surface temperatures.



To tie things together you can see the really warm waters of the US East Coast that is feeding the Louisiana storms. Also lots of warm waters in the Philippine Sea (between southern Japan and the northern Philippians)
Notably across the tropical Pacific the developing la Nina is very visible, that is the tongue of cold waters right on the equator in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The curly patterns to its side is where the Coriolis Effect is turning the strong winds into spirals that actually push warm waters into the deeper ocean. This helped explain what some people called a "haitus" in warming during the 2000s and early 2010s
Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus :  Nature Climate Change :  Nature Research

La Ninas pull cool deep waters from the Humboldt Current to the surface and push warm surface waters in to the deeper ocean.

Greenlands melting has hit 2 standard deviations above average this year (again!!!)






Looking at the ocean temperatures above one can see why, and where the energy to melt the Arctic ocean sea ice has come from.

A tiny fraction of the data we have coming in every day showing the climate changed world slowly (on a human time scale) adjusting to the 250 trillion Joules per second that is being trapped into the ocean atmosphere system.

Tick fucking tock eh. Flying anywhere nice this year?


----------



## ferrelhadley (Aug 31, 2016)

Hawaii getting Teed up


----------



## ferrelhadley (Sep 10, 2016)

Hmmmm thats very interesting





And that helps contribute to the death of another meme. 






Annual average temperatures on the UAH dataset for the mid troposphere now exceed 97/98's peak. The actual trend is statistically significantly upwards from 1996 to present.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Sep 15, 2016)




----------



## nuffsaid (Sep 21, 2016)

^ saw that on F'book. The date for the Great Pyramid construction is way off I reckon.


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## ferrelhadley (Sep 22, 2016)

nuffsaid said:


> ^ saw that on F'book. The date for the Great Pyramid construction is way off I reckon.


Something wiki'd this way comes.


----------



## nuffsaid (Sep 23, 2016)

ferrelhadley said:


> Something wiki'd this way comes.



you need to dig a lot deeper than Wikipedia to find the truth on that pyramid...


----------



## ferrelhadley (Sep 23, 2016)

nuffsaid said:


> you need to dig a lot deeper than Wikipedia to find the truth on that pyramid...


Have you also cracked the code?


----------



## teqniq (Sep 30, 2016)

Terrifying 'signals from nature' prompting world to ratify climate treaty at 'breakneck speed'


----------



## ferrelhadley (Oct 1, 2016)

Matthew Becomes the Atlantic's First Category 5 Hurricane in Nine Years | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Weather rather than climate but it looks like trouble for Jamaica. 



> *How did Matthew get so strong so quickly?*
> Vertical wind shear of up to 20 knots has plagued Matthew for most of the last two days, yet the storm has not only maintained its structure but grown at a ferocious rate. Dissertations may be written on how this happened! Working in Matthew’s favor has been a steadily moistening atmosphere along its westward path, which means that the shearing winds didn’t push too much dry air into Matthew. Once it developed a central core, Matthew was able to fend off the wind shear much more effectively. In addition, water temperatures are unusually warm throughout the Caribbean (and the entire western North Atlantic), with an area of high oceanic heat content directly beneath Matthew’s path. Such deep oceanic heat allows a storm to strengthen without churning up cooler waters from below that could blunt the intensification.


5th Cat 5 of the year for the world and latest cat 5 in the north Atlantic basin ever.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Oct 6, 2016)

ferrelhadley said:


> Matthew Becomes the Atlantic's First Category 5 Hurricane in Nine Years | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
> 
> Weather rather than climate but it looks like trouble for Jamaica.
> 
> 5th Cat 5 of the year for the world and latest cat 5 in the north Atlantic basin ever.


Hurricane Matthew: At least 100 people killed in Haiti devastation

It will take time for a full assessment but this is a really terrible part of the world to catch something this big full on. Its hill, the soils are easily eroded and many of the people have only makeshift shelter. It will be in the news more as it hits America.


----------



## Crispy (Oct 6, 2016)

Pointed right at cape canaveral where, somewhat ironically, the about-to-be-launched GOES-R weather warning satellite has been put in a protective bunker. This is forecast for tomorrow morning:






The cape is the filigreed bit just north of the eye. Most buildings there aren't designed to handle anything like 140kt winds.


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## 2hats (Oct 6, 2016)

The latest high resolution GFS runs this evening place the centre (and importantly the NE quadrant) off the coast, rolling up the coast to NC, possibly not quite making landfall.




The radar loop makes for interesting viewing.






Crispy said:


> Pointed right at cape canaveral where, somewhat ironically, the about-to-be-launched GOES-R weather warning satellite has been put in a protective bunker.


Actually it's secured in a clean room in a building, rated to category 4, several miles inland away from the Cape. Older buildings at the Cape (up until early 90's) are category 2/3 rated. Subsequent constructions are rated to 4/5. It might be the storm surge that does the major damage around there.


----------



## 2hats (Oct 7, 2016)

Now down rated to category 3, it has indeed stayed off the coast so far keeping the very highest winds off the land. The ECMWF, GFS and UKMET models (and others) see the storm looping back around clockwise and heading back S/SSW in the coming days.




GOES-R waiting in the cleanroom:


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## 2hats (Oct 7, 2016)

NOAA storm chaser aircraft are flying in and out of the storm collecting data, along with a NASA Global Hawk which is monitoring it from 56kft:





A NOAA P3 Orion investigating the storm, punching through into the eye, a few hours ago:


PS:


----------



## Sirena (Oct 25, 2016)




----------



## teqniq (Oct 26, 2016)

Climate change wars are coming and building walls won't help, top general warns


----------



## teqniq (Nov 6, 2016)

To deal with climate change we need a new financial system


----------



## nemoanonemo (Nov 6, 2016)

teqniq said:


> To deal with climate change we need a new financial system


Sea level rise. No problem we've got waterproof £5 notes.


----------



## teqniq (Nov 6, 2016)

very droll, and welcome


----------



## ferrelhadley (Nov 6, 2016)

teqniq said:


> To deal with climate change we need a new financial system





> What they didn’t notice is that abolishing debt-based currency also holds the secret to getting our system off its addiction to growth,


Funny how so many well off westerners think more people enjoying their lifestyle is an "addiction". 

If a state creates more money but there is not more economic activity for that money, then the amount of economic activity per unit of money falls, i.e. inflation. 

How do you build new solar and wind farms when you cannot borrow against the future economic return of those technologies and instead rely on only what is "dollar for dollar" available now? 
How do you insulate houses when you have constricted the available loans to only what is available now?
How do people buy more expensive upfront electric cars to accrue to lower lifetime ownership benefits of electric when you have manufactured a credit crunch?

This is not  left wing solution. It is a "I do not know anything about economics" solution. It hits some easy beats "debt" "bankers" "fractional reserve currency". 


We need to improve the material well being of billions of people while doing so with far less CO2 output. We appear to be closing in on a variety of technologies that can do this economically. Transitioning to a society where the energy is used more efficiently and produced with lower CO2 output requires delivering to the majority lifestyles they will find acceptable for the benefits.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 24, 2016)

Controversial opinion but Trumps win may be a lot less disastrous than a win for either Romney or McCain would have been. In the 8 years of the Obama administration the US enacted laws that encouraged renewables. Germany and China also had huge growth in them. The net impact was to artificially create a large market for onshore wind and solar pv. This means that in 2016 the lifetime cost of renewables is often cheaper than fossil fuel energy. This calculation leaves a lot out like back up and storage and so on but the numbers are sufficient that it is likely that renewables will carry on without federal government help in the US.

Why Wind and Solar won’t be Stopped

The state with the most installed onshore wind is Texas. 
It will take 10 years for new coal power stations to come online, solar will continue to fall in that period and likely kick on substantially in rate of installation.


----------



## 2hats (Dec 13, 2016)

A couple of interesting visualisations of HadCRUT4 (global surface temperature anomalies dataset derived from observations back to 1850).

Spot the trend:



A MetOffice visualisation of the same dataset:

which you can investigate yourself interactively here.

e2a: A nice visualisation of the uncertainty of the HadCRUT observations:




in which the trend is even clear when it is broken down on a monthly basis:


----------



## 2hats (Jan 5, 2017)

Researchers at Berkeley, the University of York and JPL have confirmed the original findings of NOAA research a couple of years ago (and more recent analysis by the Japanese Meteorological Agency) - namely that there is no global warming hiatus (an apparent slowdown in ocean warming in the last decade). Sea surface temperatures have been underestimated.

Essentially the 'slowdown' was a systematic error in ship based measurements (which run back to the 1950's) arising from the methodology (water was drawn into the ships to measure via their engine rooms, thus biasing the result). Correcting this bias the ship collected data now better fits with buoy, Argo float and satellite measurements (which constitute the bulk of contemporary measurements) and also with much older ship based data that involved directly measuring the temperature of water manually scooped from the ocean. 





Past evaluations also need to account for a second effect of changing shipping routes and when doing so this underlines the bias in ship based measurements.
Paper - DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1601207
BBC News item.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 5, 2017)

2hats said:


> Essentially the 'slowdown' was a systematic error in ship based measurements (which run back to the 1950's) arising from the methodology (water was drawn into the ships to measure via their engine rooms, thus biasing the result). Correcting this bias the ship collected data now better fits with buoy, Argo float and satellite measurements (which constitute the bulk of contemporary measurements) and also with much older ship based data that involved directly measuring the temperature of water manually scooped from the ocean.


As I understand it there were several "discontinuities",  one was that the ships of the 90s and 2000s had gotten bigger thus the engine inlet was deeper and drawing in slightly colder water. Another correction was the Argos floats were colder as the temperature was not taken inside a ship. As I understand their methodology it was to build datasets that looked at the ship inlet only, the satellite sea surface temperature only and the buoy only. From this they showed the same trend but that by weighting equally for ships and buoys the Hadley record had an uncorrected bias to the increasing size of ships over the past 20 or so years. The Karl et al 2015 paper that caused all the fuss seems to have gotten its adjustments correct.

Worth pointing out that even with this adjustment the actual trend form 98-2012 was lower than "expected". Not a pause of hiatus but still lower, that is because it starts on a el Nino and ends with a couple of strong la Ninas. That is why people prefer 30 year trends, it tends to even out any ENSO and solar cycle biases.


edited to exclude the bucket\engine inlet switch which happened before the period the paper looks at.


----------



## 2hats (Jan 5, 2017)

ferrelhadley said:


> their methodology it was to build datasets that looked at the ship inlet only, the satellite sea surface temperature only and the buoy only. From this they showed the same trend but that by weighting equally for ships and buoys the Hadley record had an uncorrected bias to the increasing size of ships over the past 20 or so years. The Karl et al 2015 paper that caused all the fuss seems to have gotten its adjustments correct.


That's pretty much it: examining the data separately rather than trying to combine them - as per the separate traces in the plot they produced (above).


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jan 5, 2017)

It is worth pointing out to anyone interested in this topic that the Karl 2015 trend from 1979 (start of the satellite record) to 2017 is actually lower than the RSS satellite dataset and near equal to the (recently adjusted) UAH dataset. 
I say this because "but satellites" and "Karl cooked the books" are popular refrains to the deniers to the point the US House Science, Space and Technology Comittee tweeted:


----------



## 2hats (Jan 23, 2017)

Crispy said:


> the about-to-be-launched GOES-R weather warning satellite


GOES-R, now GOES-16 is in on-orbit testing right now (due to be declared fully operational in November) but some images and movies from the hi-res Advanced Baseline Imager (which can scan the full Earth disk in 15 minutes, target specific regions of interest every 30 seconds) have been released.








More here. GOES-S to follow in Spring 2018.


----------



## Mr.Bishie (Feb 14, 2017)

Just read this to cheer myself up;

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/


----------



## Signal 11 (Feb 14, 2017)

More realistic assessments here and here.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 25, 2017)

> The level of oxygen in our oceans has dropped over the past half-century, and human activity such as burning fossil fuels and dumping fertilisers in the sea is to blame, according to a new study.
> 
> Researchers studied five decades of data in the most comprehensive survey of ocean oxygen levels ever carried out, and found that the amount of oxygen in the world's oceans has reduced by 2 percent.


Oxygen Levels in the Ocean Are Dropping, and It's All Because of Us


----------



## teqniq (Mar 31, 2017)

Two articles today:

In the US: Republican climate sceptics call ‘insane’ hearing which backfires as expert witness calls for carbon tax

Meanwhile in the UK: Climate sceptics say they should have right to 'mislead public' because of free speech


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 1, 2017)

More the politics than science of climate but recent polling in the states is a little eye opening. 






















Global Warming Concern at Three-Decade High in US


----------



## Signal 11 (May 3, 2017)

Article and clips from a 1981 ITV documentary:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/warming-warning-1981-tv-documentary-warned-climate-change


----------



## teqniq (May 25, 2017)

Nearly all Brits want Theresa May to talk to Donald Trump about climate change, poll reveals

In all probability like fuck she will though.


----------



## stavros (May 25, 2017)

Would he listen though?


----------



## stavros (May 26, 2017)

The new director of the World Health Organisation is pushing the climate change agenda from a public health standpoint (link is in French).


----------



## stavros (May 28, 2017)

Trump is the only G7 leader not to commit to the Paris agreement at their shindig in Italy. The others have all backed it in unison.


----------



## teqniq (May 29, 2017)

teqniq said:


> Nearly all Brits want Theresa May to talk to Donald Trump about climate change, poll reveals
> 
> In all probability like fuck she will though.


Theresa May accused of being ‘Donald Trump’s mole’ in Europe after UK tries to water down EU climate change policy


----------



## Andrew Hertford (May 31, 2017)

This from the Independent just now...

Donald Trump 'to withdraw from Paris climate change deal'

The Indie not always reliable, but terrible news if true.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 31, 2017)

indy on the money apparently


----------



## teqniq (May 31, 2017)

Twats. Time for boycotts/sanctions methinks. In an ideal wold of course.


