It's difficult to have any optimism about climate change when we can can barely deal with a germ
Climate Change | UN Report: Code Red for humanity
- Thread starter Buster15
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The Germ will deal with climate change.
Yeah. China invented both, so they know how to stop the other.
But, seriously, people from developed countries can live quite comfortably with lower emissions. As we have seen over the last two months.
No unnecessary travels, consumption and waste... Not that this will matter anything when the vaccine is ready and certain countries go into no emission regulations to turbostart "the economy".
This is pretty worrying - both personally and professionally. This is a VERY early storm - it's not even June!!!
There was also a tropical depression that went over Bermuda last week, but it wasn't much at all.
Still, an active season this year could be hugely problematic - imagine a big hurricane running through Florida, and not being able to send claims adjusters and repair people to fix it because of the pandemic!
This is a great chance for the EU and its member states to spend most funding meant to stimulate the economy on sustainable businesses. I really hope they think about that when trying to get back to normal.
Yeah, tropical storm Arthur. It scraped by the coast of North Carolina before turning out to sea.
2 weeks, 2 named storms, 1 landfall... it's still May.
It wouldn't surprise me if it happens. 2020 gonna 2020.
Ain't that the truth! Stay safe over there.
EU will do this, at least to some degree.
China, USA, the UK, Brazil and India etc will not. Most of Africa will not, but we cannot really demand them doing it either given the hypocrisy of the rest of the world enforcing emission regulations on them now when we have been able to live so well with no regulations for so many years... But they really should, given that they will be the ones most affected by the change in the climate. And having food sources that are less affected by highly volatile weather will be crucial for the foreseeable future.
About time we had some good news in 2020.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52973089
Within 5 years all coal fired plants in the UK will be shut down. I had no idea we had come so far since all you hear is how the UK screwed it's energy policy up outsourcing to France/China/whoever.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52973089
Within 5 years all coal fired plants in the UK will be shut down. I had no idea we had come so far since all you hear is how the UK screwed it's energy policy up outsourcing to France/China/whoever.
It is indeed good news.
Good to hear we're making a step in the right direction.
What happened to fracking? There was some talk about that years ago but I never hear it mentioned these days.
Another fantastic point of that story was this part:
Repurposing old factories is a great initiative because in theory, it should mean jobs are retained.
It was stopped in the UK about a year ago pending review. Other countries still do it.
I'm not an expert but doesn't burning wood pellets produce alot of CO2 as well?
Brilliant news - it'll be interesting to see how much of a contribution lockdown made to achieving this, but clearly we're on the right path.
Yes but they get around that by planting new trees to offset it.
It will be the only coal/wood burning plant left in the UK. It's not much newer than the others that are being decommissioned/converted so you'd think it probably won't be around for too long.
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Arctic Hits Its Hottest Temperature Ever
This is doubly bad. Obviously the more the ice melts the more the seas will rise.
But far worse is the fact that there is a huge amount of Methane which is currently frozen. But not for much longer.
And as we know, Methane is far worse a greenhouse gas than CO2.
We really need to get people back but safely on public transport. But, what ever we achieve, Arctic warming is an absolute disaster of global proportions.
And 2 more bad consequences:
- The artic ice reflects a huge amount of solar rays that without all that white surface, will be absorbed by the sea, increasing the temperature
- All that amount of fresh water melted might disrupt the North Atlantic Current changing the clima drastically, I believe freezing north europe among other natural disasters like animals that migrates following the current
One more, just for good measure: melting permafrost wreaking havoc on aging infrastructure, much of it oil & gas related due to the locations of these resources. More pipeline leaks and others, like we just saw in Russia which turned a river red. It was likely caused by a storage tank losing support due to a weakened foundation.
Methane is far more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but as far as I know it doesn't stay in the atmosphere for anywhere near as long. Of course we're probably still fecked.
yay...
All perfectly correct.
Many times when I think about climate change, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Mainly the latter and the laugh is only a nervous laugh.
I have 4 grandchildren aged between 7 and 1. And their futures are going to be extremely difficult.
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Unsurvivable.
It's a massive storm and it's about to broadside an enormous chunk of the gulf coast of the US. 
Methane's atmospheric life time is still 20 years, so it's not that short-lived. Also, methane converts into CO2 (which has a life time of about a thousand years), so it's a double whammy really...
In good news, Canada's federal government is also going to aim for a so-called 'green recovery'. As long as that's not paper talk, that'll be helpful.
People living in Arctic and Subarctic are also among the world's first climate change fugitives because of thawing permafrost destroying their homes, and indeed entire towns.
