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Man-made climate change - we're doomed!

wickedken

wickedken

TRIBE Member
Interesting article from the Guardian...
- CO2 levels are dropped off, but
- methane levels are increasing and nobody knows why
- methane is 20x more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon

Rapid rise in methane emissions in 10 years surprises scientists

I can't help but think of the well-meaning Starfleet crew who poked holes in a planet's crust to induce global warming and save the planet from an ice age... but then triggered something else so devastating that the planet would have been destroyed.
 
praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
Yes it's a new feedback loop they're finding.

Seems a lot of the news in last five years is centered on identifying these kinds of mechanisms.

Careful what is meant by "CO2 levels are dropping off", need to understand both the atmospheric amount and how much is being absorbed by the oceans. We may see dips in atmospheric, but pay attention - were they describing a drop in rate of increase or a true reduction? Sometimes a "drop" is just a slowing down of our rate of acceleration, but we're still pumping more in of course.

And a true drop, if it's being measured as such according to a good metric, could be a false promise if the oceans are eating up more of it than we thought. This leads to ocean acidfication and other bad shit too.

It's complicated stuff, and it's heartening to see that recognition in the climate science community and the results of that mindset are scientific research that help up us understand these interdependencies, feedback loops and a more holistic understanding of climate change looking at many disciplines and angles and how they connect.

We thought there was a "global cooling" effect not so long ago but it was a false signal, the excess heat was just getting buried deep in the heart of the ocean where we weren't looking.
 
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praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
Ya you're right that it will take drastic action.

That said its so important? Even the smallest increment of action should be welcomed!

Each incremental bit of action we take means just a tiny bit of the potential hurt is rolled back. If there are millions of these small actions they can be just as important as one big "drastic action".
 
Lojack

Lojack

TRIBE Member
Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared

Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared

“The New Little Ice Age Has Started.” This is the unambiguous title of a new study from one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions, the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg. “The average temperature around the globe will fall by about 1.5 C when we enter the deep cooling phase of the Little Ice Age, expected in the year 2060,” the study states. “The cooling phase will last for about 45-65 years, for four to six 11-year cycles of the Sun, after which on the Earth, at the beginning of the 22nd century, will begin the new, next quasi-bicentennial cycle of warming.”

Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at Pulkovo and the author of the study, has been predicting the arrival of another little ice age since 2003, based on his study of the behaviour of the Sun’s different cycles and the solar activity that then results. His model — informed by Earth’s 18 earlier little ice ages over the past 7,500 years, six of them in the last thousand years — led to his prediction more than a decade ago that the next little ice age would occur between 2012 and 2015. Unlike the global warming models of scientists, which were soon disproved by actual measurements, Abdussamatov’s models have been affirmed by actual events, including the rise of the oceans and the measurable irradiance sent earthward by the sun. This record of accuracy — which he has repeatedly demonstrated in studies between 2003 and now — leads him to now confidently state that in 2014–15, we began our entry into the 19th Little Ice Age.

[...]
 
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praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
Solar forcing, or an abeyance thereof, is not about to put us into a little ice age.

It's been a strange obsession in some quarters - there persists a few researchers looking to confirm their theories that place the sun and variations thereof in a place of primary importance over GHGs, in terms of explaining recent and near term climate trends.

These hypotheses are not really supported by the facts, and it takes cherry picking and the operation of some unconscious or conscious bias in the researcher to get there. The preponderance of evidence and nearly all their peers goes against them. Like it does for other agenda based researchers in other fields, like Seralini for GMOs, Wakefield for vaccines or the Discovery Institute for evolutionary science.

Outliers and ideogues, pollyannas and contrarians all out in the wilderness pushing ideas that get them some attention and validation from activist communities that use their research for their marketing campaigns.

Sun & climate: moving in opposite directions

FigFAQ5_1-1_smaller.png
 
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praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
The "researcher" Solomon is elevating past the point he deserves is essentially focusing on the second graph there for the sun, and de-emphasizing the rest.

While the sun figures as an important element in our climate - no doubt - we can see how despite a downturn in solar radiation intensity from the sunspot cycles we are nonetheless seeing an increase in global temperatures. In the long term history we can likely tie some major climate shifts to this factor of changes in solar forcing.