----------



## NoXion (May 31, 2017)

Fuck. This can only make things worse in the longer run. How much worse will depend on what the rest of the world does, and whether saner heads will prevail in the US administration in the future.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 31, 2017)

NoXion said:


> Fuck. This can only make things worse in the longer run. How much worse will depend on what the rest of the world does, and whether saner heads will prevail in the US administration in the future.


start writing to senators and congressmen and -women to start impeachment proceedings.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 31, 2017)

Mr.Bishie said:


> Just read this to cheer myself up;
> 
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/


you might want to move to higher ground.


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 31, 2017)

Mr.Bishie said:


> Just read this to cheer myself up;
> 
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/





> The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result.


This is just a rehashing of the "East Siberian Ice Shelf" story that has been doing the round for about 10 years now. Shakhova, Semiletov and Wadhams, the main propagators have been discredited by much of the Arctic research community and are considered very fringe. 

People can believe what they like but I would suggest people steer well clear of that kind of dreck.


----------



## stavros (May 31, 2017)

Pickman's model said:


> start writing to senators and congressmen and -women to start impeachment proceedings.



I've had a brief look at Wikipedia and, whilst I'm fairly sure an assassination would default to a Mike Pence presidency, would a successfully upheld impeachment do the same? If so, I'm not sure it'd see any change in this policy.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 31, 2017)

stavros said:


> I've had a brief look at Wikipedia and, whilst I'm fairly sure an assassination would default to a Mike Pence presidency, would a successfully upheld impeachment do the same? If so, I'm not sure it'd see any change in this policy.


Consider more drastic action


----------



## stavros (Jun 1, 2017)

So he's just gone and pulled them out. I'm not sure anything akin to this has been done by anyone before, so the rest of the world needs to think about what we can do.

I don't suspect this issue is likely to rocket up the GE agenda in the next week as a result though.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jun 1, 2017)

stavros said:


> So he's just gone and pulled them out. I'm not sure anything akin to this has been done by anyone before, so the rest of the world needs to think about what we can do.


The US refused to ratify Kyoto


----------



## teqniq (Jun 4, 2017)




----------



## ferrelhadley (Jun 15, 2017)

Possible early signs of the disintegration of the Ross Ice Shelf. 





> In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places. The total area affected by melt was 300,000 square miles, or larger than the state of Texas, the scientists report.
> 
> That’s bad news because surface melting could work hand in hand with an already documented trend of ocean-driven melting to compromise West Antarctica, which contains over 10 feet of potential sea level rise.
> 
> “It provides us with a possible glimpse of the future,” said David Bromwich, an Antarctic expert at Ohio State University and one of the study’s authors. The paper appeared in Nature Communications.


----------



## MikeMcc (Jun 22, 2017)

On the plus side, a number of significant states in the US (lead by CA) have declared that they will fulfill the requirements of the Paris Accord.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jun 30, 2017)

https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/RSS-tlt-v3-v4-diffs-1024x878.png 


 There has been a major revision to the RSS dataset that has been featured heavily by skeptics.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/major-correction-to-satellite-data-shows-140-faster-warming-since-1998

Now shown to be warming faster than the surface, the person submitting it was Carl Mears who scotched the old school "satellites show cooling" in the mid 2000s.


----------



## MikeMcc (Jul 1, 2017)

I 'should' be happy that the results trash some 'skeptic' arguments.  Unfortunately they indicate that the warming is worse than expected!


----------



## 2hats (Oct 30, 2017)

The WMO’s latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin is out and it emphasises that the 2016-2017 increase, at 3.3ppm, is some 50% greater than the previous year and the largest recorded annual increase on record.


> Over the last 800 000 years, pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 content remained below 280 ppm, but it has now risen to the 2016 global average of 403.3 ppm. From the most-recent high-resolution reconstructions from ice cores, it is possible to observe that changes in CO2 have never been as fast as in the past 150 years.


They also highlight that atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1853 parts per billion (ppb).

More in the WMO press release here.


----------



## teqniq (Nov 7, 2017)

FFS

Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change



> President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.
> 
> The row has erupted after a key polar satellite broke down a few days ago, leaving the US with only three ageing ones, each operating long past their shelf lives, to measure the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Scientists say there is no chance a new one can now be launched until 2023 or later. None of the current satellites will still be in operation then.





> The crisis has been worsened because the US Congress this year insisted that a backup sea-ice probe had to be dismantled because it did not want to provide funds to keep it in storage. Congress is currently under the control of Republicans, who are antagonistic to climate science and the study of global warming....


----------



## yield (Mar 23, 2018)

Chevron’s lawyer, speaking for major oil companies, says climate change is real and it’s your fault
Mar 22, 2018


> In a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, major oil companies concurred with the “scientific consensus,” saying it was “extremely likely” that human activity has been driving global warming since the middle of the 20th century. They just don’t think they can be sued for it.


----------



## yield (Apr 15, 2018)

Gay Rights Lawyer Immolates Self in NYC in Ecology Protest
APRIL 15, 2018


> A lawyer who burned himself to death in a grisly protest against ecological destruction was a nationally known gay rights advocate and lead attorney in a famous case involving transgender murder victim Brandon Teena.
> 
> The charred remains of 60-year-old David Buckel were found in a grassy meadow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park at dawn Saturday, as early-morning cyclists and joggers strode by. He left a suicide note in a shopping cart near his body, writing that he hoped his act would bring attention to the need to protect the environment.
> 
> "Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves," the note read, according to the New York Times which received an emailed copy.


----------



## nuffsaid (Apr 26, 2018)

A damning read...very damning:

'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

Also

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children


----------



## yield (Apr 26, 2018)

nuffsaid said:


> A damning read...very damning:
> 
> 'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention


Fucking grim reading that.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Apr 26, 2018)

yield said:


> Gay Rights Lawyer Immolates Self in NYC in Ecology Protest
> APRIL 15, 2018



This was the friend of a friend, although I didn't know him. 

The Brandon Tina case happened where I live.  The local reporting was pretty awful.... basically blaming him for his own rape and murder for being different.  In part, I blame one of the churches in town.  Brandon Tina had been getting "counseling" at a fundie mega-church and was eventually outed to the congregation and denounced as a "sinner" -- as if the rest of those fuckers aren't.


----------



## yield (Apr 27, 2018)

Don't know much about the case. I've seen Boys Don't Cry but don't know how close that was to reality.

Churches like that the world over. Full of hypocrites.

It's sick that they're trying to pathologise David Buckel's protest.


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jul 18, 2018)

Anomalous


----------



## 2hats (Jul 19, 2018)

TheHoodedClaw said:


> Anomalous



That’s inside the Arctic Circle. Where today temperatures topped 32 degC. Over 60 wildfires in Sweden with more in Norway, Finland, Russia. Sweden has requested international assistance.


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jul 19, 2018)

2hats said:


> That’s inside the Arctic Circle. Where today temperatures topped 32 degC. Over 60 wildfires in Sweden with more in Norway, Finland, Russia. Sweden has requested international assistance.



Yep. It's very difficult to define a tipping point, much less having enough data to establish that one has happened, but y'know...


----------



## Ralph Llama (Jul 19, 2018)

So Exxon, the biggest collector and collator of climate change data, has been in the dock for withholding data.




> Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura T. Healey (D) has authority under state law to investigate whether ExxonMobil Corp. suppressed information related to global climate change, the Bay State’s highest court ruled on Apr. 13.


AG can seek ExxonMobil climate-change data, Massachusetts court rules




> By Ucilia Wang
> 
> *New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood has asked for a court order to force ExxonMobil to turn over financial documents she said the company has withheld during her office’s investigation into whether the company misled shareholders and the public about climate change.*
> In a request filed last week, Underwood said the state’s investigation has already turned up evidence that the oil company used one set of data to estimate climate risk it shares publicly and a second set of numbers for its internal calculations. The state subpoenaed Exxon for documents it believes contain the second set of numbers but has yet to receive them.
> ...


NY attorney general accuses Exxon of withholding key climate documents

Yay!


----------



## 2hats (Jul 19, 2018)

Ralph Llama said:


> So Exxon, the biggest collector and collator of climate change data


I suspect the NCDC, DKRZ might disagree.


----------



## Ralph Llama (Jul 19, 2018)

Most that I have seen is sourced from them, and I have always heard this from climate activists.. and you get headlines like these



> Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
> A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation


Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago

so it appears to me that they have a monopoly on the information.


----------



## 2hats (Jul 19, 2018)

Those are two different statements that you are making there.


----------



## Ralph Llama (Jul 19, 2018)

The collection and the collation ? I am assuming that they have monopoly over both. I don`t know though.

Or do you mean I am biting the hand that feeds ? Well yes.


----------



## 2hats (Jul 19, 2018)

The collecting of data and the time since realisation of climate change.

The first observations of the connection between human originated pollution and climate were made in the late 1800’s. Argument over further research ensued for decades but by the 60’s, at the latest, scientists already knew and had pointed out the connection between industrial carbon dioxide emissions and changes in climate; it had been discussed at conferences. Classic paper (doi:10.1038/239023a0) from the early 70’s. By the 60s/70s computers were just becoming powerful enough that they could begin to verify some of the underlying ideas through modelling the basic chemistry and physics involved.


----------



## Ralph Llama (Jul 19, 2018)

True. But currently they have the monopoly on cutting edge information which could be vital to civilization. From what they are giving out it looks bad. Imagine what they are holding back.


----------



## 2hats (Jul 19, 2018)

Better to deal in the facts I think rather than supposition. Whatever Exxon may have withheld is more a political issue than one that affects ongoing climate research and understanding.


----------



## yield (Jul 28, 2018)

Scorched earth: the world battles extreme weather
FT 27/07/18


> Thanasis Kontidis was hosing down the veranda of his family’s summer home in Mati on Monday afternoon when he caught a whiff of acrid smoke. “I looked up and saw the sky was a beige colour so I knew there was a fire somewhere. But I didn’t realise it was getting close.”
> 
> Half an hour later the 22-year-old university student was fleeing for his life.
> 
> ...





> Climate change is an “accelerant” for these fires, according to the scientists who study them, although it is not the only reason. Urbanisation, changing land use patterns, the arrival of invasive species and even austerity are contributory factors. There have been more than 450 fires covering land of more than 30 hectares in Europe so far this year, according to EU data, which is 40 per cent higher than the average over the past decade.
> 
> While fires are common in some parts of the world such as California and Australia, what is unusual about this year is that these disasters are happening in different places, catching people unawares. Fires burning inside the Arctic Circle are the result of drought and heat that have made forests there unusually combustible. Peat lands in the UK, traditionally protected from blazes by moisture, have also been burning amid a heatwave. In the US, the annual average number of large fires has doubled since the 1970s, and this week Yosemite Valley, a national park in California, was evacuated due to a nearby fire.
> 
> “There are a lot of extreme fire events occurring,” says David Bowman, a professor of fire ecology at the University of Tasmania. He points to the Thomas fire that ravaged Los Angeles’ suburbs and freak fires in central Chile last year. “It’s not normal — I shouldn’t be overwhelmed with opportunities to study extreme fire events.”





> There is also a growing understanding of their cost. The recent fires have highlighted some of these, both economic and human: 87 people dead in Athens, $100m worth of forests burnt in Sweden and more than $2bn spent on fire fighting in the US last year. “With each extreme weather event, we get new information for our actuarial models for how likely these events are and their cost,” says Trevor Houser, co-director of Climate Impact Lab.
> 
> In Sweden, authorities have struggled to respond because their firefighting force is not sufficient to handle blazes of such size — the burnt area is 40 times greater than the annual average in the country over the past decade, and the fires are still burning out of control. Other European countries have sent in assistance.
> 
> In Greece, which had not suffered a prolonged heatwave before the blaze, the dense illegal housing, high winds and slow response from authorities were key reasons why the fires became so devastating, says Efthymios Lekkas, an Athens university tectonics and geology professor. The impact was worsened because its emergency services have faced severe budget cuts during the country’s financial crisis. Local government officials in Mati also failed this year to complete an annual clearing of undergrowth required by law, leaving a thick layer of combustible pine needles and dead branches on pavements and in public spaces around the resort.





> “You need a number of ingredients, for wildfires in particular. Climate change is only one factor, but it is a very important factor,” says Rowan Sutton, director of climate research for the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Research. “If it is hotter and drier, the risk is greater.”
> 
> Climate change is central to scientists’ understanding of which areas are likely to face greater fire risks in the future. Areas such as the forests in the UK are expected to see an increase in fires as conditions become hotter.
> 
> ...





> Lloyds, the London-based insurance market, estimates that as much as $123bn in global gross domestic product in cities could be at risk from the impact of a warming planet, including windstorms and floods.
> 
> “People are starting to have the feeling that it might be a lot worse than some of the estimates suggest,” says Mr Fankhauser, referring to the economic modelling. “Now that you experience it, [it] feels a bit more unpleasant than what the models would have said”.
> 
> On average, richer countries in the northern hemisphere will see less negative impacts than poorer countries closer to the equator, according to the study in Nature. Some countries could even benefit. For example in Sweden, global warming could mean more sunshine and faster-growing forests, providing a boost to its timber industry.





> Stephane Hallegatte, a senior economist in the World Bank’s climate change group, says one of the things that will determine the cost of climate change is how quickly people adapt and prepare for a warmer world.
> 
> “If you assume that nobody acts until there is a disaster, then with the same change in physical conditions you can have a very high cost,” he says.
> 
> “The key thing is to see this fire in Sweden not as a Swedish event. People in different parts of the world, say Canada or Russia, should look at this and think this is exactly what they have to expect.”





> Like other aspects of climate change, adapting to fire risk is difficult: the cost can be hard for societies to accept, when there is a perception that the risks are uncertain. Prof Bowman, the fire scientist, says building codes and urban design need to take fire risks into account. Better land management and landscape features such as fire breaks, parks and golf courses can help reduce fire risk in some areas.
> 
> “We haven’t got time to debate things, we really need to move into the adaptive mode. But there are . . . always reasons to kick the can down the road,” he says, adding that countries are moving far too slowly to address growing fire risks.
> 
> “So our adaptive process will be a zigzag reacting to fire disasters. It is heartbreaking, but unfortunately that seems to be the trajectory we are on, we will just have to deal with more death and destruction.”



