Climate Change
- Thread starter Dr Jon
- Start date
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Yeh we're all fucked
teqniq
DisMembered
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
Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
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.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Reminds me of the seed bank in the north of Norway that flooded
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
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
There is no love between us anymore.
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.
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.
Mr.Bishie
pickled egg
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
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)
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 4.5
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.
The second set of results from the global carbon project are in GtCO/yr
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
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)
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 4.5
RCP 6.0
RCP 8.5
(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.
RCP Database
The results above are in PgC/yr.
The second set of results from the global carbon project are in GtCO/yr
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
There is no love between us anymore.
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.
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.
2hats
Dust.
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.
This will almost certainly change their radiation budget and accelerate melt rate just as Amazonian forest fires have sped up Andean glacier melting.
teqniq
DisMembered
I'm shocked. shocked, I tell you. 
insideclimatenews.org
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
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