This does not reconcile with the factors at play in recent warming trends here and now, however. It's irresponsible of the researcher to make these claims and irresponsible of Solomon to report on it so gullibly. It's a sign of this journalist's lack of ability to understand science and he shouldn't be trusted to communicate science to the public for major publications as a result.
 
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wickedken

wickedken

TRIBE Member
praktik said:
Lojack, wickedken beat you to the punch on the Solomon piece in the weather thread!
Click to expand...

so violent!

Actually I read an interesting article re the post I made about how dark matter was being called into question. (See "This is Heavy".) However I ran into a post by the scientist who was quoted, who essentially said journalists often get science wrong, including what he said about the experiment in question.

The Reference Frame: Severe inaccuracies in media stories about Verlinde's speculations
 
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praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
wickedken said:
so violent!

Actually I read an interesting article re the post I made about how dark matter was being called into question. (See "This is Heavy".) However I ran into a post by the scientist who was quoted, who essentially said journalists often get science wrong, including what he said about the experiment in question.

The Reference Frame: Severe inaccuracies in media stories about Verlinde's speculations
Click to expand...


Yes, interesting stuff:


NeuroLogica Blog » A Tale of Two Science News Reports

NeuroLogica Blog » Science Journalism

NeuroLogica Blog » Who’s To Blame for Bad Science News Reporting

NeuroLogica Blog » The Challenges of Science Communication
 
Boss Hog

Boss Hog

TRIBE Member
Just drove through the alps. No snow except for at the very top, or where it was man made and melting in 10 degree weather.
 
praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
The underestimated danger of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System

"A new study in Science Advances by Wei Liu and colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and the University of Wisconsin-Madison has important implications for the future stability of the overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. They applied a correction to the freshwater fluxes in the Atlantic, in order to better reproduce the salt concentration of ocean waters there. This correction changes the overall salt budget for the Atlantic, also changing the stability of the model’s ocean circulation in future climate change. The Atlantic ocean circulation is relatively stable in the uncorrected model, only declining by about 20% in response to a CO2 doubling, but in the corrected model version it breaks down completely in the centuries following a CO2 doubling, with dramatic consequences for the climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
...
There are, therefore, two reasons why thus far we could have underestimated the risk of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System. First, climate models probably have a systematic bias towards stable flow. Secondly, most of them do not take into account the melting ice of Greenland. As the new studies show, each of these factors alone can lead to a much stronger weakening of the Gulf Stream system. We now need to study how these two factors work together. I hope these worrying new results will encourage as many other research groups as possible to pursue this question with their own models!"
 
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praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
wickedken said:
Doomed! Good thing cap-and-trade exists so we can pay more!
Click to expand...

We should be thankful for that actually, glad you're on board. our energy costs are subsidized on the backs of future generations.

We should all be paying much higher prices.

Even with cap and trade the full cost is not being factored in.
 
wickedken

wickedken

TRIBE Member
Looks like Jane Fonda disagrees with you @praktik, carbon emissions schemes are NOT enough:

To a reporter’s question of whether Alberta has social licence to continue developing oil because the government has drafted legislation to dis-incentivize its own carbon emissions, Fonda replied “that’s ridiculous.”

Jane Fonda comes to Alberta to inform them that oil is bad and they should get other jobs

Let's disregard the celebrity thing, and the oh so great quote “We don’t need new pipelines,” she told a Wednesday press conference at the University of Alberta where she also dismissed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “good-looking Liberal” who couldn’t be trusted.
 
praktik

praktik

TRIBE Member
Thats not disagreeing with me - in fact I think we both agreed in this very thread they wouldn't be enough.

I welcome each not-enough move as an incremental step in the right direction, and as offering incremental improvement to a very bad situation.

This is why carbon schemes are a long-term economic winner in every analysis - each dollar spent now pays back in reduced damage we otherwise would have had should we have continued to subsidize super cheap carbon for political expediency on the backs of future generations.

Pricing carbon isn't enough - but its long overdue and a part of a solution that does require a shitload of other stuff.

It also pays back, so its a bit of a no-brainer even if politics means we're too stupid to recognize that.
 
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