Capital's view. Could be bad for business...

“There are a lot of extreme fire events occurring,” says David Bowman, a professor of fire ecology at the University of Tasmania. He points to the Thomas fire that ravaged Los Angeles’ suburbs and freak fires in central Chile last year. “It’s not normal — I shouldn’t be overwhelmed with opportunities to study extreme fire events.”


----------



## Ralph Llama (Jul 31, 2018)

Noam Chomsky on the escalating climate situation and the urgency this should be met with. 




			
				DN! 30.07.18 said:
			
		

> NOAM CHOMSKY: The World Geological Society finally settled on the end of World War II as the onset of the Anthropocene—sharp escalation and destruction of the environment, not only global warming, carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, but also such things as plastics in the ocean, which are predicted to be greater than the weight of fish in the ocean not far in the future.
> 
> So we’re destroying the environment for organized human life. We’re threatening a terminal disaster with regular nuclear confrontations. Anybody who has looked at the record, which is shocking, would have to conclude that it’s a miracle that we’ve survived this long. Humans beings, right now, this generation, for the first time in history, have to ask, “Will human life survive?” And not in the far future will organized societies—those are the issues we should be concerned with. Everything else pales in significance in comparison with this.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Aug 8, 2018)

yield said:


> Scorched earth: the world battles extreme weather
> FT 27/07/18
> 
> 
> ...


The new abnormal. 

We were telt this was gonna happen. And this is just 0.8C above preindustrial (the 1C figures going round are the ENSO positive years). Its not the end of civilisation or the mass die  of of humanity the clowns online will tell you. Its the steady accumulation of severe weather events impacting agriculture, daily lives, economic growth and when sea level starts increasing in rate of rise, areas that can be inhabited. 

And yet renewables are becoming as cheap as new fossil fuel generating capacity, grid scale storage is now competitive with gas peaker plants, the EV is arriving fast. 

We have the tools, we lack the will to avoid the 450ppm that would see us hit a 50% or greater chance of exceeding 2C warming. 

Perhaps that sums up our politics as well, the new abnormal?


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Aug 9, 2018)

This is a photo from an airliner of the fires in California:


----------



## Signal 11 (Aug 10, 2018)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> This is a photo from an airliner of the fires in California:


It's a sunset photo:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clouds-over-california-wildfires/


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Aug 10, 2018)

Signal 11 said:


> It's a sunset photo:
> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clouds-over-california-wildfires/



Thanks!  I usually check those things, but who would have thought people would waste their time on that. 

It's still a cool photo.


----------



## Ralph Llama (Aug 13, 2018)

over 100 forest fires happening in the U.S.A. now according to Amy Goodman


----------



## teqniq (Sep 8, 2018)

US accused of blocking UN climate talks amid protests


----------



## ferrelhadley (Sep 10, 2018)

While not climate per se there are quite a few tropical storms active in the world right now. 




Florence has the potential to be devastating on the US east seaboard. Potentially making landfall at category 4. I do not think there is a actual weather or tropical storm there so I guess it goes in here. God speed all in the path of these storms.


----------



## teqniq (Dec 2, 2018)

I'm striking from school to protest inaction on climate change – you should too | Greta Thunberg


----------



## ice-is-forming (Dec 2, 2018)

Queensland is on fire, and now there's a tropical cyclone forming off the coast


----------



## teqniq (Dec 3, 2018)

The 'climate diaspora' trying to save the Paris agreement from Trump


----------



## Poot (Dec 3, 2018)

I went to a water conference last week. What surprised me is that the 25 year plans now treat climate change as an absolute fact. We are preparing for more flooding and drought (mostly flooding), and there is no question of this not happening, even amongst those who you could absolutely imagine saying 'Pah! Climate change? Load of old nonsense!'. Even the tweediest, toriest right-wingers never even questioned that the future is all about damage limitation. And it doesn't look good. There are new protocols being introduced at speed to ensure that responsibility can be taken at local level for erosion and the increasing number of flood plains.


----------



## Argonia (Dec 5, 2018)

An interesting interview just now on Five Live about geo-engineering.


----------



## teqniq (Dec 10, 2018)

Tackle climate or face financial crash, say world's biggest investors


----------



## stavros (Dec 10, 2018)

Meanwhile, Russia, the Saudis, Kuwait and the US have tried to dilute a statement from Katowice.


----------



## 2hats (Dec 11, 2018)

The east Antarctic ice sheet has long appeared relatively impervious to the climatic change that has clearly affected other glaciated regions (west Antarctic, Greenland), though there have been hints of its susceptibility to past warming episodes in the fossil record. However, new research, using recent and latest satellite data,indicates it is melting and clearly at in increasingly alarming rate. Ice mass loss rate has increased several fold in the last decade (glacier thickness reducing):




BBC News article.

These drainage basins have the capacity to raise global sea levels by 28 metres (four times the contribution of melting the Greenland ice sheet), which makes for an interesting map of the UK:
 
Don’t get too attached to London, Cambridge, York or numerous coastal towns, cities. Nor a lot of important farmland. Globally something like 0.75 billion people directly affected ie displaced (but that’s just based on current population levels/distributions).


----------



## NoXion (Dec 11, 2018)

2hats said:


> The east Antarctic ice sheet has long appeared relatively impervious to the climatic change that has clearly affected other glaciated regions (west Antarctic, Greenland), though there have been hints of its susceptibility to past warming episodes in the fossil record. However, new research, using recent and latest satellite data,indicates it is melting and clearly at in increasingly alarming rate. Ice mass loss rate has increased several fold in the last decade (glacier thickness reducing):
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What kind of time-frame are we looking at with regards to sea level rises? What is the present and currently projected rate of increase?

My understanding was it was something on the order of a 2 metre rise by 2099.


----------



## 2hats (Dec 11, 2018)

NoXion said:


> What kind of time-frame are we looking at with regards to sea level rises? What is the present and currently projected rate of increase?
> 
> My understanding was it was something on the order of a 2 metre rise by 2099.


I await the corresponding paper. Since this is new, additional input the rate of projected sea rise would increase (timescale for a given rise decrease).


----------



## ferrelhadley (Dec 12, 2018)

2hats said:


> These drainage basins have the capacity to raise global sea levels by 28 metres (four times the contribution of melting the Greenland ice sheet), which makes for an interesting map of the UK:
> View attachment 155221
> *Don’t get too attached to London, Cambridge, York *or numerous coastal towns, cities. Nor a lot of important farmland. Globally something like 0.75 billion people directly affected ie displaced (but that’s just based on current population levels/distributions).


 

East Antarctica is expected to have a very limited impact on global sea level rise, especially given that as oceans warm, they will bring more precipitation to the region that will fall as snow. (Figure adapted from table 5.3, chapter 13 IPCC AR5).

I am not quite sure how your mate of the UK showing what 5 or 10m sea level rise and this research are linked.

Unless I am wrong it does not seem to suggest we will be losing major towns in the UK in my lifetime. We do expect a warmer world to have an impact on sea level in the 10s of metres range, but so far as I am aware only a few niche scenarios put  this within the next hundred or two years.


----------



## 2hats (Dec 13, 2018)

ferrelhadley said:


> I am not quite sure how your mate of the UK showing what 5 or 10m sea level rise and this research are linked.
> 
> Unless I am wrong it does not seem to suggest we will be losing major towns in the UK in my lifetime. We do expect a warmer world to have an impact on sea level in the 10s of metres range, but so far as I am aware only a few niche scenarios put  this within the next hundred or two years.


The map is for 28m which appears to have arisen from a discussion with the lead author regarding the drainage output from the Aurora and Wilkes subglacial basins considered in this particular piece of research. No time scale indicated.


----------



## 2hats (Jan 9, 2019)

Visualisation of the Central England Temperature data set (1772-2018) average annual temperature - clearly illustrates recent warming trends…



From here.


----------



## Yuwipi Woman (Jan 9, 2019)

From the "we are so fucked" news section:



> U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose by a striking 3.4 percent in 2018, in the midst of an otherwise downward trend since 2005, a new analysis suggests. It’s likely the second-largest emissions jump since 1996, topped only by a 3.6 percent spike in 2010.
> 
> The findings were published Monday by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, largely drawing on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
> 
> The uptick occurred during one of the biggest years for coal plant closures on record. This means declines in coal aren’t enough to keep pace with increasing demand for electricity—largely fed by natural gas over renewables last year, the report points out—and increasing emissions from other sources, including transportation and industry.



U.S. Emissions in 2018 Saw the Second-Largest Spike Since 1996

Wrong direction here, people.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 15, 2019)

Also from the same:

Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’



> “We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.”
> 
> His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming....


----------



## yield (Jan 15, 2019)

If You Can’t Deny It, Downplay It
January 13, 2019
How capitalists talk about climate change…


> The world’s scientific community predicts up to two feet of sea level rise by just 2100, likely accompanied by a rising tide of climate refugees. So it’s worth dissecting how America’s dominant conservative media have swept the issue under the rug for two generations. To watch the evolution of climate change denial in action—and learn how to fight it—a great place to turn is the nation’s highest-circulation newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 15, 2019)

The WSJ is a Murdoch rag so no surprises there.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 17, 2019)

teqniq said:


> Also from the same:
> 
> Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’


An abstract of the research the Graun piece is based on. At the risk os sounding like a broken record, we are so fucked.

Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web


----------



## 2hats (Jan 27, 2019)

A new study just published (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1806562116) has found that the largest sustained ice loss from early 2003 to mid-2013 came from Greenland's southwest - there are fewer glaciers there than in the southeast and northwest regions where earlier research has tended to focus. The lack of glaciers would suggest the melt is coming largely from inland - increasingly, large amounts of ice mass are disappearing as meltwater, rivers that flow into the sea. This had not previously been considered a serious threat, but will likely become a major future contributor to sea level rise. Gravitational measurements from satellite and GPS data indicate that by 2012 ice mass loss was four times the rate it was in 2003. "We're going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future”, the lead author said.

New research (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav0566) indicates that the degree to which aerosols cool the earth has been grossly underestimated, necessitating a recalculation of climate change models to more accurately predict the progress of global warming. A new satellite image based methodology for computing the contribution of aerosols to the Earth’s radiation budget suggests their cooling effect is almost twice as great as previously thought. Lead author: "If the aerosols indeed cause a greater cooling effect than previously estimated, then the warming effect of the greenhouse gases has also been larger than we thought, enabling greenhouse gas emissions to overcome the cooling effect of aerosols and points to a greater amount of global warming than we previously thought.” This may leave us in the delightful catch-22: efforts to clean up fuel use and reduce pollution in order to reduce greenhouse gas production would also reduce pollution aerosols and in turn that would diminish the degree to which they currently offset global warming.

Finally, another study published this week (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0848-x) models the variability of land carbon uptake with variation in soil moisture, so highlighting the important role it plays in the carbon cycle. This suggests that more droughts and heatwaves in the coming years will compromise the contribution the land makes to locking away anthropogenic carbon - the lead author: "If […] the rate of carbon uptake by the land starts to decrease by the middle of this century, as we found in the models, we could potentially see a large increase in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and a corresponding rise in the effects of global warming and climate change."


----------



## 2hats (Jan 30, 2019)

GOES-16 was mentioned earlier in this thread. GOES-17 (was GOES-S) is now on orbit and undergoing pre-operational testing (due to become GOES-West this month but delayed by the government shutdown). Despite thermal issues with the Advanced Baseline Imager (already being addressed in the next two satellites) it is producing some nice results such as this observation of cloud evolution around Big Island, Hawaii.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 8, 2019)

Methane hydrates: Why scientists worry less than you might think

The superdoomer positions of clowns like McPherson (most will not have heard of him but he has a sizable following online pushing near term human extinction from climate change) is basically over wrought hysteria.
We still need urgent action to cut our CO2 emissions to avoid the damaging effects of going above 2C warming, but we do not have to stay awake at night thinking we are 20 years from extinction.


----------



## yield (Feb 21, 2019)

As the Colorado River runs dry: A five-part climate change story
February 15, 2019


> There are large, existential questions facing the 40 million people who depend on the river — there simply is not enough water for all who depend on it, and there will likely soon be even less.
> 
> Most of the water in the Colorado comes from snow that falls in the Rockies and is slowly released, a natural reservoir that disperses its bounty gradually, over months. But since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has been locked in what experts say is a long-term drought exacerbated by climate change, the most severe drought in the last 1,250 years, tree ring data shows. Snowfall since 2000 has been sketchy — last year it was just two-thirds of normal, tied for its record low. With warmer temperatures, more of the precipitation arrives as rain, which quickly runs off rather than being stored as mountain snow. Many water experts are deeply worried about the growing shortage of water from this combination of over-allocation and diminishing supply.


----------



## Wookey (Feb 27, 2019)

Warmest winter day in the UK ever.

Won't be the last time someone posts _that_ sentence.

Seems like the end of the world, and it looks like a summer Bank Holiday.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Feb 28, 2019)

Wookey said:


> Warmest winter day in the UK ever.
> 
> Won't be the last time someone posts _that_ sentence.
> 
> Seems like the end of the world, and it looks like a summer Bank Holiday.


https://www.carbonbrief.org/media-r...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer


----------



## 2hats (Mar 10, 2019)

Climate change sweater (see here) - this based on annual global temperature (HadCRUT4), 1850-2017:



More details.


----------



## yield (Mar 14, 2019)

Sharp rise in Arctic temperatures now inevitable – UN 
13/03/19


> Sharp and potentially devastating temperature rises of 3C to 5C in the Arctic are now inevitable even if the world succeeds in cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, research has found.
> 
> Winter temperatures at the north pole are likely to rise by at least 3C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, and there could be further rises to between 5C and 9C above the recent average for the region, according to the UN.
> 
> Such changes would result in rapidly melting ice and permafrost, leading to sea level rises and potentially to even more destructive levels of warming. Scientists fear Arctic heating could trigger a climate “tipping point” as melting permafrost releases the powerful greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, which in turn could create a runaway warming effect.