I’ve been to Port Arthur and Lake Charles. The area around there is bayou and swamp. It is going to absolutely devastate that area. Port Arthur has levees protecting it, but Katrina proved those can fail. Lake Charles does not have levees.
A proposal to build new levees around Lake Charles was rejected last year literally because this kind of even was “too unlikely”.
“The new draft plan, revised from a first version released in December 2013, rejected proposals to build new levees around Lake Charles and other communities to protect them from storm surges caused by hurricanes with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, the so-called 100-year storm. The costs of the levee proposals outweighed their benefits, the report said.”
https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_b300928d-fef8-5d22-800f-0558535f6a87.html
Record storm surge in that area of SW Louisiana is 13 feet and half of the city of Lake Charles was underwater. They’re talking 15-20 feet tonight.
On top of Cat 4/5 storm surge, it’s also king tide tonight.
On top of Cat 4/5 storm surge, it’s also king tide tonight.
It looked like a near perfect hit on Lake Charles. And yeah, if you’ve been there you know they can’t contain this.
Fecking hell, I didn’t know it was ramping up strength like this.
edit: source for last bit was Wunderground.
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Residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than 10 years. This is shown by Murry Salby calculated 6 times using methods independent of each other. Methane is easily oxidised in the atmosphere by oxygen via photocatalysis. Methane's residence time is less than CO2's.
So I looked up Murry Dalby and he's a climate change denialist. Not a good starting point. Can you refer to any mainstream atmospheric scientists confirming his view?
From my end: my wife is an atmospheric scientist why does trust the mainstream consensus, so I'll prefer her view. What she explains to me, is that individual CO2 molecules are indeed removed from the atmosphere (e.g absorbed by the ocean or rocks) pretty quickly (maybe 5 years on average), but in that dynamic, they get replaced by another CO2 molecule. So that doesn't reduce the overall CO2 presence in the atmosphere. Same with methane. If that's what you mean by residence time, then I'm afraid it's a red herring.
But don't trust me either: here is an article that explains the science in detail, with further references. Same point; yes, CO2 residence time is low, but the argument doesn't stop there. Here are two key quotes:
(I thus did overstate things myself with setting the CO2 life time simply at 1000 years.)
guess who's back, back again,
shady's back, tell a friend.
shady's back, tell a friend.
It's insane to reject infrastructure investments because it's a only for a 100-year storm. Might as well start moving people out of the area then, the way climate change continues to increase those odds. What's behind this? Lack of political will, because the costs will create negative budgets with only long-term benefits, and politicians fear to be voted out of office? (Which is what I think usually holds infrastructure investments back.)I’ve been to Port Arthur and Lake Charles. The area around there is bayou and swamp. It is going to absolutely devastate that area. Port Arthur has levees protecting it, but Katrina proved those can fail. Lake Charles does not have levees.
A proposal to build new levees around Lake Charles was rejected last year literally because this kind of even was “too unlikely”.
“The new draft plan, revised from a first version released in December 2013, rejected proposals to build new levees around Lake Charles and other communities to protect them from storm surges caused by hurricanes with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, the so-called 100-year storm. The costs of the levee proposals outweighed their benefits, the report said.”
https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_b300928d-fef8-5d22-800f-0558535f6a87.html
Sounds to me like the wider region down there needs its equivalent of the Dutch Delta Plan (link). That was a large-scale plan to construct numerous water containment structures (like dams) across the southeast of the Netherlands after a giant flood in 1953. Extremely expensive and it took decades to complete, but it was the only way to keep the population of a large area of the country safe. Given climate change, it's either that, evacuation - or accepting that Katrina-like events will continue to happen, with increasing frequency.
Ex-coal mine CEO Bob Murray files for black lung benefits — claims he is ‘near death’
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/ex...its-claims-he-is-near/#comments_section_start
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/ex...its-claims-he-is-near/#comments_section_start
Eat shit Bob.
the report rejected a $1.8bn proposal to deal with the 1 in a hundred year floods but endorsed a $824 bn plan that deals with the 1 in 25 year floods - this also provides 86% of the benefit of the one in a hundred year proposals
in effect making the last 14% of the 1 in a hundred years cost £1bn whilst 86% of the benefits costs $824bn and is expected to pay for its self in approx 4 years with savings on dealing with floods
i think it comes down to the fact that effectivley dealing with the extra 14% of flooding from a one in a hundred year occurrence vs the 1 in 25 year occurrence is simply something that does not provide the same value for money
Ah OK - I didn't have that context, sorry.