Joy


----------



## Pickman's model (Mar 14, 2019)

yield said:


> Sharp rise in Arctic temperatures now inevitable – UN
> 13/03/19
> 
> Joy


Yeh we're all fucked


----------



## teqniq (Mar 22, 2019)

Can't say I'm surprised. The oil companies are, of course vigorously denying any such thing.

Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report


----------



## teqniq (Mar 26, 2019)




----------



## yield (Mar 30, 2019)

^ 

The Best of a Bad Situation
nplusonemag
This is what extinction feels like from the inside



> It’s a tragedy in a postmodern sense, where the tragic does not consist, as Hegel thought, in the conflict between two equal goods, two equally valid demands, which can only be resolved by the next age or paradigm, but in a struggle between pointless desires and differing sets of human limitations.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Apr 27, 2019)

> IEEFA U.S.: April is shaping up to be momentous in transition from coal to renewables
> Signs of a tipping point in national power-generation mix
> The future of the U.S. electricity generation industry may have arrived, and it is not good news for struggling coal-fired generating plants.
> 
> ...










IEEFA U.S.: April is shaping up to be momentous in transition from coal to renewables - Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis

The cost of renewables is only going to go down (with the exception of hydro) and the arrival of grid scale storage is already happening. 
Not fast enough by some distance, but the momentum towards are low carbon future is building all the time.


----------



## yield (May 2, 2019)

Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release
30/04/19


> As the temperature of the ground rises above freezing, microorganisms break down organic matter in the soil. Greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — are released into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. Soils in the permafrost region hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does — almost 1,600 billion tonnes1.
> 
> What fraction of that will decompose? Will it be released suddenly, or seep out slowly? We need to find out.


To keep carbon emissions down, look underfoot
29/04/19


> Climate change can't be halted if we carry on degrading the soil, a report will say.
> 
> There's three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere – but that carbon's being released by deforestation and poor farming.
> 
> ...


----------



## Pickman's model (May 3, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767


----------



## Pickman's model (May 3, 2019)

teqniq said:


> View attachment 165733



jesus mary and joseph


----------



## yield (May 4, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> View attachment 169703
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767


Reminds me of the seed bank in the north of Norway that flooded


----------



## yield (May 5, 2019)

A War Reporter Covers “The End of Ice” — And It Will Change the Way You Think About Climate Catastrophe
04/05/19


> “This global capitalist experiment, this experiment of industrialization and burning fossil fuels rampantly is an utter, abject failure,”


----------



## Saul Goodman (May 5, 2019)

teqniq said:


>



WTAF?


----------



## ferrelhadley (May 5, 2019)

yield said:


> Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release
> 30/04/19


Two put this in perspective, the paper this is based on says we are expecting about 200 billion tonnes of carbon from permafrost by 2300. The new report suggests there may be an extra 100 billion tonnes of carbon.  Global carbon project suggests we have emitted about 2000 billion tonnes of carbon from human sources up to 2015. But those numbers are not totally like for like comparisons as we expect the global carbon sinks to diminish in the coming decacdes as warming reduces their efficacy thus its likely more of the CO2 will remain in the atmosphere in the short term than for our emissions up to now. (Longer term atmospheric CO2 levels is a very complex topic.)


----------



## ferrelhadley (Jul 24, 2019)

Arctic sea ice is currently at a near record low and now this



Lots of warm air may be on the way. Seems this year may have a crack at the all time low sea ice levels, getting late in the season, its already low and the melt will be given a boost.


----------



## teqniq (Jul 25, 2019)

https://news.yahoo.com/20th-century-warming-unmatched-2-000-years-193608775.html



> World temperatures rose faster in the late 20th century than at any other time in the last 2,000 years, according to research released Wednesday which experts said undermines climate deniers' questioning of mankind's role in global warming.
> 
> As Europe sweltered in a second record-breaking heatwave in a month, the three peer-reviewed papers offered the most detailed overview of regional temperature trends dating back two millennia....


----------



## Mr.Bishie (Jul 26, 2019)

Grim reading.

Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping point'


----------



## teqniq (Sep 10, 2019)

Petition: Stop the increase to 20% VAT for the installation of renewable energy sources


----------



## 8115 (Sep 10, 2019)

Signed.


----------



## ferrelhadley (Oct 17, 2019)

Is climate change going to make us extinct?

Extinction is nigh
For the past 3 decades people denying its existence or significantly downplaying it were the biggest and loudest challenges to the mainstream science. Over the past 3 or 4 years another bunch of attention seeking loonies has come to greater public attention. Variations on over the top hysterical catastrophists. 

Start with a simple thought experiment what would it take to make humans extinct. We can survive with about 10 000- 20 000 breeding pairs. Aboriginal Tasmanians were able to survive for about 30 000 years with numbers of an estimated 7000. Other groups round the world show something similar. In some fantasized warmed world, everywhere that could support about 10 000 humans would need to exceed the wet bulb temperature for human survival of 35C (this is not the temperature, but the temperature of a wet bulb wrapped in a damp cloth, this is used to work out the temperature with evaporation so takes into account our capacity to perspire) 


> Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature _TW_, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. _TW_ never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed.


An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress

At 7 degrees warming, broadly that consistent with a quadrupling of pre-industrial CO2 levels, we would start to see significant areas where this wet bulb temperature would be regularly exceeded.
At 12 degrees warming we would only then see the majority of land currently inhabited exceed these temperatures. For 4 times the radiative forcing from preindustrial we would need roughly 4 doublings, that is to say 16 times the preindustrial CO2 levels. That is 4500 ppm CO2 or equivalent of other greenhouse gasses (excluding H20 that is included in those figures as a feedback.)
Here we are not talking about human extinction or anything remotely close. But this is based on *equilibrium *climate sensitivity. It would take hundreds of years after the emissions for that temperature to be reached. In the insane "burn it all" scenario required to reach that temperature, we would exhaust every bit of combustable carbon we can concieve off by end century and still have a couple of centuries to fully adjust to the insane 12C increase, and the eventual inability to sustain human life in much of northern Eurasia and north America. This would be disasterous, but its fantastically unlikely and even under the most extreme scenario devisable, nowhere close to human extinction. 

The people pushing this agenda are overwhelmingly scientifically illiterate (there are exceptions). It also tends to be handwaving between missing the 2C "guardrail" target and human extinction for purely narcissistic rhetorical use. Its like having a speed limit of 20 mph and sitting in a car running at 30 mph. Missing it by 50 whole percent. Then the shrill piss the pants sitting next to you starts screaming you are almost going at 180 mph (16 times the amount you are actually exceeding the speed limit). 

"Business as usual". 

The next phrase you hear with great excitement is that we are running at business as usual and that is the worst case from the IPCC. 

For the 5th assessment report the IPCC produced four major scenarios to study. These are called RCPs (the history is a bit more convoluted than that, they were produced in 2000 and meant to be exceeded by AR5). 
RCP 2.6


> RCP 2.6 assumes that global annual GHG emissions (measured in CO
> 2-equivalents) peak between 2010–2020, with emissions declining substantially thereafter



RCP 4.5


> Emissions in RCP 4.5 peak around 2040, then decline


RCP 6.0


> In RCP 6, emissions peak around 2080, then decline.


RCP 8.5


> In RCP 8.5, emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century


(definitions from the wikipedia page as it was quicker to just cut and paste and makes no actual difference).
Notice how the eyes rolling out the back of the head brigade always emphasize 8.5.
Here is the web page
Socio-Economic Data and Scenarios
These are their numbers for the differing scenarios. 


> Scenario...........2000....2005....2010....2020
> RCP 6.0...PgC/yr...7.884...9.166...9.389...9.357
> RCP 4.5...PgC/yr...7.884...9.166...9.518...10.212
> RCP 2.6...PgC/yr...7.884...9.166...9.878...10.260
> RCP 8.0...PgC/yr...7.884...9.166...9.969...12.444


RCP Database


> Total global emissions: 41.2 ± 2.8 GtCO2





> 1 Gigatonne (Gt) = 1 billion tonnes = 1×1015g = 1 Petagram (Pg)


The results above are in PgC/yr.
The second set of results from the global carbon project are in GtCO/yr


> 1 GtC = 3.664 billion tonnes CO2 = 3.664 GtCO2


So you divide the the GtCO2 by 3.664 and it gives PtC. 
That is 11.25PtC/yr. 
So about 1PtC/yr above RCP 4.5 but about 1.2PtC below RCP 8.5 

To meet RCP8.5 we would need to have the next 80 years with literally zero efforts to curb CO2 emissions, 80 years of subsidizing fossil fuels to maintain there economic competitiveness vs new technologies that are now often cheaper like onshore wind and storage vs peaker plants and worst case population growth. 

To say we are currently not doing enough to meet the 2C\450 ppm guardrail is a very credible and important statement. This is what our policies should be aimed at. We have most of the technologies available for perhaps half or more of the changes needed already and already economically viable. The UK for example has already decarbonised nearly 55% of our electricity production through our nuclear fleet, our wind and bioenergy. https://assets.publishing.service.g...ploads/attachment_data/file/834120/ET_5.1.xls


----------



## ferrelhadley (Oct 17, 2019)

https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/18/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2018.pdf

Here we can see where the emissions are now coming from. The US, EU and China need to cut much faster. This is an international problem  and screaming about cutting UK emissions in 5 or 10 years is not really going to do much other than discredit the message of the need for global CO2 cuts. 

But to revise, we are not on the worst case scenario and easily have the tools to avoid it. We are on track to miss 2C and will, with current rates of new technology deployment his 2.5C to 3C. This is not good. It needs to be addressed, this means the loonies and wackos quietly tuned out of the public conversation and the more sober and knowledgeable tuned in. 

Methane the monsters that always does not bark. 

When all else fails. Shout methane methane methane. For the vocal a magical substance devoid of the usual physics of thermodymanics (for its release), radiative physics (for its impact), atmospheric chemistry (for its persistence) etc. From the mid 80s to the mid 20000s it was located in the deep ocean clatherates, when books like Gaia's Revenge promised us Earth was a sentient being about to unleash a much earned apocalypse on humanity by somehow moving vast amounts of heat into the deep ocean and melting the methane. It had happened before in Earths history but the loonies tended to ignore that it took  tens of thousands of years to warm the oceans that much (End Permian and Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum). Sometimes the vast methane monster would appear in the permafrost. Somehow it was never quite explained how this permafrost that had often extended down to Spain had never caused these catastrophes in the 20 or so deglaciations over the past 3 million years. Warming the subsoil takes a very long time, this is why we use boreholes to measure changes in temperature thousands of years ago. We expect methane from the permafrost, it is built into many of the models. These worst case scenarios use methane up to 100m below the surface. It takes a lot of time for heat to get that deep. 
And then there is the Arctic Ocean. The new frontiers in end of the world scenarios for the past 12 years. 
3 names. 
Shakhova,
Semiletov,
Wadhams. 
They have been hyping various scenarios in the Arctic for over a decade. 
Wayback Machine
Some methane seepage was found need Svalbard and was instantly flagged as part of their recent methane releases. More investigation showed it was millenia old. 
Methane seepage at Vestnesa Ridge (NW Svalbard) since the Last Glacial Maximum - ScienceDirect
No one has been able to corroborate most of their findings about already melted methane just below the Arctic ocean and other scenarios. 

Methane has a half life in the atmosphere of just 8 years, it very quickly breaks down into CO2. 
The very high radiative forcing numbers for methane are due to its relative scarcity. If large amounts were relased the forcing from it would drop exponentially for each new unit of equivalent mass added. 
Many of the supposed sources of these catastrophic methane releases are either already accounted for, will take huge amounts of energy to access or of questionable scientific veracity. 


Finally. 
Questions when someone is predicting various kinds of climate doom. 
Is their source referencing the major synthesis reports where teams of scientists have reviewed *all the recent papers *such as the IPCC reports, the National Academy of Science, Royal Society or the various major science academies. Or are they pushing just one or two cherry picked papers and ignoring the rest. 
Are they talking in qualitative or quantitative terms. 
"Massive", "huge", "lots": qualities, qualitative descriptions. 
"120ppm", "3W/m^2", "an estimated 3.5% increase given an error range of 0.2%" these are quantities, quantitative descriptions are much easier to reference and contextualize. 
Is the person making big claims someone who would be able to a) pass a high school level exam in maths, physics or chemistry. b) has a graduate degree in a physical science. c) Has a long history of well referenced peer reviewed papers in the field they are making claims about? Easy to work out which ones you should pay attention to in increasing order when claiming mainstream science in a field (any field) is wrong. 
Or is it someone with a degree in philosophy, economics, Greek classical literature etc who thinks all the scientists are lying to you about "its not as bad as they claim, its a commie scam" or "they are covering it up because its going to end capitalism" etc. 

As always your mileage may vary and when challenging fact free arguments the buffoons will immediately try to change what they were saying and cry about "strawman". That is how people push antiscience misinformation, they never allow you to pin them down. There statements are vague because they tend to not know enough to show big holes in evolution, the theory of gravity, why the world is warming  or why we are not headed to extinction. I have done it myself and have watched world famous scientists try to pin down various quacks and cranks on many fields. There defenses are always the same weaseling. 

Have a nice day and spend more time thinking about how you will cut your carbon emissions than how we are all going to die.


----------



## Crispy (Oct 17, 2019)

Always appreciate your detailed posts on this topic FH


----------



## teqniq (Oct 27, 2019)




----------



## 2hats (Dec 16, 2019)

Interesting observation of ash deposition on South Island NZ from the on going extensive fires in SE Australia:

This will almost certainly change their radiation budget and accelerate melt rate just as Amazonian forest fires have sped up Andean glacier melting.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 13, 2020)

I'm shocked. shocked, I tell you. 









						Emails Reveal U.S. Justice Dept. Working Closely with Oil Industry to Oppose Climate Lawsuits - Inside Climate News
					

In early 2018, a few months after the cities of Oakland and San Francisco sued several major oil companies over climate change, attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice began a series of email exchanges and meetings with lawyers for the oil companies targeted in the litigation. At one...




					insideclimatenews.org


----------



## teqniq (Jan 15, 2020)

Much good it may  do./ cynicism. But fair play.


----------



## Marty1 (Jan 15, 2020)

teqniq said:


> View attachment 165733




Yeah, I remember that - quite surreal.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 15, 2020)

is there a point?

to your post, that is.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 27, 2020)

The British Medical Journal making the case for divestment from fossil fuel companies.









						Investing in humanity: The BMJ’s divestment campaign
					

Health professionals and medical organisations must act now  How do we restore hope for humanity? Many of us feel despair at a disintegrating political consensus to save our planet from fire, flood, disease, and conflict. We feel trapped in our high carbon lives and disempowered by commercial...




					www.bmj.com


----------



## Marty1 (Jan 27, 2020)

Looks like it’s time to get rid of all pets to reduce the impact of climate change.

_Many pet owners are blissfully unaware of the true cost of the pet population on the environment. With the exponential increase in global CO2 levels, more attention has recently been focused on just how much carbon our furry friends contribute to this imbalance. In ecological terms, dogs and cats are apex predators, feeding largely on meat, which has a high carbon footprint to produce.

Pets are responsible for 64m tonnes of greenhouse gases per annum, which is the equivalent of 13m cars (Okin, 2017). In addition, they produce around 30% of the poop that Americans egest, which leads to 64m tonnes of methane and nitrous oxide greenhouse gasses, which have a twenty fold effect on CO2 on global warming._









						Paw print, your pet’s carbon footprint. - Transition UStA
					

Pets have co-evolved with mankind for thousands of years. Domestic dogs were thought to have evolved from domesticated grey wolves in the Middle East around 15 000 years ago. Archaeological ...




					www.transitionsta.org


----------



## teqniq (Jan 27, 2020)

Which is mainly diverionary bullshit from the main culprits, the fossil fuel industry.


----------



## Marty1 (Jan 27, 2020)

teqniq said:


> Which is mainly diverionary bullshit from the main culprits, the fossil fuel industry.



Are you a pet owner?

Even if not surely you understand that if people did not have pet cats and dogs there would be less animals required to be reared then slaughtered to produce dog/cat food, less amount of trucks transporting these foods, less factories to process these foods etc, etc.

I remember when talk of cattle methane wasn’t mainstream but now it is.  I doubt however that the hypocrisy of green evangelists owning methane emitting pets will get much if any traction.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 27, 2020)

No I am not, and I don't care how much you slice it, individuals are not going to solve this alone. This is merely diverting attention away from the main issue, the fossil fuel industry. Everything else is just pissing in the wind.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 27, 2020)

Ecocide is essentially what's being talked about here. It's been talked about a fair few times in the past but you can guarantee that the usual suspects will fight tooth and nail to stop this from becoming a reality.









						We need an international environmental criminal court now
					

The world needs to get serious about protecting the planet.




					thehill.com


----------



## Marty1 (Jan 27, 2020)

teqniq said:


> No I am not, and I don't care how much you slice it, individuals are not going to solve this alone. This is merely diverting attention away from the main issue, the fossil fuel industry. Everything else is just pissing in the wind.



_"An individual can help the global effort to tackle the climate change dilemma by being part of the collective solution, making bold decisions and sacrifices, and sharing their personal decisions with the community as a positive influence,"_

Dr. Michael Notaro, Ph.D., the associate director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 27, 2020)

I did not say that individuals could not help. I said it would be pissing in the wind unless the fosssil fuel industry is bought to book. Something they have sought to avoid with bought and paid for politicians, relentless lobbying and burying the facts every step of the way.


----------



## 2hats (Jan 27, 2020)

Has our resident climate troll been busy?

64 million tonnes fits inside the thin line of 'other' and 'waste' sitting on the top of this chart (for CO2 emissions alone).


Source: UN FAO via Oxford University.


----------



## Marty1 (Jan 27, 2020)

2hats said:


> Has our resident climate troll been busy?
> 
> 64 million tonnes fits inside the thin line of 'other' and 'waste' sitting on the top of this chart (for CO2 emissions alone).
> 
> ...



I should have stated - 64 million tonnes is for the U.S alone.


----------



## teqniq (Jan 30, 2020)

Governments funding the fossil fuel industry by indirect or obfuscated means:



			G20 funds fossil fuels $30 bn a year under the radar: analysis
		










						Carbon emissions: Scale of UK fossil fuel support 'staggering'
					

The government is funding oil and gas projects abroad, despite a commitment to cut carbon emissions.



					www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## DexterTCN (Feb 7, 2020)




----------



## Pickman's model (Mar 11, 2020)

executive summary: things will go to shit far faster than previously thought










						Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems - Nature Communications
					

Little is known about how the speed of ecosystem collapse depends on ecosystem size. Here, Cooper, Willcock et al. analyse empirical data and models finding that although regime shift duration increases with ecosystem size, this relationship saturates and even large ecosystems can collapse in a...




					www.nature.com


----------



## RTWL (Mar 17, 2020)

An article concerned that there is no budget, or impetus, to prevent the deforestation of the Amazon.









						Amazon deforestation could speed up in 2020: expert
					

Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon rainforest threatens to accelerate and draw increased global concern since no new fire prevention measures have been taken in the crucial run-up to this year's dry season, according to Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of a group called MapBiomas...




					www.reuters.com


----------



## yield (Mar 31, 2020)

First Antarctic heatwave recorded at Casey research station 
31st March 2020


> “Heatwaves are classified as three consecutive days with both extreme maximum and minimum temperatures,” Dr Robinson said.
> 
> “In those three days in January, Casey experienced minimum temperatures above zero and maximum temperatures above 7.5°C, with its highest maximum temperature ever, 9.2°C on 24 January, followed by its highest minimum of 2.5°C the following morning.”





> “In the 31 year record for Casey, this maximum is 6.9°C higher than the mean maximum temperature for the station, while the minimum is 0.2°C higher.”
> 
> Temperature records were also broken at research bases on the Antarctic Peninsula in February, with the average daily temperatures for the month exceeding the long-term means by between 2°C and 2.4°C.


----------



## stavros (Apr 2, 2020)

COP26 is postponed as well.


----------



## Aquamarine (Apr 23, 2020)

As per the OP and logging CC milestones, I saw on a FB CC discussion group that there is currently an initiative preparing mirrors to reduce the Earth's albedo that appears to have interested people with an understanding of the subject.


----------



## stavros (Apr 24, 2020)

Aquamarine said:


> As per the OP and logging CC milestones, I saw on a FB CC discussion group that there is currently an initiative preparing mirrors to reduce the Earth's albedo that appears to have interested people with an understanding of the subject.



Without doing any research of my own whatsoever, is it at all feasible on the scale required to compensate to any extend for ice loss?


----------



## Aquamarine (May 25, 2020)

The discussion I read - about the Harvard Rowland Institute /work by Dr Ye Tao & team, suggested that technology to affect Earth's albedo is currently the only hope.  There is more detail online and YouTube.


----------



## teqniq (Jun 21, 2020)

Thread on the current situation inside the Arctic circle. Not good.


----------



## teqniq (Jun 23, 2020)

Money talks. Can they bring enough pressure to bear?









						$4 trillion fund holders tell Brazil to halt deforestation
					

Investment funds managing close to $4 trillion in assets called on Brazil Tuesday to halt deforestation of the Amazon in an open letter warning that biodiversity loss and carbon emissions pose a "systemic risk" to their portfolios.  The managers from countries across Europe, Asia and South...




					news.yahoo.com


----------



## RTWL (Jul 24, 2020)

Chomsky said:
			
		

> The reason why this is the most important election in history has nothing to do with this. Four more years of Trump’s climate policies and nuclear policies might simply doom the human species, literally. We don’t have a lot of time to deal with the environmental crisis. It is very serious. Every prediction that has been made by scientists has been too conservative. Each time it comes out worse


----------



## stavros (Jul 24, 2020)

Forgive my ignorance: what is Trump's stance on nuclear power? A brief search only brings up references to Iran and North Korea.


----------



## teqniq (Aug 7, 2020)

Canada's last fully intact Arctic ice shelf collapses


----------



## platinumsage (Aug 9, 2020)

MikeMcc said:


> CO2 concentration about to break the 400ppm level, we've already had a few individual measurements above that level, but we're certain to see the monthly and annual figures go through it this year.  The May figure for Mauna Loa is 399.89ppm.
> 
> Earth's CO2 Home Page



414ppm now

Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19?


----------



## NoXion (Aug 25, 2020)

stavros said:


> Forgive my ignorance: what is Trump's stance on nuclear power? A brief search only brings up references to Iran and North Korea.



A properly pro-fission President would be raising a stink about the stupid and wasteful policy of not reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. They're up to their ears in stuff which could be recycled and put back into reactors. Fucking imbecilic.


----------



## 2hats (Sep 13, 2020)

Greenland's ice sheet passes a tipping point: "Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss," said one of the co-authors.


> The glaciers have shrunk back enough that many of them are sitting in deeper water, meaning more ice is in contact with water. Warm ocean water melts glacier ice, and also makes it difficult for the glaciers to grow back to their previous positions.
> 
> That means that even if humans were somehow miraculously able to stop climate change in its tracks, ice lost from glaciers draining ice to the ocean would likely still exceed ice gained from snow accumulation, and the ice sheet would continue to shrink for some time.











						Warming Greenland ice sheet passes point of no return
					

Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.  The finding, published today, Aug. 13, in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, means that...




					news.osu.edu
				



Paper - DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0001-2


----------



## 2hats (Sep 14, 2020)

Climate change: Warmth shatters section of Greenland ice shelf
					

A big chunk of ice breaks away from the Arctic's largest remaining ice shelf - 79N, or Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden.



					www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## yield (Oct 1, 2020)

The Arctic hasn't been this warm for 3 million years–and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet
phys.org September 30, 2020


> Every year, sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrinks to a low point in mid-September. This year it measures just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers) – the second-lowest value in the 42 years since satellites began taking measurements. The ice today covers only 50% of the area it covered 40 years ago in late summer.
> This year’s minimum ice extent is the lowest in the 42-year-old satellite record except for 2012, reinforcing a long-term downward trend in Arctic ice cover. Each of the past four decades averages successively less summer sea ice. Credit: NSIDC
> 
> As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in human history. The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached today's level – about 412 parts per million – was 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch.


----------



## Saul Goodman (Oct 1, 2020)

Something I pondered over lately, was whether the global lockdown has contributed to global warming. Less pollution means more sunlight can reach the earth. . It's a bit of a conundrum.


----------



## Signal 11 (Oct 2, 2020)

That effect will offset the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions...



> As a result, we estimate that the direct effect of the pandemic-driven response will be negligible, with a cooling of around 0.01 ± 0.005 °C by 2030 compared to a baseline scenario that follows current national policies.











						Current and future global climate impacts resulting from COVID-19 - Nature Climate Change
					

Reduced GHG and air pollutant emissions during the COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in declines in NOx emissions of up to 30%, causing short-term cooling, while ~20% SO2 emissions decline countered this for overall minimal temperature effect.




					www.nature.com


----------



## NoXion (Oct 6, 2020)

The fucking cunts. Murderous, callous, fucking cunts.





__





						Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
					





					www.bloomberg.com
				




We need an environmental equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials, and we needed it ten years ago.


----------



## teqniq (Oct 6, 2020)

NoXion said:


> The fucking cunts. Murderous, callous, fucking cunts.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ecocide


----------



## Geoffers (Feb 13, 2021)

Strikes me that if we are going to plant millions of trees, or abandon land to let it go wild (my preferred option) we're going to need to nationalise land. Is anyone banging the nationalise land drum? I'm reading 'Land Nationalisation - Its Necessity and Its Aims' by Alfred Russel Wallace from 1892 but that's the latest I've found!


----------



## StoneRoad (Feb 13, 2021)

Geoffers said:


> Strikes me that if we are going to plant millions of trees, or abandon land to let it go wild (my preferred option) we're going to need to nationalise land. Is anyone banging the nationalise land drum? I'm reading 'Land Nationalisation - Its Necessity and Its Aims' by Alfred Russel Wallace from 1892 but that's the latest I've found!


Either nationalise or compensate owners (but perhaps not as a tax dodge ... schedule D land, anyone ?)

by encouraging afforestation or "wilding" by some means ...


----------



## Pickman's model (Feb 13, 2021)

NoXion said:


> The fucking cunts. Murderous, callous, fucking cunts.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The Nuremberg trials happened after the defeat of nazi Germany. Sadly the likes of ExxonMobil haven't yet been defeated


----------



## stavros (Feb 13, 2021)

Geoffers said:


> Strikes me that if we are going to plant millions of trees, or abandon land to let it go wild (my preferred option) we're going to need to nationalise land. Is anyone banging the nationalise land drum? I'm reading 'Land Nationalisation - Its Necessity and Its Aims' by Alfred Russel Wallace from 1892 but that's the latest I've found!



Don't the Queen and Charles own a fuck-tonne of UK land? If so some might argue it's already nationalised. I know Brenda's just made a mint from flogging off sea bed for turbines.


----------



## yield (Feb 13, 2021)

Geoffers said:


> Strikes me that if we are going to plant millions of trees, or abandon land to let it go wild (my preferred option) we're going to need to nationalise land. Is anyone banging the nationalise land drum? I'm reading 'Land Nationalisation - Its Necessity and Its Aims' by Alfred Russel Wallace from 1892 but that's the latest I've found!


You might find this thread interesting? Who owns Britain? Map displays unregistered land in England and Wales

Ian Jack · Why did we not know?: Who is hoarding the land?



> Christophers estimates that since 1979 the state has sold about two million hectares – about a tenth of Britain’s landmass – which at today’s prices would be worth £400 billion, ten times the amount realised by its most valuable component, the sale of social housing. His estimate includes land qua land such as forests, artillery ranges and municipally owned farms; and land as an inherent element in other privatisations such as electricity generation and social housing. (On average – that is, for all kinds of housing – land now accounts for 70 per cent of a house’s sale price. In the 1930s it was 2 per cent.) When Thatcher entered Downing Street in May 1979, more land was owned by the state than ever before: 20 per cent of Britain’s total area. Today the figure is 10.5 per cent. The disposals include council houses, forests, farms, moors, royal dockyards, military airfields, railway arches, railway sidings, museums, theatres, playgrounds, parks, town halls, bowling greens, allotments, children’s centres, leisure centres, school playing fields. There has been in Christophers’s words ‘a colossal devaluation of the public estate’, and not one that came about by accident. This was a project determined and driven by the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, a project that in the forty years since its inception has never been seriously studied, let alone contested or protested, and shows no sign of letting up. In his introduction, Christophers suggests that the book’s British readers keep a puzzle at the back of their minds as they follow his disclosures: why did I not know about this before?





StoneRoad said:


> Either nationalise or compensate owners (but perhaps not as a tax dodge ... schedule D land, anyone ?)
> 
> by encouraging afforestation or "wilding" by some means ...


It's complicated. More trees isn't neccessarily the quick fix. Scientific forestry with monocrop in straight lines isn't sustainable. 

Add into that the UK is warming, so it may be better to introduce southern european trees but will they survive the winters?


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## platinumsage (Feb 13, 2021)

Over-enthusiastic tree planting can be a bad thing. There was a scheme on a Cumbrian farm recently in which the new forest was capable of capturing only half as much carbon as the peat moor it replaced.


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## Geoffers (Feb 13, 2021)

Quite right. Trees grow by themselves, and have been doing so for 450 million years. They brought this planet back from the brink five times already and will do so again. I am very pro abandonment. It is also free!

Thank you for that book review - it was fascinating and aggravating, with some choice quotes from Mark Twain and Adam Smith! I might buy the book! Nationalisation not mentioned though - I'm looking for people agitating for a national reset, where land isn't and cannot be 'owned' by anyone; like the first peoples of North America and Australia.

I read that was true to some extent in pre-invasion Britain: William the Conqueror was so broke that he promised England to his sponsors. He and they moved in, built castles and owned the land like it had never been owned before. We are still living with the consequences 1000 years later!


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## StoneRoad (Feb 13, 2021)

Carbon capture is very complicated ...

Wet peat bogs are far more important than many people realise.
And farmed monocultures are not good things at any time, whatever is grown in them.

I've planted a real mix of broad-leaved and coniferous trees & shrubs / hedging in and around my patch.
These are almost all native or naturalised species, mainly to support wildlife. 

After a period of largely ignoring the woodland because of other demands on my time, and giving it a chance to actually grow, a couple of years ago I started to maintain it, I started by thinning out and trimming back the "hedge" areas. After stacking the results to allow some drying, this has produced some pieces large enough to use in the new stove - a lot of the thinner twigs ended up on the compost heap, as does the wood ash.
I'm hoping that these trees pruning's will become a carbon-neutral fuel source in the near future.


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## yield (Feb 13, 2021)

Geoffers said:


> Thank you for that book review - it was fascinating and aggravating, with some choice quotes from Mark Twain and Adam Smith! I might buy the book! Nationalisation not mentioned though - I'm looking for people agitating for a national reset, where land isn't and cannot be 'owned' by anyone; like the first peoples of North America and Australia.


The alternatives to privatisation and nationalisation
Sep 14th 2019
More public resources could be managed as commons without much loss of efficiency


Geoffers said:


> I read that was true to some extent in pre-invasion Britain: William the Conqueror was so broke that he promised England to his sponsors. He and they moved in, built castles and owned the land like it had never been owned before. We are still living with the consequences 1000 years later!


William the Conqueror hired a lot of mercenaries as it wasn't common to have large standing armies. Henry VII invaded England four centuries later. I think William of Orange was invited?


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## Geoffers (Feb 14, 2021)

Thank you. It is pay-walled but I have read a lot about commons already. We urgently need a retreat from all land that is not town or profitable farmland (i.e. not subsidised). I mean no kind of resource-extraction at all.

It is interesting that we don't even have the language for it. Say 're-wilding' to someone and they want to leap in their Land Rover with hundreds of imported saplings in plastic tubes  Leaving nature completely alone is such an alien concept it is left with the dregs of the adjectives: 'untidy', 'unkempt' and, worst of all... 'wilderness' !!


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## yield (Feb 14, 2021)

Geoffers said:


> Thank you. It is pay-walled







__





						Outline.com
					






					outline.com


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## yield (Feb 15, 2021)

US cold snap: Why is Texas seeing Arctic temperatures?
15/02/21


> Temperatures in the city of Dallas for example will reach a high of 14F (-10C) on Monday when it should be more like 59F (15C) at this time of year.
> 
> For the first time in the US state, all 254 counties are under a winter storm warning, US media report. The temperature in Dallas is already colder than in Anchorage, Alaska, CBS News reports.


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## 2hats (Feb 26, 2021)

Start knitting. Or digging.




__





						Gulf Stream System at its weakest in over a millennium — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
					

02/25/2021 - Never before in over 1000 years the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as Gulf Stream System, has been as weak as in the last decades. This is the result of a new study by scientists from Ireland, Britain and Germany. The researchers compiled so-called...




					www.pik-potsdam.de
				





> They found consistent evidence that its slowdown in the 20th century is unprecedented in the past millennium – it is likely linked to human-caused climate change. The giant ocean circulation is relevant for weather patterns in Europe and regional sea-levels in the US ... Global warming disturbs this mechanism: Increased rainfall and enhanced melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet add fresh water to the surface ocean. This reduces the salinity and thus the density of the water, inhibiting the sinking and thus weakening the flow of the AMOC. Its weakening has also been linked to a unique substantial cooling of the northern Atlantic over the past hundred years. This so-called ‘cold blob’ was predicted by climate models as a result of a weakening AMOC, which transports less heat into this region.










> The northward surface flow of the AMOC leads to a deflection of water masses to the right, away from the US east coast. This is due to Earth’s rotation that diverts moving objects such as currents to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. As the current slows down, this effect weakens and more water can pile up at the US east coast, leading to an enhanced sea level rise. In Europe, a further slowdown of the AMOC could imply more extreme weather events like a change of the winter storm track coming off the Atlantic, possibly intensifying them. Other studies found possible consequences being extreme heat waves or a decrease in summer rainfall.


DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00699-z.


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## yield (Mar 27, 2021)

Solar Geoengineering Should be Investigated, Scientists Say
March 26, 2021


> The most common proposal suggests spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere, where they would beam sunlight away from the Earth. Other proposals involve making clouds brighter by injecting them with particles, or to help trap less heat beneath them.
> 
> They're contentious ideas. Experts have many concerns about the possibility of unintended consequences, such as unwanted effects on rainfall or other global weather patterns.
> 
> Furthermore, solar geoengineering doesn't address the root cause of climate change — greenhouse gas emissions. It simply masks their warming effect on the planet. There are consequences of rising carbon dioxide levels, such as ocean acidification, that geoengineering can't address.


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## Nylock (Apr 5, 2021)

So an aerosol-based toupee to try and address the problem of climate change? Sounds like the kind of half-arsed solution we'd come up with in order to desperately cling to the status quo.


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## NoXion (Apr 6, 2021)

A cloud of orbital sunshades located at the Earth-Sun L1 would seem to be a better way of reducing the planet's insolation than dumping crap into the atmosphere. More controllable. More reversible too, since I'm not sure how we can easily un-dump chemical or physical dispersant materials from the atmosphere. Sunshades wouldn't introduce novel substances into the biosphere. There'd be no need to worry about the interaction between the dispersed substances and the those comprising the atmosphere. The sunshades could be solar-powered and could be mostly made out of thin foil. Also given the total volume of the Earth's atmosphere, versus the 2-dimensional area required to shade the entire Earth at the L1 point, it might actually require _less_ bulk material overall than the aerosol idea.

In fact atmospheric modification is looking like the worst geoengineering option of them all.


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## Saul Goodman (Apr 6, 2021)

NoXion said:


> A cloud of orbital sunshades located at the Earth-Sun L1 would seem to be a better way of reducing the planet's insolation than dumping crap into the atmosphere.


Given the chance, Elon Musk would probably have this sorted in a few weeks... or call somebody a paedo.


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## NoXion (Apr 6, 2021)

Saul Goodman said:


> Given the chance, Elon Musk would probably have this sorted in a few weeks... or call somebody a paedo.



Elon Musk is a fucking clown. He can wear a Jester's cap and foolishly dance for his idiot fanboys while the adults get on with doing their work.


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## Pickman's model (Apr 6, 2021)

NoXion said:


> Elon Musk is a fucking clown. He can wear a Jester's cap and foolishly dance for his idiot fanboys while the adults get on with doing their work.


He'd do his best dances with a steady supply of bullets between his feet


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## Crispy (Apr 6, 2021)

NoXion said:


> A cloud of orbital sunshades located at the Earth-Sun L1 would seem to be a better way of reducing the planet's insolation than dumping crap into the atmosphere. More controllable. More reversible too, since I'm not sure how we can easily un-dump chemical or physical dispersant materials from the atmosphere. Sunshades wouldn't introduce novel substances into the biosphere. There'd be no need to worry about the interaction between the dispersed substances and the those comprising the atmosphere. The sunshades could be solar-powered and could be mostly made out of thin foil. Also given the total volume of the Earth's atmosphere, versus the 2-dimensional area required to shade the entire Earth at the L1 point, it might actually require _less_ bulk material overall than the aerosol idea.


It would be a BIG undertaking.









						Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point (L1)
					

If it were to become apparent that dangerous changes in global climate were inevitable, despite greenhouse gas controls, active methods to cool the Earth on an emergency basis might be desirable. The concept considered here is to block 1.8% of the solar flux with a space sunshade orbited near...




					www.pnas.org
				






> An ideal sunshade with the above reflectivity and density would orbit at 2.2 Gm and, for 1.8% flux reduction*, would require area 6 million km2 and would weigh ≈7 million tons (marked “screen material alone” in Fig. 2 b). A practical sunshade will be heavier when structural and control elements are included.


*to mitigate the warming effect of a doubling of CO2 levels.

SpaceX Starship is aiming to lift 100tons to LEO, so not accounting for in-orbit refuelling flights (required to propel the payload out to L1 and return the spaceship) you'd need 70,000 launches, which is about 14x as many orbital launches so far in all of spaceflight history.

That's the sort of flight rate that Starship is being designed for, and with a goal of $10/ton marginal cost, it might not even be astronomically expensive.
But it would require a complete step-change in spaceflight operations, from rare and expensive to cheap and everyday.


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## NoXion (Apr 6, 2021)

And how much would it cost to implement this cock-eyed scheme to add further adulterants to the atmosphere we all have to breathe?


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## Crispy (Apr 6, 2021)

NoXion said:


> And how much would it cost to implement this cock-eyed scheme to add further adulterants to the atmosphere we all have to breathe?


Probably much cheaper. But irreversible.


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## Nylock (Apr 6, 2021)

NoXion said:


> A cloud of orbital sunshades located at the Earth-Sun L1 would seem to be a better way of reducing the planet's insolation than dumping crap into the atmosphere. More controllable. More reversible too, since I'm not sure how we can easily un-dump chemical or physical dispersant materials from the atmosphere. Sunshades wouldn't introduce novel substances into the biosphere. There'd be no need to worry about the interaction between the dispersed substances and the those comprising the atmosphere. The sunshades could be solar-powered and could be mostly made out of thin foil. Also given the total volume of the Earth's atmosphere, versus the 2-dimensional area required to shade the entire Earth at the L1 point, it might actually require _less_ bulk material overall than the aerosol idea.
> 
> In fact atmospheric modification is looking like the worst geoengineering option of them all.


Giant space parasol definitely > atmospheric chemical toupee....


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## Pickman's model (May 14, 2021)

Missed this last year, sure it's on the thread somewhere More than half of all CO2 emissions since 1751 emitted in the last 30 years I think the executive summary is we're utterly fucked


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## yield (May 15, 2021)

Big Oil Is Trying to Make Climate Change Your Problem to Solve. Don’t Let Them
May 14, 2021
A new Harvard study highlights a decades-long trend — how industry creates systemic problems and then blames consumers for it


> Of course, consumers aren’t entirely blameless, particularly the world’s wealthiest individuals, but the idea that oil is a purely demand-side industry is ridiculous. In the 1980s, for example, when the oil crisis was finally over (oil prices had risen by 300 percent at one point) oil companies were very worried about the fact that Americans had gotten good at saving energy, so good that demand seemed to have permanently dipped.
> 
> Did they reduce supply accordingly? No, they looked for ways to drive demand back up, tinkering with production and lobbying for policies that would incentivize increased fossil fuel use. More recently, as companies have grappled with a natural gas glut, they have not stopped fracking, but merely found a new revenue stream — plastic.





Pickman's model said:


> Missed this last year, sure it's on the thread somewhere More than half of all CO2 emissions since 1751 emitted in the last 30 years I think the executive summary is we're utterly fucked


Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says
Mon 10 Jul 2017
Four years old but I doubt much has changed? Maybe cryptocurrency mining?


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## teqniq (Jun 23, 2021)

Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report
					

Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, according to a landmark draft report from the UN's climate science advisors obtained by AFP.




					au.news.yahoo.com


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## Argonia (Jun 23, 2021)

Stick the Windsors in their prison cells, unleash the Republic, and get the genius scientists on the case with no further delay. That and peak oil are the twin tasks ahead and we can't have tyrants cluttering up the place and getting in the way.


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## 2hats (Jun 23, 2021)

teqniq said:


> Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report
> 
> 
> Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, according to a landmark draft report from the UN's climate science advisors obtained by AFP.
> ...


Note that that's based on the *second draft* of the sixth assessment cycle's Working Group II report, which assesses impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change,, not due to officially report until mid-late February 2022. A media (not IPCC) summary graphic of the (not yet fully peer reviewed and finalised) information gleaned from the draft:





The first officially released material from the sixth assessment cycle will (should) be the Working Group I report, which assesses the physical science basis of climate change. That is expected to be released on 9 August this year.


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## yield (Jun 27, 2021)

Madagascar: UN warns 400,000 people at acute risk of starvation
27.06.2021 


> The WFP chief says climate change is to blame for the food emergency.
> 
> The situation is "not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change," Beasley stressed.
> 
> Madagascar has contributed nothing to climate change but "they're the ones paying the highest price," he added.





> "Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now," Beasley said.
> 
> Lola Castro, the WFP regional direction in southern Africa, told a news conference that she witnessed "a very dramatic and desperate situation" during her visit with Beasley.
> 
> She added the food situation in southern Madagascar is unlike anything she has witnessed in 28 years of working for the WFP on four continents, with the exception of what is now South Sudan in 1998.


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## Argonia (Jun 27, 2021)

yield said:


> Madagascar: UN warns 400,000 people at acute risk of starvation
> 27.06.2021


Christ


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## Badgers (Jun 29, 2021)

Interesting if a bit scary thread


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## Saul Goodman (Jun 29, 2021)

I watched an Attenborough thing last night about the 9 tipping points that are going to fuck us up, it was quite disturbing. It seems we've already passed the tipping point for chemical fertilisers, so much for us all turning vegan.


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## Argonia (Jun 29, 2021)

Get the Manhattan Conference of global scientists on the case. They don't need to fly around, just meet on Zoom and sort it out. It might be time for unfashionable forms of geo-engineering. I don't know because I'm not a scientist. I tweeted Michael Mann and Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer but none of them replied. We got the job done on the Ozone layer so there is still some hope but time is running out.





__





						Climate engineering - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## NoXion (Jun 29, 2021)

Don't let the defeatism encouraged by the fossil fuels industry get you down.









						Climate Deniers Shift Tactics to ‘Inactivism’
					

Fossil fuel interests are trying to blame climate change on individuals while also sowing division, says Michael Mann, one of their prime targets




					www.scientificamerican.com
				







			
				Article said:
			
		

> Although it is too soon to declare victory, Mann cautions, the initial war of disinformation against climate science is now essentially over. The scientific evidence has become impossible to dispute in light of the dramatic increases in extreme weather events, megafires and polar melting in recent years, he says.
> ...
> I use whole bunch of “D” words to describe this: deflection, delay, division, despair mongering, doomism. To start with, there is an effort to deflect attention away from systemic solutions. They are trying to convince people that climate change is not the result of their corporate policies but of our own individual actions. I mean BP [a multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London] was instrumental in the whole idea of a carbon footprint. *They introduced the carbon footprint calculator to help get people to think of this as an individual-responsibility issue.*
> ...
> ...


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## Artaxerxes (Jun 30, 2021)




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## Argonia (Jun 30, 2021)

Artaxerxes said:


>



Good expose


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 1, 2021)

Getting a lot of traction that.

I hope people get good and angry at the fucking lies we've been sold and the corrupt fucking law makers we've had.


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## Argonia (Jul 2, 2021)

Artaxerxes said:


> Getting a lot of traction that.
> 
> I hope people get good and angry at the fucking lies we've been sold and the corrupt fucking law makers we've had.



Saw a thing from Common Dreams at Facebook last ngiht about suing the companies for their lies.


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## Argonia (Jul 2, 2021)

Just read at Wikipedia that Alexander von Humbodlt was the first person to point out human induced climate change in 1800 and 1831. If only more people had listened to him.


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 3, 2021)

Argonia said:


> Just read at Wikipedia that Alexander von Humbodlt was the first person to point out human induced climate change in 1800 and 1831. If only more people had listened to him.



He was a top fella, this is well worth a read. In many ways the founder of environmentalism and while he was popular more should have listened to him long after he'd gone. To many lessons ignored, to many struts cut from the web of life 





__





						The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner eBook : Wulf, Andrea: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
					

The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner eBook : Wulf, Andrea: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store



					www.amazon.co.uk


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## Argonia (Jul 3, 2021)

Artaxerxes said:


> He was a top fella, this is well worth a read. In many ways the founder of environmentalism and while he was popular more should have listened to him long after he'd gone. To many lessons ignored, to many struts cut from the web of life
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks Artaxerxes . He was an utter genius and in the David Attenborough bracket. I downloaded Kosmos to my Kindle (in English because my German is hopeless) and ripped through it last night.


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## Argonia (Jul 5, 2021)

Get rid of this shambles of a government, have an election, vote in a coalition that can make a climate change plan in a landslide. RIGHT NOW









						Government has no climate change plan - MPs
					

Two reports from MPs cast doubt on the government's approach to meeting its climate change goals.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 6, 2021)

New Zealand records hottest June on record.









						New Zealand experiences hottest June on record despite polar blast
					

Average temperatures for the month were 2C higher than normal, with 24 separate locations hitting their own records




					www.theguardian.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 6, 2021)

Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)
					

The long read: The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom




					www.theguardian.com


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## Argonia (Jul 6, 2021)

Hopeless BBC News which keeps showing pictures of Alexander Boris and Queen Elizabeth II have a small story.









						The brewery using algae to fight climate change
					

An Australian craft brewery is using microalgae to turn their carbon emissions into oxygen.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 6, 2021)

Nordic countries endure heatwave as Lapland records hottest day since 1914
					

Kevo in Lapland recorded a temperature of 33.6C after Finland registered record heat in June




					www.theguardian.com


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## CNT36 (Jul 6, 2021)

OBR saying (no shit) that it will  be cheaper to act early on climate change to avoid massive public debt. As we're talking money not lives maybe it will spur some into action.









						UK faces new debt surge in climate push, early action best - OBR
					

Britain faces another jump in its 2-trillion-pound ($2.8 trillion) public debt pile to make its economy net carbon zero by 2050,but quick global action could make the hit less severe than that of the coronavirus pandemic, a fiscal watchdog said.




					www.reuters.com
				











						Shortages hit US services firms, German factories and UK builders; Didi shares tumble after crackdown – as it happened
					

Office for Budget Responsibility says UK debt will rise to pay for decarbonisation, and early action would limit the bill




					www.theguardian.com
				




Spoilered a bit from the Guardian as it is from a live feed not an article and may disappear.



> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The fiscal cost of acting early, or even late, on the transition to net zero pale into insignificance compared to the cost of completely unmitigated climate change, the OBR adds.  It has modeled the fiscal risks from an extreme, unmitigated climate scenario, in which increasing CO2 emissions cause average UK temperatures to rise by around 4°C by the end of this century.  It found it would cause “progressively more frequent and more costly shocks to the public finances than have historically been the case”, sending debt levels ratcheting higher as a series of shocks hits the government.  UK temperature forecasts  Photograph: OBR That’s due to extreme weather events at home and the spillovers from even greater damages in hotter countries.  This scenario also shows a greater economic and fiscal costs of adapting to higher temperatures.  This would add to the UK’s other significant long-term pressures -- such as the increased spending demanded by an ageing society, and other cost pressures in the health system.  So debt ratchets up more sharply to reach 289 per cent of GDP by the end of the century, as the hit from each shock increases and the period between them to get debt back down diminishes  That’s almost three times today’s debt/GDP levels, and twice as high as you’d expected with a typical number of shocks over the century [and well beyond levels seen as sustainable].  Impact on UK debt from unmitigated global warming  Photograph: OBR The OBR says such a worst-case scenario now appears “increasingly unlikely” – it would fail to take into account the mitigation policies already in place.  But while based on extremely broad-brush assumptions, they highlight the magnitude of the fiscal costs that might be avoided by successfully stabilising global temperatures in line with the Paris targets, the watchdog says, adding:  A true ‘current policy’ fiscal scenario that incorporates only actions underpinned by firm policies that have already been announced would therefore lie somewhere between this illustration of catastrophic unmitigated warming and the early action scenario.  Introducing the policies necessary to meet the climate targets that are set out in legislation in the UK and increasingly being adopted elsewhere would shift the ‘current policy’ outcome further away from the catastrophic scenario. But this is very much still work in progress.  Updated at 1.26pm BST FacebookTwitter 3h ago 12:40 OBR: Delaying action on net-zero will double the impact on national debt The fiscal cost of achieving net zero by 2050 will be twice as high if the UK government delays taking action until 2030, rather than acting fast now, the UK’s fiscal watchdog says.  The Office for Budget Responsibility’s fiscal risks report shows taking early action to decarbonise the economy has a smaller net impact on the UK’s finances than Covid-19 or the 2008 financial crisis.  But delaying until the start of the next decade will end up adding twice as much to the national debt as acting fast.  And failing to take action has a catastrophic impact on the public finances (and, rather more importantly, the planet), with debt rocketing to 289% of GDP by the end of the century, up from about 100% now.  The UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) puts the cumulative investment cost for the whole economy between now and 2050, plus the operating costs of emissions removals, at £1.4trn in 2019 prices, the report says.  The Government has not said how much of that cost it expects to bear -- but the OBR assumes it meets a quarter of it. When combined with savings from more energy-efficient buildings and vehicles, the net cost to the state is £344bn in real terms. Spread across three decades, that’s an average of just 0.4% of GDP in additional public spending each year.  Speaking at today’s press conference, OBR chairman Richard Hughes explains that the watchdog has drawn up an ‘early action’ scenario, in which the UK ramps up carbon taxes and also boosts investment in green technologies from the mid-2020s.  In that scenario, making the transition to net zero by 2050 adds about 20% of GDP to government debt over the next 30 years, slightly less than the pandemic is expected to add in just two years, Hughes says.    The bulk of the cost comes from the loss of fuel duty, followed by government support for investments in zero carbon technology - which are only partly offset by taxing carbon more heavily.  The report says:  Carbon tax revenues. Our [early action] scenario assumes all emissions are taxed, and more heavily, from 2026-27 onwards (which could be achieved by extending the UK ETS [emissions trading system] or imposing a uniform carbon tax in its place).  The OBR report shows how expanding carbon taxes would raise significant revenue.  The OBR report shows how expanding carbon taxes would raise significant revenue. Photograph: OBR But, this is only one scenario for reaching net zero, and arguably ‘quite an optimistic one’ Hughes admits, in which governments around the world act decisively this decade to put their emissions on a steeply declining path.  So the OBR has modelled alternative scenarios - varying the timing of the transition, impact on productivity, and fiscal policy choices.  One scenario actually saves the government money -- if the investment costs are funded within existing spending plans (meaning a very tight squeeze on other public services), and the loss of fuel duty is replaced by another tax on motoring, such as a road user charge.  But under the ‘late action’ scenario, decisive steps to cut emissions globally and in the UK are delayed until the 2030s. Then, the UK must manage a more hurried and costly transition to net-zero - and misses out on five years of carbon tax revenues.  Under this scenario, debt in 2050-51 is 23 % of GDP higher than in the early action scenario, with GDP around 3% lower and direct public spending costs increasing by around a half.  Hughes says:  The price of this delay is a doubling of the total fiscal cost of the transition.    Hughes also points out that in some sectors of the economy, such as transport, decarbonisation pays for itself as improvements in battery technology drive the lifetime cost of electric cars below the cost of petrol cars.  But other areas have significant net costs, such as replacing household gas boilers with green alternatives, which society would have to bear.  The net cost to the government depends on revenues changes - net zero provides threats and opportunities. At risk are the revenues collected from petrol duty - which are almost certain to disappear once fossil-fuel cars are banned by 2030.  But, this can be partly made up for with a carbon tax (although the revenues here would decline as the economy shifted to net zero).    Here are more key charts from the report:     And here’s some reaction:


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## stavros (Jul 6, 2021)

CNT36 said:


> OBR saying (no shit) that it will  be cheaper to act early on climate change to avoid massive public debt. As we're talking money not lives maybe it will spur some into action.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That was what Nick Stern said in his government-commissioned review, *15 fucking years ago*.


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## CNT36 (Jul 6, 2021)

stavros said:


> That was what Nick Stern said in his government-commissioned review, *15 fucking years ago*.


Yeah, I remember that one. I was in a lecture the next day and the lecturer and I both said


CNT36 said:


> As we're talking money not lives maybe it will spur some into action.


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## Crispy (Jul 6, 2021)

It's tomorrow's money though, which has zero value compared to today's. Obviously.


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## Argonia (Jul 7, 2021)

At last another story on the pretty hopeless BBC









						Why North America's killer heat scares me
					

It's not the new record temperatures that concern the BBC's Roger Harrabin - it's the way they were smashed.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## Argonia (Jul 8, 2021)

This is something to look forward to!

GET THE FUCKING TORIES OUT AND GET A GOVERNMENT WITH A FUCKING PLAN









						Climate crisis ‘may put 8bn at risk of malaria and dengue’
					

Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds




					www.theguardian.com


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## CNT36 (Jul 8, 2021)

The heat won't just affect the length of the season. It will extend zones where disease carrying mosquitoes can flourish away from the equator.


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 8, 2021)

CNT36 said:


> The heat won't just affect the length of the season. It will extend zones where disease carrying mosquitoes can flourish away from the equator.



It will effect everything, from little to large


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

A story from the pretty hopeless BBC:









						Covid: Can the arts lead the green recovery from the pandemic?
					

The pandemic has devastated the arts, but green shoots of recovery may be forming - in every sense.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

Apparently a writer in Spain says it is heading for 49 degrees there soon


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## Pickman's model (Jul 10, 2021)

Argonia said:


> Apparently a writer in Spain says it is heading for 49 degrees there soon


Yeh could we have a link for this sort of claim?


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Yeh could we have a link for this sort of claim?


Won't give her name but this was the update at Facebook:

We are promised a weather phenomenon on Monday known as the Bestia Africana. It could take temperatures up to 47 degrees. Am thinking this is not the best time to be without a working fridge.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 10, 2021)

Argonia said:


> This is something to look forward to!
> 
> GET THE FUCKING TORIES OUT AND GET A GOVERNMENT WITH A FUCKING PLAN
> 
> ...


I don't know why they don't just say everyone will be at risk by 2080, rather than 8bn people will be...


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## teqniq (Jul 10, 2021)

And then there's this:


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## glitch hiker (Jul 10, 2021)

That wet bulb shit is just fucked up. You literally boil in your own sweat.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 10, 2021)

I have been on that river, the Lena, and I have been on that boat. And I have been through the smoke from a Siberian forest fire for three days, back in 2018.

That's down around Yakutsk, I saw a film of the Lena pillars - a UNESCO world heritage site - burning the other day, been there too. It's absolutely heartbreaking.


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## cuppa tee (Jul 10, 2021)

Argonia said:


> Won't give her name but this was the update at Facebook:
> 
> We are promised a weather phenomenon on Monday known as the Bestia Africana. It could take temperatures up to 47 degrees. Am thinking this is not the best time to be without a working fridge.


Fiona Pitt Kethley ?


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

cuppa tee said:


> Fiona Pitt Kethley ?


No comment to protect the guilty


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

cuppa tee said:


> Fiona Pitt Kethley ?


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## cuppa tee (Jul 10, 2021)

Argonia said:


> No comment to protect the guilty



dont think she’d have a problem with being named, her posts are mostly public anyway
i enjoy her posts about fun with feral cats and rambling around rural Spain amongst other stuff.
she doesn’t seem to do much of the bawdy stuff these days but her patreon site may be does.


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## Argonia (Jul 10, 2021)

cuppa tee said:


> dont think she’d have a problem with being named, her posts are mostly public anyway
> i enjoy her posts about fun with feral cats and rambling around rural Spain amongst other stuff.
> she doesn’t seem to do much of the bawdy stuff these days but her patreon site may be does.


I think she still has a mouth like a Victorian sewer run by Joseph Bazalgette. Another writer I know complained she was being bombarded with the C word. She's a great writer. Sadly we have lost her to Spain because Brttain is so poorly governed.


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## petee (Jul 11, 2021)

teqniq said:


> And then there's this:




typo? google says 70s and 80s for this week.


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 13, 2021)

The SW US is basically fucked by the look of it.









						Severe drought threatens Hoover dam reservoir – and water for US west
					

The wellspring of Lake Mead created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River has plummeted to a historic low as states in the west face hefty cuts in their water supplies




					www.theguardian.com


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## yield (Jul 13, 2021)

farmerbarleymow said:


> The SW US is basically fucked by the look of it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





> The engineering might of Hoover dam undoubtably reshaped America’s story, harnessing a raucous river to help carve huge cities and vast fields of crops into unforgiving terrain. But the wellspring of Lake Mead, created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River and with the capacity to hold enough water to cover the entire state of Connecticut 10ft deep, has now plummeted to an historic low. The states of the west, primarily Arizona and Nevada, now face hefty cuts in their water supplies amid a two-decade drought fiercer than anything seen in a millennium.
> 
> “We bent nature to suit our own needs,” said Brad Udall, a climate and water expert at Colorado State University. “And now nature is going to bend us.”





> the decline of Lake Mead has caused the amount of hydro power generated by the dam to drop by around 25%. The drought is expected to cause the hydro facility at Lake Oroville, California, to completely shut down, prompting a warning from the United States Energy Association that a “megadrought-induced electricity shortage could be catastrophic, affecting everything from food production to industrial manufacturing”. The association added that such a scenario could even force people to move east, in what it called a “reverse Dust Bowl exodus”.
> 
> Bernardo said a similar shutdown of the Hoover dam would require more than 100ft in further water level retreat, which is not anticipated, although he finds himself constantly hoping for the rains that would ease the tightening shortages.


While the midwest is flooding.


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## Flavour (Jul 14, 2021)

Yeah this is it. It's too late, but we still need to take action anyway, and California becoming uninhabitable in a scarily rapid timeframe is the only thing that can kick US capitalism into taking more radical action.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 14, 2021)

Flavour said:


> Yeah this is it. It's too late, but we still need to take action anyway, and California becoming uninhabitable in a scarily rapid timeframe is the only thing that can kick US capitalism into taking more radical action.


The flooding of new orleans and new york clearly not severe enough


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## David Clapson (Jul 18, 2021)

I wonder if there are any climate-related disasters which might happen in the UK, and trigger changes in people's habits? The majority of people here are not really doing anything, except sorting their rubbish. I don't think the floods in Germany/Belgium or the fires in the US will get their attention. People will still buy as many Range Rovers as they can.


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## yield (Jul 20, 2021)

Scientists were stunned by last week’s rare Arctic lightning storms
Reuters - July 19, 2021


> ANCHORAGE — Meteorologists were stunned last week when three successive thunderstorms swept across the Arctic from Siberia to north of Alaska, unleashing lightning bolts in an unusual phenomenon that scientists say will become less rare with global warming.
> 
> “Forecasters hadn’t seen anything like that before,” said Ed Plumb, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fairbanks, speaking about the storms that started on Saturday.





> Typically, the air over the Arctic Ocean, especially when the water is covered with ice, lacks the convective heat needed to generate lightning storms.
> 
> But as climate change warms the Arctic faster than the rest of the world, that’s changing, scientists say.
> 
> Episodes of summer lightning within the Arctic Circle have tripled since 2010, a trend directly tied to climate change and increasing loss of sea ice in the far north, scientists reported in a March study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. As sea ice vanishes, more water is able to evaporate, adding moisture to the warming atmosphere.





> “It’s going to go with the temperatures,” said co-author Robert Holzworth, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
> 
> These electrical storms threaten boreal forests fringing the Arctic, as they spark fires in remote regions already baking under the round-the-clock summer sun. Boreal Siberia in Russia gets more lightning than any other Arctic region, Holzworth said.


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 21, 2021)

It looks horrendous in China at the moment - breaches of dams and flooded underground systems.  









						Death toll rises and thousands flee homes as floods hit China
					

Torrential rainfall and burst rivers swamp Henan cities, with commuters trapped on subway trains




					www.theguardian.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 27, 2021)

Some pictures of Lytton  









						‘There’s nothing left in Lytton’: the Canadian village destroyed by wildfire – picture essay
					

The fire that devastated Lytton is still burning – and First Nation residents say the lack of help from the British Columbia government has been ‘sickening’




					www.theguardian.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 28, 2021)

Poor salmon 









						Video shows salmon injured by unlivable water temperatures after heatwave
					

A conservation group recorded the video after a heatwave in the Pacific north-west on a day when water temperatures breached 70F




					www.theguardian.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 28, 2021)

More cheerful news  









						Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds
					

Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records




					www.theguardian.com


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## Badgers (Jul 28, 2021)

Fucking cunts


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## stavros (Jul 28, 2021)

Earth Overshoot Day has progressed back to almost as early as 2019, after last year's Covid anomaly.


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## cyberpink (Jul 29, 2021)

stavros said:


> Earth Overshoot Day has progressed back to almost as early as 2019, after last year's Covid anomaly.





farmerbarleymow said:


> It looks horrendous in China at the moment - breaches of dams and flooded underground systems.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love how the Chinese look back at basic rule - "anyone that can control the Yellow River has divine authority" - this is all in the pre-Maoist spiritual sense. So the Uyghur murdering bastards have karma to roost.
They are kicking all Western journalists out of the area. Because the control of the Yellow River is vital to the divine legend of bullshit horrible modern Chinese image. Free Hong Kong and fuck China.


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 29, 2021)

Unsurprising news.









						Met Office warns climate crisis has already arrived in UK
					

Hotter, sunnier and wetter. Britain's weather in the last 30 years was different to the preceding three decades.




					www.channel4.com


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 29, 2021)

Surprise


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## Badgers (Jul 30, 2021)

Already posted


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## Pickman's model (Jul 30, 2021)

Artaxerxes said:


> Surprise



Tbh that's small beer compared with predictions of civilisational collapse by 2040 World collapse by 2040 that was predicted in 1972 study 'could happen unless we act now'


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## teqniq (Jul 30, 2021)

Badgers said:


> Already posted


I think this may be a new development. Wasn't the original thing (back in May I think) that there was a demo because some people realised that the exhibition was sponsored by Shell and the Science museum called the police to disperse them? Here's a short thread from Channel 4:











						Revealed: Science Museum signed gagging clause with exhibition sponsor Shell
					

The Science Museum has signed a gagging clause in its agreement with Shell International to sponsor its climate change exhibition, agreeing to take care not to say anything that could damage the company’s reputation, Channel 4 News has learnt.




					www.channel4.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Jul 30, 2021)

Greenland: enough ice melted on single day to cover Florida in two inches of water
					

Data from Danish government shows vast ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday




					www.theguardian.com


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## farmerbarleymow (Aug 5, 2021)

This is another ominous sign, although this has been known to be a risk for quite a while.









						Climate 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




					www.theguardian.com


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## Flavour (Aug 6, 2021)

We're so fucked. How long till we see a breakaway XR that is not quite so cop-friendly?


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## farmerbarleymow (Aug 7, 2021)

Another Canadian town is toast.  









						Second western Canada town destroyed by ‘exceedingly aggressive’ wildfire
					

Residents of Monte Lake, British Columbia, forced to evacuate a month after village of Lytton devastated by wildfire




					www.theguardian.com


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## teqniq (Aug 9, 2021)

FFS


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## teqniq (Aug 9, 2021)

IPCC report out. Not telling us anything we didn't know already but considering the above we are royally fucked:









						Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'
					

Heating from humans has caused irreparable damage to the Earth that may get worse in coming decades.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## farmerbarleymow (Aug 9, 2021)

teqniq said:


> IPCC report out. Not telling us anything we didn't know already but considering the above we are royally fucked:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep, utterly fucked - I doubt there will be any meaningful changes.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 9, 2021)

teqniq said:


> IPCC report out. Not telling us anything we didn't know already but considering the above we are royally fucked:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sure we all knew it was coming to 'game over'


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## SpookyFrank (Aug 9, 2021)

Flavour said:


> We're so fucked. How long till we see a breakaway XR that is not quite so cop-friendly?



Spiky direct actions have been going on for decades. XR are allowed some publicity precisely because they're harmless, non-confrontational and don't talk about structural or class issues.

Also they're happy to snitch on themselves and everyone else. If the state didn't invent them they probably wish they had.


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## David Clapson (Aug 9, 2021)

SpookyFrank said:


> Spiky direct actions have been going on for decades.


Got any examples?


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## SpookyFrank (Aug 9, 2021)

David Clapson said:


> Got any examples?



This very site is full of reports of climate activism going back 20 odd years.


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## Flavour (Aug 9, 2021)

Up to a point, Frank. XR are indeed given more publicity because they're BBC-friendly, non-confrontational (at least in theory, except when kicking working class people trying to drag them from the tops of the underground trains they're blocking), largely white and middle-class and so on. We know that.  I am against XR.

But at the same time, for all their numerous faults which I am very well aware of, I do think they organized some of the biggest climate protests the UK has seen for many, many years, probably the biggest ever. I know there were lots of protests against, for example, Manchester Airport expansion in the 90s, expansion of the motorway network, and so on, but those feel like a different age now. Certainly the general public opinion of the seriousness of climate change has shifted considerably since Swampy was trying to prevent the building of the Newbury bypass.

What happened between the Occupy protests of 2011 and the XR protests of 2019 that was worthy of note, that could have been built on?


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## stavros (Aug 9, 2021)

I wonder if the "options" as it were, of fucked or not fucked need to be phrased differently, in a less binary fashion. Perhaps in the sense that yes, we are going to be fucked, but the time proximity and intensity of that fucking is still in our hands.


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## Artaxerxes (Aug 9, 2021)

stavros said:


> I wonder if the "options" as it were, of fucked or not fucked need to be phrased differently, in a less binary fashion. Perhaps in the sense that yes, we are going to be fucked, but the time proximity and intensity of that fucking is still in our hands.



It's not really, even if we dropped to zero overnight we're quite fucked. Climate has inertia.

If we're lucky we can make us fucked for a bit less time and adapt some modifications that'll ease the pain


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## David Clapson (Aug 10, 2021)

Half a percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are from traffic in Texas.









						What If Texas Tore Down Its Highways?
					

The Texas Department of Transportation intends to spend $25 billion widening highways to fix traffic in Texas cities. What if we tore them down instead?




					www.texasobserver.org


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## David Clapson (Aug 10, 2021)

42 people have died in wildfires in Algeria. Cause of fires not yet known.  Wildfires in Algeria: dozens of civilians and soldiers reported dead


----------



## StoneRoad (Aug 13, 2021)

I know iceberg calving is a normal process (although I suspect that we are getting rather more than the "normal" frequency of calvings, and some big sections of ice shelves breaking free) ... 
but A74 has been wandering about and has just bumped back into the corner of the Brunt Ice Shelf - not hard enough (?) to knock off the "Western" section [west of Chasm 1] 









						Giant iceberg A74 kisses the Antarctic coast
					

A colossus almost the size of Greater London gives the Antarctic coastline the gentlest of nudges.



					www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## yield (Oct 12, 2021)

As drought worsens, California farmers are being paid not to grow crops
					

As Colorado River levels continue to drop, water agencies are working with local growers to leave some fields fallow in exchange for cash payments.




					news.yahoo.com
				







__





						Outline.com
					






					outline.com
				





> The Colorado River has long been chronically over-allocated, with so much water diverted to supply farms and cities that the river has for decades rarely reached the sea in Mexico. Most of that diverted water — approximately 70% — irrigates farmland, and much of that water flows to thirsty crops such as hay and cotton, which are exported in large quantities.
> 
> Since 2000, the river’s flow has shrunk during one of the driest 22-year periods in centuries. Scientists have described the last two decades as a megadrought, and one that’s being worsened by the heating of the planet with the burning of fossil fuels. Researchers have warned that long-term “aridification” of the Colorado River Basin means the region must adapt to a river that provides less water.





> The water level in Lake Mead has declined 27 feet since January 2020. The reservoir now stands at just 34% of full capacity, placing it at a shortage level that will trigger mandatory water cutbacks next year for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.
> 
> The lake’s water level is projected to continue falling. The latest estimates from the federal government show the water in Lake Mead could drop an additional 30 feet by August 2023, a level that would require water cuts in California.


----------

